1. The Changing Facebook
What Marketers Need to Know
for 2012 Social Media Planning
“We’re going to make it so you
can connect to anything you
want in any way you want”.
- Mark Zuckerberg

2. 1
Introduction
In the last five years, not only has facebook become the world’s most
popular online social networking destination, but it also has shaped
how we engage with culture through our friend networks and the
content we share and consume.
At facebook’s recent F8 conference, we heard the company’s
intentions to develop the social platform as it seeks to balance
the commercial desires of its brand partners while innovating user
experience.
As we look towards 2012, and a radically redesigned facebook
platform, here are four perspectives to take in to account as your
social media planning evolves.
1. Life Happens in Real Time, So Does Facebook
2. Timeline: Brand Pages Get Visual
3. ‘Gestures’ Are the New ‘Like’
4. Measuring the Real Value of Social Media

3. 2
1 Life Happens in Real
Time, So Does Facebook
Our day-to-day life is a series of parallel streams -- what we’re doing at the
moment, and what we’re simultaneously thinking or feeling.
Up until now we’ve shared and this information through our status updates.
Introducing the Ticker Feature
Now, with the ticker feature you can browse your
newsfeed, but also see what your friends are doing
right then and there, like “Listening to Led Zeppelin
on Spotify” or “Watching Alice In Wonderland on
Netflix.” Better yet, you can click on their activity and
join in the experience with them via facebook chat.
This means that as more and more of the digitally
connected behaviors in our lives enter our Facebook
ticker, we will be influencing one other through the
choices we make.
What This Means for Brands
Relevant content is more important than ever. By
creating content that can be streamed or shared,
that has topical relevance, or that encourages the
participation of others, brands can can ensure they
get their proper share of attention in the ticker, and
use the ticker as an effective engagement driving tool.

4. 3
2 Timeline: Brand Pages
Get Visual
The introduction of facebook’s Timeline user experience is yet to open up to
Brand Pages.
When it does, it will allow brands to curate a more visual feed of content
into their channel, which can increase consumer engagement, but also will
demand that content is relevant, creative, attractive, and provides better
continuity.
What This Means for Brands
The challenge for many brands is to maintain a consistent tone
of voice while producing a variety of content, and now with the
Timeline, this will become more transparent to consumers --
meaning the need for greater editorial control of their brand’s tone and
content.

5. 4
3 ‘Gestures’ are the
New ‘Like’
Introducing Facebook ‘Gestures’
“Gestures” is the next step in integrating facebook with the rest of the Web.
“Gestures” are actions defined by developers to describe what people are
actually doing on facebook. So instead of just liking a song or movie, you can
tell your friends you’re “Listening” to a song or “Watching” a movie. Simply
put, facebook is integrating verbs into their language outside of “Like” ... and
“Poke,” which seems to be on its way out.
In the words of Mark Zuckerberg, “We’re going to make it so you can connect
to anything you want in any way you want ... you don’t have to ‘Like’ a movie,
you can just ‘Watch’ a movie, which is pretty good because you’ve probably
watched about 10 times as many movies as you’d want to like on Facebook.”
What This Means for Brands
“Gestures” will have major implications on
how fans interact with your brand and how
you understand their behavior. Brands that can
successfully move beyond building connections
(“Likes”) and instead start cultivating
conversations, will have the best opportunity for
growth and engagement.

6. 5
4 Measuring the Real
Value of Social Media
Facebook “People Talking About”
The newly introduced Talking About feature allows a brand to establish a metric
for how many people are engaging and sharing generated content.
The feature is the inception of Facebook Insights, the company’s internal
analytics engine, which provides brands the much needed ability to measure
the value of facebook activity in a way that already exists for Twitter through
mentions and retweets.
The new feature allows brands to see “Weekly Total Reach” and ”Friends of
fans” to gain data on how brand pages and content are being shared.
What This Means for Brands
This provides brands and agencies the ability to measure, react and optimize
the social channel content to ensure maximum engagement and increase
content sharing potential.

7. 6
United Future is an independent integrated communications agency with
offices in LA and Seattle.
From more information on our Social Media Marketing services, or to book a
presentation, please contact:
Anthony Brown
Director of Client Engagement
anthony.brown@wdcw.com
206.624.5325
http://twitter.com/awbrown
http://www.linkedin.com/in/awbrown