Communication is no longer about just businesses talking to anyone; it’s about people talking to people. Forget who’s on the end of the conversation. This is about where it all starts. The future of communications is C2C, or consumer2consumer or people2people.

Individuals, whether buying for business or themselves, are talking to and listening to other consumers. They are setting the agenda, leading the conversation, sharing their views, recommending the best products and deciding whether brands are successful or not.

No longer are consumers just taking in information corporations and brands are spewing at them. Now they question and make brands earn their loyalty. Because of social media platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, consumers are now quick to ask brands: What can you do for me?

Case in point: Take the fatal example of Netflix. When Netflix raised prices last summer, customers became infuriated, took to their blogs and Twitter accounts, and raised hell. Netflix was humiliated and has yet to fully recover from the CRM crisis that has plagued it ever since. Instead of being accountable to its customers, Netflix let Facebook comments go unanswered, and the company’s president responded with an answer about profits rather than speak to its customers directly in a level manner. Millions of customers felt betrayed and gave Netflix quite a scare by cutting service, resulting in its stock prices taking a 60 percent nosedive.

So, our challenge is getting people talking about brands in a positive way, not getting brands to talk to people. With so many touch points, brands must move away from the traditional 1960s formula of one-sided information and start having conversations with consumers. Consumers want brands to be authentic and have a real human voice they can speak with when something goes wrong (or right).

Advertisers are in complete denial if they think they can continue with the same tired, one-sided formula. Brands need to have authentic conversations with consumers if they want to survive. Consumers are talking to each other, so why aren’t brands following?

Fiona Menzies is managing director at gyro Dubai.

Originally published at Ignite Something on the Forbes CMO Network

1. It’s all about the packaging. In his unveiling of Katniss and Peeta to the world, Cinna took a negative and turned it into a positive. Given that they were from District 12 (the poor mining district), Katniss wondered if they were to be dressed as miners or stripped naked and covered in coal dust. Instead, he made Katniss “the girl who was on fire,” right down to the synthetic flame of the headdress. Yes, when you’re competing against 11 other products on the global stage, it helps to be the one that’s on fire.

2. Don’t be afraid to flaunt your talents. Within a company, marketing can get lost in the mix if it isn’t communicated properly to everyone (the CEO, the CFO, IT, everyone). That’s why it’s good to remember that if you’ve got the skills and your peers are ignoring you, make them notice. Or shoot right at their heads just like Katniss, who unleashed an arrow straight at the Gamemakers’ table, skewering an apple that sat before them in a pig’s mouth and pinned it to the wall. Your message needs to be communicated loud and clear, just like hers.

3. Don’t be afraid to make your own rules. Today it’s Pinterest. Yesterday it was Facebook. Who knows what the next hot marketing channel will be. Marketers have more opportunity than ever to share their brand with the world. This means taking risks, experimenting and making up new rules as they go. (SPOILER ALERT) Like Katniss and Peeta, who threatened the Gamemakers with their poison berries, marketers need to consider drastic measures as the media mix continues to evolve daily.

4. You’ll never survive without your sponsors. Let’s call this one the homage to Rush Limbaugh. It’s one thing to be edgy and a challenger brand, but you still need to be likable enough to have supporters (or, in his case, sponsors). Otherwise, you will end up like Rush or Belvedere vodka—left trying to explain and coping with lost revenue. Katniss and Peeta received several gifts from their sponsors just in the nick of time. None was more important than the medicine Katniss received to save Peeta and herself.

5. Make sure your message is humanly relevant. Katniss deliberated with Haymitch as to how she should handle her debut interview. How would she portray herself to the world? She opted to tell the truth about her family and her sister Prim, whom she loved dearly. Today more than ever, it’s important to be humanly relevant. It’s too easy to be numb with all of the messaging thrown our way. Consumers want to feel emotion. They also want someone or something to root for— make that your brand.

Kenneth Hein is director of North American marketing for gyro, the global ideas shop

Follow him @KennethHein

Originally published at Ignite Something on the Forbes CMO Network

The iPod was introduced in 2001, the iPhone in 2007 and the iPad in 2010. I love the evolution of the products. And the new iPad 3 delivers phenomenal technological advancements including 2048-by-1536 resolution, 44 percent greater color saturation and 3.1 million pixels all powered by the new A5X chip. However, I can’t help but wonder what the next new product will be. I can’t help but wonder what this iconic company will introduce, and I can’t wait to see how it will impact the world economy from manufacturing to sales and marketing.

