JC Penney retained six teen girls from across the nation to create their new back to school haul videos (jcp.com/teen). The haulers were given free transportation, lodging and JCP gift cards and let loose in a store near Penney’s headquarters in Plano, Texas. And now they’re showing — and telling about — what they purchased at JCP to gear up for the new term.

Any person with a webcam can become a haul video expert. Tennessee “haulers” Elle and Blair Fowler are the teen pioneers of hauling and have attracted such a following of their peers and the moms of their peers that they’re now in high demand by marketers of everything from fashion to cosmetics.

Haul videos can focus on the results of shopping at a specific retailer or for a specific product category. Imagine the opportunity to take the haul concept beyond the teen market.  Why shouldn’t a marketer or retailer of “all things baby” recruit a team of moms to talk about the latest product trends and actually demonstrate product features? Wouldn’t a grocery chain want a team of people-who-love-to-entertain to post videos that feature their supermarket shopping haul for a specific event they’re hosting – even sharing the recipes that necessitated the trip?  How about having some of the most avid DIYers haul about their last shopping spree at the hardware, building supply or paint store?

Since marketers are taking the original authentic YouTube phenomena to a more commercial consumer-generated concept, under Federal Trade Commission guidelines, paid haulers must disclose in the video if they got free products or other compensation from retailers.  So the real question is: Will commercializing consumer-generated content, like hauls, come to have the same trust as non-commercialized YouTube content or the same mistrust as traditional advertising?

What do you think?

It’s no surprise that we have encouraged our clients to leverage the world’s busiest social media channel, Facebook, as part of their social media mix. In fact, we set up our own page, as an example of how to use Facebook to distribute content and create real world, ‘analogue’ events.  Imagine our surprise when our Page disappeared. Let me repeat that, our TMA+Peritus Facebook Page disappeared.

At first, we thought it was some terrible mistake. Did one of our Admin’s simply unpublish the page? Was it accidentally deleted? Were we hacked?  We reached out to Facebook with a quick email that basically told them our Page had disappeared, would Facebook help us determine what happened?

Facebook replied with an automated statement that read:

“Your account was disabled because it was in violation of Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. Nudity, sexually explicit, and other graphic content is not permitted on Facebook, nor is any content that contains self harm, depicts violence, or attacks an individual or group. In addition, harassing others through unsolicited friend requests or messages is prohibited.

Unfortunately, we won’t be able to reactivate your account or respond to your email directly. This decision is final and cannot be appealed.”

What the heck are they talking about?   When it came to our Facebook page, we could only be described as conservative.  In fact, the vast majority of our posts were either reposts or original posts that were published by the likes of Gannett Newspapers, In Business Madison Magazine, Marketplace Magazine; and the videos and work samples that were shown have aired on television screens throughout the Midwest or are printed and distributed throughout corporate America.  Like I said, what the heck? Not even a cuss word found its way on to our page.  We are a business and used our Page as a tool to communicate with our clients, thus we were shocked at the implication that we had violated Facebook’s policies

We tried no less than four times to resolve this matter with Facebook, there were no further replies. Case closed. All our work, all our Fans (who now are called Likers) were gone.  Of course, we were shocked. Not only do we firmly believe that we did not violate Facebook’s terms and conditions, but we were alarmed at Facebook’s indifference and refusal to communicate with us regarding this situation.

Despite this event, we still believe that Facebook is a very useful tool, and we created a new Page (feel free to Like us on Facebook!). Although baffling, we suggest everyone take the time to regularly consider the following:

1. Read and understand the Terms and Conditions of Facebook. [Facebook Terms, Facebook Promotions Guidelines, Facebook Pages Terms]. There are a lot of rules on how you can use the page, how to create promotions, and the basic disclaimer that Facebook can and will delete any pages/posts it feels violates it’s policies.
2. When you don’t own a social media network, you are at the mercy of the provider. Providers come and go (remember Geo Cities, AOL pages?), thus it is important to understand that Facebook is part of your Social Media strategy, not your complete strategy. As with investing money, you need to have a balanced social media portfolio that includes several public social media services (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Four Square and the list goes on) as well as a company owned website/blog. By leveraging several services and owning your own site, you reduce the risk and increase social and search exposure.
3. Even though our Page was deleted, our employees continued to share information and network on behalf of TMA+Peritus by using their personal social networks. This is an important point; the ‘personal’ social networks of your employees can be a critical content distribution channel.

