So you built a website and it seems to do everything you need. Then someone points out that it looks pretty terrible on a phone, so you build a mobile website. Then you realize that it isn’t optimized for touch screens and doesn’t work on an iPad, so you build an iPad version. Then you get a memo from the Chairman asking why it doesn’t work right on his wife’s new Kindle Fire, and your sales director calls and says it looks terrible on his Mac Mini, which he is viewing on his 42” living room TV, and then…well, you get the idea.

The moral of the story is that the one thing you can count on in our technology drenched world is change, which is why you need a better way to approach creating things for digital channels.  That better way is called Responsive Web Design. Not very catchy, but as you’ll see in a minute, the name pretty much sums it up.

What is Responsive Web Design?

Responsive Web Design is where the layout and content of a website adapt to the user’s environment, which includes screen size, platform, and even orientation.

Basically, it means writing code to create a site that will work on the majority of devices, including those that haven’t been invented yet.

To see more examples of sites using responsive design, go to http://mediaqueri.es/.

Why you should care

Your customers and prospects are discovering your brand on all sorts of devices now, and there just isn’t any excuse for not having a good digital experience waiting for them every time. Consumers expect brands to care enough about them to get it right, so when they come upon a brand that hasn’t produced a good user experience they infer the obvious; that your brand doesn’t care.

This is all part of the customer experience puzzle that a brand must get right if it wants to be a competitor today. Responsive Web Design solves a part of the digital piece of this puzzle.

How does it work?

The basic idea is you only have to create or edit a website once and it appears the way it should on a multitude of screen sizes and formats.

Responsive Web Designs contain three core ingredients:

• Flexible, grid-based layout
• Flexible images and media (show only what you want to)
• Media queries, a module from the CSS3 specification

Responsive Web Design is Device future-friendly

Mobile use is big and getting bigger. It’s predicted to outpace desktop browsing by 2015, and by then there will be more devices than people.

Maybe your current website works great on desktops, mobile phones, and tablets, but will it work on projectors, TVs, netbooks, eReaders, game systems, and all the devices that haven’t been thought of yet?

Responsive Web Design is not perfect, but you get closer to ensuring that your content can flow into any device; designed once for all platforms. Of course it also cuts down on the production and maintenance costs, because you’re only programming and designing once, and not each time a new device explodes onto the scene.

Responsive Web Design helps Search

Search engine rankings are strongly influenced by the amount of traffic you generate, but search engines keep the search traffic from different versions of your site separate. Now with Responsive Web Design all your traffic is combined into one big number.

In the example below you see how Google doesn’t combine your main website (domain.com) and its mobile counterpart (m.domain.com) and you lose the search ranking that a 10 million number might deliver. Responsive Web Design solves this.

By creating one site with one URL, all traffic to your site—no matter where it comes from—is counted in the total. That means your search rankings go up. This is particularly important if you already have a legacy of great SEO for your main website.

How do you apply?

Responsive Web Design still requires innovation. There’s not a single model that fits all websites. However, patterns are starting to emerge. Luke Wroblewski documented many of these patterns in his article “Multi-Device Layout Patterns.” The following are two examples he shared.

Which pattern is right for your site?

Each site is unique, so yours may not fit neatly into a pattern. This is where a good UX/design agency can help:

• Content strategists review your current content and help you think about future content. Then they inventory what you have and what you’ll have eventually, so you know what to allow for.

• Experience architects help you figure out what features and functions you want the site to have and then prioritize those with your content. They can also help you determine what size points to use (i.e., the screen sizes you already know you must design for).

• Designers create a visual language for your site and determine the best way to scale the content, features, and functions for each screen size.

• Developers build the site. They follow coding standards to ensure your site works across as many devices and platform types as possible and scales smoothly from one screen size to the next.

Is Responsive Web Design right for your site?

Nobody wants to change, especially if you already have a website that’s working well. But user experience problems will only multiply as devices proliferate.

