Honda has a new home on Facebook

The Honda Facebook Fan Portal

 Brands are making their presence known on Facebook. Their influence is everywhere from their advertisements to their Facebook fan pages and their sponsored advergames. The social network that began as a way for students to keep in touch with their peers has grown into an international branding triathalon. So who is performing better than ever due to their ever-evolving presence on Facebook? Honda.

Honda not only has a brand fan page, but each of its models have their own Facebook fan pages. The brand has described its presence on Facebook as a social experiment. In August, Honda quietly launched an official Facebook page, themed “Everybody Knows Somebody Who Loves a Honda,” to recruit fans of the brand. According to Advertising Age, owners are encouraged to join as overall Honda fans as well as fans of a specific model, and to learn how they are connected to friends, family members and other owners around the world. Visitors can upload photos of their cars or link up to owners of their favorite old Honda.

Currently the fan page has over 250,000 members, or just about 2 million ‘connections.’ But has it really increased the sales for Honda? That is still to be determined. They have been successful in getting interactive connections established with customers. What is wonderful about Honda is the fact that every promotional piece they take on is uniform to its other efforts in the marketing mix. From its fan page on Facebook to its television commercials, the brand has a unique feel of a family, and who is not loyal to their family?

LinkedIn and Twitter Sittin’ in a tree…

The New York Times reported that LinkedIn and Twitter have formed a partnership which helps affirm that Twitter is for business conversation and professional networking. According to the article, LinkedIn users will be able to send status updates and add sections of their LinkedIn profiles to tweets. This will only increase Twitter’s reach for marketers and brand managers. This also allows for seamless communication for human resources as well.

In addition to its partnership with Twitter, LinkedIn will release a new platform which will allow its technology  to be incorporated onto Outlook 2010 and web-based applications for professional communication. At first glance, it seems like Twitter is more like AOL’s instant messenger for people who would resemble exhibitionists, however, transparency is all the rage. I am sure AOL is kicking themselves right now.

As young professionals, we were already aware that HR departments have cyber-stalked our social media profiles to help determine if we are viable candidates for positions, and if you didn’t you now do! According to a study conducted by Harris Interactive for CareerBuilder.com, 45 percent of employers questioned are using social networks to screen job candidates — more than double from a year earlier, when a similar survey found that just 22 percent of supervisors were researching potential hires on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn.

What does this mean for HR representatives screening applicants? With social media outlets all being linked together, they get a better understanding if an applicant can handle the changes in emerging media. If a personal is interacting using social media applications to interact with their professional and personal environments, it could be beneficial for the brand to hire that person. Out with the old, and in with the new.

Are Brands Allergic to Twitter?

Weber Shandwick released a study this month that has me thinking, is Twitter really brand friendly? There are more than 20 million people in the United States that are using Twitter, 50 million worldwide. That is potential for supporters, and more likely critics to be able to comment on the brand and ask questions directly.

Twitter can be used for many purposes like to discuss news, introduce new products and services and create a two-way dialogue with customers to enhance B2C relationships. So why are Fortune-1o0 companies dragging their heels to participate in the social media forum? And why are they not using it to its full potential? While, Weber Shandwick does not draw insight, personally, I think its because they don’t get it. Twitter is relatively new, but its got a huge draw for participants.

Weber Shandwick states, “Companies that excel at engagement on Twitter both listen to and participate in conversations.They provide frequent updates with valuable information.They have a large number of followers, they reply to people who talk about issues that are important to them, and they retweet those conversations too.”

According to the study, these best practices were not followed by most of the Fortune 100 accounts examined by Weber Shandwick.

• Half of those accounts had fewer than 500 followers, while more than half did not meet engagement metrics that were analyzed in Twitalyzer (e.g.numbers of links, hashtags, references and retweets).
• As well, three-quarters (76 percent) of those accounts posted fewer than 500 tweets.This indicates either a lack of engagement by many companies with their followers, or newly established accounts that haven’t yet started using the platform to build relationships.

So what is the fear of these brands?