More intriguing, I wonder how Apple will keep the legacy of Mr. Jobs alive. The stock price is still there. In fact, with the iPad 3, Apple broke the $600-per-share mark, and sales are stronger than ever (3 million tablets sold as of print), but how long will it stay there? Will Apple deliver on Jobs’ wish to be a company that is continuously inventing, continuously evolving—and will the company that lives on Infinite Loop live up to his wishes and live on into infinity?

Why am I so curious and eager to see what’s next? Maybe Apple has spoiled me. But I bet I’m not the only one anticipating what’s really next. Yes, a lot of us have learned to wait to experience the new product before we comment (and, as it turns out, I wrote this post on my iPad 2 the same day the new iPad was made available to the public). I don’t need to wait and experience the new product. Virtually all of us knew that the 4G product would be amazing. I’m sure I’ll like the next iteration of the iPad once I get my hands on one, but really, what’s next?

Why do we care so much about Apple’s next new technology? Because only once or twice in a generation does a company, a culture, a movement come along that changes the world, improves humanity and impacts the world’s economy. And as a marketer, I am eager to see how it will impact the marketing landscape.

I listened to the announcement and watched the unveiling of the new iPad, and I saw the immediate impact it had on three other company’s stock prices (their suppliers). This started me thinking about the impact that this company has on my world and my profession, but then I realized the impact that it has on the entire world’s economy—suppliers, shippers, app developers, e-commerce, the music and movie industries, and manufacturers (of everything: headsets, phone cases, chip makers, processors, glass, etc.).

Further, I recall the Jobs biography written by Walter Isaacson and how a child in a developing country picked up an iPad and inherently knew how to use it, even after having never interacted with such technology before. I can’t wait to see what Apple does for the advancement and education of today’s youth. I know it’s coming as I’ve seen the announcement about Apple, textbooks and universities (Apple and NYU are expected to make a statement this month).

So, Tim Cook, we are waiting. I missed it at the unveiling of the new iPad, I missed Jobs saying, “Oh, and one more thing …” I hope you continue the trajectory of this incredible American company, but most of all I hope you keep the tradition of surprising and delighting us and keep saying “one more thing …”

Keith Turco is president of gyro New York

Originally published at Ignite Something on the Forbes CMO Network

No wonder we have a reputation of being entitled. We have more than we could ever want and need thrown at our feet, 24/7.

As both a member of Generation Y and an ad man, I have some insider tips to pass your way—some do’s and don’ts—that can help you reach our ever-stimulated, ever-distracted group.

Five Ways to Gain Our Attention

1. Make it participatory: I still see TV, print and even online campaigns that simply shout a message without inviting participation. In this hands-on world, you can’t afford to miss that opportunity, especially not with the active and tech-savvy Generation Y.

2. Make it easy: We have media ADD. If we don’t get it right away, or at least see how to get it, we’ll lose interest and move on to something we do know how to use.

3. Make it shareable: And not just for Facebook and Twitter, but anywhere and everywhere, especially new trending sites like Pinterest. If you don’t know what that site is yet, Generation Y does, and they are there waiting for you.

4. Take a risk: Gen Y likes daring brands. We’re looking for something that stands out from the crowd in a real way, which rarely happens when you play it safe. Find a great idea, and instead of testing it to death, go with your gut, take a risk, and see how we respond to it in a real-world “test.”

5. Give it meaning: With a reputation for being entitled and spoiled, it’s easy to think we care only about ourselves. Nothing could be further from the truth. We’re altruistic, optimistic, passionate, and want to be part of something bigger than ourselves. Give your message a relevant, meaningful focus, and we could become your most loyal evangelists. Levi’s Go Forth campaign did a pretty good job of capturing that feeling, and Tom’s Shoes wrote it into their business model. You can too.

Five Ways to Lose Our Attention

1. Take yourself too seriously: The power of funny is incredible, especially with Generation Y. We love to laugh. It makes us feel closer to each other and closer to your brand. And your brand doesn’t have to be an Old Spice or Burger King to make a joke. Serious brands can still use humor to illustrate a more serious point. I’d recommend keeping a comedian or two on staff for just such an occasion.

