On Monday InsideFacebook.com reported in-depth on some changes to the Facebook Like button. This is in relation to using the Like button on a published site. Basically, they are replacing the “share” button on sites with “Like” and “Like (with comment)”.

This means when you have this functionality installed on your site, and a user “likes” something, the user of your site is effectively syndicating your content directly into Facebook, publishing it into the streams of all their friends.

Let’s hope that content doesn’t suck, eh? The real world equivalent of this would be advertising to get people into your store, then handing them 150 flyers to go give to all their friends, along with a personal endorsement (implied, at the very least) of how great your company is.

You can’t get that with paid media. You can’t get it with earned media. Only owned media gives you this unique scenario where not only do you get to control the message, and the platform, but the credibility of the source is almost unquestionable.

If my friend says it is so, it must be true! I trust them. I confide in them. I have a relationship with my friends that brands–regardless of their budgets or their hip factor or their sheer will–will never, ever be able to replicate, because brands are not people.

What is an impression like that worth compared to buying a print ad (if it’s good enough I’ll see it online), or having a story featured on the local news (which my friends curate for me on Facebook)?

I would have to say it is worth a helluva lot more than any tactic a traditional medium–paid media or earned media–can offer. Plus, you can track each actual impression or interaction all the way through to conversion, if you know what you’re doing on the anlaytics front. Earned media and paid media are at best a guess, an approximation.

The Like button could (and probably will) become one of the top syndicators of your content, if you employ this technology on your site or your blog. What else are you doing to syndicate your content?

We have seen a lot of success with our clients on Reddit, as well as occasionally on Digg (hit and miss). Twitter and Facebook syndication works. We have also recently been working more traditional syndication into our content planning, as well as guest blogging strategies for brands and thought leaders.

Getting the content off of your site or blog and proactively getting it in front of people is critical to your success, and a Facebook Like button is a great start. Let us know if you need a hand with this, or other syndication strategies; we’ll be happy to help!

This is the first of a series of posts featuring members of our team. All of the this series will be available here.

Taulbee Jackson is not your typical CEO. He is the leader of the band, yet not the front man. Consider him the Eddie Van Halen of Internet marketing. The flawless maestro of interactive marketing. His guidance of Raidious covers every inch of the infinite scenarios that our content and social media plans provide. We plan, iterate, and execute.

He does it right, and so do we.

Taulbee’s history includes working as a planner & strategist in the advertising agency world, as well as in a web design & digital production company.  This experience led to a realization that the problems clients needed help with were content problems, not technology or marketing problems.

Raidious was started to fix those problems.

“When you think about it, the technology is the easy part. The hard part is content – and it is all content. The success of every web site, email, blog post, and social media campaign is directly related to content. Search engine optimization is the practice of optimizing content. Online ads have to lead back to content. At the end of every single online interaction, there is… content.”

Everything marketers measure online is a measurement of the success of content. Email open rates? Content driven. Time on Site? Engagement? Network size? All driven by content.

“When I tried to solve this problem with the operational infrastructure and staffing constraints of an ad agency, or even with a digital shop, it became clear that we needed to re-think everything about how a marketing services organization should be staffed and structured. Agencies and PR firms and digital shops don’t have content people on staff – nor are they structured to produce content or manage dialog or work in real time. So we started from scratch, and built Raidious from the ground up to really address marketer’s needs in today’s real time, two way media environment.”

Everything needs content, and everyone needs content. If you need more content about content, please fill out the form below:

Two recent studies seem to confirm what most of us already suspected: business leaders are generally clueless about social media.

The first study, conducted by Russell Herder and Ethos Business Law, surveyed senior US marketing, management and HR executives. The executive summary and whitepaper are available at http://www.russellherder.com/SocialMediaResearch/, but some key statistics culled from the report are telling:

• 81% believe social media has the power to enhance customer and client relationships
• 81% agree it can build brand reputation
• 69% feel social networking has value in recruitment
• 64% see is as a customer service tool
• 46% feel it can enhance employee morale

There’s a giant “but.”

Despite these overall positive feelings about the intrinsic value of social media, both intra-office and from a branding and strategy standpoint:

• 51% fear social media could be detrimental to employee productivity
• 49% fear social media could damage company reputation

This reluctance to implement social media into corporate strategy has a cascading effect on HR and IT policy: less than 1/3 of respondents report that their organization has incorporated an acceptable use policy for social media, and only one in ten has conducted employee training in this regard.

To that end:

• 40% block employee social media access
• 40% are concerned about confidentiality and/or security
• 37% fear a loss of employee productivity

The other study, conducted by UberCEO.com surveyed Fortune’s 2009 list of the top 100 CEOs to discover how many were using Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Wikipedia, or had a blog.

The summary and whitepaper are available at UberCEO.com, but the thumbnail sketch is telling. It seems like these results should be shocking, but somehow they’re not.

Of these 100 business leaders:

• 2 (that’s TWO) had Twitter accounts
• 19% had personal Facebook pages
• 13 had profiles on LinkedIn
• 0 (as in zero, goose-egg, nada) had a blog

It’s hardly surprising that large companies are either slow to get on board, or are often misguided when they do. Effective implementation of strategy, social media or otherwise, requires buy-in and approval from the top down.

When corporate honchos are content to remain disconnected from not just their customer base but their own employees as well, adoption of new media and methods for communicating and connecting moves at a stereotypically glacial pace.

Business leadership needs to adjust to the idea that your brand is as much what your customers say it is as what you say it is.

A quick look at my previous post bears this out: an unknown musician made a video criticizing United Airlines and proceeded to crush their limited social media efforts, and brought out all the angry torch-bearing villagers to boot.

Customer perception is a powerful thing, as the amount of money companies spend to massage public opinion demonstrates. As a business there is no sense in cutting your own legs out from under you by letting your customers have the last–or only–word.

Use that money wisely and get into the game, or sit alone in the bleachers when the team bus leaves without you.

Coming up in part two: “It’s Your Company, Now Own It.”

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• Social Media Gives Execs the Willies (marketingpilgrim.com)
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