“We’ve come from a place in marketing 10 years ago—when B2B agencies and companies tried to reach consumers by pushing out a message that they wanted to talk about, in the channels where they wanted to spend money and felt comfortable,” O’Hagan explains. “In the past two or three years that landscape has shifted entirely.”

To illustrate her point, she reaches beneath a stack of papers to retrieve her iPhone, and holds it up. Just that morning, she had been watching a morning news show on it when suddenly the network’s mobile stream went out. True to nature, she immediately went to the network’s Facebook page and gave them a heads-up on their technical problem.

By the time she got to work, the network had replied, acknowledging the problem and thanking her.

“As a consumer, I expect to be able to communicate with companies and media outlets in that way and have them be there for me,” she says. “As a company, you have to be where they are, and you have to figure out how to get people what they need.”

And as more people consume content on mobile devices, companies must be as mobile as their customers.  Enter the lesson of the day, delivered via the be-all, end-all social media mammoth itself: Facebook, which had to respond to questions last week about its feeble mobile ad structure. The ads, which account for much of Facebook’s revenue, don’t translate onto a phone screen—and half of Facebook’s 900 million users access the site via their cell phones.

“You can’t separate social media and mobile anymore. When you think about having a presence in social media, you also better be thinking about how it will look on a mobile device,” O’Hagan says.

It isn’t enough, though, to slap up a profile on a few social media channels. In order for the content to be seen in the first place, it must be optimized for search engines. I’m vaguely aware this has to do with SEO practices. I learned—or thought I did—about SEO during a two-week stint at a five-person company that occupied the corner of an otherwise abandoned office building. We churned out blogs that repeated key phrases like “fun things to do” and “places to stay in Michigan,” and reposted car ads Craigslist like it was our life’s purpose.

“That’s called keyword stuffing, and it’s not cool,” O’Hagan says, smiling.
Oh.
“As time goes on, search engines are revising their algorithms in how they rank sites, and they’re on to that.”
Oh.
She takes a deep breath. “There are a few parts to think about here. First, there’s an overarching SEO strategy, which a lot of companies don’t have.  That’s thinking about what sorts of phrases people enter when they’re searching for something a company offers, and thinking about the kinds of things a company should want rank for.

“The second part is, when you build a website or web property, there are certain things you can do on the front end to optimize your website, like making it really easy to navigate. That’s called on-page SEO. You should be thinking about headers, tags, making sure every image has an alt tag, making sure you use breadcrumb navigation, title tags, and unique meta descriptions so when content comes up in a search, it’s accompanied by a description that convinces someone to click on it.

“Another huge part of it is a link-building strategy. And that’s thinking about what other kinds of websites your company wants linking to it. Because search engines like Google give a very high priority to websites that have a lot of really relevant inbound links.

“It’s such a huge thing to contemplate,” she concedes. “Imagination works with clients to figure out what kind of content they want to produce, and we try to optimize that content.”

It surprises me to hear that many companies ignore this particularly complex piece of the digital content puzzle.

“It’s necessary, especially if you’re in an industry that’s super competitive online,” O’Hagan says emphatically. “If you think you’re going to just kind of come out of the gate and rank for anything, you’re wrong. You’re not going to. It takes an incredible amount of content, an incredibly optimized website, and an incredible amount of inbound links and a targeted focus on long-tail keywords. It will take you months—maybe even years—to get where you want to be. But if you don’t have a strategy like that, one or two of your pages might rank for something, but your website as a whole probably won’t rise to the top very often.”

Taking this in, I admit my concerns about the deliberateness of SEO, as well as social media’s abbreviated language and abridged delivery. I worry—like so many others in the liberal arts—that all of this will degrade the kind of content that would have otherwise been destined for print. O’Hagan laughs.

“That’s like how my dad thinks the postal service should be mad about email taking away their business,” she says. “It’s an evolution. It’s our job, as an agency, to figure out how to do things a little differently. You’ll be at a disadvantage if you’re hesitant to change or try new things.”

But for O’Hagan, ensuring the quality of content is her job, and that hasn’t changed despite how communication has evolved.

“At Imagination, the content focus is huge,” she says. “What a lot of other agencies don’t have is that relentless focus on content. The fact is, we have a staff of 30 or 40 writers out there, and that’s what they do. They tailor content specifically for a client and for their audience. And that’s our biggest differentiator.”

She relaxes slightly in her chair and smiles at me, folding her hands in her lap. “It’s a tremendous amount of work to strategize something from scratch. But I get excited about the opportunity to influence the outcome of what we pitch,” she says.