2. Be vague: Mission statements and brand platforms sound great in the boardroom, they but mean next to nothing to a 20-something who will skip your ad after about 0.7 seconds.

3. Give us a product instead of an experience: If you’re VW, you don’t sell cars. You sell a transportation experience. From the moment we consider buying a new car, to the moment years later when we trade it in for a new one, we want to be engaged. Give us an experience, not a product. Kodak thought they sold pictures. Now their business will be the butt of every what-not-to-do marketing case study for years to come.

4. Make fun of us: Take a look at this Samsung Super Bowl ad and tell me there isn’t an army of offended tech geeks—who love waiting in line for the latest iWhatever—eager to bash you online. Making fun of us isn’t the way to convert us.

5. Talk down to us: I’ve heard various decision-makers say things like, “I get it, but our customers won’t,” and “We need to dumb down the language for our customers.” If you think your target market is dumb, it will come across not just in your ads but also in your entire company culture. Try it with Generation Y, and we’ll go hang out with someone who thinks everything we do is brilliant (like Doritos).

So we of Generation Y are a pretty strange bunch, and we like it that way. Learning to reach us isn’t just good business, but it’s also a way to prepare for the future of advertising and marketing. Because we’re going to get older, technology will get only more complex, and the next generation … well, they are even weirder than we are.

Brian Havig is a copywriter at gyro

Originally published at Ignite Something on the Forbes CMO Network

On Feb. 27, I received a handwritten thank you note from the Tiffany’s sales associates who assisted me with my purchase. It’s not uncommon to receive a thank you from Tiffany’s given its reputation for service, but in the same pile of mail was a handwritten thank you from my florist. The florist’s note was the first I’d received after years of doing business with them.

Minutes later, I received a phone call from Pete, the manager of the Lorien Hotel and Spa, inviting my wife and me for a return trip—free of charge—as a result of some service issues we had experienced during our stay. Pete realized that those misfires disrupted an important customer experience (see my note above about “continual travel” and “well deserved”) and offered to make it right.

Significantly impressed with the three simultaneous acts of kindness, I thought to myself that maybe there is a silver lining to the recession. Maybe companies have been reminded that customers are, in fact, important to their success.

A customer is defined as an individual, not a segment that scores the highest on a propensity model or an occupation with a “desirable socioeconomic profile.” A person with feelings and beliefs who has had an experience with a brand, a company representative, a product or service, might be most likely to decide to buy it again, or tell a friend, or both, if that experience was a good one.

In a new study published by Accenture titled The New Realties of “Dating” in the Digital Age, 85 percent of consumers who posted a comment about a negative online experience switched providers. And these consumers are getting harder to please. Customer service expectations have been increasing consistently over the last four years, with 44 percent of consumers saying their expectations are slightly or much higher than the previous year, compared to only 31 percent in 2008.

The study also identifies five potential blind spots over the course of the provider-customer relationship that could predispose customers to switch providers:

*Nice to Meet You – Missing the chance to set the right expectations at the onset of the relationship.
*You Don’t Know Me Anymore – Missing subtler changes that matter in customers’ need for special treatment or reward.
*Cheating Heart – Overlooking signs customers are itching to switch.
*Are You Listening – Failure to offer consumers opportunities to engage with a provider.
*Trinkets Won’t Save Me – Relying on point solutions to satisfy and keep customers.

The “cheating heart” effect points to companies over emphasis on retention, which may cause them to miss important shifts in buying behavior that could signal a future switch in vendors. Thankfully, my florist carefully monitors my purchase patterns and reminds me of purchases I make at certain times of the year (birthdays, anniversaries, etc.), creating a win-win for both of us.

As the researchers note, failure to notice these subtle changes in behavior puts the company at risk for eventually losing the customer. For example, 27 percent of respondents mentioned that they had stayed with their bank/financial services provider but have added another provider (a partial switch), a foot out the door that eventually leads to customer attrition.

So remember to treat your customer as you would a loved one, with respect, kindness and an occasional gift to smooth over any misgivings. If you don’t, that cheating heart might just leave you.

Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty 360, in an interview identifying the top loyalty trends for 2011 stated, “Loyalty will focus more on emotions than on rational, incentive-based initiatives. Behavioral economists tell us that economic decision-making is 70 percent emotional and 30 percent rational, which is why incentive-based loyalty programs that tend to be rational do not work well. It’s the emotional side of the decision-making process that creates connected, passionate, engaged customers.“

The thank you cards and the phone call I received were specific to me and my experience. They weren’t form letters generated by a transactional or CRM system, based on my purchase. The notes were handwritten by the people who assisted me and mentioned the specific purchases I made with them.

