Facebook’s newly-launched Fan Box helps marketers bring the action to fans with embeddable widgets (image via Flickr).

The meaning of “social networks” has connotations far beyond that of a destination site where people go to keep in touch with their friends. Fittingly, the world’s largest social network wants to be far more than a site people visit.

The new Facebook Fan Box exemplifies the transition. Built on Facebook Connect, the service where publishers can allow visitors to register for their sites using their existing Facebook logins, the Fan Box lets publishers bring their Facebook Page content to their site. Visitors to those Fan Box-enabled sites who log in via Facebook Connect can then become fans of the publisher’s Facebook Page.

What’s great for the site’s visitors is that they never have to leave the site; they can become a fan of the site’s Facebook Page and then continue their activities. The Fan Box is (for most publishers) fairly quick to set up, with just a few lines of code added to the site to get the widget to work. Here’s what 360i’s fan box looks like:

For publishers – a group that also includes marketers with microsites or blogs – they have the potential to substantially increase their fans on Facebook. With more fans, that means there are more consumers with whom they can stay in contact on a regular basis. The potential reach grows much larger in turn, with some of these fans’ actions on the marketers’ Pages showing up as updates to their friends. Thus, there’s value both in reaching these first and second degree consumers. Most of these Fan Box-triggered fans would likely be consumers who would pass through the site, so publishers with a Fan Box will probably want to make it very visible to their visitors.

It’s not a slam dunk for every publisher. First, the publisher must have a functioning Facebook Page, one with status updates and potentially other content such as photos, videos, events, and applications. Publishers and marketers also need to understand how communicating with Facebook fans fits in with their strategic lens by answering the four questions discussed in 360i’s Social Marketing Playbook:

1) Does it meet your brand’s objectives?

2) Does it leverage your brand’s existing arsenal of assets?

3) Does it abide by the social media rules of the road?

4) Does it provide significant value exchange?

If Facebook meets these criteria and the Fan Page is on its way to meeting your objectives, then the Fan Box is a valuable way to build on your current efforts.

Forrester Principal Analyst Shar VanBoskirk set the stage with an energetic presentation about risk taking. I had talked with Shar about this last month, when she asked some bloggers for feedback on her idea for the keynote, and surprisingly the feedback I gave (which she kindly credited) inspired a lot of her discussion.

She was thinking a lot about risk taking, and she shared my initial feedback on the Forrester blog last month:

…Leveraging interactive tools can actually make marketing innovation *less* risky. Berkowitz mentioned – and I agree – that doing things like monitoring Twitter for what is being said about your brand or campaigns is actually an extremely *safe* thing to do. Although Twitter sounds all newfangled for a traditional brand, it provides a way to listen to how your audience is talking about your brand. Heeding this input can help marketers actually be better/more secure in crafting customer-centric marketing programs.

This wound up leading to a very detailed discussion at the Marketing Forum on managing risk – how to take risks and how to make them less risky. She focused specifically on “accessible innovation”, which she defined as “A marketing program development that you can pursue from within your own role in order to solve problems or improve business results.”

Forrester’s Shar VanBoskirk suggests marketers leverage interactive tools to manage risk online.

Here are the Four Fundamentals of Accessible Innovation:

- Enhance: build on existing idea to create new value, to create margin on existing programs

- Include: incorporate many disparate perspectives, gain community input on campaign devleopment – eg Adidas including users in New School of Thought campaign

- Empathize: relate to community and bring value, to build personal relationship between brand and customers – eg Zappos as human face of Twitter brand, company had $1B in sales in 2008, 75% growth

- Iterate: segment different messages to different audiences – Shockwave used different websites, got 150% increase in annual subscriptions

At our agency, we know it’s not all about risks. There are very safe bets like search engine marketing (safe and tested for most marketers, at least), and there are some things that feel risky, like communicating directly with customers through public channels. But by listening to what consumers are saying, the risk drops off dramatically, and marketers can make better informed bets that are more likely to deliver results.

