As we get closer to the Facebook IPO people are starting to examine more closely where the potential threats to facebook might come from.

I think before we go any further I should lay my cards out on the table.  I admire what facebook has accomplished, I’d be a fool not to.  Where my views apparently differ from the mass media is on its future prospects for growth.  I’m not alone in this wilderness.  There are some even more vocal apponents to the current pre IPO stock valuations.

OK so we could touch on the obvious stuff here.  Revenue has fallen in this quarter compared the last.  Profits have fallen over a period when user numbers increased by over 30%.  Click through rates on paid ads fell and continue to fall.  Although they claim to see the future as mobile (dont we all)  they’ve  a poorly executed mobile app (on all platforms). Only a fraction of their income comes directly from mobile ads, something no one has yet to accomplish at scale.  Oh and last and not least, the jury is still out on social media ROI, at least when compared to the much more transparent established search marketing channels.

Anyway the point being, the list is pretty long and getting longer as more of what goes on behind their closed doors becomes public.

All these topics have been covered at least in part by other industry commentators.  So what I’d like to discuss here is something more fundamental in terms of threat to their future growth.

If the future truly is as mobile as zuckerberg believes, then central to that future internet is hardware.  One might argue that its in fact hardware thats facilitated the growth in mobile internet rather than consumer demand.  The iPhone has taken us from the old mobile wap world into a 4G, app driven version..

As the speeds of mobile internet increase it’s easy to believe the bulk of our social interactions will be via mobile devices. They are the ideal delivery mechanisms for this type of information.  Foursquare, instagram, path, twitter and yes even google+, are all potentially standalone mobile apps.  In the case of path and instagram they already are.

So what happens if that social aspect is baked into the hardwares operating system?  Apple already has plans to integrate photo sharing in its next release of iCloud. Facebook’s photo sharing is seen as its core feature.  What if apple was able to make photo sharing seamless?  Photos taken and shared appear on friends phones without the need to load a browser or an “app”.  A kind of next generation instagram.  Fully integrated with your phones camera.  They’re already part the way there with the current iCloud version, imagine what 3 versions from now is going to look like?

Twitter is already built into iOS at a core level, and although Spotify already shares your music across facebook, its not a huge leap to believe that apple will step into the music streaming business in the near future.  Their last major itunes update took them a step closer to that end goal.

Apple already has a notifications screen (following androids lead), which is an, admittedly raw, events feed right now. But again imagine a version thats two or three revisions from now.  We’ve already seen the latest release of windows mobile really pushing the bounderies of whats possible on a mobiles homescreen.  Android is not far behind.

I propose that if you had a device which shared music, status updates and photos in a way that was passive to friends and family (meaning there is no NEW social network to join) there would be massive adoption.  On a scale no web platform has yet to witness.

Apple is moving every closer to that illusive mobile to browser to TV operating system.  The summer release of OSX is going to see us take another step closer.  Incorporating messenging and reminders across all devices.  Joining the existing music, photos, TV, movies.

So when people claim apple has failed at social media, I think they’re missing the point.  They already have the network in place with well over 100M people using it on a daily basis.  Ignoring ipads, they sold more iPhones in the first quarter of 2012 then babies were born on the planet!

Ironically facebooks only really viable defence comes from its current number one enemy.  Google.  The rise (albeit shaky in recent months) of android has at least slowed apples mobile domination.  Its possible that iPhone & iPad adoption, fuelled by an integrated social platform could be a tipping point the likes we havent seen in 30 years.  As windows was and continues to be to the desktop, so too will iOS be to the mobile.  The one remaining questions is in a world where mobile internet rules and is run by apple, how long before the subservient desktop operating systems follow suit?

Facebook may be rolling out the ‘timeline’ style theme to all brand pages but don’t think it’s missed a trick by letting companies keep the cover photo.

When I first started playing with the new timeline on our brand pages the first thing that sprang to mind was ‘Great! Look at that lovely big cover photo. That’s the perfect spot for a banner’, but alas fellow marketers, Facebook are way ahead of you.

With a load of new advertising options in the pipelines (Offers, Deals, and the log-out screen thing) there is no way that Facebook is letting you get around giving it money but putting up a free banner on your brand page; so there’s a few little restrictions that you should probably be aware of.

Facebook only briefly mentions what your cover photo should be (“a photo of a popular menu item, album artwork or a picture of people using your product”), but goes into a lot of detail on what it shouldn’t be:

Cover images must be at least 399 pixels wide and may not contain:

- Price or purchase information, such as “40% off” or “Download it at our website”
- Contact information, such as web address, email, mailing address or other information intended for your Page’s About section
- References to user interface elements, such as Like or Share, or any other Facebook site features
- Calls to action, such as “Get it now” or “Tell your friends”

That’s right folks, NO ADVERTISING allowed in your cover photo. No promotions, no contact details, no website URLs, no calls to actions, and you’re not even allowed to encourage visitors to Like the page they’re on. Madness.

So just bear that in mind when you switch to the timeline and have the same epiphany I did! Here’s what Facebook’s timeline looks like:

We’ve already covered how you can use Pinterest.com as part of your online marketing strategy, so I thought it would be good progress to take that idea one step further and give you some tips on how you can connect Pinterest together with the rest of your social media accounts, as well as your website.

Although it might seem like a bit of a basic concept, if you’ve got a good grasp of what all the different settings do and how you can create appropriate links to your account then you’ll be able to asses which ones will benefit your social media and marketing efforts.

Connecting Pinterest.com with your Facebook Page

The biggest and easiest way to connect your Pinterest account and your Facebook account is to activate the ‘Add Pinterest to Facebook Timeline’ feature within the ‘Settings’ tab of your Pinterest profile.

