It is certainly in your best interest to be prepare yourself for this major adjustment (especially if you’re managing client accounts), so we here at Carrot have decided to give you the rundown on the most important highlights of Facebook’s new Timeline. Feel free to download the PDF or or take a quick peek at it below.

This article is copyright © 2012 

Look, I work for a social media agency. It’s part of what I do. Being able to be fluent and understand the complexities of each platform has such great value for this line of work. The ability to know the ins and outs of each platform helps establish Carrot as an expert in the industry. But there’s a delicate balance you have to strike with your online presence. As cliched as it might sound, being “online” and having a “brand” (ugh, I hate myself for saying that) is all about curation and providing some sort of value to your readers/followers/stalkers.

Funny enough, it’s because of my involvement in Tumblr that I wound up at Carrot. In a round-a-bout way at least. You see, I have a blog. No, not one of those blogs. I don’t post my deepest, darkest secrets. I mean really, my parents read it. But this blog is about me. It consists of photos I take, food I make, food I want to make, music I listen to, and funny things that happen to me on any given day. I’ve been told that my blog “sounds” like me, that the tone represents my personality, and that you can get a good sense of me as a person from reading it. And this should be your goal.

Ultimately, it was through someone I met at that startup that I got the job at Carrot. So forget what everyone says, being on social media can be good for you career. However, I think the real question is what sort of things can you post that will help you get a job, rather than hurt your chances. And frankly, I think the answer is to be yourself, focus on a specific interest you have (for me it’s eating as much dessert as I can possibly stuff into my body), and connect with people you find interesting. Keep your internet presence friendly and never hesitate to reach out. The truth is that most people are more than happy to talk to you over a cup of coffee. But don’t come off as creepy. I think you know what I mean — “Hey I saw on Foursquare that you love Mudspot in the East Village and go there every weekend. Wanna get a cup of coffee there together?” No. Please don’t take that route.

Use common sense. But really, become a pseudo “expert” at something. Okay, maybe expert is too strong of a word. But essentially, showing your interests in a positive light on social networks will connect you to those with similar interests. Connect, reach out to people, and be your genuine self. Positively contribute to the online community and your efforts will pay off in dividends. See you on the internet.

This article is copyright © 2012 

Our hack was an attempt to see how the camaraderie of your social sphere could influence everyday consumption habits. Using the Tendril API, we allowed users to track their real-time electrical energy consumption data in comparison to that of their Facebook friends. In addition to being able to visualize trends in energy usage between you and your peers, users were able to commit to energy saving goals. These goals could then be shared on your Facebook wall in an effort to educate the public.

Above, you can see a screenshot of the energy consumption
comparison between you and your Facebook friends.

I am proud to say that our app took home prizes for Best User Experience and runner-up in the Tendril Energy Internet and Smart Home App Contest. It was also demoed by Tendril at DistribuTECH, the utility industry’s leading Smart Grid conference in San Antonio, Texas. It’s refreshing to see a company like Tendril taking advantage of opportunities like this Hackathon and is a testament to the fact that social media can really change the world.

The Green Carrot Team celebrating their win with Eric Shiflet of Tendril.

In addition to learning about how information technology could influence consumption habits, we also learned how an extremely limited amount of time could influence the workflow of our team. Rather than following our conventional methods for producing a web project, we chose to use a more organic approach. In the interest of saving time, our team utilized Google Drawings to create an interactive wireframe that allowed all of us to collaborate in real-time. Opportunities like this hackathon give creatives the ability to test out new methods of working together and if any part of this experience seems interesting to you I would highly recommend attending one in your local area.

This article is copyright © 2012 

Here’s what works about GE’s approach: the campaign…

1. legitimately brands crowd sourced content without alienating the audience
2. rewards participants cyclically for their participation, with multiple stages to the contest
3. engages the Facebook fan base to judge the content produced on Instagram, creating earned reach

This campaign optimally integrates TV, mobile, user generated content, and Facebook. I’m sure it will be a huge success.

Read The Next Web article here or see other brands that are using Instagram here.

This article is copyright © 2012 

Last week a contingent from Carrot Creative flew out to San Francisco and attended Facebook’s f8 conference. We laughed when Andy Samberg impersonated Zuck and we cheered when the app we built for The Daily was featured as the first media app released on the new Graph API.