Consumer adoption of new devices has been so fast that most existing brand sites are only now waking up to the demands of the multi-device marketplace. Designing Responsive sites is more expensive, but it’s cheaper than making custom sites for each device.

An easy first step would be to shift your site to a fluid layout instead of fixed layout. This is where the width of the site automatically adjusts. But even this has been slow to catch on. Our recent review of the Alexa Top 50 U.S. Sites showed that only 6 were ‘fluid’.

Support for media queries is broad and growing

Most modern desktop browsers support Media queries, the technology involved powering Responsive Web Design. Most mobile browsers also support Media queries. This is great news, because mobile devices are one of the areas where Responsive Web Design is needed most.

Understand your users’ needs.

Some argue that users looking at your site on a phone have different needs than users looking at your site on a desktop so you need to create a separate mobile website. For example, someone looking at a restaurant’s website while walking down the street probably needs an address and a basic menu. They are not interested in large images of the food.

Be wary of this argument.

It’s true that context (e.g., user on the street versus sitting on their couch) should influence design, but knowing what device a person is using does not necessarily tell you their context. The good news, however, is that Responsive Web Design allows you to turn on or off and content on your site depending on the device or platform it will appear on.

Sometimes a separate mobile site may be appropriate, such as with a conference site that requires specific capabilities. But this may mean you really need a mobile app vs. a mobile website (check out IQ’s white paper on mobile web vs. native apps if you’re facing that decision).

A final thought

Responsive Design is not a magic bullet, but it goes a long way to solve the multi-device problem. It should, of course, be part of a bigger process of understanding your consumer’s needs, when and where they are likely to use digital channels, and what they are trying to accomplish in each context.

Technology will continue to evolve and brands will continue to have to adapt, the question is when is the right time to move. The speed that device technology, like tablets, is being adopted seems to indicate that brands can’t afford to sit on the sidelines and allow second-rate user experiences much longer.

I first met Dick when I was producing the Marconi Awards, the Emmys for radio. Dick agreed to be the host and can you imagine a better host for anything? The next year he came back and hosted them again and that was where I saw what he was really made of.

It was a jam packed program of music and luminaries all working for the good of the radio industry. So when the road manager of Tower of Power demanded cash for his band to go party after the show, I said no, we didn’t have any cash. I then didn’t think of it again until we discovered the road manager, upset at the lack of party favors, had shut down all of the sound computers for Kenny Loggins, who was next up. In the 25 minutes it took to boot the computers back up again, Dick took to the stage to save the day.  He proceeded to regale the black tie audience with wonderful stories of the music and radio industry people he had met over his already illustrious career. He was so engaging that when Kenny was ready go on again no one wanted Dick to stop. It turned out to be the highlight of the evening.

Dick was the real deal. He was easy to know, never superior and never acted like a  star. He could be a bit gruff to those he knew, but he was always really generous and gracious. After the Marconis I suggested a couple of TV show ideas that we might pitch together. Of course this was like telling David Hockney that I had an idea for a painting. He started out by telling me that he had already had every idea I would ever have. While I was still processing those ground rules he asked me what I had and as it turned out he liked one of my ideas. I had actually created shows before including a series for NBC so I wasn’t a complete beginner, but I was very conscious of being in the presence of a master.

We agreed to take the idea to the networks together. First we went to NBC to sell the show to Brandon Tartikoff, the celebrated programming genius.  I did the selling and Dick brought the credibility. It was a quintessential network pitch meeting. Tartikoff burst into the room trailed by flustered looking assistants. He was brusque, acerbic and five minutes later bought the show on the spot. I wasn’t sure what had happened, but I thought, that was easy. A month later the NBC lawyers killed the deal. So I called Dick and suggested pitching it to ABC.  Once again his patience and generosity indulged my enthusiasm and a couple of days later I drove him over to Century City to see the head of programming for ABC. I pulled into valet parking as I always did, but Dick, the $200 million dollar man, insisted it was stupid to spend $10 when we could do it for ourselves. Appropriately chastened I found a spot and never forgot the lesson.