Are search engines for toilets more than just bathroom humor? (Image via Flickr)

When you have to go on the go, where do you go? Yes, even the vertical of toilet search engines is rife with competition.

There may be some kinds of searches that are more critical, like when you have an emergency need for a plumber or a proctologist. But on that curve of searches that are both critical to your well-being and likely to arise in an average month, the need for a good bathroom search engine hits that sweet spot; parents with young children will find such engines especially useful. It’s time to seek out the No. 1 bathroom search engine, even when you really need number two.

Divorcing Ms. P

MizPee, the first such engine I heard of, works for San Francisco, Los Angeles, or Manhattan. I had used it once before successfully, but when I tried my home intersection (28th St and 3rd Ave) or ZIP code from my Samsung Omnia, it couldn’t locate me. It worked better when I entered my building number, though the first location that came up was a children’s barbershop, which I’d probably avoid, especially since I don’t have kids. The barber’s bathroom was rated five rolls of toilet paper, but it was from a single anonymous rating, and I wasn’t sure how many rolls could be awarded. Could the owner have tried to game the system? To make matters worse, the first Starbucks it listed didn’t exist, the map didn’t work even for the wrong address, and there is one closer than it indicated (I should know; I live above one). Rating: 2 squares out of 5.

Bling for your Bottom

When entering my ZIP code on “premier toilet search engine” Diaroogle, the results were generally five blocks from me, which won’t help in case of an emergency. But if you know your ZIP code, you’re probably near home or work and have easy access to facilities. Diaroogle fared much better when searching by address, bringing up the first listing for a bar across the street, with a description that included so much detail it noted high quality toilets are downstairs, as opposed to the more pedestrian ground-level stalls. Another plus: very clear Google maps. The site did miss quite a few other restrooms nearby. Then again, the descriptions for some locations are so good, they make great bathroom reading material. Consider another bar described as “about as charming as TGI Fridays… in West Virginia.” An iPhone app is also available. Rating: 3.5 squares.

Short a Potty

Safe2Pee.org says it’s in beta and means it. This site isn’t yet ready for mobile, or for mass usage. In all of New York, it has 35 listings, disproportionately in the West Village. Rating: Half a square. I considered another half but it stuck to my shoe.

Vortegh e Zugarane?

What about word of mouth? I downloaded the Where’s the Bathroom iPhone app that will play a recording of the phrase “Where’s the bathroom?” in sixteen languages. Some of the world’s most spoken languages are missing, so you won’t have any luck learning the question in Hindi, Bengali, or Japanese. But if you happen to run into some Armenians or Mongolians and want a polite way to excuse yourself, this app will serve you well for a mere 99 cents. Rating: 1.5 squares.

Please Don’t Squeeze the App

Where’s the Bathroom was one of the four apps that came up in a search for “bathroom” in the iPhone store; the other three were for bathroom diversions so you could have something to do when you got there. I had read about another app sponsored by Charmin, but it wasn’t coming up under the brand name or “bathroom.” I did find it by searching for “sit,” which led me to SitOrSquat.

The Charmin app asked me to register, but I’d imagine that wouldn’t be my first priority if I was accessing such an app in a time of need. I skipped that and it brought up a number of bathrooms within a block or two, noting for quite a number of them which ones were open, with pictures for the vast majority. A separate option listed bathrooms with changing tables (the nearest one was a bookstore a few blocks away whose bathroom was rated two stars for being “surprisingly unclean”). There weren’t many ratings ye, but I’d easily go with this. You can also find it at SitorSquat.com. Rating: 4.5 squares.

Goo Doo, ‘Hoo Doo

So what about the major search engines? Trying the mobile versions of Google and Yahoo, all I get are home renovation and real estate sites. Rating: 0 squares. When you’ve got to go, go to a specialist.

This article can also be read on MediaPost’s SearchInsider blog.

Search Insider: Which chapter do you find marketers have the hardest time wrapping their heads around?

