I’ve been thinking a lot lately about where Facebook seems to be going for businesses, and I have several ideas about where it’s going based on observation and experiences with my clients. I’m not quite ready to blog about these ideas yet. Sometimes ideas just need to marinate a bit longer, but these stats seem to validate where things are going. In the meantime, consider some of these new Facebook stats from ComScore:

Traffic:
In Dec. 2008, Facebook had 13 million daily U.S. visitors.
In Dec. 2009, Facebook had 37 million daily U.S. visitors.
This is an increase of 181%.

In Dec. 2008, Facebook had 54 million U.S. visitors total.
In Dec. 2009, Facebook had 111 million U.S visitors total.
This is an increase of 105%.

In Dec. 2008, the average Facebook user visited the site 16.8 times during the month.
In Dec. 2009, the average Facebook user visited the site 27.4 times during the month.
This is an increase of 64%.

Engagement:
In Dec. 2008, users spent 2.8 cumulative hours on Facebook during the month.
In Dec. 2009, users spent 4.1 cumulative hours on Facebook during the month.
This is an increase of 45%.

In Dec. 2008, Facebook users spent 10.1 minutes per visit.
In Dec. 2009, Facebook users spent 9 minutes per visit.
This is a decrease of 11% (Though this is a decrease I think it makes sense that people would spend less time per visit when they’re visiting the site more often. There’s less new stuff to see since the last time they were there.)

Last week I conducted a little experiment to between Facebook and Twitter to see which one generated more discussion. My hunch has been that Facebook provides more engagement and conversation, but I wanted to see if that would be true when I was intentionally comparing responses to the same questions.

To run this little experiment, I posed the following statements/questions to both Facebook and Twitter simultaneously. At the time of these posts, I had 1,920 followers on Twitter and 770 friends on Facebook, so theoretically, I’m talking to over twice as many people in Twitter as Facebook. Here are the results…

Tweet/Update #1 (posted Monday, Nov. 2)

“Well…we’re having a boy. After two girls a boy is on the way. Looks like I won’t mow my lawn forever after all!”

Response:

• 25 followers replied from Twitter
• 10 people commented and 9 people “liked” the update on Facebook

Tweet/Update #2 (posted Tuesday, Nov. 3)

“Saw someone with Christmas decorations on their house. Can we throw a premature celebration flag? Is it too early or that just me?”

Response:

• 4 followers replied from Twitter
• 6 people commented in Facebook

Tweet/Update #3 (posted Tuesday, Nov. 3)

“Good comments re: Christmas decorations. What about the music? Anyone listening to it yet? I don’t start until after Thanksgiving.”

Response:

• 5 followers replied from Twitter
• 5 people commented and 1 person “liked” the update on Facebook

Conclusion

After taking a look at the numbers I have to conclude that Facebook is more conversational for general discussion. Twitter has shined, however, when I’ve talked about more professional things, but when it comes to anything personal, fun, cultural, etc. I have seen time and time again that Facebook is the place where more conversations happen. I’m not sure what to make of this as it relates to businesses using either of these tools and I’ll be curious to see if others have similar experiences, but for now I think I’m seeing Twitter differentiate as a largely professional social network whereas Facebook continues to hold steady as a more personal social network.

On an interesting sidenote, a few days ago I Tweeted that I had run this experiment and asked people to guess whether Facebook or Twitter was more conversational. Everyone predicted Facebook, including the four people who responded via Twitter.

A couple days ago I had a client here in Nashville forward me a link to a blog post about Facebook’s terms of use policy. The post, in essence, says that Facebook doesn’t intend for personal profiles to be used for commercial purposes and that they can (and very well may) shut down your account if you violate this policy. The blogger went on to recommend everyone create Facebook Fan pages instead. The rationale here is that your “fans” permit you to promote to them, while your “friends” on your personal profile do not.

First let’s take a look at what Facebook says about this.

In Section 3 of the Facebook terms of use/statement of rights and responsibilities it says:
1. You will not send or otherwise post unauthorized commercial communications (such as spam) on Facebook.

In an updated (but apparently not official) Facebook statement of rights and responsibilities Facebook has included the following statement in Section 4:
2. You will not use your personal profile for your own commercial gain (such as selling your status update to an advertiser).

