Well, the first thing they should think about is how does one become a fan. Explaining this to a brand might be difficult, as most marketers will say “because they love us.” Well, brand love just ain’t what it used to be. Users will not gather around a brand just because it is there – well, some will and some brands do have that effect. But let’s look at a more strategic optic – what sort of fans are out there and what mechanics work best to attract them?

In a broad sense, there are four types of fans – the unconscious, the grabber, the seeker and the lover. Each of them has a different motivation and requires a different approach. Let’s look at each of them:

The unconscious – These users see a friend who has become a fan of a page and just click on it. Most of the time they become a fan simply because their friend did. Other times they’ll become fans because the page name looked fun/odd/curious. Regardless, they become fans. But the odds are, you won’t get a peep out of these users – and they won’t come back to the page that often. Getting these users demands two efforts – spreading your page to a database of dense users with many contacts (who are a reference) and/or, sometimes, simply coming up with a fun/odd/curious name for the page itself.

The grabber – The prize winners. They will go for every freebie/campaign you create. They join because they’ve either become aware that the page had a campaign offering something to the fan base or saw on a friend’s wall a reference to that campaign. Anyway, they join in an effort to win a prize. The good thing about these users are that they will follow the page – as long as it keeps on pumping out the freebies/promotions/etc. Getting this user is easy – just create a campaign based on Facebook’s mechanics.

The seeker – These users actively seek pages pertaining to specific interests. Although very subjective, these users can be categorized into a group as not all users ‘actively seek’ pages in Facebook. Seekers look for interesting content because they become active followers, commenting and participating in the discussion. They’re the best type of fan you can get. To gather users such as these, the page has to be very content focused and have a strong update scheme that keeps users coming back for more, which means no dead moments with just weekly updates. Another strategy is cross posting – finding related pages where you can post content from your page to generate curiosity.

The lover – Quite simply the user who goes to a page simply because they love the brand. Not much a page can do to get them – simply having users join so the page shows up on the wall feed – or better, doing a campaign using Facebook ads and taking advantage of segmented user data.

Most users don’t fall into one of these categories specifically – most of us identify with each of these segments at one time or another. To effectively get a user to join a brand page we should devise a strategy that plays on all these levels. But one thing’s for sure – it’s not the number of fans you get that matter, but what you do with them and how they react to your stimulus.

If you work in the online arena, then a lot of your clients have already come up to you and said, “Well, let’s go into [insert Social Network here]” – most likely Facebook now – and has tasked you and your team to strategize what the brand should do on Facebook. If you are going into a a group logic or just a fan page with some static information, then you should probably think about doing something more. However, if you are creating a more complex interaction, like a browser game or a new tool that you hope will be really interesting for the users, then you’ve got a lot of work ahead. The KISS principle will be your friend when figuring out what you should do, but I’ve got a new rule – the SSS Rule.

The SSS Rule simply stands for “Simple”, “Sharable”, “Scorable”. And it will help you evaluate your ideas before you take them to the client and even support them when you do your presentation. Let’s look into each of these:

Simple – No news here. KISS said to keep it simple. I’m telling you to keep it SIMPLE. The time people spend in Social Networks, although growing, is unbelievably fragmented. From tool to tool, game to game, post to post, users are prone to lose their attention in a very short time span. It’s a stresstetainment consequence. So if you want your tool to survive it has to be really time efficient – only requiring a little while to understand and about 1-5 minutes of the users time maximum. Beyond efficiency, keep in mind it also has to make them come back for more. One such example is Mafia Wars. With more users growing every day, Mafia Wars takes up to a few minutes each time you go in. But it always makes you come back in a few hours to carry on your game.

Sharable – Social Networks are all about sharing – and they make it easy to do it too! All you have to consider is that the tool has to have sharing potential – be it because it’s a natural mechanism such as the ingredient exchange in Restaurant City or because sharing it broadens the experience like adding more neighbors in Farmville.

Scorable – This is probably the hardest to explain. To keep users coming back for more, Social Network tools should create competition in an indirect way (e.g. a score or level that challenges users to develop new skills and ‘up their game’). Not only does competition open up more functionality in the application, it also becomes a status of its own. Consider the quiz craze on Facebook. What makes users crazy about quizzes like the Flixter Movie Quizzes is the fact that they see the results of their friends. This is what I mean as Scorable – it give a score or it contains an evaluation or evolution metric inside the application.

