We all know that Facebook is an influential global company, and even if you don’t have a Facebook account, you’re probably the only person you know over the age of 15 who doesn’t.

Mashable announced last week that 25% of all web page views in the United States are views of Facebook pages, which also equates to 10% of page views worldwide.

What kind of experience has Facebook created online, and how does this attract more customers than Google? Google is the largest and most used search engine on the Internet and does receive a significant number of searches and page views but is certainly not as high as Facebook’s global 10%.

While Google provides great value to their customers, Google’s business is in connecting searchers to the information that they are looking for, in the quickest and most efficient manner possible. Although Google has many other business functions and makes its core profit from advertising revenue, Google and Facebook will soon be even closer rivals. Facebook is launching a messaging/e-mail service similar to that offered by Google through Gmail/Google Mail, an established popular free e-mail service.

Facebook has a very different business model than Google, even though their revenue streams are predominantly based on pay per click advertising.

Facebook gives value to users by providing a platform that intelligently manages and promotes user generated content, an example of the most fundamental of web 2.0 philosophies. Facebook’s business is diversifying and now includes social gaming. Over 11 million daily users log on to a social game and engage with their friends, relatives, colleagues and most importantly, click on ads and spend money on earning higher game status.

In the end, Facebook and Google have very different core business strategies. Although Google provides tools to help manage daily online business and communication, Google directs people to content that they are looking for. Facebook on the other hand does not create any content, but provides an online environment that most of the world chooses to spend time in.

Yes, the Queen is on Facebook. It was inevitable and we should have seen it coming ever since she addressed the world on Youtube. If only I had been smart enough to snatch up www.facebook.com/thebritishmonarchy I could have made a small sum, or even owned an unofficial monarchy page.

Engagement you ask? Not the Prince William type (and we actually did write this just before Prince William announced his engagement to Kate Middleton today), the other kind of engagement. The British Monarchy engaging their audiences who spend their time in Facebook, and whom are getting a very warm welcome.

It’s been about two weeks and at a last count there have been hundreds of thousands of followers that have “liked” them. Depending on how Prince William and Kate use this new medium to communicate with Royal fans, the potential for followers is exponential.

Although expected, I was caught by surprise by a small, tiny comment on the homepage in the haiku-like “about me” box. “Please note that any offensive comments will be deleted”.

A question asked by many companies and organisations when setting up a Facebook page, is whether or not to delete negative comments. Now interestingly enough, the posting to wall functionality has been disabled, however what the general public can do, is comment on a royal post.

Perhaps in one of the most engaging mediums of all time, the general public has a desire to comment on these pictures, most likely posted by someone in a position of relatively high responsibility at an advertising agency or a digital media agency.

As you can see from the posting, these fans are engaging in a genuine and utmost authentic way. “What a thrill” to see my favorite actresses receiving MBE’s as noted by Stuart Parkinson for the world to see.

“I wonder what the joke was” asks Sean Schilke. Is the ability to comment on pictures and activities of the Royal family strengthening people’s brand association with the Monarchy?

At least the new Royal wind farm developments can fund the room full of people who will spend every waking hour reviewing each and every last comment, deleting the offensive comments. It will be very interesting to see the how many people will grow to “like” the royal family, and whether or not it will contribute to national and international “liking” of the Monarchy.

In an effort to sustain sales levels, Harley Davidson are now officially targeting women specifically. Of course they have always had loyal female followers, but they are now targeting the thirty-to-fifty something female demographic who have high levels of disposable income.

After hearing last week that the Milwaukee family home of the brand will be staying open after unions voted to accept a seven year pay freeze and move from full time to more part time and seasonal employment, Harley Davidson are being frugal and are saving money through user generated promotional content.

In contrast to one of the brand’s recent extremely edgy, masculine commercials appropriately called “The Cheater”, here is the winning video from one of Harley Davidson’s newest targeted demographic.

Harley Davidson are being extremely smart in harnessing the devotion and cult culture that the brand have already established, and getting those same customers to create content for them in their spare time. The user generated content may not have high production value, is admittedly slightly on the cheesy side and may not appeal to the wider older woman demographic. It does however belong to a collection of content that increases top of mind awareness and fuels increased customer passion for the brand as they and their troupe of supporters vote for their favorite video.

I read in a blog that the brand have started to send out rings specially designed by one of the founders’ grand daughters to new and loyal female customers, but I couldn’t find any official word on that. The cost of a ring is a small price to pay for user-generated content and the development of long term brand champions.