Take the time to review your social media plan. How would your business survive the event we experienced?

When your marketing team or agency starts down the “best time to advertise is during a recession” road, ask them if the best time to buy a bathing suit is in the dead of winter?  Maybe it is, maybe it’s not.  The grim realities of operating a business when the economy is in the stinkpot is that all budgets need to be prepared for the carving knife; yet as marketers, we always feel our budget alone is sacred.  You slice the marketing budget and you can count on a sliced share of the market – oh, and by the way – it will take decades to reclaim the lost share points. Or, if you cut the budget now, cut down on your trade shows, your advertising spend and your digital presence, the competition is going to notice and they’ll increase their marketing budgets.  I speak from experience; I’d need an abacus to count the number of times I’ve said that.

No, the fact of the matter is this – the best time to market is when you have a product or service that meets an unmet need.  When the message and your supporting content is so compelling that your buying segment can’t wait to purchase, and can’t wait to tell a friend to make the same purchase.  And another friend, and another, and so it goes.

But let’s assume you’ve had your budget cut. When’s the best time to get back in the ring, and what are the best marketing punches to throw?  No two instances will ever be the same, but here are a few considerations.  Get back in the game when you’ve got game.  Random acts of marketing rarely result in returns that have a positive impact.  Resist the temptation to stretch the marketing budget by including more products and benefits in the message.  He who proves too much ends up proving nothing at all.  And by all means let the marketing money flow when you have a business case, complete with measurements and analytics, that can justify the expenditure.  Remember, you can’t manage it if you can’t measure it.

And when you ramp back up, what strategies should you begin with?  Make the cheapskates, skinflints and bean counters happy.  Start with the three most cost-effective initiatives you can implement: content marketing, increased web activities and social media.  That’ll get them talking.

But they did remind me of one of my favorite adages.  A saying that rings true in just about anything we do.  Measure twice, cut once.  I’m not sure who said it, most likely a carpenter or a surgeon, but one thing’s for certain – it doesn’t apply to social media where we’re more prone to saying, “Just keep doing it, don’t worry about measuring it.”  But all that has changed in the blink of an eye.  So, if you’re a CFO, an analytics geek, or a marketer trying to grapple with social media and ROI, your ship has come in.  And the captain of that ship is none other than TV ratings behemoth Nielsen Corporation who led the study in tandem with Facebook.

The report, titled “Advertising Effectiveness: Understanding the Value of a Social Media Impression,” essentially states that there is quantifiable lift when social media is used in conjunction with advertising.  This was no slouch of a survey; it analyzed data from more than 800,000 Facebook users, 125 ad campaigns and 7 different brands.  The study is quick to point out that advertising needs to be viewed in both a “paid” and “earned” context, which explains why the report begins with a listing of where respondents trust their selected sources of information.  Not surprisingly, the top of the list at 90% is friends and peers, followed by consumer opinions posted online and brand Web sites at 70%, then editorial content at 69%, brand sponsorships at 64% and TV at 62%.  Newspapers (61%), magazines (59%), radio and billboards (55%) are others on the list.

The study was based on the three different types of Facebook paid ads in an effort to measure recall, awareness and purchase intent.  The three ads are:

• Lift from a standard “Homepage (Engagement) Ad”
• Lift from an ad that featured social context or “Homepage ads with Social Context”
• Lift from “Organic Ads,” news-feed stories that are sent to friends of users who engage with advertising on a brand

Here are the results when paid ads were used in conjunction with social media, as opposed to just placing a paid ad or message: For the homepage ads, there was a lift in recall of 10%, in awareness a lift of 4% and in purchase intent a lift of 2%.  For the homepage ads with social context, recall was up 16%, and awareness and purchase intent up 8%.  Finally, in the category of organic ads, recall was up 30%, awareness up 16% and purchase intent up 8%.