There you have it. The SSS rule will help you conceptualize and evaluate any application you create for a Social Network. Keep in mind, some applications might only fulfill two of the criteria such as Sharable + Simple; as one of the S’s might be more important to your target than another. Ultimately it’s up to you though, where you want to position the brand in the SSS matrix. In any case, using the SSS Rule will help you evaluate where your social application stands and what should you improve or not.

Alvenda Inc., a Minneapolis-based startup, has innovated the e-commerce scenario by creating Banner Based Stores, display advertising materials that pose as a online store for their clients — an innovative and definitely different approach towards e-commerce as it allows a store to be where the consumers are instead of trying to drag them into their website which has to be done by gaining their confidence, getting them to visit you and having a really good product.

So now they’ve decided to go one step forward by developing fully functioning retail stores in Facebook. Facebook already has a currency that is used to buy virtual gifts and is slowly evolving into a semi-Pay Pal system that allows more complex offline shopping to occur – but the fact is that in order for the e-commerce capabilities of Facebook to evolve, companies have to find a way to play with all the capabilities Facebook has to offer at the moment and build up a proper E-Commerce strategy with real added value for the Facebook-using consumer. This has to be done, of course, taking into account the nature of Social Media and the seriousness (or lack of) that it has in the eyes of the consumer.

And in comes a rather recent concept – Social Shopping. Shopping is by nature a social act. Shopping online always had a few issues – the fact that you can’t see the actual product (not solvable) and the fact that you can’t exactly take your friends or family to help you choose. So Alvenda is bringing a solution to this second fact by bringing the shop to where the consumers are and, if they properly use the tools Facebook has, they will enable users to share their shopping or wishlists with other users directly on Facebook.

The sheer potential of the Social Shopping is still far from explored. While brands can look at this with some skepticism, marketers should to be able to design a strategy that, if necessary, can look into a first dwelling in Social Shopping. A very basic and test-oriented dwelling, of course. Like in any new tool, the first approach should be cautious but not too basic.

Let’s see how Alvenda’s approach to Social Shopping works out. We do not expect massive results at first and we know that some cards might be playing against them – not many users consider Facebook as a Shopping Mall and still look at it more as a toy than a serious website. But take this into account – the nature that the Social Network is acquiring goes beyond a profile page and more into the building of an online persona where more users each day invest more time. Not only this, but more brands and companies are building microsites for promotions inside Facebook. So the odds for Alvenda’s are pretty good – let’s see what happens…

Having recently released a Facebook Connect application where users can share their travel plans with their friends. Not only this but it also allows friends to click on the trip in order to book their own travel, be it equal to the one they saw on Facebook. This makes group booking a lot simpler. The clever thing about this is:
1. The way it displays the brand and their product in a Facebook-friendly why. It’s not an invading application that you feel that is just another quiz, it’s actually something real (a trip a friend is making);
2. It generates opinion. Trip reviews – be it opinions on the destination or the Hotel – are the themes most commented on the web and regarded as valued knowledge coming from somebody who’s actually been to these places – it’s the basis of the 2.0.
While Orbitz is not the first vacationing app on Facebook, it definitely uses two important factors – simple and context-friendly. It is a natural fit with Facebook and users do not mix it with second rated applications. In an overcrowded social media scenario, it’s nice to actually see brands tone it down a bit and instead of creating complex in-Facebook mechanics, they just connect it in a natural way.

Facebook just made official what they had told us few weeks ago: starting at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Saturday, June 13, you’ll be able to choose a username on a first-come, first-serve basis for your profile and the Facebook Pages that you administer by visiting www.facebook.com/username/ so if you want to avoid the trouble of dealing with cybersquatting for your brand (company) and if you have a pretty common name, make sure you stay a bit sober on Friday night and don’t plan to hit the bars before late! More info here ›

Pretty awesome way to stay in touch with your fans. Because unlike us, chances are that they probably don’t spend their day on Facebook and don’t own an iPhone.

Us Weekly has sold sponsorship of its new Facebook profile to State Farm in what appears to be a first for a media company on the social network website, as well as a first for a company’s fan page.

As reported by AdAge.
Hat tip: our favorite CEO, Melissa!

