According to a report by Inside Facebook, Facebook user growth – while still increasing – is beginning to slow. The significance of this data has been debated; as Portfolio.com points out, “One month does not make a trend, and such hiccups aren’t unheard of for Facebook. ‘Short-term factors’ like college graduations can affect Facebook’s numbers.” Still, this new information has led some to question the future of Facebook, as Portfolio.com also added, “there is some cause for caution. The social network’s overall growth, driven by its march into newer geographic markets, has slowed down.”

Specifically, user numbers dropped in the US and Canada, two of Facebook’s largest countries. As Econsultancy commented, “Facebook is no spring chicken, and its days of staggering growth will not last forever. The possibility that the company has already plateaued, or is in slight decline, in the markets that it first entered, would seem real.” Portfolio.com added that “the numbers could… show Facebook hitting a saturation point in key markets.”

Of course, even if Facebook growth suddenly halts, it will remain a huge and influential market. For now, it will take more time to see if these recently reported numbers are meaningful.

Fullsix Group has brought the Facebook “Like” button off of your computer screen and into the real world. In the UK, visitors at Diesel stores can now scan a QR code associated with a particular product, “Like” the product, and post it to their Facebook walls. This is another interesting development for the usage of QR codes in marketing. As Fullsix explains, Facebook “Like” buttons are clicked 3 billion times a day, so “why not [do it] in the real world?”  Check out the video below to see the campaign in action.

ImageShack’s yfrog – best known as a platform for sharing images on Twitter – has recently undergone a logo redesign, abandoning its frog imagery for a series of speech bubbles instead.

Of course, the recurring comment among critics is, “Where’s the frog?” As Brand New explains, a logo certainly doesn’t have to literally reflect its name, “but when the name includes the word ‘frog’ it seems to me like there are dozens of visual ideas that could be exploited. Instead we have a circle of speech bubbles.”

While the new logo is tremendously more professional-looking, it’s also quite generic. However, there may be a reason: yfrog is attempting to transform into a “full-fledged social platform,” with profiles, commenting, and “other accoutrements of sharing and liking.” Like a platform dedicated to MySpace layout customization would have faded into obscurity as soon as MySpace did, yfrog’s success is almost entirely linked to that of Twitter. Not that Twitter is necessarily dying any time soon, but it seems sensible for such a niche platform to expand its service to help it stand on its own. The internet is flooded with similar Twitter-dedicated photo-sharing platforms, including the massive TwitPic, and yfrog may be attempting to differentiate itself.

A look through the comments on Brand New provide a lot of interesting critiques, suggestions, and insight on yfrog’s logo change:

“If they were going for the thoughtless literal representation why didn’t they at least mold the speech bubbles closer together and tilted it to give it perspective and WHAM you [got] yourself a lilypad, ‘a platform for social networkers to LEAP from’…”
“Seems like there was a huge missed opportunity here to do something cool with the frog croaking… if they were intent on the ’speech/dialog/networking’ concept. Frogs croaking is more exciting than this logo.”
“[I'm] a bit worried that everyone would have designed this with a frog in the logo. That would be way too literal and far too abstract from what the company actually does. Maybe I’m missing something here, but how is a frog related to this service?”
“A significant improvement but very generic.”

Customer relationship management is a major element of successful marketing. However, it’s often one-on-one, between the brand and a particular customer at a time. How can you leverage customer relationships to benefit your brand?

Having developed with the age of digital marketing is the concept of “sharing” – encouraging audiences to share compelling original content through with their social networks. Most commonly the items shared are in the form of blog posts, Tweets, photos, and videos, but even customer relationships can be shared…

Marketing Profs suggested the following scenario, regarding positive feedback emails from customers:

An email comes in.

An email goes out thanking them and asking if we can use it for marketing.

Permission is almost always granted.

Email goes out after content is posted, inviting the writer to see the content and SHARE it to their Facebook.

Writer almost always does.

New traffic comes in from both Organic Search and from Facebook Referrals.