The takeaway is this.  Don’t just advertise and don’t just do random acts of social media.  Concentrate on a blend of paid and earned media because both are measurable.  And by the way, what ranked lowest among respondents’ trust in selected forms of information?  Text ads on mobile phones at 24%.

 If “sharing” your content consists of cutting and pasting the same piece from web, to Twitter, to Facebook, you come across as repetitive and as sorely lacking an understanding of your audience. Take, for example, your female audience. On average, they spend between six and sixty minutes doing online research, searching for coupons and browsing email newsletters before they actually hit the stores. What influences their purchases? Seventy-seven percent of women are more likely to seek a product in the store after they’ve read a review of that product on a community forum or message board and 67 percent of them are more likely to actually purchase that product after reading about it online.

What’s driving that? Community web sites, forums and message boards that include online coupons, blogs and customer product reviews — such as iVillage and SheSpeaks — are influential digital channels. Women are looking to their peers for the low down on products.

 What that means is you can’t be the only voice with something to say — you need to inspire others to talk about you. And you need to do so using social media and your website. That’s content marketing coming full circle — engaging consumers in conversations that drive more conversations. Conversations that inform the consumer, that inspire the consumer to share their opinions and insights, and that ultimately influence purchase behavior.

 Does that mean women aren’t using your site or Facebook page? Certainly not. Fifty-one percent of women “like” grocery, health/beauty and household products brands on Facebook — and they go there to share opinions and experiences or connect with other customers. Think about that the next time you post to your status feed — what information are those who “like” you looking for and how do you generate conversations on your Facebook page that create a social setting that’s conducive to consumer feedback?

 And your web page? That’s a different experience — and thus requires different content and a different voice. Because your website is less “social,” the majority of women visit it to gain more information about the brand, seek coupons and promotional offers. They’re not looking to voice their opinions on your site, simply to get the information or deal they seek. If you do it right, they’ll then give a shout-out to that experience, your brand and your product on Facebook and other community sites.

 Social scientist and viral marketing guru Don Zarella (donzarella.com) conducted a study of Facebook data over a long period of time and identified some key features of posts with “share power.”  I found five of the findings especially interesting. 

 Add Numbers to Your Title.  That one was easy to apply to this article — even though using a numeric in this instance wouldn’t typically make it past a proofreader.  It seems that Zarella found that in Facebook, titles with the digits 1 to 9 outperform text only titles. Not very creative, but more effective, I guess. 

Write to a Second Grade Reading Level.  When he matched the level of sharing among posts with reading grade levels, Zarella’s results revealed that the higher the share rates, the lower the reading level.   Facebook posts written at second grade reading level generated about 32 percent more shares than average.  The first paragraph of this article, when tested using the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test scores about a 5^th grade reading level — which, if it were a Facebook post would have resulted in about 15% more shares than average.  Guess I need to shorten my sentences and use more words with one syllable. 

Post on the Weekend.  Facebook users are most likely to share posts on Saturdays and Sundays.  While Zarella found that the volume of URLs introduced into Facebook are highest on weekdays — especially on Wednesdays and Fridays — stories published on the weekends tended to be shared on Facebook 15 to 40 percent more often. Then again, this could be due to the fact that more than half of U.S. businesses block the use of Facebook and other social networks in the workplace.

Verbs Speak Louder than Adverbs.  The use of action words trigger the most sharing, followed by important nouns.  In fact verbs trigger about 2 percent more shares than average and adverbs trigger almost 3 percent less than average.  Trigger is an action word, isn’t it?