It’s a lot of thinking to fill a relatively limited space. But with millions of people doing their reading, watching and communicating on screens that are a few inches wide, perhaps what we’re looking at is bigger than it appears.

Karen spent the last nine years at the Chicago Tribune, first as a reporter and editor for the City News Service and then as an editor and web producer for Metromix.com. From there she moved to Tribune Media Group and has held management positions including digital consumer strategy and marketing manager of RedEye. Karen has her BA from Washington University in St. Louis, a postgraduate diploma from the London School of Journalism and a MBA from Loyola.

One of the new additions that came with the launch of timeline was ‘life event’ for individual users and ‘milestone’ for brand pages. The idea is actually pretty useful for keeping friends and family up-to-date on the major events in your life.

Just got engaged? There’s a life event option for that. Just moved halfway across the country? There’s a life event option for that. Just got back from an exotic trip in Barcelona and you want to make your friends green with envy? Of course, you’ll want to add it to your life events on Facebook. Even seemingly minor events—like breaking a bone or buying new glasses—can be celebrated publicly on your Facebook timeline.

The relatively new life events feature provides generic posts for a plethora of situations that occur in this crazy thing we call life. Becoming an organ donor is just the most recent in the chain of life events options that Facebook has enabled you to promote.

Organ donation is something Mark Zuckeberg obviously feels strongly about, especially since a liver transplant extended the life of his friend Steve Jobs. Now, registered organ donors can broadcast their status to the world and generate awareness that might persuade some to consider becoming an organ donor. And if you aren’t already a donor, the Facebook life event will tell you exactly how to become one.

Zuckerberg was able to raise awareness for the cause through his position at Facebook, but what’s to say he won’t be inspired or persuaded to add even more events in the future? What’s to say that you can’t effectively use the options already in place?

On the business side, the ‘milestone’ option for brand pages already allows businesses to go back and share major moments in the company’s history. For instance, Facebook could mark their milestones when they launched Timeline or filed for an IPO.

The options for brand milestone are nowhere near as specific as those for individual life events, which means the possibilities really could be endless. Sports teams on Facebook could create a milestone if they became champions or broke a record. A company like Apple could announce a milestone with the launch of a new operating system.

Although relatively simple in design, the milestone option can be utilized for drawing attention to new products and services. It stand out from generic status updates, which could be handy in singling out groundbreaking news for any business.

Facebook is in a unique position to create a whole slew of relevant life events and milestones options, and it could even lead to collaborations with major companies to develop specific Timeline features.

While there’s no telling what the next life event or milestone option might be, there’s no reason you couldn’t use the options already in place to promote your brand, product, service or cause.

Imagination was chosen as a Top Interactive Agency for compelling creative work, B-to-B marketing expertise, and continued growth. A sampling of our leading B-to-B clients include Project Management Institute, Wells Fargo, OptumInsight, Chick-fil-A and YMCA.

I don’t know about you, but my brain can sometimes shut down when I see a plethora of numbers staring me in the face. I’m not proud of my poor math skills, but I’ve learned to work around it.

One thing that’s always helped me understand big numbers is lots of visuals that can make an idea pop. All across the web you’ll see popular and well–designed infographics, charts, interactive material, and maps. They aren’t outside anyone’s ability to create—you just need inspiration and the data to display it. The next time you need to display a lot of data really quickly, consider some of the following options.

Infographics

Mashable Infographic

Infographics are amazing because they’ve gotten people all around the web excited about data. What else can do that? To create one yourself, make sure that there’s a flow to your infographic and some kind of connecting element. Think about how you look at a page and design around it. If you need more inspiration, check out CoolInfographics.com.

Charts, Graphs and Interactive Data

There’s nothing new about the world of charts and graphs, you probably had some in your math textbooks as a kid. But the Internet is allowing us to create dynamic graphs and data that you can actually interact and play with.

This chart from the non profit news website TexasTribune.org allows visitors to click on the bars for more information, filter by category, and view different data sets about the Texas School system. This interactive data set was compiled for journalistic reasons, but there’s no reason you couldn’t take this same approach for displaying data pulled from social media – say Twitter followers by region – or any other type of large data sets. A lot of these data sets are compiled by serious coders, but if that’s not you, don’t worry. Sites like Chartle or even Google’s Charts API allow for most anyone to create cool data sets with minimal coding experience.  For more interactive data sets check out thedailyviz.com.

Maps

Everyone’s used Google Maps to get around cities or plan a trip. But odds are, you’ve barely scratched the surface of what maps can do. Used in tandem with Google’s Fusion Tables, you can create large-scale interactive maps bursting with data as easily as you can create a spreadsheet.