Let’s Make Sense of All of This
First things first, the item from Section 3 of the policy is the official policy as of today. The addition may be coming, but neither of these changes where I land on this. Ultimately it all of this comes down to whether you want to take the broad interpretation or the narrow interpretation of the policy. The broad view is that you can talk about work but you can’t sell. The narrow view is that you can’t talk about work or sell. I fall into the broad interpretation category (as you might guess) because the specific examples Facebook gives are both sales oriented examples. It’s one thing to talk about life as an employee but something else entirely to say, “Email me now for a 31% discount on the latest Whizbang Life-Helper 5000. Get them before they’re gone!”

Here’s What I Love About the Policy
The most encouraging thing about Facebook’s terms is that it prevents people from doing the things that don’t work in social media anyway. The culture of social networking is informal and soft sales at best. Anyone who comes off as only participating because they’re trying to sell you something isn’t just going to have Facebook policy to contend with, they have to deal with the fact that they’re annoying the heck out of people by violating the entire culture of the medium.

Facebook, like any other social network, works best with conversation that adds value to the people you want to reach. When you take the predatory salesman approach, you’re going to be shunned for being a spammy jerk. The Facebook policy is the least of your concerns. You’re out there bothering potential business and hurting yourself and your brand in the process.

Facebook Fan Pages Create False Sense of Security
Fan pages won’t fix spammy jerks on Facebook. If anything they may enable people to continue using Facebook the wrong way. Using Facebook for business isn’t directly about selling. It’s about earning attention and listening to feedback that will help your business. The LACE method for social media measurement falls nicely into this. For instance, Facebook let’s you capture leads, but not because you were annoying, but because you shared a link that met a need but coincides with what you do professionally. Or maybe you talked about something you do professionally that got them interested and now they want to know more.

If you want to win with Facebook in your business, it’s most important that you learn how to think the right way and talk the right way. A strict adherence to the policy won’t prevent you from completely missing out on everything you hope Facebook will do for you. Sure, you can violate Facebook policy and lose the business opportunities you most want. You can also adhere to Facebook’s policy and miss out too.

For all the interest in social media today, I wonder if a few of the subtleties that really make it work are getting lost in some of the newcomers. When social media is done well, it is a nice combination of both awareness and engagement.

Engagement feels like you’re doing something because you’re blogging or Tweeting, but awareness feels like you’re just watching and listening (which you are) but it doesn’t give you that same “I did something today” kind of feeling. If that’s you, I have three words of advice: Get over it!

Why Understanding Social Media Culture Is Critical
An organization that’s excited to jump into social media may be blogging their brains out, Tweeting their thumbs off, and Facebooking their faces off, but if they don’t understand the world of social media, they may be doing it all wrong which will only come back to hurt them.

Social media is not just technology. It’s a culture of the new way to engage and interact with people online. You really only learn that through observation and personal, experimental participation. That’s where awareness comes in. Awareness is what keeps you grounded in all of the engaging. It’s what let’s you know where the boundaries are.

The Bad Facebook Profile
Last week I was working with some clients and we were reviewing Facebook profiles of people in their particular industry. We found one lady, in particular, who quite obviously didn’t understand the culture or protocol of Facebook. As interesting a discovery as that was, the more interesting thing to me was the reaction of individuals in the room. A few of them saw the problems with her profile right off the bat. They were aware of the Facebook culture. The rest of the room didn’t see what the big deal was. They, as you might suspect, haven’t spent much time in Facebook and therefore don’t understand the culture. How could they? They haven’t lived there yet. I can only tell them so much as their consultant. They have to experience it for themselves to fully understand it.

It seems a lot of the social media discussions focus on the engagement side. Heck, I’m even guilty of leaning that way myself sometimes. That’s where it feels like all the action is. It’s great to know how to Tweet better, blog smarter, position your YouTube video for viral success, and Facebook like a rockstar. I’m all for that, just don’t miss the value of taking the proper time to become aware of the culture.

I recommend people experiment personally before they do anything from a business standpoint. You have a lot of freedom and autonomy as an individual, but once you start that corporate profile for your business, you’re going to feel the pressure to do something whether it’s what you should do or not…and doing can sometimes be the worst thing to do. Take the time to be aware of how the world works before you set up your own camp.

Yesterday Facebook announced it was going to open up the search function within the site. What this means is that now you can search for any word or phrase you want within Facebook whereas before  you could only search for groups, locations, or individuals. This may not seem like a big deal, but from a business perspective it’s huge. The walled garden isn’t closed anymore.

The world of social media monitoring has been growing steadily for the last year or so, and I think this new development from Facebook is going to blow it wide open. Until now, there were a handful of ways businesses could really know what public sentiment was about their business, brands, products, services etc. They could search blogs, Twitter, discussion boards, and even online video, but Facebook was always the big unknown yet it was the premiere social network with the biggest numbers of people to listen to. Now that it’s open, I think it’s going to become the first place for businesses to look for consumer sentiment instead of Twitter.