Email subscriber list grows.

So, from one email that would have simply died (or, at best, been printed out and put on a bulletin board), you now get search traffic from Google and lots of referral traffic from Facebook.

It’s not uncommon for companies to receive these types of “love letters” – letters and emails praising your products and/or services. So, why not leverage these customer relationship interactions? They’re the best kind of testimonial you can share since they are completely unsolicited, coming from an honest and evidently passionate source. Chances are your customer will be honored to have the chance to “speak” on your behalf. Rather than ending the communication with a “thank you,” that communication can become original content to improve social media marketing and search engine optimization efforts.

What’s the difference between branding and personal branding? As Bernadette Jiwa of The Story of Telling explains, “‘Personal branding’ is simply how we market ourselves to others, we do it subconsciously every day in the way we dress, speak and act.” The same is true for companies – branding is the way companies market themselves to others in the way they “dress” (like with a logo or website), ”speak” (like in marketing communications), and “act” (like in public relations).

A great example Jiwa gives is regarding the graphic designer David Airey. As she explains, a Google search for the term “graphic designer” turns up over 25 million organic results and Airey is one of the first. If you think about it, through personal branding, designer Airey has made is name virtually synonymous with the general term “graphic designer” – an impressive feat! Just imagine the number of graphic designers and graphic design agencies all across the web that come up in those 25 million results.

After a discussion with Airey, Jiwa composed a list of ways in which he accomplished developing his personal brand. Though geared toward personal branding, many of these strategies could be tweaked to apply to companies as well:

• Invest time in creating a reputation – define who you are and what you stand for with an online presence.

• Decide how you would like to be perceived in your niche and set goals to achieve.

• Leverage your online platforms – communicate your abilities/services/products and showcase your expertise.

• Build a community and connections around your work using social media.

• Evolve your brand as your reputation grows.

• Openly display your work, ethics  and authenticity across all marketing platforms.

• Give your audience a place to stay up to date, interact, and acquire and share knowledge.

• Do great work!

Search and social marketing blog Single Grain recently created an interesting infographic showing how Facebook plays a role in our daily lives – and how life would be different without it.

From a marketing standpoint, Social Grain’s graphic shows that a whopping 70% of local businesses use Facebook for marketing. This is probably a massively helpful and valuable tool for local businesses. Just imagine, less than a decade ago it did not exist! Clearly Facebook marketing has caught on, and is fairly mainstream, from major global brands to your neighborhood small businesses.

Still not convinced about the power of content marketing? According to Social Grain, the average Facebook user creates 90 pieces of content per month… that’s an average of about 3 pieces of original content per day! Considering the number of Facebook users is now approximately 600 million (as of January 2011), this is an incredible statistic. At 600 million users, the “population” of Facebook has now surpassed the entire population of North America (344 million), exceeded the total number of internet users in all of Europe (475 million), and eclipsed the entire population of Russia (143 million) approximately 4 times. There are more people on Facebook today than there were in existence just 400 years ago (in the year 1600, the world population was 545 million).

With 770 billion page views per month, what would the world be like without Facebook?

Check out the Royal Wedding tomorrow, Friday, April 29^th!  How will you plan to follow the Royal Wedding?

Waking up at 5 a.m. ET to watch the broadcast on all major may not be probable for some.  There are several other options where you can follow the Royal Wedding online while enjoying some tea and crumpets in the comfort of your own home.

Official Website

The official website is http://www.officialroyalwedding2011.org/ .  The site will link together the official Royal Wedding’s Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr accounts.

Facebook

The British Monarchy Fan Page will be hosting a live feed of the Royal Wedding on their page.  The page will be updated with stories as the event progresses.   The British Monarchy would like all Facebook users to share their stories of their experiences on the day of the Royal Wedding.

Twitter

The Royal Wedding’s official hash tag will be #rw2011.  The BBC News Channel (@bbcroyalwedding), CNN News and their broadcasters (@royalweddingCNN), and the Today Show (@royalwedding) will be keeping the Twitter world updated with information throughout the wedding.  Tweet any comments or information with the hash tag #rw2011.

