http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5HlPPd06WY

Really, does Old Spice ever do it wrong? In the spirit of great things, we’ve provided you with a plethora of advice from the best in practical form. I would like to note the tremendously fantastic use of video throughout these links (and the above, to be sure), so that’s a nudge in a direction we think you might be thankful for. Got questions about video? Let us know. Enjoy these highly entertaining, highly inspiring examples of organizations and businesses that just got it right. Now, it’s your turn. We believe in you!

**********

Pop Tarts Facebook Strategy To Connect With Teens Crazy Good For Business. So what did they do here? They knew their audience, they listened, they developed content to cater to their audience. And of course, made delicious Smores flavored pop tarts. Oh, childhood.

5 Smart Social PR Campaigns to Learn From. While turning a profit or just being helpful is still prevalent in this domain, social PR is about a bit more, and these campaigns do some really fantastic things to make their relationships intimate, meaningful, and genuine.

20 Awesome Facebook Fan Pages. Lip balm, candles, coffee, cupcakes, music, science. I mean, really. Take a look. There’s a lot to learn here, with a focus on doing fan pages right.

Anal Warts and All, Denny’s Does Episodic Content Right. This might be the worst headline for an article ever, but here are some reasons to click through: Will Arnett, Sarah Silverman, Jason Bateman. See? Now it sounds fun. Give it a whirl, it’s a nice campaign.

9 Companies Doing Social Media Right and Why. Shabam! Retailers, real estate, trucks, restaurants, games—and more. Not just facebook fan pages, but whole social media efforts. It’s all here with helpful insights to boot.

Really, how could you resist?

Last week we showed you how to get Facebook fans. This week we show you how to keep them. Engagement is key in both of these endeavors. People aren’t interested in liking a page that no one else is interested in. Likewise, it’s hard to convince fans to stick around if there’s no party going on with your page. So that’s one way to think about it–make sure your Facebook page is a constant party.

In addition, look: what’s social media about? Here’s a good answer–building relationships. Relationships? Engagements?! This sounds heavy! Not ready to commit? That’s fine, but when you’re able to have real conversations that you and your Other are both interested in, when you can be mutually helpful and supportive–well, you might just find yourself changing your relationship status to “married to my fans”. Jokes aside, if you want to have any success in social media, get your audience talking. How? We’re glad you asked.

**********

HOW TO: Improve Engagement On Your Brand’s Facebook Page. By far the most awesome thing you’ll read this week. Industry-specific tips based on real data of 200 companies over two weeks. The images are great, and should change your game for engagement in the coming weeks.

How to Encourage Engagement on Facebook. Another outstanding article, bringing in the idea of contra-competitive posting and including an e-marketer graphic. Gotta love emarketer.

16 ways To Get More Comments On Your Facebook Page. This article focuses on asking questions. What do you ask? How do you ask it? And, our personal input, always think of what exactly you’re trying to achieve when you do ask it.

The 5 Golden Facebook Engagement Metrics. Metrics are key for finding out what to do. So we have two articles here for you. This one gives you the tips as well as examples for the things to do/watch for no matter the size of your business. If you keep just these 5 metrics in mind, then you’ve got a good start for progress.

How to Measure Your Facebook Engagament. I mean, you could start counting comments and likes, but we’re not sure that’s really what you want to do. Facebook comes with some sophisticated analytics that allow you to see what works and what doesn’t. Remember that, in the end, past all the tips, do what works for you.

image courtesy www.93south.net

About two months ago, I sent out this tweet:

And one of our clients sent me a direct message that hinted – well, downright stated – that it didn’t inspire confidence in our clients. I could see where they were coming from, especially since they had recently signed a contract for a customized Facebook fan page from us.

I messaged them back that it had the #devilsadvocate hashtag for a reason, that I used Twitter as an industry sounding board, etc. but still, it nagged at me.

A few weeks later, one of our interns emailed me about an article I told him to post to our blog, fan page and Twitter account. It reported that only one out of every 10 Facebook posts gets noticed. He wasn’t sure we should post something like that. Maybe it would undermine our services.

Should we put blind faith in our tools?

I think as good marketers we should question our tools. Our clients and fans trust us to point them in the right direction, to guide their social media efforts in the most effective manner possible, and to be the voice of reason in a very noisy industry.

If every one out of 10 Facebook posts goes unnoticed, our clients and fans need to know so that they can adjust their strategies accordingly. I don’t think our clients should be walking around thinking that each and every one of their status updates is cherished and honored when it’s not the truth. It doesn’t make Facebook a lesser marketing tool. People continue to buy television advertising knowing full well that most people don’t see them. They adjust their strategy, and purchase in bulk, cycles, and with the idea that they will repeat, repeat, repeat.