They were relevant to me, left an impression and got me talking about the experience. I didn’t receive bonus points or special discounts. Instead, I got a response from someone who appreciated my business and cared enough about my experience to reach out to me on a personal and emotional level, which is how you can create connected, engaged customers and prevent “a cheating heart.”

Scott Gillum leads gyro’s Channel Marketing practice and is president of gyro Washington, D.C.

Follow Scott on Twitter @SGillum.

Originally published at Ignite Something on the Forbes CMO Network

Millions of people around the world have been talking about brand Ireland over the course of this Saint Patrick’s Day weekend. This year, for the first time, Tourism Ireland can assess the value of that engagement and compare it to the investment we have made in creating branded messaging.

Tourism Ireland is currently ranked the third largest national tourist board on Facebook, with approximately 700,000 fans across 20 markets in eight languages. In the absence of an accepted industry standard to assess the value of this beyond simply counting fan numbers, we developed the concept of Social Equivalent Advertising Value (SEAV).

Just as the PR sector has traditionally measured its impact by the cost of buying advertising to cover the equivalent column inches, so a similar approach can be applied to social media. The more a brand message is shared, the more “column inches” are gained and the value of this can be compared to the cost of equivalent online advertising.

We identified four levels of consumer engagement with brands in social media:

*Post Impressions: viewing a brand post.
*Page Impressions: viewing a brand owner’s social platform.
*Personal Actions: consuming brand content such as photos, videos or links.
*Public Actions: sharing brand content with their network.

We then categorized the actions that consumers can take across the major social platforms into each of these groupings, and attributed a financial value to the cost of delivering a comparable consumer engagement online. This allowed us to quantify the value of our social engagement in Facebook at the end of last year at an annualized level of €1.7 million.

We have adopted SEAV as a corporate KPI and set organization-wide growth targets. These objectives drive our local marketing teams to continue to not We all know that it’s no longer the size of your social media audience that matters but rather how those people engage with you. Finally, we can place a value on the return.

Read more about how the SEAV model works and how you can apply it in your organization at http://www.scribd.com/TourismIreland

Mark Henry is the Central Marketing Director of Tourism Ireland, the agency responsible for promoting tourism to the island of Ireland from across the globe.

Originally published at Ignite Something on the Forbes CMO Network

For any business, its website is a business asset with value that accrues over time and should be treated as such. Here are five timeless “worst practices” to avoid:

1) Link buying – Attempting to make your site more authoritative by paying for links (see J.C. Penney). 

A major element of most search engines’ ranking algorithm (especially Google’s) is “link popularity.”  Simply put, link popularity is a measure of the authority, trustworthiness and number of links pointing to a domain. Authoritative and trustworthy websites (Forbes, The New York Times, PBS, etc.) are able to pass along a significant amount of their authority and trust if they link to a company’s website. Not surprisingly, these links tend to be very difficult to get. However, there are also cases where sheer “tonnage” of links suffice to boost rankings and organic search traffic.

Unfortunately, it’s very common for sites to try to cheat the system. Instead of creating a remarkable website, stellar services and content, unethical Web marketers try to buy their way to the top by purchasing links. There is no shortage of site owners who would link to a site for a fee. Buying links should be avoided at all costs. It is a violation of any search engine’s Terms of Service, and it can get a site banned from the index.

J.C. Penney famously got caught in 2011 for buying large amounts of links. The company was banned from Google’s index for 90 days. While losing a full fiscal quarter’s worth of profit from organic search traffic is certainly nothing to take lightly, that’s not the worst-case scenario. Plenty of sites without the brand clout of J.C. Penney have been banned for much longer periods of time for the same infraction.

If “building links” is a service that an agency or vendor offers to you, have them explain to you exactly how they’re building links, and how their methods are within the engines’ Terms of Service.

2) Cloaking – Serving different content to a search engine versus a human visitor. 

The term “cloaking” certainly sounds dark and mysterious, but the concept is relatively simple. It means that a Web server will deliver different content based on whether the request is coming from a search engine or a Web browser.