Rebecca Lieb: It all depends on the needs of the individual reader, of course, but I think the chapters on using SEO in social media, or in tandem with blogging, online PR, and reputation management, are of particular interest now that the spotlight’s on social media in general. Another reason people will appreciate those chapters is because they provide a pretty clear roadmap for highly optimizing messaging with a minimum of expenditure. Budgets are tight these days, have you heard?

SI: Did you ever grapple with whether to call these chapters truths? For instance, one’s “The Jury is Out on Paid Links,” and another is “In-House or Outsource,” where there aren’t truths but rather two sides to the issue.

RL: Funny you should ask. Initially, I did grapple with some of these titles and tried hard to write all 51 chapter headers as absolute truths. Luckily, my clear-thinking editor let me relax the absolutes when logic dictated they’re not so absolute. Your readers are marketers, so they’re well acquainted with the biggest truth in anything marketing-related, which is, “It depends.” But really, it is the truth to tell people that paid links have both advantages and disadvantages, and to weigh both arguments. This is, after all, a book, not a consulting engagement.

I hope readers will find the pro and con arguments in chapters such as paid links, in-house or outsourcing, or even the whole concept of what it means to be in number one in search rankings helpful. When there isn’t an absolute truth — and face it, sometimes there just isn’t — I hope I provide enough guidance for people to make educated, informed decisions.

SI: Again, since it’s a book of truths, what’s the biggest lie or myth you’d love to counter here?

RL: That SEO is a set-it-and-forget-it item you tick off a to-do list. SEO is an ongoing process that’s both strategic and tactical. Probably the biggest value in my book is, it illustrates why. There are so many ways to optimize a Web site, and many of them challenge you to look at and think differently about your business. This means thinking from a searcher’s perspective, of course (actually, from many searchers’ perspectives). But it also means knowing about all the styles and flavors search comes in: local, vertical, directory, images, video, audio, personal — the list just keeps getting longer. All this innovation is more complicated, sure. But at the same time, it exponentially expands the opportunities to get visible in new ways and in new places, as well as to maintain that visibility.

And if you’ll indulge me a second, there’s another myth I’d like to bust: that search is for geeks and techno-nerds. I’m not a developer; I’m a writer and editor, but search turns me on. Maybe it’s because I’m weird, but maybe it’s also because there’s just so much interesting strategy and content behind the concepts. Search can really get both brain hemispheres revved — right and left!

SI: This question comes from @matt_mcgowan on Twitter: How does social media marketing fit in with search engine optimization?

RL: Social media, particularly user-generated content, benefits SEO in myriad ways depending, of course, on the social media channel. Consumer reviews on an ecommerce site Web page, or a review site like Citysearch or Yelp, not only expand keyword-rich text, but provide added credibility for buyers and browsers. Blog platforms are built to be easily crawled and spidered by search engines, so blog content is incredibly search friendly. Social media allows users to provide their own metadata, not only to images and video on sites like Flickr and YouTube, but also directly to product pages on sites such as Amazon. In a sense, social media can be considered a great, collaborative effort to make almost anything on the Web more search-engine-friendly, including sites, images, video, products, and text.

SI: The final question, also via Twitter, comes from @annatalerico: Should companies measure ROI from SEO, and if so, how?

RL: Of course companies should measure ROI from SEO. The how is a bit stickier to answer, because measurement is tied to goals, and every company and Web site has different goals and objectives. These might include more search visibility for important keywords and phrases, e.g. ranking higher in organic search results. But a more ROI-related metric would be tracking not only the traffic that found your site or pages via organic search results, but also tracking how much of that traffic converted into a desired action such as a click or a sale. Other factors play into this, of course, such as optimized landing pages, compelling copy, and a clear call-to-action. Search won’t do all that heavy lifting! But if searchers can’t find you, they can’t take action, so using your analytics package to track changes in search-engine-generated traffic, and the keywords searchers are using to find your pages, are an essential first step in calculating ROI.

If you want to find out more about Lieb and her book, visit RebeccaLieb.com.