NYCStalled.com uses Fusion Table’s maps function to show where construction in the Big Apple has stalled. Because they use Google Maps, most people are familiar with how to interact and navigate it. Also using fusion tables, you can create charts and graphs with the above mentioned Google Charts API. If you want to get really fancy with it, you can even have a chart that pops open a location on a map when you click on a specific type of data. For inspiration, Google has compiled a wide range of examples showing all the different features Fusion Tables allows users.

The tools are there for you to use, whether you’re a programmer or just someone who casually browses the web. All you need is a little inspiration, some know–how, and above all, good data.

It’s only April and already,the social media giant has filed for an IPO, launched Messenger For Windows, introduced verified accounts, announced a revamp to their advertising and, of course, bought Instagram for a jaw-dropping $1 billion.

Email can now be added to that ever-expanding world of Facebook, as the company looks to take their messaging system to the next level.

Facebook’s current email system has been around for years; even though each user has an @facebook.com email address, the company has distanced itself from actually using the term ‘email,’ preferring instead to call it ‘seamless messaging.’ In a press statement in 2010, Zuckerberg  said, “It’s true that people will be able to have an @facebook.com email addresses, but it’s not email.”

Some members of the industry had labeled this seamless messaging as the “Gmail killer,” but that prediction has hardly panned out. Now Google has integrated their growing social media platform, Google+, with the well-established Gmail, making a strong pairing that may have Facebook concerned.

Facebook’s current messaging system is quite underwhelming, and has a subpar feel in comparison to email services like Gmail. The lack of simple features such as CC, BCC and subjects, while intended to change the face of email, has actually seemingly failed to produce the same user-friendly feeling that Gmail provides.

Simply put, for those accustomed to traditional email, Facebook’s ‘seamless’ system feels awkward and a little bit too informal. Plans to revamp email are possible with some changes, such as syncing, already announced. Facebook specifically used the term “email” when they announced last week that Timeline will be synced with users’ email addresses.

Although the company has yet to comment further, Facebook might be ready to adopt email and up the ante in a bid to compete with Google in the coming months, and with good reason: Statistics show that email draws 85 percent of Internet users while social media only draws 62 percent.

What could this mean for business? If Facebook can become the one-stop spot for all users’ online needs and wants, it makes building a brand presence on Facebook even more critical, as the reach would inevitably grow.

Launched in November 2010, Betty 911 resulted in nearly 500,000 impressions during the Thanksgiving holiday. The positive brand association and brand equity that resulted were enough to propel the campaign into its second year, during which the staff fielded 600 questions from anxious cooks (all answered within the hour). This 2011 holiday program was so successful that Betty 911 became a permanent feature on BettyCrocker.com and was even crowned the winner of ClickZ’s Holiday Social Showdown, over brands such as Converse and Build-A-Bear.

There you have it: Old brands can learn new tricks.

Establish a personality

“Social media allows brands a personal touch,” Chase says. When a giant corporation is transformed into a personality people can identify with, “a voice and face and tone that resonates with the audience,” the conversations can begin.

Avoid sounding automated.

“Although you need plans for content, you want it to be organic and free-flowing and personal,” Chase recommends. An escalation plan and a social media calendar are must-haves, but don’t let them stifle the way you connect with consumers.

Respond to everyone

Or, at least, as many as you can. Follow backs, retweets, commenting and friending are how you begin to build a dialogue.

Don’t count on the numbers

While it follows that the number of friends or followers your brand has directly correlates with engagement, this isn’t always the case. You can have a million fans on Facebook, but if no one’s talking, you’re missing your target. Instead, focus on the quality of your engagement. “Big corporations have an easy plug,” Chase says. “But are people liking, sharing, commenting? More importantly, are they talking back and forth to each other? When people feel comfortable discussing a brand, that’s when you see a community develop.”

If your message isn’t reaching the right consumer, it’s time to reassess.

“Rethink your strategy and develop a new voice, then begin to regularly update content,” Chase advises. “And don’t panic if people begin unsubscribing. Your messages can’t apply to everyone.” And that’s the point. You’re looking for the people it does apply to. The very fact that you’re losing subscribers can mean you’re zeroing in on the right consumer group.