Some “black hat” Web marketers use cloaking for very nefarious purposes, serving pages that are radically different to engines and humans. Usually the cloaked version served to the search engines is very text heavy (which engines understand well) and often targets off-topic, popular phrases just for the traffic it might pull in. The version served to humans is typically a conversion-centric page with very little content, trying to lure some fraction of visitors to pull out their credit cards and spend some money.

Not all cloaking is done with malicious intent. A few years ago, I worked with a very large comparison-shopping site, helping the international versions of its sites generate more traffic. One of the interesting things I noticed immediately was that it was cloaking its own home pages! Instead of the version that humans saw with products, photos and marketing copy, the cloaked version was a simple list of links to most of the categories for which the sites had products.

When I brought this issue to light, it turned out that the engineer responsible had knowingly done this. He thought it would be more helpful to search engines to present a simple list of links to enable them to discover the content on the site. He didn’t even know that cloaking was against the rules and could get the sites banned!

This kind of oversight, while not done maliciously, could have gotten the site into a penalty situation. Any agency you hire should be checking for cloaking on all of your Web properties as part of a standard technical SEO audit.

3) Keyword stuffing – Cramming page content full of a keyword to make the page appear more relevant for that keyword.

Keyword stuffing is a very old-fashioned tactic that stopped working well a long time ago—around 2005. The rationale was based on the notion that the more times a particular keyword appeared on the page, the more “relevant” an engine would consider that page to be for that keyword. Text on the page would be “stuffed” with the keyword, and it would read terribly.

Search engines have long since moved past basing relevance calculations on simple keyword repetition. While good keyword research is still central to publishing content that performs well in engines, your writers should be writing for the visitors that they have to inform and persuade, not a search engine spider.

4) Hidden text – Using tricks to make different content visible to humans than engines (see BMW Germany).

Hidden text and keyword stuffing often travel hand in hand. Because keyword-stuffed text reads so awfully to visitors, the idea is to hide it from them while still having it as machine-readable text on the page for engines.

Hidden text comes in many forms, from old-fashioned white text on white background, to positioning text off the visible portion of the page using CSS, to having text that’s visible only when JavaScript is disabled.

BMW Germany was guilty of the aforementioned variety of hidden text in 2006 when it was caught serving pages with pretty pictures and very little text to visitors, but behind the pretty pictures was keyword-stuffed garbage for search engines.

Some methods of detecting hidden text are easy for search engines (e.g., white-on-white text), whereas others are more difficult (e.g., hiding content with JavaScript). However, you can rest assured that the first time a company catches its competitor with hidden text on the page, that company will likely be filing a spam report with the search engines.

Content should be central to your website. It’s how you communicate value to prospective customers. There are plenty of legitimate ways to balance content with aesthetics and conversion, and hidden content isn’t worth the risk.

5) Being a seed for spam – If visitors are allowed to create profiles or leave comments on your site, and they create links to “bad neighborhoods” on the Web, your site can suffer as a result.

Social media and community involvement continue to develop as important aspects of a fully realized Web marketing campaign. But while interaction with your customers and peers is undeniably good, it can also hurt your website if implemented and managed incorrectly.

Especially on blogs, a central part of fostering an interactive and healthy ecosystem is to involve your readers. Commenting and discussion should be encouraged, both as a way to strengthen bonds with existing customers, acquire new ones and even address news that may be particularly challenging for your organization.

The flip side of this coin is that the more active and successful your community is, the more it can attract bad actors just looking to exploit your site’s popularity and authority by creating profiles and comments that exist only to drive links back to the bad actors’ sites.

Ensure that your blog comments are being actively filtered (by software, using “nofollow” on outbound links, and by employee curation) to remove manipulative, promotional posts and the users involved.

Search engines are particularly sensitive to sites that feature links to “bad neighborhoods.” These sites are seen as the seeds for Web spam and can be penalized as a result. Engines don’t want bad sites in their indexes. Keep your community clean, and you’ll reap rewards. If you allow your site to be a seed for spam, you can suffer for it.

With the Web becoming an increasingly important marketing channel for most companies, it’s more critical than ever that you ensure your Web marketing tactics are focused on the long-term health and success of your website. The risks associated with outlawed SEO tactics are not worth the reward.

Ethan Hays is Search Director at gyro
Follow him @ethanhays

Originally published at Ignite Something on the Forbes CMO Network

Whether their focus is online or offline, any savvy public relations person understands the benefits from being presented on page one. This makes it pretty ironic that PR pros continuously make the same mistake: Failing to use press releases, blogs, and other tools at their disposal to improve organic search visibility.