Dick was a self made man and he never forgot that either. He saw himself first as a business man.  It was almost like the star Dick, was just what he had to be to get his ideas to happen. At heart I think he saw himself as a salesman, an idea guy, a marketer, a hard working man, who loved work. And he was always working; he would open a supermarket if it kept him busy.

So we sold our show to ABC and suddenly I was producing a prime time network TV show with Dick Clark. It was a lot of stress, not only because of the show, but also because I was getting married two days after the premiere. Perhaps that was why I listened when someone told me to be careful because Dick was a business barracuda.  I shouldn’t have listened, but I did, and I started to act a bit pushy about my creative rights and other show biz BS. Dick tolerated me, as he probably had many other novices before, until one day he looked up and in his slightly crusty, avuncular way,  told me I was a nudge. Being an Irish Catholic boy I wasn’t sure if this was a good thing or not. So I did a little research and discovered it meant I was being too pushy. That was the extent of the dark side I ever saw from Dick. Sure he could be gruff, but he was usually wise and invariably kind. On the day before our show, a piece of nonsense called “Anything for Laughs” was to premiere on ABC, following “America’s Funniest Home Videos” another pillar of American culture, my fiancé and I received a package at home. It was a wedding present from Dick and his wife Kari. A set of hand blown brandy snifters with a little place where you could put your thumb, and a note that read “….never lose touch with what’s important.”

After the show flashed forgettably across the television heavens for an instant, Dick and I stayed in touch, although I went into the digital world from there. Some years later, however, after not talking to him for a long while, I was at a conference when I saw him surrounded by admirers. I stood at the edge of the crowd, waiting my turn, when he saw me, and lunging through the throng gave me a big, long bear hug.  I’ll never forget how special that made me feel.

Like many I watched Dick bravely battle the stroke that damaged, but didn’t destroy his legendary timing. But unlike most, I knew that he had also been fighting Parkinson’s disease for years.  Nothing could seemingly slow down the man that refused to stop working; the man who always looked so young and alive that we joked he had secretly stolen Dorian Grey’s portrait. Part of me, with everyone else, lost America’s favorite TV host today, but a bigger part of me lost someone who was patient and generous to an ambitious young man, once upon a time, for which I will always be grateful.

PRYOR, Oklahoma – If you’re looking for a perfect lesson in how to master CRM in the digital age drop by the Mid-America Grill, along U.S. Highway 69, more than 250 miles from the nearest big city. You can also get a pretty good New York Strip while you’re there.

I certainly wasn’t looking for marketing strategy when I ran into the grill. Actually I was trying to escape a hellacious Oklahoma thunderstorm, the kind where the sky takes on unnatural colors and the rain is moving sideways. But what I got was a lesson on how easy it really can be to connect with your customers.

Yet study after study demonstrates that companies are failing to deliver on even the most basic customer interactions online and off. Nearly half of the public want to interact with brands online a recent study on Toluna found.

Stop to think about that. Imagine a stadium full of potential customers with money in hand. And half of them say they want to talk to their favorite brands online. Can you imagine that any business would turn them away? And yet that’s exactly what’s happening.

A study by IQ found that more than half of Tweets to Fortune top 50 companies went unanswered, and last fall Maritz Research found that nearly two thirds of consumers who reached out to companies via Twitter got no response. That’s like a business failing to answer the phone two thirds of the time. Unbelievable.

CRM reminds us time and again that it’s much easier to grow an existing customer than to find a new one. The emergence of social media has just injected that logic with adrenaline. It’s no longer about just keeping long term customers happy, but instead turning them into your best sales people. The extraordinary value of creating loyalty to the bottom line is proven, just read the classic “The Loyalty Effect” by Frederick Reichheld. All of which brings me back to dinner at the Mid-American Grill.