YouTube

A live feed will be broadcasted without commentary of the wedding beginning at 5 a.m. ET.  The official YouTube channel is names The Royal Channel.  Viewers will be able to upload videos of them sending a message to the engaged couple.

Flickr

Viewers at the wedding will be able to upload their photos of the Royal Wedding to the British Monarchy’s Flickr page.  These pictures will be from all around London.  The British Monarch will be holding a contest judging who uploads the best pictures of the day.

The Royal Wedding has turned into a social media event.  How will you plan to follow the Royal Wedding?

Social Media Optimization (SMO) integrates several social media sites and activity with the goal of driving new and existing customers to website content.  SMO allows companies to make their content easily accessible and shareable across all social networks.  The more shareable and interesting the content is, the better.

Social Media sites have become more popular than search engines in some parts of the world.  Facebook is the leading social media site, bringing in 55% of the social media traffic.  Google dominates the search engine traffic.  Of the overall web traffic, Google brings in 9.3% of web traffic and Facebook brings in 7% of web traffic (mashable.com).

The use of SMO will increase traffic flow to websites because the social media sites are driving all traffic to the specific website.  Several websites are beginning to receive more traffic from social networking sites than from Google.  Some of these sites include Comedy Central, Forever21, Etsy, NFL, Threadless, Netflix, and Match.com.

A huge part of SMO is the idea of sharing between friends.  Friends encouraging friends, through social media, to check out different brands and websites increases traffic greatly.  When someone hears about a brand from a friend they may be more inclined to check it out because their friend is a reliable source.  Friends are generally interested in the same things.  Sharing also ensures that the content is reaching the correct people in your target market.

Facebook leads all other social media network in sharing at 24%.  Twitter is steadily increasing their sharing, with almost half of Facebook.

SMO helps with Search Engine Optimization as well as reaching your target audience.  SMO is very positive for the brand because people are able to view content and websites through widgets, applications, mobile, and social media.

How will you use social media optimization for your company?

Creating and optimizing original content for digital marketing is so important, as we’ve discussed before. Last week, Andrew Hanelly wrote a great post applying the lessons of legendary investor Warren Buffett to content development.

Buffett once said, “someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” As Hanelly explains, we need to remember that developing success with content marketing takes time! Specifically, no individual piece of content will “do the trick” by itself – a content marketing strategy takes time to grow and develop, gaining momentum, credibility, and trust among your audience or community. Even the smallest actions you take to improve your content marketing strategy could reveal the greatest benefits and rewards over time.

Buffett once said, “If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.” Hanelly expands, “don’t be afraid to experiment and innovate.” Recycling the same ideas from the past over and over again will not maintain success. It’s important to consider and utilize the best practices of content marketing, but not rely on the methods of the past. Rather, learning lessons from the past and applying them to today’s practices is valuable for developing new innovative and successful techniques.

Buffett once said, “Most people get interested in stocks when everyone else is. The time to get interested is when no one else is. You can’t buy what is popular and do well.” For this point, Hanelly states, “Following the herd will ensure that you’re always just one of many… It’s true that you should fish where the fish are, but that’s also where all the other fishermen are.” This one is pretty easy to relate – don’t always follow the crowd, utilizing the same methods and channels as everyone else, or you’ll get lost in a sea of competitors.

Following up on our last post on small business’ social media usage, here’s an interesting statistic from The Future Buzz (Adam Singer). As it turns out, while Facebook and Twitter are valuable at driving traffic, they are only 2 of many sources – many, as in thousands, at least.

As Singer explains, “While Facebook and Twitter absolutely should have a place within a larger digital strategy, your marketing does not start and end with them. They’re outposts but not a hub… There is a huge mix of sites, networks and apps spanning every category that can become potential referrers… If you’re just spending time on Facebook and Twitter, you’re thinking small and missing a lot of opportunity.”