Social media isn’t a magic bullet. It’s not different from traditional marketing in that sense. Do you have a better shot at reaching people? We think so, especially if you are working within the framework of being helpful, resourceful, and useful to your target audience. But what if it still isn’t working? Something’s broke, and you have to find out where the breakdown is occuring. Sometimes it’s you, sometimes it’s the target, and sometimes it’s the platform.

Questions Lead to Answers (Hopefully)

If I’m having a hard time increasing engagement on any platform, I’m going to question it’s usefulness for our own clients. In questioning we find answers. To shut our eyes and ears off to what we see happening is to be blind-sided in a few months or a year.

Literally days after I sent that tweet, Facebook made sweeping changes to fan pages. They now allow fan pages to comment on other fan pages, which dramatically changes any given fan page’s effectiveness in drawing fans there. Fan page administrators now have the ability to do outreach to other areas of Facebook and draw in new users.

That makes me think that my initial concern was right on, and that I wasn’t alone in questioning it’s effectiveness. Facebook must’ve known this as well, or they wouldn’t have made the changes that they did.

The reality is that social media marketing is all still very new, and will remain a moving target for marketers as the platforms upgrade, change, and shift. The only way to avoid falling into the trap of putting all our eggs in one basket is to continue to ask questions, play devil’s advocate, and keep our eyes open to the limitations and capabilities of our tools.

There’s so much more to social media than farms and tweeters.

Join us next Tuesday, and we’ll show you free online tools to help you tame and prioritize your email inbox, store and share files from anywhere in the world, and dismiss expensive business software.

Pretty amazing, right?

Here’s a sneak peek at some of the things you’ll learn.

How to make technology your personal assistant – all for free.

• Easily manage your calendar and automatically schedule appointments,
• Get reminders about important events or tasks, right when you need them,
• Save and manage standard replies to common emails or questions,
• And automatically manage your emails so that you see only what’s important.

How to have the same tools as a large corporation – without the cost.

• Setup professional phone and fax systems for less than you pay for parking,
• Access your documents from any computer with internet access,
• Have everything backed up automatically,
• And have the latest software (legally) for a fraction of the cost.

How to build stronger relationships with your customers without leaving the office.

• Host live meetings or conferences for less than the cost of a tank of gas,
• Share custom introductory videos with your proposals,
• And easily keep track of every meeting, call, or email.

Ready to sign up? Click here to register for free.

If you can’t attend, you can follow along on Twitter. Comment below, and we’ll even email you a reminder before we get started.

On our Facebook fan page poll the other week, we asked you folks what you’d like to learn more about, what your current challenges are in social media. We had a lot of people saying they wanted to learn how to get more Facebook fans, so we’ve collected a slew of articles here for you that either share stories of how a company got so many fans or give some concrete, proven directions when it comes to getting more people to click that “like” button.

It’s important to remember that getting more fans isn’t the point of social media. It’s a necessary part of it. You want the right fans, and you want to engage them in the right way. A large part of getting more fans is to have a solid, well-kept, helpful, interesting Facebook page. So never sacrifice quality of content for numbers. Everybody’s gotta start somewhere.

***********

Oh yeah, two notes. Firstly, there are a lot of people out there telling you that you can buy more Facebook fans from them. It’s ridiculous, and don’t do it. Unless of course you’re hiring on a professional, reputable company who is helping you build a social media strategy. Otherwise, stick to doing social media well. It’ll pay off.

Secondly, a couple of these first articles are old (the dinosaur ages of 2009 and 2010). This isn’t because we’re unhip–hey, we read Slate–but because the trouble of getting more fans has been around since pages were introduced. So some of the information is outdated, but know we chose these articles because they are still useful, and the tips are still relevant/still hold. And there you doubted us for a second.

How To Develop A Facebook Page That Attracts Millions. Now this article doesn’t actually tell you how to get a million fans (and for a small business, we’re not sure that’s what you’re aiming for). Aaaaand it’s also from 2009, but that shouldn’t deter you. Even if it is one of those articles telling you what a facebook fan page is, we checked through all 10 tips and all 10 tips still hold. Call it goin’ retro. It works.

21 Creative Ways To Increase Your Facebook Fan Base. Quick tips: use video, cross-post to other social media outlets, print (people still walk around in the real world from time to time).

How To Get Facebook Fans: The Easy Way and the Hard Way. This article focuses on Facebook advertising and why it’s a route worth taking. From January 2011.

