Social by design -- the buzz
phrase for the coming year -- signals the Web being rebuilt around people. John Yi, online sales operations at Facebook, opened the Search Insider Summit in Captiva, Fla. with a new view on how
word-of-mouth marketing and conversations will influence search.
More than half the people on the Internet get information through friends and family, Yi said. That type of information is
increasingly relevant because it influences decisions. For example, 60% of jobs are found through friends, and 90% of people say they trust their friends for music recommendations, rather than
critics.
Thus, Facebook engineers built WOM features into Stories. The new feature allows marketers to create ads from member actions. Yi said the social formula is simple: someone experiences
and another notices the experience. The technology and communications channel haven't been available to analyze the buzz.
Yi points to applications such as Spotify, CityVille and Facebook
Photos, as examples of social by design.
The concept is similar to the strategy discussed by country-music star Kenny Chesney at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles when addressing educating kids
about the arts. Chesney studied marketing and advertising at East Tennessee State University. He said it's important to "build a relationship" with fans and calls WOM the "best type of advertising in
the world."
That "best type of marketing needs technology to monitor metrics. Techlightenment, an Experian company that develops social media technology, continues to test a platform that
provides the ability to track back real-time purchases to ads, Yi said. The company also partnered with Adknowledge, a long-tail advertiser marketplace, to support the social platform for Facebook.
It gathers market intelligence from Facebook's more than 500 million members worldwide.
The Social Research Platform layers opt-in social data from consumer interests and demographics on top of
survey responses. With this knowledge, brands can make informed decisions about advertising campaigns, marketing strategies, product development roadmaps, and competitive positioning.