South by Southwest is often called spring break for nerds – a place filled with techies and marketers looking for the next big thing. So it may come as a surprise to you that my biggest takeaway from the conference was maturity.

No, not the conference attendees, but rather the social media landscape. The atmosphere at the conference was that social media has matured from a cute trend to a part of business as usual. For example, companies sent more “suits” to the conference than in past years; and the space’s biggest publication, Mashable, was in acquisition talks with CNN for $200M. One hot topic among the folks I met was the new advertising models for Facebook and Twitter. These new models represent a sort of coming of age for the space’s two biggest players.

Facebook has created the perfect drug and knows it. Users need their daily fix, making it a destination site and a place that brands need to be active. This addiction has given Facebook the perfect flytrap and opportunity to become the Internet. The new ad model encourages engagement on the brand’s page as opposed to sending traffic directly to the brand’s site.

So if you take a second to read between the lines on this, you’ll see that content has been anointed king. This shift also allows Facebook to further separate their ad-model from Google’s by building trust among users since the ads served are less obtrusive and more relevant to users’ interests. I’d also argue that this model will force companies to invest in building a community rather in turn building up brand affinity than pushing advertisements.

In the case of Twitter, its new model isn’t as dynamic as Facebook’s, but is still just as important for brands to keep an eye on. The company is now rolling out a self-serve ad model for small businesses, which should refine the platform for enterprise-level clients along and its backend analytics. Twitter has also made it clear that verified accounts are important but are not going to come cheap. As Facebook’s model of keeping ads on platform continues to evolve and roll out, I can see Twitter gaining marketshare in traditional direct response-style ads. It will be interesting to see if they wind up panning out in traditional ROI models or if companies will need to incorporate new metrics like follower acquisition and social impressions into their forecasting models.

While you can say that this is a tipping point for social business, I think it is more of a wake-up call for traditional marketers who are still looking at social media as a cute niche with no future. The C-suite is going to have to take notice and devote real dollars to playing in the space instead of dipping a toe into the water. Standing on the sidelines will leave companies as relevant as Enron after financial reforms.

The winds of change swirling across the social landscape are going to make for an interesting year for social media practitioners. The question it begs to ask is: are you ready for it?

South by Southwest is often called spring break for nerds – a place filled with techies and marketers looking for the next big thing. So it may come as a surprise to you that my biggest takeaway from the conference was maturity.

No, not the conference attendees, but rather the social media landscape. The atmosphere at the conference was that social media has matured from a cute trend to a part of business as usual. For example, companies sent more “suits” to the conference than in past years; and the space’s biggest publication, Mashable, was in acquisition talks with CNN for $200M. One hot topic among the folks I met was the new advertising models for Facebook and Twitter. These new models represent a sort of coming of age for the space’s two biggest players.

Facebook has created the perfect drug and knows it. Users need their daily fix, making it a destination site and a place that brands need to be active. This addiction has given Facebook the perfect flytrap and opportunity to become the Internet. The new ad model encourages engagement on the brand’s page as opposed to sending traffic directly to the brand’s site.

So if you take a second to read between the lines on this, you’ll see that content has been anointed king. This shift also allows Facebook to further separate their ad-model from Google’s by building trust among users since the ads served are less obtrusive and more relevant to users’ interests. I’d also argue that this model will force companies to invest in building a community rather in turn building up brand affinity than pushing advertisements.

In the case of Twitter, its new model isn’t as dynamic as Facebook’s, but is still just as important for brands to keep an eye on. The company is now rolling out a self-serve ad model for small businesses, which should refine the platform for enterprise-level clients along and its backend analytics. Twitter has also made it clear that verified accounts are important but are not going to come cheap. As Facebook’s model of keeping ads on platform continues to evolve and roll out, I can see Twitter gaining marketshare in traditional direct response-style ads. It will be interesting to see if they wind up panning out in traditional ROI models or if companies will need to incorporate new metrics like follower acquisition and social impressions into their forecasting models.

While you can say that this is a tipping point for social business, I think it is more of a wake-up call for traditional marketers who are still looking at social media as a cute niche with no future. The C-suite is going to have to take notice and devote real dollars to playing in the space instead of dipping a toe into the water. Standing on the sidelines will leave companies as relevant as Enron after financial reforms.