After all, they hold the unique position of pushing out messages to create pull for their clients. The copy must start being strategically used to hit key messaging AND to drive search authority and traffic to your client’s Web site.
So, for all of you PR folks that are currently writing your final drafts and are ready to hit send, stop and consider the four points below. Each will help you increase your SEO visibility:

1: Employ the one link per 50 words rule. Excessive linking is frowned upon by search engines and may be considered a manipulative linking spam. The general rule-of-thumb is to include one unique link per 50 words, so that linking is viewed as “natural” which carries increased keyword rankings. This is true for all online communications.

2: Be unique with your anchor text. Do not hyperlink your company name 10 times in a three-paragraph press release or in a blog post. Not only does it tend to bother the reader, it is going to have the opposite effect with the search engines than you intended. (Namely, they may penalize the page).

Instead, be unique with anchor text. This means hyperlinking different terms to create diversity for your keyword portfolio. Select the right mix of terms that describe your service offerings and capabilities, which will have the effect of generating better visibility for the terms that your prospects and customers are searching for. (In short, make sure you pick the words that people are most likely to key in when they are looking for your company or client.)

3: Don’t just point to your client’s homepage. Now that you are using a variety of terms, make sure they aren’t all pointing to same place. Consider linking to pages that are deeper than just the home page to increase relevancy.

4. Remember: Not all external sites are created equal. A word about where your content lives – a few authoritative links are far more valuable than a large number of spam links. In other words, a link on the Forbes CMO Network has stronger domain authority than 100 tiny blog posts. Ultimately, you want your articles linked from the sites with the highest authority.

The moral of the story: Link unique, diversified keywords to deeper pages (beyond the home page) from external sources with the highest authority.

Do this and you up your chances of making page one of Google.

Don Ball is a marketing strategist at gyro, the global ideas shop.

Follow him @DonaldJBall

Originally published at Ignite Something on the Forbes CMO Network

Staff who believe in the brand, product or service they are marketing can become or act as “brand advocates.” It therefore makes absolute sense for businesses to take advantage of this opportunity. There are no additional marketing costs, and the staff effectively market a brand or service to a wider yet targeted audience of their friends and family. Office dynamics can help by creating the right breeding ground for brand advocates. But how do you create this?

Internal communications.

Digital has had a revolutionary impact on the ease with which people now communicate and no less in internal communications. Social networks present a realm of endless possibilities for employers to provide places where staff can discuss their work and how it inspires them, spreading a positive message to the rest of the company. Creating staff-only social network pages is a major step toward cultivating brand advocates, and it’s something that many companies forget when setting up pages for clients or fans.

gyro’s Facebook page, for example, is a place where internal communications and personal employee messaging combine, enabling staff to feel truly involved with the company whilst also providing a place for internal communications to be less corporate.

One such gyro communications scheme epitomises what can be done through this platform. As gyro rebranded itself last year, employee buy-in for the new ethos of the company was essential. Creativity is intrinsic in everything we do, and so we challenged staff to be creative with the new brand ID, incorporating their own personal images within it, offering an overseas trip to another office as the prize. Not only did this approach offer a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for an employee to travel, but it also let different global offices feel connected and motivated as part of one community. An overwhelming response saw employees from all 18 global offices uploading countless inspiring works that our Facebook community discussed and judged.

The use of digital was the driving force behind this competition, letting the creativity present in the marketing industry not only flourish and spread but also promote integration and company buy-in across gyro’s global network. Employees bonded over their work, becoming motivated as part of one community, despite living on different sides of the globe. This is something not possible without digital technologies. Moreover, employees became empowered by their work and the clients for whom they produce such work. These employees quickly became brand advocates, extolling the virtues of both their agency and their clients.

What other digital channels can marketing agencies use to create brand advocates? In an extension of social networks, blogs have become increasingly popular in many industries, not the least of which is marketing. An outlet previously reserved for those in senior roles (often limited to CEOs), blogs are a great way of giving employees at all levels the chance to air their views on anything from topical events to the latest office Christmas party. This transparency and inclusion can serve to make employees feel empowered and integral to a business far more than social networks can, where single contributions are often devalued by the deluge of comments. Encouraging comment through company blogs is a key stage in creating a dedicated workforce.

