To reward their valiant efforts, the ladies of ZGM voted on each handsome moustache and presented the fellas with their very own bronzed razor (which they promptly used on November 30 at 11:59:59pm).

Without further ado, the 2012 ZGM Movember Awards go to:

1. Andrew McFallon – Most Surprised to Have a Moustache

2. Christopher Heatherington – The Late Bloomer Moustache

3. Dan King – Best Moustache Mug Shot

4. Luke Devlin – Most Dangerous Moustache

5. Mike Pardy – Best Biker Moustache

6. Rob Fairhead – Most Disturbing Moustache

7. Scott Irwin – Best Creeper Moustache

8. Mario Amantea – Best Fortune 500 Moustache

9. Rob Harlow – Best Effort for a Moustache

10. And the LADIES’ PICK for 2012 goes to… PETER BISHOP!

A big congrats to all of the guys who participated; raising over $1,600 for Prostate Cancer Canada. We, uh… are anxiously counting down the days until next year!

Reached 1,000 followers? Post a celebratory photo! Announcing a new product? Create a fun video! According to Facebook, photos and videos generate 180% to 100% more engagement than text posts alone. Leveraging a tool like Instagram, or posting videos from YouTube also help your content reach more people, across more channels.

Be sure to keep it interesting. Think of what you share or like to see online. Utilize trends, like generating your own meme, to add humour to your post. Use fun and unique visuals to back up your message. For a great example, check out Oreo’s Facebook page.

It’s not all about you. 

Look at your wall. Are all of your posts about your sales or promotions? Do you ignore your follower comments and what other pages are doing? If you answered “yes” then you need to give your head a shake. Social media is just that – a social platform. Ask your fans what they want to see, answer their questions, and comment or share great content from other pages.

L’Oreal USA does a great job of linking to partners and celebrities in their posts, and asking followers what they think.

Make your fans feel special. 

Exclusive behind-the-scenes photos, follower-only discounts and contests, and sneak peak announcements are a few ways to reward your followers. Remember, most people ‘like’ a brand’s Facebook page for special offers, so it’s important to offer value to your fans, in addition to providing customer service and great content.

For example, check out the VIP Contest we created with Market Mall. If you ‘like’ their page and sign up for the e-newsletter, you’re automatically entered to win a great new prize, each month.

Have tips or experiences of your own? Share them below!

After much anticipation, Facebook announced on February 29 that they are rolling out Timeline for brand pages. While brands can work on the changes behind-the-scenes, by March 30 – all pages must make the switch.

There are major changes in 4 key areas that brands should be familiar with to update their page:

#1) Profile Images: Cover Photo & Tile

The new profile display allows a brand to be much more creative with their design, but there are a few things to keep in mind with the new cover and profile images.

Cover photo:

• Specs are 850 x 315 pixels.
• The photo must NOT contain any marketing actions – no pricing/purchasing info, no contact info, no references to Facebook actions (e.g. like or share), no calls-to-action.

Profile image:

• Square tile displays as 180 x 180 pixels (plus a border).
• This image serves as the avatar – displaying the brand’s logo is recommended.

#2) The “About” Section

Under the cover photo is an area where a brand can share a bit of key information. There is a limit of 150 characters. Depending on the nature of the brand, there is also an area to include contact information – such as address and hours of operation.

#3) Tabs for Applications and iFrames

While brands can still build custom applications and iFrame tabs, the layout has drastically changed. Rather than being listed on the left-hand side, tabs will now have “buttons” – allowing a brand to be more visually creative.

Application buttons:

• Specs for these buttons are 110 x 74 pixels.
• 4 buttons will display under the cover photo, but the view can be expanded. The first button will ALWAYS be Photos (and the most recent photo displays as the button). The rest – such as the map (if the brand has claimed Places), a brand’s likes, and additional apps can be sorted by the brand.

New tab views:

• Ideal specs are now 810 pixels wide. There are no limits to the length, but keeping important information above the fold is always a good idea.
• There is no longer a welcome tab. ALL users will land on the wall, unless a brand directs them to an app. This means marketers have to think of new strategies for like- or fan-gating. You can read more in this article from Business 2 Community.

#4) The Timeline

The Timeline layout allows a brand to go back to when it was founded and fill out key dates with information, photos and more. Brands should tell their story to fans through timeline to create an engaging experience. For example, Coca-Cola’s page dates back to 1886 and includes a scan of their original founding certificate.

In addition to backdating, there are a couple new features brands can take advantage of to highlight important posts and content:

• To draw attention to an important message, brands can “pin” a post. This means it will stay on the top left feed of the Timeline for 7 days.
• Brands can also call out certain posts by “highlighting” or starring them. This means they will take up the entire width (not just one column) on the Timeline.