There are more dangerous and risky activities to partake in than posting a Facebook or Twitter update after you’ve had a few too many at the pub. We all understand the dangers associated with texting while driving, so how can we still enjoy our favourite pass time and stay connected while our mind is otherwise occupied on driving?

I bet the posh-sounding lady who speaks to me through my Tom Tom would sound extremely funny reading out my friends’ status updates, but that’s exactly an idea that General Motors has. An article from Advertising Age describes a potential solution very similar to that.

OnStar is a service offered by General Motors on vehicles sold in the United States, Canada and China. This service allows you to ring up an attendant or an automated system by pressing a button, depending on what kind of information you need. Primarily designed as a means of automatically alerting first responders in case of an accident, it is an upscale feature usually offered by subscription. This service will soon be upgraded, as described in “OnStar Looks to Connect Drivers With More Than Their Stolen Cars” in Advertising Age. In an effort to make the OnStar service seem less old and more hip, the company is looking to attract new audiences by modifying their core offering.

OnStar will be targeting younger audiences who would usually be tempted by practising unsafe social networking while driving, and will do all the hard and dangerous work for the driver and passengers. “The traffic on the M42 is a bloody nightmare” you say, and OnStar will automatically use it to update your status. This feature certainly brings new potential to the recent location integrations in social networking.

It sounds great in theory, and the automatic voice will also be able to read you the recent news or updates of your friends or followers. I do have some questions, which I’m sure will be answered and addressed before the service is launched in the future. For example, how will the service be able to confirm the identity of the user? Would you speak your password into the system? What’s to stop your friends from changing your status to something funny or embarrassing while you’re busy pumping petrol?

This is a very smart strategic move for OnStar, which has typically been a luxury service for those older than average or the extra-precautious with children. They will be opening up their target demographic, which will require fundamentally different marketing and communication strategies and messaging.

Although it is a new offering for OnStar and General Motors, is it a competitive advantage? OnStar has traditionally been a subscription-based service, so will they be able to convince their audience to sign up? Since this demographic already have a smart phone of some sort, what’s to stop the iPhones, Blackberries or Androids from offering the same service for free on the platforms that people already use? In fact, Facebook, Twitter and other social networking big shots could offer the service for free as a product extension, or could a social networking component to the already popular sat nav systems. All you have to do is listen to a 20 second audio ad and you could peruse updates and do your daily friending in the car.

Yesterday Apple announced the release of Ping, the new music-focused social media site. If you’ve ever purchased music on iTunes, ever purchased or registered an apple product or if you’ve ever downloaded an iPhone application, you have an Apple account. Sometimes you might even forget that this account exists, as I did until I signed up for Ping some few hours ago. I downloaded iTunes 10.0 and it was magically there. Ping is far from perfect, most notably because it hasn’t yet approved my profile picture and there’s not yet an easy way to add friends or contacts.

Apple’s business model has historically been providing computers at a higher-than-average price range that are reliable, easy to use, and attractive. Part of Apple’s competitive advantage was that having one of these products became a status symbol, something that millions of Apple fans are willing to pay a premium for. The iPod and iPhone have further reinforced the competitive advantage, with the business model shifting to provide attractive, higher-than-average priced, easy to use .mp3 players. The key factor that brings us to Ping, is that in order to use your iPod on your mac or pc, you need iTunes. ITunes understands some of your deepest and darkest desires such as when you listen to which music, what kinds of music you’re willing to pay for, what music you’ve purchased online and what music you’ll never listen to again. The Genius functionality in iTunes regularly sends Apple information on who and what you’re listening to (with your permission), and it both recommends new music based on your past purchases and it will also create a playlist based on a song.

If you’re in the mood to listen to a certain song, Genius will also scour through your music collection and pick out a selection of songs that will play seamlessly and that have the same beat and feeling. This Genius feature ensures that you’re listening mode doesn’t turn into “I can’t believe I own this music”.

With our increasing comfort with social networking, a social music system seems logical, reeking with MySpace influences. In the Apple keynote speech yesterday Jobs hinted in a slide that users would be able to integrate their Ping activity with Facebook. It apparently turns out that there will be no Facebook integration yet, and in the meanwhile users are left to find friends by name and/or e-mail (that’s so passé).

In terms of competitive advantage, Apple are strides ahead of the competition, integrating a music platform that everyone already uses with a logical place to interact with bands and musicians. In fact, it’s more logical a place than Facebook to interact with other fans and artists. Ping and iTunes are creating a unique environment by pulling more of people’s time into the Apple platforms, creating a stronger argument for them to be a primary host for all music and television content.