We went into all the breakout sessions and meetings with Facebook as well as conversations with other developers on the platform with the typical questions and concerns. Nearly each person in attendance all had the same answer:

With this recent update, Facebook has given the entire web the ability to become social. Each object, piece of data and destination can be fully connected with the social graph. On the open web Facebook’s reach started with Connect, moved onto the Like button and Comments, and now with the new Open Graph API, they’re taking objects like songs, movies and articles, and creating social stories for your ticker feed by adding verbs such as listen, watch, and read. In doing this, Facebook has laid the foundation to enter their most substantial phase of growth in becoming a platform.

At each phase, they’ve increased their reach, improved the product they’re delivering users, and empowered the developer community. To take this final step however, they’ve got to turn many basic tenets of advertising on its head, moving an entire industry that’s built on buying nouns to hopefully buying verbs.

Newton’s Third law of motion is: (T)o every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

While this may appear nebulous on the surface of this argument, it’s one of the core principles that plays out everyday in advertising:

I show you an advertisement for X and you recall this ad and hopefully one day purchase X when you need something X was created to fulfill.

Social ads managed to take this a step beyond, helping to drive engagement and audience ownership. We’ve gotten lucky because social ads inherently have more variables and more points for engagement than typical ads, and moreover, they’re based on the subject of the ad, being inherently social.

E.g. Your friend X likes page X, you should like it too!

While we all know the root of actions are verbs, what advertising at large hasn’t embraced is the fact that verbs are fundamental to marketing because they create transactions. Outside of the ‘Cost Per Click’ product, modern agency based advertising–in large part–has abandoned the fundamental aspects of conversion or performance based advertising and in doing so abandoned verbs. Carrot Creative believes this is fundamentally wrong.

Why?

Because actions are generally associated with service based companies and modern advertising was born into an industrialized world, where widgets and not services were a highly sought after metric, easy to measure and objectively defined. Widgets are nouns, and within advertising, these nouns represent objects such as CPM’s or impressions and rating points and subscribers. These are the current industry standard and are all highly scalable in their respective industries. However, these scalable ad products can no longer accurately represent the greatest and most accurate value social platforms hold.

This is why we’re fundamentally abandoning traditional forms of media buying and from here forward building our Social Activation platform off of conversion based metrics exclusively.

This article is copyright © 2012 

Platlas.com: A love letter to our favorite social networks.

Earlier this summer, we took on the somewhat daunting task of exhaustively mapping out the ecosystem of Facebook. Even though Carrot is a Preferred Development Consultant and we consider ourselves severely versed in the Platform, we still learned A LOT by delving into Facebook so expansively. However, our ultimate goal was to narrow down a story within this vast array of features, into something compelling and widely relevant to us: our clients and our industry. Platform education is an integral part of our relationships with our brand clients, so we decided to focus on what is most relevant to them: content creation and interactions.

We began with a flat infographic (PDF) to share with our current and prospective clients, mapping the features available to both a Facebook User and to a Facebook Page. For each feature, there are a number of response actions available to Facebook users; we are calling these “edges.” Essentially, Facebook features – anything from Profile fields to Status/Wall updates – allow users to create and share content. From that content, users have actions such as “Like” and “Comment,” a variety of tagging options, and so on. These edge actions are what make Facebook truly a powerful experience for users and a valuable tool for brands. They are what populate newsfeeds and enable the spread of content from Page to Profile, Application to inbox. Taking a step back to get a bird’s-eye perspective of the spread and availability of these edges, across all features, has helped us garner a better understanding of content-share relationships. We also realized that experiencing a flat version of this map is limiting. So, a new Carrot Labs project was launched, to bring this infographic to life as an interactive experience.

Just as the visual experience we have built has been an exciting experiment, so has been the development on the backend. Jeff, who handled the bulk of development, will be detailing this in the near future… but it’s worth noting that this experience does not use any flash. It is a mix of SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), Javascript, and whole-lotta math.

As with any ecosystem, the Facebook platform is constantly evolving and growing. This is exciting for us as we’ve built this “Social Platform Atlas,” because it means we will be continually releasing new versions (while archiving previous ones for reference). The beta launched Platlas (accurate to Sept 1, 2011) is already slightly out of date with Facebook rolling out changes in the last 2 weeks as they lead up to F8. Not to fear – we are already tracking these updates on the Platlas News page, and will implement new releases of the infographic as often as we can. Additionally, we are excited to have a Pages interactive view in the works (for now, you can view the flat version). If all goes well and we see the social community enjoying our Facebook-centric Platlas, we will be taking a look at other social platforms to help tell their stories of content and sharing as well.