Other Important Changes

In addition to the changes listed above, there are a few more features brands should consider when using Timeline:

1. Fans can now private message a brand. This is good for customer service – brands can refer people to message them in order to share contact information or resolve issues. A brand cannot initiate contact with their followers.
2. Brands can now apply a setting to approve user comments before they post on the wall. While this may be tempting for many brands to reduce negative comments, it also takes away from the page’s transparency.
3. Page analytics will now be public. This means your competitors can see you, and you can see your competitors.
4. Facebook is also adding a new premium ad format to their offering. You can read more about these new social ads in this article via Fast Company.

A number of brands have already made the switch to Timeline, such as: Facebook, Lexus and Red Bull. Check out what they’re doing for more examples and inspiration.

Does anyone have more great examples of brands that have already made the switch?

Our competitor is on Facebook. We must get on there. Now.

In the past year it seems that multiple businesses have scrambled to utilize the latest social media platforms simply because everyone else is doing it. Sure, with over 800 million users, Facebook is an attractive platform – but should tossing up a Fan Page be the first move? Like anything else in marketing, you need to start with a plan.

Here’s a 5-step process to make sure you’re heading in the right direction:

1. Know what’s already being said about your brand.

Do you have Google Alerts set up, or even better – Google Reader? Do you use an online monitoring tool to discover what’s being said about your brand, and where? If you’ve answered no to these questions – then this is a critical first step in order to know what negative comments might come up, what positive comments you might capitalize on, where conversations about your brand are taking place, and so on.

2. Define your objectives.

With traditional advertising campaigns, organizations typically have a list of objectives. “We want to drive sales by 10%.” “We want to change behaviour.” Yet when it comes to jumping on the social bandwagon, some businesses seem to forget about asking this essential first question – what do we want to achieve? Perhaps it’s to educate customers on a product. And/or maybe it’s to provide another channel for customer service. Whatever your reason – write it down, remember it, work toward it.

3. Know your audience. Know the platforms.

Now that you know what’s being said about your brand and what you want to achieve, it’s time to look at your target audience and the available social media platforms.  Does your audience create or just comment on content? What are the limitations and rules for specific platforms? How do people use them? Answering these questions will help you tailor your day-to-day messages, campaigns, and contests in order to provide better value to your audience.

4. Develop a content plan.

To develop a good content plan, reiterate steps 1 to 3 into your plan. What is your brand’s objective? What is the current perception of your brand online? Where is your audience and how do they act on various social platforms? This knowledge serves as the backbone for your content plan. Using this information, develop a personality for your brand that will emotionally connect with your audience to start building a relationship online. Then, consider the types of posts you should be publishing to keep them interested. But remember, a good content plan is flexible. Which leads me to…

5. Rollout, review, revise and repeat.

This is where having a social media management tool (see the blog post I previously wrote about these tools) is especially useful. With one tool, not only can you monitor your brand, but you can also respond to, write, schedule and review the effectiveness of your posts. Revise your content plan as needed to improve social efforts and continue growing your online communities.

The work doesn’t stop once you have developed a strategy document. It begins.

Once a plan has been developed, there are many more actions you’ll need to take. Integration into your website, SEO considerations, visual assets for your social profiles, an internal social media policy, and maintaining the platforms day-today are just a few examples. A social media plan is different for each organization – dependant on things like the brand, business goals, key audiences, and internal capabilities.

Remember, social media isn’t “free” like some companies might think – it requires time and thoughtfulness from the initial planning, to development, to ongoing maintenance and reviewing. If you’re going to do it – do it well.

For those of you that don’t know, Facebook is rolling out yet another change to your profile design and functionality… any day now. It’s called Timeline. If you are like the millions of Facebook users that freak out over the ongoing profile overhauls get over it and read on about why it’s not that bad.

Okay, so what makes Timeline great?

I’ve been on Timeline for just over a week (you could get it early by following these steps on Mashable) and have really grown to like it. Here are the top 5  features that have me sold (but there are many more to check out!):

1)    Cover Photos – In addition to your (now-smaller) profile image, you now have a large, horizontal cover image. For aesthetics and creativity, this simply rocks.

2)    Easier Navigation & Smarter Sorting – Now you can easily skip to points in time where you can see your posts, what you pages liked, who you became friends and whatever else you did on Facebook during that time period by selecting the year and month from the “timeline” on the side. You’ll notice that the timeline starts from “born” which leads me to…

3)    Backdating – You can now document your WHOLE like on Facebook, from birth. Add the darling photo of you in an incubator or share how swank you looked at your high school prom. Your whole life can be viewed in one place – like an interactive online scrapbook.