9 Best Ways to Increase Facebook Fans. Some additional, more current ideas on some solid, proven methods of getting more fans.There’s some overlap, but call it reinforcement.

The Top 5 Ways to Stand Out On Facebook. This one is less directly focused on getting more fans, but talks about how to be a good brand on Facebook. You do that, and people will like you, link to you, and trust us, you’ll see the fan count rise.

image courtesy www.bulklikes.com

For the post on email marketing and social media, go here.

Hope you got a kick out of our prank. But no more fooling around! We promise useful content so we’ve brought you the content.

This week, how do social media and email interact? What can you do to improve your email marketing? And how effective is it even? All this and more addressed in this series of choice articles. Enjoy your weekend, folks.

********

HOW TO: Optimize Your Email Marketing for Social Media Results: In this Mashable article we’ve got some good tips and some impressive examples of companies using email as a lead in to their social media campaigns.

6 Common Email Marketing Mistakes: We all make mistakes, but these email marketing mistakes can and should be avoided at all costs if you want your brand to be trusted, liked, and effective.

How To Turn Your Email Into A Social Media Hub with Posterous: Have you heard of Posterous? A lot of people are using it for a lot of different reasons, one of its biggest attractions being the fact that you can post to over 20 different social media platforms from it by email. Need a hub? Is email where you spend most of your time? Check out Posterous.

Integrating Social Media Into Email Marketing: If the first article in this bunch was about using email to drive customers to your social media, this article is about using social media to drive people to your email campaigns. Which do you prefer? Let us know!

Email Marketing “Extraordinarily Effective”: A lot of people say e-mail is dead. A lot of people said disco was dead. They were probably right about that, but they’ll have a harder time proving the same for e-mail, and this article starts the conversation on why that is. The most likely truth, it argues, is that email integrated with social media efforts is likely to produce the best results.

*******

So what’s your idea on it? Are you an e-mail fanboy? A social media militant? A centrist of the two? What works and what doesn’t–we wanna hear it.

Never gonna give you up,

Neovia.

Examples

5 Unique Uses For QR Codes. More in the “how to do it” department. None of these ideas are up in the articles above, showcasing the vast possibilities for this kind of technology. In other words, don’t count it out just yet.

Best Buy Mood QR Codes Best Buy has done something interest and used QR codes internally for HR purposes–”how do you feel today?”. In addition, there’s a way cool video showing real time customer QR code scans for all Best Buy stores across the country.

Convinced? Do it.

QR Code Generator. This is one of many different QR generators, but try it out and tell us how it works for you.

Finding a QR Code Generator. A review of a few generators, as well as some really crucial tips in what type of content to encode and where to throw your QR codes.

The Next Generation, iQR Codes

iQR Codes. Unfortunately, in the technology world things move at a fast pace. iQR codes have a higher data capacity, can be rectangular, and can be printed even smaller. Though currently not used for marketing purposes, the development of iQR codes (or Intelligent Quick Response) might be something to keep an eye on over the next few years.

Friendly Friday, yall!

With a good Texan salutation, we move on to this week’s Friday blog post, in which we cover some new stuff with Facebook. No, we won’t be covering the “shift+enter” complaints or the “memorable status updates” (Watch your words! Facebook never forgets!), but we do have some articles that should prove a tasty treat for those of you with a sixth basic taste of business. So what can Facebook do for you today? Let’s see:

************

What’s New With Facebook

Facebook Expands Tagging to Include Comments: The same “@” sign that you’ve been using to link events, people, and pages is being expanded into virtually any place you can enter text on Facebook, which, if you’re the taggable brand, is good news for you.

4 Facebook E-Commerce Tips for Brands: a lot of businesses use Facebook to sell directly rather than as a referral tool. If you’re doing this or this idea sounds appealing to you, here are some good tips on doing it right.

Yes, Facebook Is A Viable Marketing Strategy For Startups: There is some concern among “the they” that Facebook is no longer– or at least will soon no longer be—fashionable or effective. Nick O’neill calls them out and argues that Facebook is still the number one marketing channel and is “practically mandatory” for online startups.

REPORT: Facebook Like Drives $1.34 In Ticket Sales: Eventbrite recently released a study showing the dollar worth of a facebook share and a tweet in ticket sales for events, a must-read for any business hosting (or thinking of hosting) events.

Why You Need Facebook’s Like Button On Your Site: We probably don’t need to beat you over the head with this idea for you to know its importance. But really, you should do it. The article has some resources and fully explains the awesome functionality of the “like”.

image courtesy www.twitter.com/facebookmedia