Culinary note here. If you’ve never had chicken-fried steak then you have to understand that it is neither chicken nor steak like you’re used to. And it can be either very good or terribly bad. So I casually asked our waitress if she vouched for Mid-American’s version. She never got a chance to answer.

“Buddy that thing is bigger than your head and will blow you away,” the guy across from us said. He then launched into a foodie tour of the menu that was amazing. He didn’t know me from Adam, and I doubt he had any incentive to boost the restaurant’s sales. But he was an enthusiast and he wanted to share his affinity for the food.

It would be very easy for a diner in a small town like Pryor to decide the Internet has noting to offer. After all, the owners likely know just about everyone who matters. But the Mid-American Grill understands how to use the enthusiasm of its customers. In fact one of the first things our waitress asked us was how we’d found the place. Then she told us how flattered the staff was by all the reviews on Yelp. And she promised us that our experience would be just as good…. So if we liked it we could share too.

So simple, yet so powerful. Here was the real world connecting to the digital world; a recognition that every interaction is a chance to make a fan, and that all it takes is the effort to give them an effortless, worthwhile and hopefully, delightful experience. And it makes so much sense, because it is increasingly your digital outposts that are most likely to be your main consumer touch points. So the critical question becomes how good is your digital UX on your website, email, apps, Facebook page etc? Does it meet customer expectations? Does it differentiate your brand?

When you then link these user experiences with social media you start to see the real marketing potential. Of course it can be a bit scary if you don’t have your act together. But we’re well past the point of discussing if you should. It’s time to just man up and get on it.

Back at the Mid-America grill the user experience was excellent; the server was attentive and wanted to make sure we had exactly what we wanted. The manager stopped by to ask how our food was, even the busboy made sure we were happy.

Every point of contact was concerned about our experience. So I wasn’t surprised when I checked out the grill’s web site and found this under About Us:

Everyone in this company, regardless of position, has the responsibility and authority to do whatever they believe is necessary to be sure you, the guest, have a great time every time you dine with us.
“IT MATTERS TO US WHAT HAPPENS TO YOU”
Mark & Marty Marsh

The lesson here, which many big brands should pay attention to, especially in digital channels, is that the basics are still what counts: great product, great service and great user experience.

An hour later, after the sky regained its natural color, we rolled out of our booth – stuffed, and very satisfied that we’d found a gem in the middle of nowhere. And there by the exit was a sign encouraging us to share our experiences with friends.

And so I have, which brings us full circle.

You’ve got to feel for professionals in the financial services industry. All the world is talking about the power of social media for marketing professional services, but there is a seeming mountain of regulations standing between them and an active Facebook page.

And yet who better to ride the wave of social media than a breed of individuals who have the ability to talk to people about the most sensitive issue we have, money. The problem is there’s a very tricky line that financial services professionals have to toe or risk falling into a world of trouble.

The Wall Street Journal defined the line quite nicely.

“It’s one thing for a baker to crow about his cupcakes on Facebook or for an athlete to talk trash about an opponent on Twitter. It’s something else entirely for an adviser to talk business online; there are rules, after all, that govern advisers’ public communications, to protect investors from being misled. And nuance—so crucial when discussing money and investing—can be lost in the social-media world.”

Indeed, just over two years ago FINRA recognized the need for guidance to keep members from going over the line with their social media endeavors. Regulatory notice 10-06 outlined a series of guidelines. Social media guru Glen Gilmore captures them quite nicely in his presentation on Slideshare, FINRA’s 10 Commandments of Social Media Engagement for Financial Firms. It should be considered required reading.

The crux of the regulations is that you have to watch how you talk about specific products, keep good records of discussions and make sure employees are aware of the regulations when they use social media for work.

But if you’re fixating on the ins and outs of what you can post on Facebook, or tweet about, then you’re really missing out on the sales and marketing potential of social media for the financial services industry. Instead focus on the potential for building a window into your clients’ lives.