Facebook just announced this new function few days ago and we’re already working with one of our favorite clients to develop a new online/offline integration, to prolong the in-store experience and create a subtle daily engagement with their consumers thanks to the brand’s activity on social networks! Starting point being in-stores and on-pack messages. You should totally pitch us to develop some similar platform for your brand: NYC @ fullsix.com

via InsideFacebook

I know. You must be thinking “OMG, another Twitter post…”. Yes, Twitter has been on the spotlight for some time now and everybody seems to be using it. But what this post is actually about the uses of Twitter.
If you consider the basic use of Twitter, it is far simpler than a Social Network. That’s because you cannot consider Twitter a social network per se, although it contains a strong networking (essential actually!) and it is based on exchanging information amongst peers. Nor can you consider it a Social Bookmarking tool, although the use it has been having from most users is to share links to interesting stuff they come across the web. It’s not a messaging system either as it goes beyond it. So what exactly is it? It really doesn’t matter what it is – it’s a lot more interesting to check what it can do.
Twitter has something that is completely different from any other service of the same genre – it can work as an add-on to other tools online. That’s right – we can consider Twitter as an upgrade to the user’s needs and purposes online. Better yet, Twitter can work towards a company’s objectives and even a fellow website purposes. Consider the following examples:

- Digg – Digg is a Social Bookmarking website. What Twitter does is, instead of having all sorts of digital scrap on the top popularity links due to having the same “credible” individuals posting and using convenient titles such as “TOP 10 MICROSOFT vs. APPLE and IPHONE PICTURES” (all the basic keywords to attain first place on Digg’s homepage), Twitter allows the users to select the people most in tune with their preferences and just check the postings and links placed by them. Yes, I said it’s not a Social Bookmarking service, but the fact is that more users are using Twitter to share their common interests and “work” related information. Which leads me to my next point;

- Linked In – A professional social network, Linked In is probably one of the best sources of information for head hunters to find their targets. It’s like an online résumé. But what Linked In lacks (or simply users don’t use it to that purpose) is information regarding the involvement of the target with the type of job he has. Is he a simple Joe who just does his 8 hours of work and doesn’t do much more or is he this information powerhouse that would be valuable for the company? Simple – if this person has a Twitter account, you can check just the type of information he shares and is interested in simply by following him and checking who he is following. Sure, you can always say that the Linked In target is not exactly Twitter’s target, but consider that most Twitter users are professional above 35 years-old.

- MySpace and Facebook – Here’s the bigger issue. How to mashup Twitter and these two while the first two have a service that sort of works the same way Twitter does. Well, consider this – how much stuff do you have on your wall to check? With Twitter, you can focus the attention towards where on the Profile you want people to look at without all the crowded information about the Quizzes you did.

- Youtube – Having recently added a Twitter sharing button, Youtube has definitely discovered the potential in Twitter for it’s business. Twitter users are used to follow up links and, like I mentioned before, are more prone to go to a link to Youtube placed by a trusted followed source that on any other place.

I could go on but I believe you got the big picture. The truth about Twitter is that it isn’t a threat to other Social Media websites – it can actually work towards a common goal. It all comes down to how the relationship between the companies influences the integration of their tools and, of course, on the user’s interest.
Twitter is growing so we are sure to see more users joining Twitter. So, instead of fighting it, why not just ride the waves like Youtube did and find out how we can use it to the consumers advantage. Companies have already started scrapping Twitter and finding the first uses from this tool:

- Extending the reach for those individuals or companies that already have a blogging strategy in place, and want to deepen or further ties. Good examples: Carnival Cruise Lines. The ScienceNewsBlog’s weather tracking updates. Andy Carvin’s PBS blog on education and technology.
- Retailers announcing sales and deals. Good example: Deals on Dells. Blue-light specials at Amazon.
- Increasing the ability for frequent updates to blogs or web sites or news. Examples: The NY Times, CNN, BBC, Adrants, and those of us here at MarketingProfs.
- Building consensus or a community of supporters. Good examples: Presidential candidates John Edwards or Barack Obama.
- Building buzz. Example: Scott Monty and CC Chapman introduce a new blog.
- Updating breaking news at conferences or events. Example: Jeremiah at the Web 2.0 Expo. Forrester seems poised to use it to update happenings at its upcoming Consumer Forum.
- Updating your network to shape your own personal branding: Example: Oh boy… there are zillions. Pick a face on Twitter. You’ll see what I mean.

Get more information on how the Twitter community works and thinks for your marketing efforts. As I’ve repeat several times before respect your audience – don’t jump in and apply pure hard-selling tactics because that’s not what consumers what. It’s not enough to repeat that again.