As you may know Facebook is the world’s largest social network. Over 500 million users have joined and somehow they have all agreed to share information such as location, age, interest, and much more, without serious privacy concerns. Otherwise, they would have cancelled their accounts, right?

Facebook is taking advantage of all this data to make Facebook Ads a very powerful platform that allows for highly targeted advertising.

Facebook is often referred to as a personal network, a place where you communicate with friends and family. Many have questioned its business efficacy. However, more and more companies have joined Facebook and added Facebook Pages, Groups and Events. One can find all kinds of associations, organizations and groups. And many now are taking advantage of Facebook Ads.

The platform is very flexible, with the potential of being very powerful, and you can set your ads in a few minutes. A few things to keep in mind:

1. Creating an engaging ad is not that difficult. All you need is a graphic, title, body copy and URL
   
   
2. Choose your audience by targeting users based on their location, demographics, interest and other options. This is probably the most powerful part of Facebook Ads. You will be amazed at all the options you have to target a group of people that have joined Facebook pages and groups of competitors, media and associations that cater to your audience.
   
   
3. Create a schedule and budget for your campaign. You will be able to choose the time you want to run your ads and set a daily budget. You can also choose to pay per click (CPP) or pay per mille of views (CPM)
   
   
4. Facebook gives you access to analytics, make sure you analyze them and keep improving your ads to make them more effective

Give it a try by going to facebook.com/ads/create. Let us know if you need any help with the strategy, design or interactive efforts to add this to your marketing mix.

Like is the new Fan. So, what’s the big deal? We found this article helpful in sorting out what all the recent Facebook changes mean for individuals and companies alike.

What you should know about Facebook's changes

Basically, Like doesn’t just live on Facebook anymore; it’s all over the web. That bears repeating: ALL OVER THE WEB. Facebook is branching out to enhance social connections and organize information on the Internet according to interests and preferences. So, now, if someone Likes your company, organization or event on Facebook, that action (that recommendation) has the potential to influence the Internet search and browsing results for that certain someone, all of their Facebook friends, their friends’ friends and so on.
 
New Thumbs Up icons are already popping up on heavily visited sites like CNN.com. Read an article. If you Like it, you can click the Thumbs Up icon and Recommend it. Your friends will know you like it, Facebook will know, CNN will know, everyone else who gave the article a Thumbs Up will know…You see where this is going. Fun, fast and far-reaching, Facebook is marshalling us into the future of the Internet.
 
We’ll certainly be staying on top of the latest metrics and trends so that we are putting the new Facebook to use effectively for our clients, and ourselves. But when it comes to an increased capacity to build brand awareness, reach more customers and draw traffic to your website or online communities—what’s not to like?
 

From time to time, business owners are asked to throw their proverbial hat into the ring for various graphic design awards, Best Places to Work lists, Smart CEO honors and the like. So, it was no big deal when earlier this year we received a Top Agency nomination from BtoB, the magazine for marketing strategists, and were asked to complete a survey. All in a day’s work; answer their questions and move on.

Imagine our surprise a few weeks ago when we learned that Fixation had been named to BtoB’s (www.btobonline.com) 150 Leading Agencies list in their March 2010 issue. This particular honor stands out because a) it’s a national recognition that finds us listed among some of the nation’s biggest and best “name brand” agencies; and b) the questions took into consideration not just our personality or number of employees, but some deeper questions about year-over-year growth and how we were helping our clients deal with a fragile economy.

Look, we know this business is not all about awards. But as a small agency, we rarely get consideration in the rarefied company of the “big boys” like BBDO and Ogilvy & Mather North America. Let’s hear it for the little guy! And let me take this opportunity to first thank a great small-and-smart staff here at Fixation who work hard and produce terrific stuff that is sometimes unheralded. Second, let me honor our clients—many of them long-standing—who hire us to provide creative strategy, design and interactive marketing solutions that help keep them successful and help keep us on top of our game.

Congratulations to all. I’m so proud of this company.

Maddie Grant is the chief social media strategist and co-founder of SocialFish, a consultancy firm that teaches association professionals how to effectively use social media. Maddie and her SocialFish business partner, Lindy Dreyer provide social media strategy, marketing and training to clients like ASAE and the Center and the National Association for the Self-Employed. Maddie and Lindy provided valuable social media training to our team at Fixation last year, for which we remain incredibly grateful.

I often get the question "what's the ROI for using social media?" How would you answer this question?
This is actually the "big question" that seems to be top of mind for everyone now that a lot of organizations have started using social media. In one sense, it's like saying, "what's the ROI of building relationships?" or "What's the ROI of email?"--because social media is a way of communicating and interacting with stakeholders. Having said that, there can be defined and measurable results--but those results need to be directly tied to business and strategic goals. There needs to be a starting benchmark and deliberate tracking--as well as factoring in of indirect costs (staff time, overhead and resources) in order to really measure ROI--which I would say many organizations don't do a great job of in general, not just for social media efforts.

I've heard several folks in the industry say that Twitter's relevance to business is dwindling. How would you respond?
We believe that the core purpose of social media (including, of course, Twitter) is to build relationships and we've seen that work very successfully. If business strategies involve an understanding of that core principle, then Twitter is a fantastic way to reach people in an organization's "ecosystem" and get to know them and what their needs are. If, on the other hand, Twitter is used merely to spam people with marketing messages without a care to fostering that community, then it's not going to work for that business for very long.

What are 5 initial steps that an association professional can take to begin using social media tools right now?
The first step is always to "listen" on the social web--which means start using Google Alerts to search for brand mentions, industry terms, key people, etc. -- to see what people are saying about you or your industry. You can do this, to some extent, without actually having social media profiles at all. Step two is to focus on the places where your people are, and start building a presence there. Step three is to begin building relationships by responding when appropriate to relevant questions, following discussions, answering feedback. Step four, start providing value by posting information people need. Step five, identify those champions (influencers in those spaces who care about what you care about) to help you grow your presence and community and take things to the next level.

Do you see practical applications for associations to use video and mobile applications? Do you agree that video and mobile will grow exponentially in the next year or so?
Ab-so-lutely!! Mobile is becoming huge across all industries--not just because of geolocation, which empowers local connections between people and businesses, but more fundamentally because devices like the iPhone are revolutionary in terms of changing how we want and expect to get what we need, in a very individualized way (e.g. each individual user downloads the apps that they want to use, so every individual phone is different. The Long Tail thrives on mobile!) And if we consider the Millennial generation (now entering the workforce in substantial numbers) and younger, these are people who do all of their communicating through mobile phones, which is changing the landscape of how we work (not tethered to a desktop, which means not tied to 9-5...) With regard to video, associations are definitely starting to see just how valuable it can be to add video to their arsenal of ways of communicating with members--it's easy and attractive, and it's humanizing, in terms of potentially giving some much needed personality to the "brand" they want to promote to their members.

Is there an association that in your opinion has done a really good job of using social media? If so, how and why?
Honestly we've seen many associations doing fabulous things. If I had to pick one, we often show the International Society for Technology in Education as a great example of an association conference home base site that aggregates lots of different social media activities--but really I think the beauty of social media is that much of it is all out in the open for everyone to find. I'd love your readers to check out the Association Social Media Wiki if they are looking for specific examples. I also had a really great series of interviews with association social media managers on the SocialFish blog, where people working for all types and sizes of organizations told us how they internally managed the social media management work.