Success Story: Foiled Cupcakes

When Mari Luangrath first opened Foiled Cupcakes, an online cupcake bakery that delivers in the Chicago area, she was told that her website wouldn’t be able to accept or process sales for six weeks. Despite being a social media novice, Luangrath relied on Twitter exclusively until her website storefront was up and running. She also paid attention to demographics. Knowing that the primary cupcake eaters are women ages 18-35, Luangrath inserted herself into Twitter conversations about clothes and shoes, as if she were at a cocktail party. By responding to every single tweet and follow, Luangrath began to build individual relationships with her customers and exceeded her revenue goals by 600%. She now estimates that 90% of her sales are through Twitter.

“She was being a person,” Chase says of Luangrath’s Twitter presence.

Brands thrive in an engaged community, and just like in real life, the person you’re talking to will respond if they know you care about what they’re going to say next.

His community is largely comprised of Trekkies and those who have come to respect his efforts as a gay rights advocate. He regularly shares his fan’s meme-worthy images and videos and has been known to post videos of himself doing … well, this.

More importantly, the traffic his Facebook page and Twitter account regularly receives is absolutely staggering. Here are the stats:

• 1.5 million Facebook fans, rivaling the fan base of several major brands.
• 724,000 “talking about” his page.
• A quick glance at his last five posts (as I write this) reveals about 50,000 shares and 130,000 likes between them.
• 344,000+ Twitter followers.

That said, here are a few social media lessons we can all derive from Takei:

Post with Confidence

One thing Takei has going for him that brands don’t necessarily have is that there’s really nothing at stake for him, which allows him to post fun, engaging content without having to worry about whether it will impact sales or brand identity.

Brands that invest heavily in their social media efforts don’t always have this luxury, but that doesn’t mean they can’t post with the same confidence.

Understand Your Audience

Takei’s audience is clearly defined: Trekkies, Star Wars enthusiasts, gay rights supporters and viral content enthusiasts.  The content is written specifically in a way that resonates with all of those audiences.

Takei never underestimates his audience or shies away from a joke if it’s too heady, and his followers appreciate him for it.

Personality Rules

Social media managers speak often about the importance of voice on a page. After you establish who your audience is, you then need to understand how to talk to them. For brands, this is always a delicate matter — something that is often refined over months of testing, tweaking and re-wording. Takei inherently gets it.

For companies, it’s often referred to as “living the brand.” In order to effectively communicate with your audience in social media, you have to be your audience. It’s easier said than done, but Takei’s is a great example.

Take Risks

No one ever made a splash in social media by playing it safe. Takei’s content is rarely safe, often teetering on the edge of impropriety (only very rarely NSFW).  If you and your brand are having fun in the social space, chances are you’re taking risks — and that’s a good thing. Takei is clearly having fun with his million and a half Facebook friends—and that’s a good reminder when it seems like metrics are all that matter.

No kidding. The 64-year-old Secretary of State—not exactly vaunted for her hipness—schooled pretty much everyone last week on how to handle social media attention. Her actions play like a case study that should be read by everyone who cares about social reputations—especially corporate marketers.

If you haven’t heard the story: Two Washington 20-somethings created a Tumblr featuring a photo of the stern-faced, sunglasses-clad Secretary of State studying her smartphone while sitting aboard a military plane. Since the message on that screen is anyone’s guess, the Tumblr page juxtaposes that photo with pictures of high profile politicos and celebs pecking at their phones and imagines the text message conversations.

Texts from Hillary

Some of the conversations border on the profane; all of them are politically incorrect. But rather than try to control the message, the Secretary of State dove into the game. A week into the Tumblr’s existence, as it was getting picked up all over the socialsphere—we’re talking 83,000 Facebook shares—Hillary joined the fray. She posted her own message directed to the site’s founders:

Texts from Hillary

Then she invited the two creators to meet with her, and posed for a photo of the three of them texting. For her efforts, Hillary picked up some serious Web cred. From Mashable to Time magazine’s site to the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd, writers, bloggers and regular Joe commenters were impressed. “Hillary 2016!” was a common refrain.

Texts from Hillary

There’s a lot for companies and associations to take from this. Foremost: Don’t fear social media. Embrace its many possibilities. When there’s commentary out there about your company, never, ever ignore it, even if it catches you off guard or isn’t the message you’d choose. When you become part of the conversation, you instantly earn respect. In the process, you may even be able to tailor the message and shift the conversation.

Did Hillary mastermind this deft social maneuver on her own? We seriously doubt it. Does it matter? Not a bit. Like any savvy executive, she leveraged the experts on her staff to help her craft a message and an approach. That too is a lesson we all can learn from when we feel out of our element.

You might think of your organization as stodgy. But if Hillary can do it—she of the pantsuits and scrunchies—so can your company.