 Sex Sells. Okay, this is not so surprising.  But from a linguistic content standpoint, posts with the word “sex” are at the very top of the list for posts with share power.  What’s surprising is that “sex” is the least often introduced word introduced into social media feeds.  I used it twice here in an attempt to reverse that trend.

Facebook has added a nice touch to allow Page’s users to target their updates by location and/or language. Since many Page’s users have locations in multiple geographic regions, and bands tour internationally, focusing your message on a certain location has distinct advantages.

For example, let’s say you own a business that serves Wausau, Madison, Green Bay and Milwaukee Wisconsin. Sales in the Milwaukee market could use a boost, so you decide to offer a promotion to that area that you don’t necessarily want the other markets to see.

When you are updating your Facebook Page’s status, you’ll notice an icon with two people right next to the Share button. When you click on the icon, you have the choice of Everyone or Customize.

By clicking the Customize option, you are given the opportunity to enter a Location or Language.

The Location option starts with County. Once you enter United States, you are given three new options: Everywhere, by State/Province, by City. From here you could select the City option, and enter Madison. Bingo – Your update will only be seen by those in the Milwaukee Area.

Facebook defines geographic area by two elements: 1) User profile data and 2) ISP location. As with any Geographic targeting, it is essential to understand that there will always be some margin for error.

 What I love about the Shoe Dog is what I love about Facebook — its “go fetch” nature. I use Facebook for business and pleasure — and I have it open all day long. Why? It’s an incredible business asset for me — a constant crowdsourcing resource that helps me keep tabs on industries important to my clients. Because I “like” top industry publications on Facebook, they “fetch” for me — kindly sharing the latest industry news via their status page, which appears on my status feed. I can then share that information with my clients and they can in turn share it with their clients on their own Facebook business page.

 Perhaps you haven’t found a Facebook page that keeps you up-to-date on industry news. Can you say “opportunity”? Here’s your chance to be that resource — go fetch! Remember, Facebook updates shouldn’t just be about your business — they should offer information that is of interest to your clients. Set up a few Google alerts that keep you abreast of the latest industry research, then post that information and links on your Facebook page. Soon, you’re the resource everyone “likes” and whose posts they rely on.

 Further, if you allow your employees to have Facebook open during working hours, you open yourself to internal and external crowdsourcing. Sure, your employees may take a few minutes to catch up on what their friends are doing, but if they subscribe to other relevant business pages, you’ll be surprises with what they come up with. Even non-relevant business pages (those outside your industry) can give employees some great ideas. Think of it as research: which business pages do a good job of getting your employees’ attention and why? Take a look at those Facebook pages — particularly their status page — and see if you can replicate that experience. 

I’m also an example of your ideal Facebook customer. While some people are uncomfortable with the targeted ads that show up on their personal Facebook pages, in general I’m not. Those ads have fetched a variety of opportunities for me — be it a trip to a Wisconsin town I’ve never been too or a digital coupon.

Take for example my planned trip to Bayfield, Wisconsin. Bayfield’s Facebook ad lured me in with “40,000 new daffodils in bloom”. Based on my profile data, likes and dislikes they knew those daffodils would be a powerful pull for me. They’ve got my number and it worked to their benefit — and mine. Not only did I click on the ad, but I “liked” Bayfield’s Facebook page, visited their website and then shared the information on my own Facebook page. I’ve also planned a weekend trip — that means more tourist dollars in their coffers for lodging, meals, entertainment and perennials. And because I’ve “liked” their page, I get updates on other upcoming events — which means another trip or two in the near future. Do I feel manipulated? No, I feel lucky. Like the Shoe Dog — who found a better shoe for me — this ad found a town that was a better, newer “fit” for me — instead of my annual trip south to Chicago, I’m heading north to Bayfield.

Every one of us is a consumer. So think like one and get Facebooking. Whether you’re doing the fetching or letting another Facebooker fetch for you — it’s a win-win situation.