You can follow Platlas updates on Twitter and of course, on Facebook. Be sure to visit Platas News to keep on top of the latest in Facebook updates and our continued development of the project!

This article is copyright © 2012 

Amid the flurry of activities surrounding Internet Week New York (IWNY), Manhattan Ford will host a rooftop summer concert on Thursday, June 10^th, featuring a performance by Cobra Starship.  The performance is the flagship event for Ford, which is also launching www.fiestafunnel.com, an interactive tool for tracking the latest developments during IWNY, built by Carrot Creative.  All of this comes as the company fast approaches its June release date for the new Fiesta, a vehicle designed with the tech-savvy crowd in mind.

Experiencing IWNY with the Fiesta Funnel

Carrot Creative engineered the site to actively speak with the car’s core demographic – tech-savvy, socially active urbanites. The Fiesta Funnel aims to transcend Internet Week, setting the tone for the entire Ford Fiesta launch program. Fans can track any and all developments throughout IWNY at the website, www.fiestafunnel.com.  Led by Editor-in-Chief Kelly Will and Creative Director Greg Littley, eight Internet-savvy writers, bloggers and videographers were selected to staff this newsroom, covering the celebration of the city’s online community.  The list of contributors includes TMI Weekly’s Meghan Asha and Vibe Magazine’s Adrien Field as well as Mike Avila, Jermaine Miles, Dee Nuncio, Colin Murphy, Erin Wigger and Maria Diaz – all well-known Internet personalities.

With so many moving elements, the Fiesta team had high ambitions regarding the creation and social media reach of the site.  “Carrot Creative had the uncanny ability to bring the project goals to digital life. My partner (Kelly Will, Editor-in-Chief) and I were lead every step of the way with consistent attention and understanding to the needs of Ford. The FiestaFunnel could not be a fully functioning social media hub without the guidance from Carrot’s team,” says Greg Littley, Creative Director for Ford Fiesta.

Star-Studded Kickoff Event

Thursday’s exclusive event promises to be a star-studded hit, with a performance by hipster favorite Cobra Starship. Taking place on the rooftop of Manhattan Ford (7-10 PM), the concert will be live streamed through the Ford Fiesta USTREAM Channel, as well as being embedded on Ford’s Fiesta website. Fans may also access the video through fiestafunnel.com.

Featured at the event will of course be the car itself, along with “agents” from the Fiesta Movement – versions 1.0 and 2.0.  Launched in May 2009, the Fiesta Movement is a social media initiative designed to create excitement about the new Fiesta, putting the small car on the minds of thousands of people nationwide. Teams across the country were given a Fiesta, and have redefined the way the car is brought to market by interacting with consumers online and offline. Agents will be on hand to talk about their work thus far, in addition to showcasing their specially designed vehicles.

Fiesta Rollout

Going on sale this summer, the all-new Ford Fiesta features a vibrant design, sharp reflexes, and a global track record that will redefine U.S. small car customers’ expectations. With 15 class-exclusive technologies and projected best-in-class highway fuel economy of 40 mpg, Fiesta brings efficiency and convenience together in one package.

Fiesta is designed to be versatile, personal and adaptable. In fact, Fiesta will deliver best-in-class convenience and connectivity with Ford segment-exclusive SYNC^® voice-activated communications system, as well as an expressive color palette and available graphics.

Follow the Fiesta Movement:

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/fiestamovement

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fiestamovement

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/fordfiesta

Twitter: http://twitter.com/fordfiesta

About Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company, a global automotive industry leader based in Dearborn, Mich., manufactures or distributes automobiles across six continents. With about 176,000 employees and about 80 plants worldwide, the company’s automotive brands include Ford, Lincoln, Mercury and, until its sale, Volvo. The company provides financial services through Ford Motor Credit Company. For more information regarding Ford’s products, please visit www.ford.com.