For years now the industry has bombarded clients with questions about their lifestyle, dreams and needs. And yet we know that these barrages put clients on their heels and seldom deliver anything more than superficial view of their needs.

There’s a reason why so many brands have tried to paint their advisors as friendly people that clients will want to share a cup of coffee with, or maybe more accurately a beer, along with their true life’s ambitions. But that seldom happens.

And that’s the real opportunity for social media in financial services – not for selling, but for learning. Using Facebook, Twitter and other social media tools lets you keep tabs on not just a few, but hundreds of your clients. You’ll know when they change jobs from LinkedIn, if they’re planning a wedding on Facebook or Pinterest, even if they are having anxiety from the day’s news headlines via Twitter.

One planner noted that checking his news feed told him a client was checking in at a family reunion on Four Square. That allowed him to drop the guy an email asking how the event was going.

“It shows you’re paying attention to them, which is what our clients are screaming at us [about] all the time,” he told the Wall Street Journal. Which makes sense, because the very heart of social media is to keep us connected to our friends and family in a way not possible in the bricks and mortar world alone.

Six Ways for FAs to use Social Safely

1. Encourage your clients to connect with your profiles by providing them your links on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

2. Decide early on if you’re going to maintain separate accounts for business and personal use. If you aren’t, make sure to manage the permissions for your friends list so you’re not over sharing.

3. Listen regularly, but inject yourself cautiously. There’s a fine line from being aware and wearing out your welcome in their news feed.

4. Keep the communications casual. This is a social channel, make sure there’s nothing proprietary or inappropriate in your communications with clients.

5. Share. If you aren’t willing to share something of your life, then don’t expect to have access to their lives. Post vacation photos. Ask for tips on new restaurants.

6. Use the channel to share news and information links that clients may find helpful. Avoid editorial comment, except to point out factual information they should see.

From one perspective marketing is, after all, only a way to extend what you would otherwise accomplish with sales. So think carefully about how this now socially connected world is really an opportunity to extend the dynamics of one to one selling. That’s why an approach that integrates the ability to know your prospects more closely with your marketing efforts can empower your sales efforts in ways you never thought possible.

And through Travis, we’re seeing that lesson at work again in the explosive popularity of a simple video he and his wife posted to share with family. You may have seen his story on Good Morning America this morning or numerous other places, but he was nice enough to give me the chance to interview him for the IQ blog. Like I said, he’s a great guy.

Emily: So, start from the beginning. You filmed a funny conversations between you and your wife. What made you post it to YouTube?

Travis: We posted the video youtube together to show Chelsea’s brother. We have a great relationship with her brothers and it was a safe and loving environment where everyone was able to understand the context of the video and the teasing. With things that were going on we forgot to make the video private and forgot about it for three months. We’re pretty sure it went on with 7 views for months, my feed had minimal traffic and we never could have imagined this would happen. I honestly think getting struck by lightning was more likely than this happening. I would never ever subject Chelsea to public ridicule, I take protecting her very seriously, it has hurt me deeply that this ability escaped me when the video went viral. I didn’t promote the video, someone found it and promoted it.

E: So there was never any intention to “film a viral video?”

T: Part of the reason I’m pretty hated on the internet right now is people realized I am a digital marketing person and have been a performing musician, to them it looks certain that I designed the situation. I have never put a serious effort into making my own personal viral video, the only effort I’ve made was for the Web IQ Quiz Birthday video I helped make at IQ. We did show our best friends the video after we showed Chelsea’s brothers and one said, “This could go huge on youtube, I bet Tosh.0 would pick up this video.” We laughed at that statement, but it came more true than we could have imagined on it’s own. The irony of this situation is mind-blowing, I used to film a lot in my teen years and did well in some competitions. It’s been 5 years since I’ve done film, I literally just started my own film project on the MMA Promotion I own with Rulon Gardner two weeks ago and have been telling Chelsea I want to get back into film, then this happened, it’s so ironic that many people don’t believe I’m not a scheming, fame-seeking, horrible guy. I won’t lie, the press has made me second-guess myself a few times, but Chelsea reminds me I’m not what the negative press says I am.