It will be interesting to see how the music platform evolves. Due to the fact that Apple’s revenue stream is derived from music and application sales unlike Facebook, whose revenue stream is advertising, there is a greater chance for fans and users to have a more organic and genuine experience. Being built into iTunes has its perks as well since users are already familiar with it and they already have it on their computers. Let’s also not forget that Apple reported having credit card information for over 124 million users in February of 2010, demonstrating the amount of trust and goodwill iTunes has already amassed.

If Apple and Facebook can agree on an integration deal allowing users to be connected to their Facebook friends in Ping, both will be further entrenched for success.

Welcome to planet Jargon. I know you’ve always been taught that we live on Earth, but that in fact is no longer the case. The almighty Oxford Dictionary has opened up, and some influential terms have been added. What do jargon and the Oxford Dictionary have to do with each other?

Lexicography. Although I intended to write a ridiculous sounding word, and then tell you it’s not a word, after a quick Google search, I was wrong (The Oxford Dictionary describes lexicography as “the activity or occupation of compiling dictionaries”).

The language that we use, that companies use whether in communicating to clients or in naming their products or services can have a significant impact on how persuasive we are, or how your clients speak about your products.

This summer between your staycations, you may have missed jargon generators in the news. I have two favorites, The Bullshit Generator and the Web-Economy Generator, which is extra juicy. In case you missed it, these simple tools take a verb, an adjective and a noun randomly from each column and put them together to create a so-called marketing phrase. The generators are a clever idea, and a good way to vent your past marketing bitterness.

Some of my favorite buzz-sayings from the Web-Economy Generator:

• Reinvent e-business convergence
• Strategise virtual relationships
• Exploit interactive users
• Synergise one-to-one ROI

These websites are perhaps holding a mirror up to society and saying a few things:

1. You’re using words that we don’t understand to describe processes and concepts that we really don’t care about.
2. Because we don’t understand what you’re saying, it must mean that you don’t know what you’re talking about.

I’m sure a few comics got a great deal of fresh summer material on the wave of the press attention that these phrase generators have been getting this summer. I also think that they do serve a purpose, maybe even to make us think about some of the terms we are using with our clients, and with people who didn’t study business from a textbook.

The following list is a selection of the words recently added to the third edition of the Oxford Dictionary, let’s take a look at some of the words recently added.

• Staycation
• Microblogging
• Social Media
• Netbook
• Dictionary Attack
• Paywall
• Tweetup
• LBD (This means Little Black Dress!)

Even from this selection, our level of familiarity and comfort with these words and terms varies greatly. Where do these words come from? A word like staycation was most likely either first used by someone in the travel, marketing or media industries. There are digital related words like paywall, microblogging and tweetup that if you said in series “a paywall microblogging tweetup”? could confuse even the most astute tuned-in digital guru.

Although the jargon generators are making comedic what happens every day, and are being extremely harsh, if you don’t understand a word or a meaning, the words no longer matter. As someone not very technical, I would be as equally confused with a techno speak generator, as I’m sure many people would be.

The words that we create and that then stick become real words. From a business or competitive advantage perspective, having your product name become the noun for the product or product category is quite an achievement. The Oxford Dictionary has added Netbook to mean a small computer, when this word is in fact derived from the product name Netbook, which is a small computer by Psion.

Twitter related words are now a part of our every day language (I am attending a tweetup this Thursday evening), and what a feat it is for Twitter, who is actually a company just like lots of others, whose terms have been so widely spread and generalized that are now officially words in the dictionary, literally.

Although by no means do I mean to compare the meaningless phrases that come out of the jargon generators to the pop-culture corporate terms that have now been added to the dictionary, but I do want to stress the importance of remembering your audience, whomever you are communicating to. What is their level of comfort with the language you are using? How effective is your presentation going to be, no matter how impressive-sounding it is, if no one in the audience really understands what you’re saying?

No one can deny Facebook’s global dominance, but you may know a little about the other F word in social media, Foursquare.

The other less popular F word, Foursquare has been gaining popularity for a few years, but Facebook’s new Places feature will challenge Foursquare to attract new users and create true differentiation between themselves and their other F word competitor.

TechCrunch noted that 20% of Foursquare users are currently having their “check-ins” automatically updated on their Facebook feed, increasing the collaboration opportunities for any organisations currently on engaging with their audiences Facebook.