Event beverage sponsor is WODKA.  For more information visit http://www.ilovewodka.com

This article is copyright © 2012 

Banksy

I spent my Sunday afternoon skimming some of my old(ish) marketing books, particularly one of my favorite sections from the The Adweek Copywriting Handbook about assumed constraints in history. There was so much assimilation to the challenges in social media I just had to blog about it.

A few examples from the section:

“Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.“
Ferdinand Foch, commander of Allied Armies in World War 1.

“Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.“
Irving Fisher, professor of economics, Yale University, 1929.

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.“
Thomas Watson Sr., president of IBM, 1943.

“So we went to Atari and said ‘Hey we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.’ And they said ‘No.‘ ” This was related by Steve Jobs of Apple, on his attempts in the mid-1970s to get Atari interested in his and Steve Wozniak’s personal computer.

“A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research report says America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make.”
In response to Debbi Fields’ idea of starting Mrs. Fields Cookies.

And my favorite… “640K ought to be enough for anybody.”
Bill Gates, Microsoft founder, 1981.

Those of us with a vocation for social media must never let assumptions take hold of our our creative potential, since the philosophy of this industry really has no limits.  We must go balls to the wall.  If Carrot’s ability to help clients was limited by what ‘was possible’, we would be no different than these large-house agencies now offering “social media” as service offering (#burn).  We’re a full-service new media agency, all of it done in house. We work hard to stay on the pulse of what’s new and has that ‘social hotness’.  We encourage our developers to have pet projects to learn the newest technologies through our Carrot Labs program.  We build on platforms and APIs that won’t be popular for another six months.  All this and more are reasons why we can service our clients disregarding any perceived limitations. There is allllways a way to work around problems or optimize a current digital strategy.

Unfortunately, clients often feel constrained by these perceived limits.  It is the responsibility of the agency to continuously introduce new features and platforms to help break down the walls of assumed constraints. The creative challenge lies within the ancillary restrictions (budget, timing, etc…), while coming up with the creative becomes the secondary objective. Obviously concepts like augmented reality or QR codes might be more costly and timely, so it’s up to us as an agency to customize the creative process to stay innovative, while keeping the limitations of the client in mind.

Oftentimes, clients are quick to assume that certain platforms or features wouldn’t apply to their product or business.  Be it because they’re not familiar with the platform yet or they still haven’t found the brands “voice” yet, whatever the reason, NEW can be a scary word. That is why our creative team is spending time thinking about concepts for clients we haven’t even signed yet (or in a few cases, clients we don’t even have a contact for!)  Our motto is “always be ready, be one step ahead”.

Naturally in hindsight, it’s amazing that those historical constraints were ever considered. Carrot Creative is constantly reminded that whenever we hear “you think so?” or “is that even possible?”,  it’s just a reminder that we’re on the right path.  It’s when we look past these limitations that we find brilliance.

This article is copyright © 2012 

As reported on Mashable, “Syracuse University has purchased six-month subscriptions to Brand-Yourself.com’s online reputation management platform for all 4,100 of its graduating seniors.” In my opinion this is a win, both for Syracuse University and the class 2010.

As many graduates approach the great migration from college to the real world, some are beginning to clean up their social media profiles, however, many are not.  “According to a recent study by Cross-Tab Marketing services, 75% of HR departments worldwide are required to screen job candidates online,” quotes Mashable. Social Media is rapidly becoming just as important as a GPA, but this isn’t a new concept. Carrot’s CEO Robert Gaafar and President Mike Germano both taught classes about Online Reputation Management at Quinnipiac University. The course, then in 2008, consisted mostly of Google Search results and Facebook Profile management.  Because, let’s face it, most employers don’t enjoy seeing a potential employee do keg stands (well, except for Carrot).  But now it’s more than just Facebook and Google; recruiters are now actively looking for the music you listen to, the videos you post, the tweets you make, or the bars you check-in to. Now is the time to switch the tides, students.

Personal social media management should no longer be just about crisis management and Natty Light untagging; personal social media management can work in your favor. As businesses begin branding and communicating in the realm of social media, they are looking for people who are familiar with the space and how it operates. That doesn’t necessarily mean keeping everything PG-13, but rather showcasing both personality and dexterity. They WANT to see you on Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, Foursquare…yadda, yadda, yadda, so they feel comfortable putting their brand’s reputations in your hands. After speaking to Patrick Ambron, CMO of Brand-Yourself.com, Brand-Yourself and other coporations are doing exactly this. The site “educates individuals about the importance of their online reputation and the different tools and techniques that help them put their best foot forward on the web.”  Their recent deal with Syracuse University is a great first step for universities in general.