Once activated, this feature will share any pinboards you follow/create, pinners you follow and most other activity on Facebook. However, there’s a slightly different way for you to share out your repins as this isn’t done automatically.

You’ll notice in your Settings that there’s another Facebook option called ‘Link to Facebook’, this actually does a couple of different things. The first thing it does is post a link to your connected Facebook account on your profile, the second thing it does is allow you to share repins quickly.

You can see from the picture that when you go to repin something you’re given the option to tick a box and share it to Facebook (and Twitter). You won’t get this option if you don’t link your accounts. It might not be auto-posting but it’s not exactly an inconvenience.

Connecting Pinterest.com with your Twitter Profile

The same option is also available to Twitter and is accessible in the same way. Activate the ‘Link to Twitter’ setting and you’ll get a link to your Twitter account on your profile as well as an option to share our individual repins from the repin screen (above).

Unfortunately, there’s not a way for you to Tweet out entire pinboards without just Tweeting out the link, but again, it’s not too much of an inconvenience to copy and paste the link if you’re happy to do it that way. You also don’t currently have the option to auto share your follows etc. as you can with Facebook’s ‘Add to Timeline’ option, however, I would image both of these will be options in the future.

Connecting Pinterest.com with your Website

There are a couple of different buttons you can use to connect your Pinterest.com account to your website, and even an image you can download for things like email signatures.

The ‘Follow Button’ works in a similar way to Twitter’s Follow button and subscribes users to your pins and pinboards. Once they’ve clicked the button they’ll see your pins on their homepage. Theres a few different types of button you can have as you can see from the picture and clicking on each one brings up its individual code. Pinterest.com says that they’ve been designed in those sizes to help webmasters incorporate them into headers and sidebars.

The ‘Pin It Button’ is a little more complicated as it allows you to specify a particular image on a page that you’d like to pin. You need to fill in the form in order to generate the code (I’ve filled in an example so you can see how it should look).

If you have multiple images on the page that you’d like to make pinnable there’s an advanced option which brings up a longer, more customisable bit of code. Although, webmasters/developers will probably step in at this point, so if you’re just the marketer or content manager then I’d guess it’s not your job to make sure this works.

The ‘Pinterest Logo’ is the final way for you to connect your website with your Pinterest.com account. There’s two different logo’s for you to choose from and the beauty of using an image is that you can link it to whichever part of your account you want.

Like I mentioned earlier, buttons are probably a better idea if you want to get followers but if you want to link to your account from your email signature or from a newsletter then using the logo and pointing it to your profile could work really well.

So those are the main ways you can connect your Pinterest.com account to your website and your social networks. If you want a little more detail on how you can use Pinterest.com for marketing check out our post: Using Pinterest.com as Part of Your Online Marketing Strategy.

I came across this study recently and thought it was a really handy bit of information for online marketers and social media marketers who use Facebook.com as part of their marketing strategy.

Tech news site Mashable.com has partnered with visual tracking software specialists EyeTrackShop to conduct a study into how an audience actually looks at a Facebook brand page. It tracked which part of the page audiences are first drawn to, how effective images are, how prominent the wall is, and how users generally navigate around the page.

The Study:

EyeTrackShop used webcam eyetracking to track the eye movements of 30 participants as they looked around some of Facebook’s biggest brand pages including; Coca-Cola, Skittles, Victoria’s Secret, Starbucks, Converse, PlayStation, Pringles and Red Bull.

The heatmap to the right shows a visitor seeing the Coca Cola brand page whilst being tracked by EyeTrackShop’s software. The red spots indicate where attention was held for the longest so at a quick glance we can see that the top of the wall and the top images were popular spots.

The Results:

- The “likes” column was noticed 58% of the time
- The smaller pictures we’re noticed 85% of the time
- Visitors almost always saw the wall first
- Visitors spent more time looking at the wall than any other element on the page
- Profile pictures aren’t as effective as we think – Only 57% of visitors to Coca-Cola’s page looked at their profile image
- Generally, profile photos with faces in them got the most attention
- Pages with photos on the wall generally held attention for the longest – “The Facebook wall with the most images at the time of the test, PlayStation, was also the one that people spent the most time looking at. On average, viewers stayed on the wall for 4.88 seconds. No other page element on any brand’s page held attention for longer than four seconds.”

Exceptions:

The study found that the above results proved accurate with the majority of the Facebook brand pages, with the exception of the Victoria’s Secret page. Mashable say “Victoria Secret’s page was the only one in which people looked at the profile photo – a busty woman in a brassiere – before they noticed the Facebook wall. When they did move on to the wall, they spent about 25% less time looking at it than they did other brands’ walls.”

The Conclusion:

The conclusion is something that all online marketers probably already knew, which is that maintaining an active Facebook brand page with fresh media and content is a good way to keep interest in your page at a high.

Images clearly proved popular with this study and the introduction of the additional images in 2010 (noticed 85% of the time) seems to have given Facebook brand pages a boost in popularity and interaction rates with visitors.

Maintaining an interesting and relevant wall also seems to be an important note to take away from the study (again, something we already knew). However, it is relatively surprising to see that visitors spent most time looking at the wall than any other elements on the page, given the popularity of additional pages/tabs, polls, questionnaires etc that Facebook brand pages can now offer.

Like I said, the conclusion isn’t something that we couldn’t have (or hadn’t already) guessed, however the additional bits of information that the study provides, such as the relatively low attention rate with profile pictures, are the bits that online marketers can take on board to further refine their social media marketing strategy.