E: When did you realize something big was happening?

T: We were moving out of our apartment when someone mentioned me on Twitter “I Liked a video on youtube.” It was the MPH video. I laughed at first, “wow, someone saw that? I better delete it before more people see it.” I went to the video and literally dropped my jaw in horror when I saw 250,000 views. I came to Chelsea pale-faced and broke her the news, I was extremely scared and extremely worried.

E: And how did Chelsea take it?

T: At first, Chelsea thought it was hilarious, the top few comments were charming, then she saw the bad comments. I tried to keep her from them, but you can’t keep someone from reading youtube comments. She was as upset as I was. It was a very tough time.

E: So, when you have a video with this many views, what happens? Does YouTube call you?

T: YouTube doesn’t call, YouTube doesn’t even take care of copyright infringing videos for us. The media calls though, lots of media. CNN, ABC, National Radio in Australia, all the Utah News Stations, TrueTV, Tosh.0, a TV show in London, and countless others. Oh, and every friend that hasn’t hung out with us in years calls too and wants to hang out all the sudden, haha.

E: What are the best things that have happened as a results of the experience?

T: It has been incredible for our marriage. It was fight or flight and we fought. We’re closer than we’ve ever been. We’ve grown closer to all our family too, they’ve all rallied in support and the true friends that were there all along have been wonderful. The notoriety i’m sure will be good for Chelsea’s shoe collection too.

E: What lessons do you think our clients can learn from this?

T: It’s been said, written and published millions of times. Anything you put on the internet is free game to the world. Another cliche is to keep your private life as private as possible. I’ve also learned that controversy is what makes news. If a brand wants exposure and can afford a hit to their reputation, a negative PR campaign can do amazing things, it can also destroy. A company recently put twigs in their packages, once it became a huge, negative story, they started to fill the pipeline and led the conversation to how fresh their products must be if there are still twigs in the packages. They received I’m sure literally millions of dollars in free advertising from that and a huge growth in sales. One must always wonder though, does the idea require you to sell your soul or not? Our experience, had I planned it that way would certainly have been me selling my soul for press, I regret it, we wish it never would have happened, but once the negative press and viral content is out there we’ve realized we have to fill the pipeline and direct the conversation or the vacuum will be filled with what the public decides. This is why we are making appearances now. I never thought as a PR student that my first crisis management campaign would be own and be on a larger scale than most Fortune 500 company ad campaigns.

E: We all want to know: What’s next for Travis Chambers?

T: I’m going to continue promoting my MMA promotion with Rulon Gardner because I love it, I’m going to keep going to work everyday at Design Analysis, and I’m not going to be famous for making my wife look bad. All the press we do and any involvement I have is up to Chelsea. I didn’t even submit this interview until I reviewed it with Chelsea. She doesn’t want to be famous for this and is just making the best of the situation. The most tempting offer I’ve had is to collaborate on co-writing a song with the Gregory Brothers who invented auto-tune parodies like “Hide yo Kids” and “Double Rainbow,” but I may end up not doing that. If I’m truly talented, I’m sure I’ll find other ways to make a positive splash in the world for a different reason than asking a clever question to an exhausted woman and getting famous for it.

We have always believed in Travis and watching how he and his wife are dealing with their sudden notoriety, we know they’ll both have success in the coming years.

We created the deck above on Slideshare to help explain Pinterest, show how brands are using it, and provide a few recommendations that we hope help you.

Pinterest is growing fast and is particularly powerful as a traffic referral source for retail (mostly clothing) brands. But how should your brand be using it?

We’ve fielded this question from a few clients and wanted to cut through the hype to the real promise of Pinterest for marketers. And since our clients are not clothing brands, we wanted think more broadly about the type of customer interaction and engagement possible through the service.