Two colleagues of mine in Madison, Doug Tangwall and Wendy Soucie, are taking a deep look into effective selling, and getting results, which is probably the basis for their company’s name – End Results Marketing. Their approach to generating sales leads is called Nurture Marketing, and although this strategy has been around since the mid-nineties, it’s a 180 from my father’s approach or those sales methods like the Ben Franklin and Bear Trap sales closes.

Doug defines Nurture Marketing as educational promotion designed to improve customer outcomes and cultivate affinity for a business. That makes sense, and it’s in complete lock step with the belief that we spend so much time trying to be understood and not enough time understanding. In other words, stop the hard sell and substitute that approach with a little hard listening. As Doug says, “Think of nurture marketing as the exact opposite of traditional marketing. Instead of ‘buy my stuff’, it’s ‘what information can I provide to help my customers succeed’?”

By all accounts the approach works. By combining research into a client’s business, including research into their target audiences, promotion, thought leadership and social conversation, Doug and Wendy have obtained 14-17 times the sales leads than traditional tactics.  Yes, it takes time to nurture these relationships, but being a trusted advisor is going to pay off more than merely being a product hawker. “The buying process has changed and our sales process needs to change accordingly. Most of us educate ourselves about products now before we ever call anyone. Sharing knowledge is increasingly important to differentiate your business. The concept of nurture goes hand in hand with social media outreach,” adds Wendy.

But don’t just think about that in terms of generating sales leads — continue the Nurture Marketing process all the way down the line. I have a friend who, in the interest of expediency, left home on a road trip and realized 40 minutes later – at the convenience store counter – that he was wallet-less.  A representative from his financial institution actually made the trek north to deliver him some cash.  Can anyone say, “customer for life?”  That’s nurturing the relationship.

So, here’s a little Nurture Marketing tip. Use social media to conduct some primary research about your prospect, then take some time and extrapolate some useful data from secondary sources.  Synthesize the information and develop a few critical insights that you can share with your future customer, but don’t share all of them – you might need to meet again.  They’ll see you as a thought leader, as a company who is genuinely interested in them, and as a person who is in it for the long haul.  No doubt the sales and marketing process has changed, now we need to make certain we change along with it.

OK, so you don’t have a million fans, but what this study illustrates is that as long as you are leveraging your Facebook fans by posting information that’s relevant to them, and engaging them with updates on new products, services and promotions — there is, indeed, value to having fans. Question is — are  you leveraging your Facebook page and its fans? The key is staying ahead and in front of your fans. If you only post once a month — you’re invisible. The other side of that coin is that if you’re constantly posting to Facebook and/or posting information that comes across as a hard sell or is simply irrelevant, then your fans are going to stop being your fans.

Plenty of people these days will leave their Facebook page open on their browser throughout the work day, or at night when they’re surfing the web. Facebook has become a resource to them. In response, some companies have realized that their fans want a bit “more” from the Facebook page — so they’re giving fans the ability to shop. It’s ingenious. The 1-800-Flowers Facebook page allows fans to shop without leaving Facebook courtesy of a “shoplet” application. All a fan has to do is click on the shop tab and they can browse different products. Mouse over that product and you can easily order the product and choose the delivery date — all while remaining on the Facebook page. Better yet, 1-800-Flowers has added a wish list feature that allows fans to add products to a wish list that is shared on their news feed — and they did this just in time for Mother’s Day. Smart, proactive and considerate.

Other businesses have followed suit, such as shoe retailer Nine West. They, too, allow fans to begin shopping from the fan page, but they send fans to the Nine West e-commerce site.

Either way, these are good examples of businesses understanding consumer use of Facebook is evolving. Yes, a person’s status feed may still be cluttered with the lunchtime ramblings of a best friend, but increasingly those status feeds serve as information resources — legitimate news feeds about the products, events, research and news that matter most to each individual. Sales app or not, your Facebook page needs to always do “more” — so stay engaged, try new things, and ask your fans what they expect and want from your Facebook page.