Who exactly uses Foursquare? According to Quantcast, in the US the Foursquare audience is 58% male, with 33% from 18-34 and 25% from 35-49. 82% of US users are caucasian and 65% have a college or graduate degree. Although UK stats haven’t yet surfaced, Foursquare is being harnessed by small businesses in the UK interesting ways.  In one example, a tea room in Brighton held the first “swarm” party, where 50 people gathered together, and had to check in online while physically being in that location to unlock the “swarm” badge. The tea room saw more than 250 mentions in social media in the next 24 hours. The real life Sims game allows you to collect various badges for checking in under various circumstances and completing challenges.

What does this mean for your brand? If your brand personality is fun, adventurous and cutting edge, then it’s only appropriate that you make the most of this complimentary social environment. More importantly, if your customers are wandering around your towns and cities and are on foursquare, make sure they don’t miss you.

Firstly, if you have a real life location, whether an office or storefront, it’s never too early to claim your foursquare real estate. After verification, within 10 minutes you can have a simple, no-frills Foursquare presence where your engaged customers can “check-in”. This maintenance free claim ensures that you’re not missing out if your audience is battling their friends for the most badges. If after a few weeks or months you notice that your customers are “checking-in”, then you can explore other opportunities, perhaps offer specials or create challenges for your clients and customers, but do not let these suggestions intimidate you. Stop reading this right now, grab a jpeg of your logo or a picture of your storefront, and go register for Foursquare!

If your audience participates in one of the popular social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, or Foursquare, then it is important to be engaged in that online environment.

The easiest and most effective way to gain and keep a social media following is by providing value to your audience. If you can provide value to your audience in these new social environments, they will become loyal followers.

Here are some of our favorite examples of companies using social media to engage their audiences by providing value.

1. Lululemon

Lulumon is little known in Europe, but has taken North America by storm. The luxury-priced high quality yoga and sport apparel is fashionable and has taken over gyms and airport waiting areas. Part of their success can be attributed to how they stealthily became part of every twenty to thirty-something’s lives through social media.

Lululemon has corporate Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare accounts, and then each store also has their own. The value provided by each is different. The corporate brand accounts provide value in uploading pictures of soon to be released products, and by sharing information and special stories about the products, fabrics and about the people who work with Lululemon. Each new employee gets a bio and a warm welcome over the internet to their 175,000 fans on Facebook or their 37,000 followers on Twitter. The corporate pages also have contests where fans or followers submit pictures of themselves and friends doing various challenges in their Lululemon apparel. The best entries are then featured on the main pages, and on the website’s blog.

The Lululemon store pages provide value to customers in a different way. Any time you enter a Lululemon store, you could find 10 or even 30 people stretched out on mats all over the store participating in a free yoga class. The stores also offer free yoga classes outdoors all through the year, which provides a great deal of valuable information for followers. New products in store, new employees and answering local yoga and sport questions allows each Lululemon store’s social media presence to be successful.

Some examples

As you can see, there is a team dedicated to ensuring that each reference of @Lululemon and Lululemon in Twitter receives a reply. Lululemon’s Facebook page is as equally successful.

As you can tell, there is a great deal of discussion on the main page, which is every companies dream. This subculture has such a devoted following that although the page is moderated and you can expect an answer from the company within an hour during working hours, fans will stick up for the brand and will ensure that any negative comments get put to rest.

Ok. I guess you’re sick of Lululemon now.

2. Old Spice

Old Spice sticks to their brand, and provides value to customers through humour.

This type of humour is geared towards their target audience, and is mimicked on Old Spice’s Facebook page.

Although it may seem cheesy or silly, each comment that is posted on the Facebook page is “liked” by well over a thousand people, many of whom also make comments. On Facebook whenever someone likes a page, unless they have tweaked their settings, all of their friends will receive a notice in their news feed indicating that “John” has just liked the comment from Old Spice. Not only are Old Spice creating value, but they are also maintaining top of mind awareness with all of their fans and with their followers on Twitter, and with many people who are friends with their followers and fans.

This low cost brand reinforcement is certainly strengthening the brand relationship between this audience and the company.

3. Dell

On Twitter through @DellOutlet and @DellOutletUK, Dell provides value to their target audiences that are on Twitter. Although @DellOutlet the US version, has many more followers than the UK partner site, both provide value by offering refurbished one-off discount computers for sale. Both these social media sites also provide codes for discounts off hardware and software products, which keeps customers engaged and keeps them planning about their next Dell purchase.