4)    Featured Posts – Highlight your happiest or proudest moments to take up more real estate on your page. On the flip side, you can also “hide” those less-than-stellar shots of you in a drunken state, or those late night rants when you first joined Facebook and didn’t know about proper privacy settings.

5) Milestones - Mark and organize those special life moments with Work & Education, Family & Relationships, Living, Health & Wellness, or Milestones & Experiences.

Let’s face it – Facebook, just like every other technology, is going to continually evolve. I’m sure in a couple years Facebook will roll out more massive changes – it’s just how you stay ahead in the game. So get used to it and give it a try. After a week or two, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.

For more information about Facebook Timeline and the features it offers, you can learn more here on their Timeline overview.

Facebook Lists are like Facebook’s answer to Google Circles. You can organize your friends and pages into groupings (Lists), so you can post content for just one specific List to see, or exclude select Lists from seeing particular posts. You can also choose to view a news feed for people within your Lists, so you can see updates from just your family, co-workers, or from whatever other Lists you create. There are already Smart Lists automatically created for you with a few friends sorted – using your location, education, workplaces, etc.

How can I create Lists?

1. Go to “Home”.

2. Select “Lists” from the left-column and click on “More”.

3. Here, you can either edit your Smart Lists, or click on “Create a List” to make a new one.

4. Click on “Manage List” in the top-right corner, and select “Add/Remove Friends”.

5. Here, you can select (or deselect) the friends that will appear on that list.

6. You can also group Pages into Lists by selected “Pages” in the top left (good for marketers).

7. Click “Done” and you’re set!

How do I use Lists?

On a post - you can select one specific List to post to, or go to your “Custom Settings” to exclude certain Lists (or people).

For viewing - in the left-column of the Home Page, simply click on the List you want to see. The window will now only display updates and posts from friends or pages within that List. You also have several options to post things specifically for that list – like status updates, photos or ask questions.

For more information about Facebook Lists, you can find some great information here on their Help Center. Happy sorting!

Facebook. Twitter. YouTube. Flickr. Post a promotion on this day. Post an event on that day. Track who’s responding to what, revise and repeat. Planning, managing and reporting on social efforts can be quite the job the more social your company gets!

But did you know that there are a multitude of social media management tools that allow you to easily publish and track your social endeavors and campaigns?

So, how will a management tool save me from my growing workload?!

Different tools offer different features. Key benefits may include some, or all of, the following:

• Manage multiple platforms. With a management tool you can upload and publish all of your social media content in one place, saving time and resources.
• Easy post scheduling. Imagine entering the posts you do know for an entire month, leaving them to publish at the most effective times, whether you are glued to Facebook or not.
• Approval paths and workflow. Want a second opinion from your agency or management team? Management tools make it easy for people to collaborate with flags, actions and emails so everyone that needs to know, is in the know.
• Monitor your brand and others. Scanning the web and social sites will help you flag, respond to, and analyze web content. This is also useful if you post on topics within your industry – from financial news to fashion trends.
• Detailed analytics. As marketers, we all love our numbers. Measure you reach, effectiveness of your links and content, growth, conversion back to your website and more.

Wow! That sure sounds great. What next?

Depending on the depth of your social diving, there are a number of social media management tools you can choose from.

First, you need to listen to what’s being said about your company, competitors and industry. Google Alerts allows you to monitor keyword searches (for free) and sends flagged content to your email or, even better, to your Google Reader.

Once you’re set-up, you can begin planning and posting content! HootSuite or TweetDeck are fantastic free programs that offers features such as multiple account management, easy post scheduling, and link shortening. Plus, for a small monthly fee, you can upgrade to more features.

If you want to drive the Cadillac of social media management systems, tools such as Spredfast or Argyle offer all of the key benefits listed above. For a reasonable monthly fee, they monitor, schedule, track, and provide extensive analytics to continually evolve your social strategy.

Managing social media is no easy task. It requires keeping on top of technology and being open to adaptation. But, with the help of a management tool, your day-to-day workload can be simplified, leaving you more time to learn… or work on that project you’ve been putting off.

You see it on almost every website. Follow us on Twitter! Like us on Facebook! It’s quickly becoming the norm as more and more brands engage in social media. And as promoting these pages becomes the industry standard, brands have to be on the look out for new tools and widgets to keep up, and ahead, of competitors.

This post is to provide a couple small tips brands can use to make their websites even more social and give visitors even more options to connect.

Adding the Facebook Like Box.

If you have a Facebook Page, there’s a good chance that you are linking to it from your website. By adding Facebook’s logo and a link, it’s a great way to get your website visitors to check out your Facebook page.

But you can take it a step further by adding Facebook’s Like Box. You can see this on popular social media site, Mashable.

This tool allows your website visitors to see which of their friends already like your page, and automatically “like” it without having to leave your site.