A few weeks ago I talked about measuring social media success using the LACE (leads, awareness, customer service, engagement) method. With the new Facebook search available, smart organizations will be able to do this even better than before.

A few weeks ago Phil Davis (aka Philo) asked me what I thought about connecting his Twitter account to his Facebook status. I told him he shouldn’t do it and should handle each one separately because it would likely confuse people in Facebook to see conversations in Twitter. I also told him it was a lazy way to look like you’re active in Facebook.

I didn’t think much about it for a few days and then the conversation came back to mind. I realized I didn’t have a great reason for responding to Phil like I had and should try connecting my own Twitter account to my Facebook profile and see what happens. What I discovered really surprised me.

The first thing I saw was that it actually facilitated a higher level of good conversations within Facebook. I wasn’t terribly active in updating my Facebook status prior to connecting Twitter to it. Once I did I really started to have some meaningful conversations within Facebook because of my Tweets. I didn’t expect that to happen.

The second thing I noticed was that I became a lot more selective about what I would Tweet. I was constantly mindful that I was simultaneously broadcasting to both Twitter and Facebook, so I found myself choosing not to Tweet at times because things wouldn’t make sense in Facebook that might on Twitter. I also started responding to people a lot more in direct messages rather than a simple “@” response. It was like I had another level of accountability for my Tweets and that was a good thing. It made me question whether something was really worth saying or not, so it was good to give a extra moment to pause and ask myself if I was really going to add any value by saying whatever it was I was going to say.

Finally, it generated business. This was the biggest shocker for me. I forget sometimes that there are still a lot more people using Facebook than Twitter, so by feeding my Tweets to Facebook it gave my Facebook friends a broader sense of what I do which, in turn, has generated several conversations about how I might be able to help their businesses. Generating business leads by connecting Twitter to Facebook was the last thing that I expected to happen, yet it did.

So this is my public apology to Phil for the poor recommendation a month ago. I have since told him the error of my ways and he was greatly delighted. It was also a good reminder for me to make sure I test my assumptions because until I know for sure, they’re just assumptions…and we all know what happens when you ASS-U-ME.

Connecting Twitter and Facebook
If you want to connect your Twitter status to Facebook there area couple of options for you:

1. The Twitter application on Facebook will automattically update all status with your Tweets.
2. The selective twitter status application on Facebook that lets you push only the Tweets you end with the #fb hashtag. I don’t use this one, but it seems to be the best of both worlds.

If you’re even mildly active on Facebook you’re going to enjoy Julian Smith’s “25 Things I Hate About Facebook.” I agree with several of them on his list. If you want a little more Facebook fun, check out Rhett and Link’s Facebook Song.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVA047JAQsk]

I think it’s time to make a call on something: LinkedIn isn’t necessary anymore. Why? You don’t need it. I don’t have anything against LinkedIn, I just don’t think it’s needed anymore, and I’m even wondering if it ever was. I wasn’t convinced of this until recently, but I have had so many conversations with professionals who say the same thing. To the person they all say, “I signed up for LinkedIn but never use it. It was just something I felt like I needed to do.” Personally, I fall into that category as well and I think I know why.

A Little Social Networking History
LinkedIn was created as a social network for business professionals. It emerged as MySpace was on the way down and Facebook was on the way up. Most professionals weren’t about to get into the spammy world of MySpace, and Facebook was just graduating from being a social network for students. LinkedIn filled the gap. It was poised to be the ultimate social network for professionals and it would have worked, except a funny thing happened. Actually two things happened: Facebook and Twitter.

Facebook quickly grew out of the student-only status and emerged as the definitive network to find or connect with just about everyone. Twitter provided another level of connection and conversation for the people who didn’t want their coworkers accessing pictures of their vacation or seeing status updates from the New Kids on the Block reunion tour.

Facebook emerged as the social network instead of just a social network and Twitter allows broad connections without as much self revelation if a person so chooses. Facebook and Twitter combined are the double punch in LinkedIn’s stomach and together they undermine everything LinkedIn could have hoped to become.

LinkedIn Gets Left Out
LinkedIn says it has three purposes:

1. To let you connect with past and present colleagues,
2. To find answers to your questions,
3. To “discover inside connections when you’re looking for a job or new business opportunity.”