While some of us at IQ are a bit addicted to “pinning,” it’s important to realize that the behavior isn’t all that new. Thinking back to the social bookmarking services like Del.icio.us that allowed you to collect, tag, and share collections of links, it’s clear that from the user’s perspective, the basic interaction has long been a part of how we behave online. More recently, Tumblr, with ultra-specific blogs and easy re-posting, shows us that people love to browse visually and quickly share what their seeing. The big trend here is “curation” and both consumers and brands are flocking to Pinterest because it makes it so easy.

So why is Pinterest making news? First, the size of the audience, higher-income women for the most part, and the speed at which it is growing is difficult to ignore. Second, it’s becoming a huge source of referrals for many brands, outpacing Twitter. And third, the ability to use the service to engage with customers around the things they love.

Does that mean your brand should be on Pinterest? No. Like any new digital channel, it needs to be part of a larger, measurable digital strategy based on business goals. If one of your business goals is to “promote the brand x lifestyle to affluent, 18-35 year old women,” then Pinterest is perfect for you. Or, if you are already creating great web content such as infographics or sumptuous product and brand photography, Pinterest can help you increase the reach and audience for that content. It’s harder, for instance, to think of ways for financial services brands to use Pinterest, but we’d avoid saying that it’s definitely out of the question.

Facebook has established itself as a powerhouse of marketing for brands around the world. But it has provided brands relatively few tools to build meaningful connection with the more than 845 million users. Ad formats are small with minimal room for branding and measurement is restricted to a few metrics that Facebook opts to report.

To date, most of the innovation demonstrated by brands on Facebook has come from adapting formats and tools created for fans wanting to share the source of their enthusiasm. That is changing now as Facebook brings its new timeline format to brands. Indeed, the very nature of the new timeline format provides platform for brands to build powerful new ties with their advocates and reach out to new fans.

Readying your brand to embrace the new format goes well beyond finding new images for the bold new look. It helps to start understanding Facebook’s mission, connecting everyone on the face of the planet with one another. It’s not about providing tools to connect people, like cell phones, but rather Facebook sees itself building the means and encouragement for people to build connections with others. And helping brands is just a fortunate by-product.

“We think a more open and connected world will help create a stronger economy with more authentic businesses that build better products and services,” Mark Zuckerberg wrote to potential investors earlier this year. “As people share more, they have access to more opinions from the people they trust about the products and services they use. This makes it easier to discover the best products and improve the quality and efficiency of their lives.”

Indeed, with every development Facebook announces, it moves further away from the highly inefficient world of banner ads. Timelines, as the latest major innovation is likely to be the worst thing that has happened to traditional advertisers since the DVR. But it will be the best thing to happen to brands. That’s because it focuses on a customer’s sustained relationship with a product or service, rather than just pushing out a monologue of advertising. Brands that are in tune with their customers will recognize that Facebook is opening a huge channel where they can showcase those rich connections with customers.

However, gaining this connection will take a focused effort, not just spending media budgets.

What is timeline

Coca-Cola's timeline

Let’s start with an understanding of what the timeline is and why Facebook is rushing headlong into this sweeping change. Until now, Facebook’s 845+ million users have been all about the here and now. They post status updates about what they’re doing, pictures of what just happened and sharing where they are. But Facebook wants to be much deeper in its users’ lives.

Timeline is an effort to portray the full sweep of its users’ lives, from birth to now, literally. The format offers a running timeline that encourages users to add all the milestones of their lives, education, jobs, relationships, births, trips, and accomplishments. For some users, it will come as a bit of a shock to find that all their status updates going back to their first days on Facebook are once again on display on their profile. While conversion to the format has been optional so far, Facebook has been clear that eventually everyone will be converted.

For brands the change started Feb. 29th and will be mandatory by the end of March. Like the user timelines, brand pages will incorporate a big cover photo. The larger photo is meant to be a canvass for the brand, an attempt to tell the brand story in 258,000 pixels. Already users have taken on the challenge with gusto, using sweeping panoramas from their trips, tender photos of their children, and more than a little whimsy.