As a student that just graduated in 2009, I can strongly say that every opportunity I have received so far has been due to Social Media. In my graduation class, that was a very odd and unique statement to admit amongst my peers. I will begin to put my bottom dollar on the fact that universities nationwide will not only begin to follow Syracuse’s lead, but that Social Media guides, courses and majors will be standard, starting this year. Patrick also agrees, “Very soon I think all career services (university or professional) will be helping clients put their best foot forward on the web. They will have no choice.”

Here are a few tips from Carrot to help recent graduates get a leg up in the Social Media space:

• Follow other people in your industry and talk to them.  Think of it as approaching someone new at a bar.  Be polite, but show your fun side.
• Choose an appropriate avatar and use the same one for every single site you’re on.  This will help your face become recognizable from constant repetition.  Remember, consistency is key when it comes to branding.
• Don’t leave out LinkedIn.  You may not have a lot of job experience yet, but those people you want to showcase your work to?  Yeah…they’re on LinkedIn.  List your activities, class projects, volunteer work or whatever it is you’ve gotten yourself involved in and search for those who’ve done the same.
• Participate!  Don’t be the shy kid standing in the corner, jump into conversations.
• Leave insightful comments on the blogs you read.  Not only will you pet the ego of the author, but more importantly you’ll expose yourself to others interested in the same subjects.
• Never forget that the groundswell is about person-to-person activity.  Ultimately, Social Media is simply connecting person to person, just like a phone call or face-to-face conversation would.  Whether it’s a recruiter, CEO, professor or coworker; they’re all just as human as you.  Chill out, relax and be yourself.
• Be patient.  Just because you’re tweeting and commenting to people does not mean they’ll get back to you right away.  Keep it up.  The more they see your name, the more likely they’ll ultimately talk back.

This article is copyright © 2012 

Application Interaction

• There will be no more application-to-user notifications. Meaning the small notification box in the bottom right of the bar on Facebook will no longer go-off when you are notified by an application.
• All correspondence between applications and users will be moved to either:
  • Email
  •  The Stream (the Facebook Wall)
  • The New Application Dashboard
• Application Invites and requests will be moved (read: buried) to the Inbox, under an Applications section.
• Application News Feed Items will be moved (read: buried) to the new Application Dashboard that shows users 3 sections:
  • Your recent activity among applications
  • Your friends recent application activity
  • Listing of friends and applications they have recently used
  • http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/images/0/03/Games-dashboard-annotated.png
• The Application Dashboard will have a little counter that you can increment as alerts, however it doesn’t seem to be an effective alternative to Notifications.

Profile Integration

• There will no longer be “boxes” on profiles.
• There will no longer be “extended profile info” on profiles.
• There will no longer be Profile Sidebar Items.
• All application branding on Profiles / Pages will live as a “Tab.”
• The new width of Profile “Tabs” will be 520px which is down from the 760 pixels as it currently stands.

Odds & Ends

• A lot of the older posting to newsfeed API calls have been deprecated and replaced with new ones.
• Applications will have the ability to prompt user access to their email addresses to send them info/notifications.
• Most of these changes are coming down the pipeline with no clear timeline, but on the upside:

• They usually give 30-60 days before they get rid of something.
• They usually stage a new feature for ~ 30 days before they push them live.
• They’ve added an “Add Bookmark” button for adding your applications to the bottom bar on Facebook easier.
• They’ve made improvements to the native analytics for applications a.k.a “Insights.”

Gamechangers
The Open Graph API will allow any page on the Web to have all the features of a Facebook Page. Once implemented, developers can include a number of Facebook Widgets, like the Fan Box, or leverage any API, which enable the transformation of any Web page so it functions similar to a Facebook Page. This has enormous implications on the way people consume brands with Facebook. It’s essentially having a brand’s Facebook page be their actual web-page.

In the end what Facebook’s team has done seems to be two fold. On one hand, developers will now have less effective tools than they once had to spread their applications but on the other hand, I believe we will begin to see truly creative and effective applications rise to the top.  Check out the Facebook Developers Roadmap for more information.

This article is copyright © 2012