Dedication comes when employees feel like they actively contribute to the business, and blogging for a company is an apropos way of achieving this goal.

And what about apps? They’re often overlooked, but businesses are using apps to communicate with their customers, so why shouldn’t there be a corporate app for internal communications that can be delivered straight to employees’ mobile devices? Such a tool could be an attractive alternative to blanket company emails on topics suitable for a more sociable and less formal platform. Employees would be able to engage with their employer on their own terms, as app content is consumed when and where the user sees fit. This permission-based interaction constructively grows the employee-employer relationship. An internal communications app just makes sense.

Digital also can be used to promote, support and raise awareness of initiatives that staff may not be aware of. For example, gyro works with Business In The Community (BITC), an organisation that gives businesses and their staff the chance to volunteer for good causes on Give and Gain day. Such activities promote well-being and goodwill amongst staff, and so are well publicised through digital internal communication channels to encourage staff buy-in and involvement.

Involving and inspiring employees are the main goals of internal communications. It enhances productivity and can produce those all-important brand advocates who can turn a good campaign idea for a client into a great one, while also promoting that client amongst their social circles. Digital technologies can play an integral part in this, giving staff the chance to socialise online, develop working relationships and inspire each other. Integrating current communication programs with digital tactics can spread the company message throughout the entire business via all formats, be they Twitter, the blogosphere or apps.

Remember, a company is no longer a specific place or office building. It is made up of the thoughts and ideas of its employees, and so creating a positive working dynamic that utilises this source of creativity is integral to a successful business.

by Patrick Danaher
Director of Marketing
Cross posted at Ignite Something on the Forbes CMO Network

Follow Patrick on Twitter @PatrickDanaher.

In a moment of much-needed perspective, a friend of mine shared a link from someecards.com that stated: “I’m appalled that the free service that I am in no way obligated to use keeps making changes that mildly inconvenience me.”

Change is inevitable—especially with Facebook. Social media is all about change—especially when the using population is often the driving force behind the change. With the introduction of Google+ and a plethora of other social media properties, change is the only way to stay current and stay relevant.

At the developer conference where the company unveiled the changes, Facebook also shared some user data:

• - Half of its user base logs into the site every day.
• - The average user has 130 friends and is connected to 80 pages, groups and events.
• – There are more than 900 million objects (pages, groups, etc.) that people interact with on the service.

As a result, you can’t afford not to be connecting with your audience on Facebook any longer. The reality is that a lot of the changes (and here’s a good summary) are designed to encourage even more sharing among users.

For example, the timeline feature reconfigures individual profiles into a virtual scrapbook. Think of it as a one-stop shop for HR and recruiting managers to know all about a candidate’s personal life (if you don’t take advantage of the privacy settings). As a result, ensuring your personal brand is bulletproof has never been more important.

Additionally, apps got a makeover in the name of incorporating more music and video into the sharing experience. So, the feature in the upper right-hand corner of the newsfeed now shares what your friends are listening to or watching.

As more people share more about their lives, the opportunity to get to know your fans more intimately increases. Facebook fans will let you know if you do something right—and something wrong. For example, when Netflix announced its price hike in July 2011, more than 20,000 comments were posted on Netflix’s wall … in one day.

So, how can marketers take advantage of these changes? Here are three quick strategies to continuously change with Facebook:

(1) Remember, it’s not advertising. Facebook is not a broadcast channel; it’s a conversation. So, if you are just repeating your advertising slogan over and over, your fans will likely tune you out. In fact, Facebook made it even easier to decide which updates users would like to see in their news stream. Don’t give them a reason to opt out.

(2) Focus on engagement. Review your Facebook engagement. Are you encouraging interaction? Posting quizzes? Asking questions? If not, you may be missing a huge opportunity to make your customers the star.

(3) Continue to measure the right things. Don’t judge your Facebook page by the number of fans. Dig deeper. Which posts generated the most action? What topics resulted in comments and shares (not just likes)?

As Facebook continues to change and evolve (as this will hardly be the last platform change the site makes), marketers need to pay attention and evolve along with it. After all, with more than 800 million active users on the social network, chances are, your customers are among them.

by Denise Suttman
Senior VP, Public Relations

Follow Denise on Twitter @DeniseKOH

Cross-posted at Ignite Something on the Forbes CMO Network