One interesting thing that Dell also does with these two outlet sites, is it has the picture and information of the person who will be responding on their Twitter background. This ads a personal touch, and it helps to remind customers that you are not speaking to an automated system- you are speaking to Stephen or Stephanie.

4. Disney

Although their Twitter feeds are simply news and don’t provide anything special to fans (I guess Disney’s audience aren’t on Twitter- their parents are!) they do have a Facebook page that can keep fans occupied for hours.

The value that Disney provides to their audience in Facebook is providing a new way to interact with their favorite characters. Showing trailers for upcoming movies and letting fans share them with friends, they creating a custom Disney experience where their audiences are.

5. Oxfam

Oxfam has created a unique Facebook page, recognising that their supporters are spending time in Facebook. This interactive page allows fans and visitors to get information about races and marathons.

The Sports Events page on the Oxfam Facebook page is an example of a utility very fit for the medium. Using such a social online platform such as Facebook, it provides an easy way for teams to get together, for friends to plan, without sending e-mails, without making calls. It can all be arranged in Facebook.

These are some of our favorite examples of companies using social media to create value for customers. Just to have a page is not enough if you really want to take advantage of the medium and really engage with your audience.

Taking advantage of social media platforms to reach your audience, as in the examples shown, really strengthens brand relationships, and can help to clarify a brand personality to the audience. Showing brand personality to an audience is best demonstrated by the funny, quirky Old Spice messages. What is your brand personality? How are you providing value to your audience?

It seems from Steve O’Hear’s  “Is Anyone Out There?” article posted on TechCrunch last week, that yes a lot of companies now know about the importance of social media and everyone understands that using social media to engage with audiences is beneficial. The article notes that “90% of UK tech companies featured had a presence on two or more social networks”, but of all these brands on Twitter, “43% of brands had never replied to a single tweet”.

What’s keeping all these companies from optimising their Twitter and Facebook initiatives? The new expectation of customer service is that within a few hours of complaining online, someone perky and powerful from the company will respond, and offer to solve your problem. I am actually impressed that a lot of companies are doing this, and I have had a few personal examples. I was delighted the first few times my queries or concerns were addressed on Twitter (within a few hours), and was very satisfied that the companies were listening my concerns. Moving forward, these few companies have raised the bar for customer service, and for anyone who has filed a complaint on Twitter, this is now the standard.

The author noted that many companies are responding to complaints on Twitter, but are not actually following through with fixing customer complaints and concerns. It seems as though the team charged with responding to social queries have no power, although in many cases customers will feel satisfied that their concerns were simply acknowledged.

That the team of interns charged with responding to social queries actually have no power, although in the end customers may feel better about their experience and about the brand, simply because someone was listening.

Why are companies not responding to follower’s tweets, as the article suggests? There are two reasons. Firstly, no one has time to log on to the Twitter account, and the social engagement queries are not deemed priorities. Secondly, the benefits of engaging with audiences in social media are not fully understood. Yes, Twitter is a useful means of sending targeted messages to an engaged audience in a one-way stream. Twitter is also useful in gaining sales leads, networking and engaging with customers. If someone called your office with inquiries about your business, would someone return their call? Yes. Is there a difference?

Have you ever had any experiences with customer service in social networks? I once read that in terms of customer satisfaction from hotel stays, if the customer or client has a bad experience and the hotel goes above and beyond to correct the problem, that the customer is more likely to book and stay at that hotel again than if there hadn’t been an issue in the first place. Will the same be true for complaints vented in social cyberspace?

Well, it’s finally here. Google is now integrating real-time results from Twitter, Facebook and Myspace into it’s search, giving users the most update information on any given subject. This is sure to give social media a real awareness boost amongst those yet to embrace them, especially Twitter.

Watch this short video about Google real-time search:

What does this mean for brands and marketers?

Although in constant use by the technorati and celebrities galore, Twitter has yet to fully enter the mainstream. As marketers we know the potential of Twitter to reach out and engage, but for most people, its still an unknown. At MTD, we look to create innovative ways of integrating Twitter into our campaigns. Our recent Christmas campaign for Jarlsberg allows anyone to post a message about their best bit of Christmas on the Jarlsberg Sweet and Nutty Season website via Twitter. This encourages a deeper interaction with the brand and keeps the website fresh and interesting.

Real-time search will also encourage brands to start using Twitter more as a channel in its own right to promote products and services. Twitter, of course, knows this. It’s soon to launch a set of paid for business services which should hopefully make it a more professional tool for marketers.

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