As you look at the three purposes, you can see that Facebook pretty well has number one covered. There’s a reason Facebook is now twice the size of MySpace worldwide. The bottom line on connection is that if someone wants to be connected, they’re on Facebook.

Twitter is pretty good at connections, but it’s lesser known quality is information. Many people are just now waking up to the fact that Twitter is the first place where news breaks. Not convinced? Just ask U.S. Airways. Twitter breaks news, makes news, and with a few good friends, can get you speedy answers to your questions. It’s pretty amazing.

That leaves us with item number three: the “inside connections” benefit of LinkedIn. To some degree you can see this with Facebook and enough observation in Twitter. LinkedIn beats them both in the ability to display this information. What this doesn’t take into account, however, is the human factor. The idea of asking a friend of a friend for a favor (let alone a job) is a little uncomfortable for everyone. Sure, there are people who don’t mind it, but the average person is pretty protective of their relational equity, and you generally don’t want to spend it just because Mike from middle school saw you know someone who knows someone who he wants to meet. Just because you can see who your friends are connected to doesn’t mean they want to facilitate a forced interaction. They know their own reputation is on the line too. This was always LinkedIn’s biggest promise and weakest point. No amount of technology can overcome social etiquette and relational capital.

The bottom line is that LinkedIn isn’t necessary anymore. Everyone you’re going to want to connect with is on Facebook or Twitter (or both) and unless LinkedIn has something more to provide, I don’t know why you would need to use it.

——

NOTE/IRONY: As I was about to post, I considered killing my LinkedIn profile altogether, but then I realized I probably shouldn’t. It turns out my LinkdedIn profile is the fourth entry on a Google search for my name. Since I’m not a fan of killing things off when Google’s indexed them I decided to leave it up. Guess LinkedIn has a little benefit after all.

Last month I wrote a post about the common strategic mix up by organizations who don’t understand that the two great strategies of social media, content and conversation, take different priorities depending on the tools you use.

When you choose social media tools like blogs, podcasts, online video, etc., you should lead with content and conversation is secondary. When you choose a social networking tool like Facebook or Ning, you should lead with conversation and content is secondary. Though it’s probably still too early in the game to say there are “laws” of social media/new media marketing, these seem to hold true.

Last week I found a great example of this. According to a NewTeeVee post, CBS is changing its strategy for TV.com away from an online community with videos, to one that is focused on the video content itself like Hulu and Fancast have done. Apparently when TV.com was created, the focus wasn’t on content. TV.com was focused on conversation for a community. The problem with that strategy, however, was that people were a lot more interested in the videos themselves than conversations about the videos. TV.com was (and still is) an online video site. Online video is a social media platform, not a social networking platform, so content should be the leading strategy. Ultimately, the people using the site proved this point and CBS has appropriately changed course.

The good news for CBS is that they should be able to make the switch successfully because they have content people want. The bad news is they’re now playing catch up to Hulu because of this strategic mistake.

Don’t make the same mistake TV.com did. Lead with content when you use social media and lead with conversation when you use social networking.

A few days ago I gave a presentation about social media marketing here in Nashville. During the Q&A time, someone asked about using Facebook as a promotional tool. She said Facebook had been working all right for a while, but now it wasn’t going so well. As she explained further, she said her organization had essentially been using Facebook to post news, press releases, and other information the people would find helpful. Now, however, she isn’t sure what to do with it because the group has stopped growing and there’s no interaction among the people.

This is actually a pretty common question to a pretty common problem, so here’s my answer: there are two groups of tools, social media tools and social networking tools, and they are meant to be used differently so use them for their intended purposes:

• Social media tools like podcasts, blogs, online video, etc.are primarily for creating and distributing content.
• Social networking toolslike Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace, on the other hand, are primarily for connecting and conversation.

It’s common to mix these up like in the example above. The lady was using Facebook, a social networking tool, to create content rather than to facilitate conversations and interactions with like-minded people. She wasn’t really interested in conversations and connections, so Facebook was the wrong tool for her strategy.

One thing to note here is that in new media marketing, content and conversations are very closly intertwined. So whereas you lead with content if you choose a social media strategy, you don’t abandon conversation. You simply don’t lead with conversation. Good conversation and connections on the heels of good content are a very powerful thing. That’s why it’s important to comment in blogs. It’s the conversation aspect of that particular social media tool.

The bottom line is this: if you choose a social media tool for your marketing strategy, lead with content and then follow up and continue to connect with people in conversations there. If you choose a social networking tool, lead with conversations and connections, and then create good content to keep the good conversations going.