• by Bryan Boettger , November 20, 2013

How appropriate the final touches of this article are being completed on the same week that the Oxford English Dictionary deemed "selfie" the word of the year. You see, this article is not about "Facebook," it's about your "face." Or, more specifically, a physical face for your brand.

If you haven't started thinking about what person (or people) will be the face of your brand, you’d better get started.

The writing (or, actually, the self-aggrandizing photo) is on the wall. Social media is going more and more personal. Despite Facebook's bet that social focuses on content and not people, the current growth engines of social media are most definitely highly person-centric.

Three case-in-points:

• Shots Of Me: The self-described Selfie network backed with several hundred thousand of Justin Bieber's money. Shots of me only allows photos with the front-facing camera on your phone and is nothing but pictures of yourself. Aimed at that younger demographic, the network does not allow public commenting on photos, in an attempt to cut down on malicious online bullying.
• FrontBack: Take a photo of what's in front of you with your phone, then use the front-facing camera to take a photo back toward you. Stack the photos together into one photo -- and that's FrontBack. "Hey, world, this is what I look like while looking at this view!"
• Snapchat: No way it's worth $3 billion (my conspiracy theory is the Zuck attached insane demands with the offer, then released the $3 billion figure to scare away other suitors who would think it was out of reach), but it's definitely gaining traction and sure to gain more after all the press of the last week.

All these have one thing in common: "Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!"

So if you want to participate in social media engagement, and not just advertise on social platforms, you’d better start thinking about how your brand will be enacting its "Look at me" strategy.

Some of the possible scenarios:

• Staged photos with your spokesperson/celebrity face
• Real-life (slightly unstaged) photos of your CEO/founder
• Photos of your customers at events or in-store/office
• "Guest" faces that you let take over your feed

Coming up with ideas isn't the hard part. Creating scenarios that minimize the risk of becoming a PR nightmare, while also remaining authentic -- that's the hard part. And this is when relationships with your PR team or experiential agency come in handy. Those are the experts you need to take out to lunch or coffee, picking their brains about how to protect people from themselves while they act natural.

The good news is these platforms have not yet hit critical mass, and there is still a little time for brands that want to become the early adopters. But the trend is clear. We humans desire human interaction -- even on social media. And, in a digital world, that comes through via pictures of those big, starry eyes and those glistening chompers.

Get ready for your brand's facetime in the spotlight.