Is this to say you should abandon your original logo and link? Not at all. It’s a good idea to keep that option in case someone wants to check out your page before making the commitment to “like” it. Adding the Like Box is just another layer to promote your Page – especially if it can show that a lot of people already like it!

Adding Twitter’s new Follow Button, and maybe even a feed.

In response to Facebook’s “like” functions, Twitter recently announced the introduction of a “follow” button that would allow a user to automatically follow a Twitter account by simply clicking the button. You can even take this a step further on your website by importing your recent tweets. This is a great way to give visitors a taste of what they’re signing up for.

A good example of this (and integrating social media in general) can be found on this interactive website for Sky, a fishing guide service out of Oregon.

Like Facebook’s Like Box, it’s good to give visitors the choice to check out your Twitter page before making the leap, so keeping the traditional logo and link is a good idea. It’s all about providing choices.

Just remember…

Anytime you promote your Facebook and Twitter pages, you have to ensure they are in tip-top shape so visitors aren’t disappointed. Frequent posts that offer value are a must, and content should be engaging and reflect your brand’s online personality.

Thanks to Detrans on DeviantArt for creating the cool Twitter picture I used as the main image for this post.

In the future, losing your phone may be even more of a headache than it is now. As mobile technology continues to rapidly evolve, smartphones are gaining more and more functionalities that really make them the Swiss-Army knife of devices. With a tap of a button you make a phone call, view your calendar, play your music, take a picture, fire off an email, or launch thousands of apps that have thousands of features. I know for me, some days it feels like my iPhone IS my life.

And it’s about to get better.

Various tech and mobile sites, such as Mashable are lavished with rumours that many device developers will be adding near field communication (NFC) capabilities to their soon-to-be-released phones. Apple, Google, Blackberry and Microsoft are all rumoured to be on board.

Wait… NFC what?!

NFC enables devices to “talk” – a chip in your phone communicates with another chip, whether it’s with a payment machine to transfer funds, a poster to launch an application on your phone, or a friend’s phone to swap contact information. Think Bluetooth meets QR codes meets Bump.

Good-bye credit cards.

Yesterday, CBC reported that Visa expects to release a digital wallet in Canada and US this fall. While this release won’t utilize NFC technologies (yet), users will still be able to pay for purchases using their phone by providing participating merchants with a username and password. Visa isn’t the first either – both Google and Paypal have similar versions. And, as more and more smartphones are equipped with NFC technology, it’s expected that these digital wallets will use NFC technology to make payments as easy as swiping your phone past a merchant’s machine. Looks like you’ll actually have to turn back when you forget your phone at home now.

There were signs.

There have been signs that smartphones would move in this direction for quite some time (at least by digital world standards). For example, earlier this year Starbucks announced that their payment card would go mobile in the US. Simply open the card app, get the barista to scan a code on your phone, and you’re on your way with that extra-hot double-whip mocha in a jiffy.

So, what does this mean for marketers?

Realize the importance of mobile. Mobile technology is increasing at a staggering rate and mobile advertising budgets are on the rise in Canada and across the globe. Like QR codes the possibilities for marketers are endless, from developing their own payment and rewards cards that use NFC, to applications launched through advertising materials. Technology changes quick. It’s our job to keep a finger on the pulse – watching for trends and innovations, but also a foot on the ground – remembering that effectiveness still trumps cool in this biz.

Social media has been a popular subject in recent years, and it seems even more so in recent months. Client meetings are filled with chatter about setting up Twitter, friends post their homemade videos to You Tube, and parents friend their kids on Facebook. Yet there still seems to be a group of people, whether by generational or personality differences, that seem reluctant to dive into all things social online.

The “Not Tos”

This group is more hesitant to engage in social media – learning how to send an email was “hooked up” enough. They worry about their privacy and don’t understand why someone would want to broadcast that they are eating a peanut-butter sandwich while watching American Idol. And the thought of people knowing your exact location from a tweet? Forget it! Plus, isn’t Twitter like Facebook on steroids with all those status updates anyways?

The “Tos”

On the other side, those that grew up with the web seem to be more receptive – they have learned to evolve with tech and online advancements. They expect instant information at their fingertips. Social media has managed to seep into their daily lives and activities as they rate restaurants on Urbanspoon, race to be mayor of their local Starbucks on foursquare, and post photos of their recent resort vacation on Facebook.

So Who’s Right?

The answer is both sides.

Just because you might not “get” social media doesn’t mean it’s not important to a growing audience. And just because social media is “all the rage” doesn’t mean you should neglect traditional advertising. There is an audience and appropriate message for each. It’s about finding creative ways to marry the two, because let’s face it – neither are going away anytime soon. But that’s another story.