Further down the page, the changes are equally sweeping. Now there are two columns, with status updates, uploaded photos and the usual interactions on the left. The top of the right column is content from the apps the user picks or posts they’ve flagged as important. So now they can keep that darling shot of cats hiding in boxes right there for visitors to enjoy, forever.

And lastly, Facebook has responded to pleas of brand managers everywhere by creating the means for a brand to communicate with followers one-to-one through private messages. So complaints can be sent and responded to privately.

Engagement in real-time

All of this would be relatively meaningless if it weren’t accompanied by big changes on the newsfeed page, where users spend the majority of their time. How much time? The average user is on Facebook 405 minutes a month according to Comscore. Facebook says its newsfeed garners 100 billion page views a day. Think about that, and no two users see the same news feed.

Facebook is making the brand pages a command center for engaging users across the site. Of course anything posted on the brand page will show up in the newsfeed of users who like the page. But new ad formats will allow brands to buy their way onto the newsfeed of friends of friends. So the more fans a brand has, the more reach it can generate.

This networking approach to marketing on Facebook can pay real dividends. The service says brands that have experimented with the new tools have generated from 3x to 10x ROI.

Once a brand connects with a user it will have a broader vocabulary for reflecting that engagement on the user’s wall. Gone are the days of chasing Likes. Now brands are defining their own verbs when users engage with their apps, creating a more natural lexicon. Users who have linked Pinterest are pinning content. Spotify users show what tracks they’re listening to now. And the Washington Post reader app shows what your friends have just read.

Some apps, like Good Reads, are working with Facebook to secure special display status on a user’s timeline. But any brand can create apps that report activity in a more natural context, hopefully reducing a user’s hesitance to grant apps access to their wall.

How to prepare for timeline

Brands have a month to embrace the changes before Facebook forces the issue. So now’s the time to start planning. Here’s a handy guide of what your brand should be doing now to prepare for the jump to timelines.

• Start by considering how your brand page will look. What will be the profile picture that shows up in the news feed? What will be the cover photo? Look beyond simple brand imagery and focus on designs that present a broad canvass of your brand’s value. Give prospective customers a visual shortcut to understand what the brand will mean for them.
• Boil down the brand’s history so you can map it on the timeline. When was the brand started? What were the milestones? Are there historic commercials worth posting?
• Scour your creative for assets that users can share on their own profile pages. Delta offered this picture recently that people could use for their cover photo.
• Re-evaluate what apps you can provide. Look for utility you can provide users while remaining consistent with the value of your brand. Think through how the app will report activity on the newsfeed. Remember too that nearly half of Facebook sessions are now via mobile phones. So think about value you can deliver to users on the go.
• Commit to integrating Facebook’s social graph toolbox on your own site. It not only encourages people to share your content, but also lets you show visitors what their friends have found useful.

And then realize that’s just the beginning. Facebook engagement requires maintaining a pipeline of relevant content for users. Recent studies indicate that even the best content has a lifespan of only three hours. That doesn’t mean hitting users three times a day with brand messages. Sometimes it’s a simple comment on a current event that demonstrates the involvement of real people behind the posts. Other times it will mean thanking users for their comments on your page, good or bad.

Just keep in mind that the overarching goal here is to provide users something of value and in turn empower them to tell their friends about what your brand is making possible. It doesn’t require big budgets to succeed in this new environment, just willingness to understand your customers and a desire to keep them happy.

At the top of Kruzeniski’s list (although I don’t think order was relevant) were two of my favorite and most used iPhone applications: Kindle and Bank of America. All of the brands in the list have noteworthy applications on competitor platforms. I find the Metro design versions fresh and visually more appealing than the iPhone or Android counterparts. What do you think?

4 things I learned last week @ AgileUX NYC 2012 and IxDA New York and NYC-CHI Present: New and Up and Coming Rapid Wireframing and Prototyping Tools