The winds of change swirling across the social landscape are going to make for an interesting year for social media practitioners. The question it begs to ask is: are you ready for it?

South by Southwest is often called spring break for nerds – a place filled with techies and marketers looking for the next big thing. So it may come as a surprise to you that my biggest takeaway from the conference was maturity.

No, not the conference attendees, but rather the social media landscape. The atmosphere at the conference was that social media has matured from a cute trend to a part of business as usual. For example, companies sent more “suits” to the conference than in past years; and the space’s biggest publication, Mashable, was in acquisition talks with CNN for $200M. One hot topic among the folks I met was the new advertising models for Facebook and Twitter. These new models represent a sort of coming of age for the space’s two biggest players.

Facebook has created the perfect drug and knows it. Users need their daily fix, making it a destination site and a place that brands need to be active. This addiction has given Facebook the perfect flytrap and opportunity to become the Internet. The new ad model encourages engagement on the brand’s page as opposed to sending traffic directly to the brand’s site.

So if you take a second to read between the lines on this, you’ll see that content has been anointed king. This shift also allows Facebook to further separate their ad-model from Google’s by building trust among users since the ads served are less obtrusive and more relevant to users’ interests. I’d also argue that this model will force companies to invest in building a community rather in turn building up brand affinity than pushing advertisements.

In the case of Twitter, its new model isn’t as dynamic as Facebook’s, but is still just as important for brands to keep an eye on. The company is now rolling out a self-serve ad model for small businesses, which should refine the platform for enterprise-level clients along and its backend analytics. Twitter has also made it clear that verified accounts are important but are not going to come cheap. As Facebook’s model of keeping ads on platform continues to evolve and roll out, I can see Twitter gaining marketshare in traditional direct response-style ads. It will be interesting to see if they wind up panning out in traditional ROI models or if companies will need to incorporate new metrics like follower acquisition and social impressions into their forecasting models.

While you can say that this is a tipping point for social business, I think it is more of a wake-up call for traditional marketers who are still looking at social media as a cute niche with no future. The C-suite is going to have to take notice and devote real dollars to playing in the space instead of dipping a toe into the water. Standing on the sidelines will leave companies as relevant as Enron after financial reforms.

The winds of change swirling across the social landscape are going to make for an interesting year for social media practitioners. The question it begs to ask is: are you ready for it?

South by Southwest is often called spring break for nerds – a place filled with techies and marketers looking for the next big thing. So it may come as a surprise to you that my biggest takeaway from the conference was maturity.

No, not the conference attendees, but rather the social media landscape. The atmosphere at the conference was that social media has matured from a cute trend to a part of business as usual. For example, companies sent more “suits” to the conference than in past years; and the space’s biggest publication, Mashable, was in acquisition talks with CNN for $200M. One hot topic among the folks I met was the new advertising models for Facebook and Twitter. These new models represent a sort of coming of age for the space’s two biggest players.

Facebook has created the perfect drug and knows it. Users need their daily fix, making it a destination site and a place that brands need to be active. This addiction has given Facebook the perfect flytrap and opportunity to become the Internet. The new ad model encourages engagement on the brand’s page as opposed to sending traffic directly to the brand’s site.

So if you take a second to read between the lines on this, you’ll see that content has been anointed king. This shift also allows Facebook to further separate their ad-model from Google’s by building trust among users since the ads served are less obtrusive and more relevant to users’ interests. I’d also argue that this model will force companies to invest in building a community rather in turn building up brand affinity than pushing advertisements.

In the case of Twitter, its new model isn’t as dynamic as Facebook’s, but is still just as important for brands to keep an eye on. The company is now rolling out a self-serve ad model for small businesses, which should refine the platform for enterprise-level clients along and its backend analytics. Twitter has also made it clear that verified accounts are important but are not going to come cheap. As Facebook’s model of keeping ads on platform continues to evolve and roll out, I can see Twitter gaining marketshare in traditional direct response-style ads. It will be interesting to see if they wind up panning out in traditional ROI models or if companies will need to incorporate new metrics like follower acquisition and social impressions into their forecasting models.

While you can say that this is a tipping point for social business, I think it is more of a wake-up call for traditional marketers who are still looking at social media as a cute niche with no future. The C-suite is going to have to take notice and devote real dollars to playing in the space instead of dipping a toe into the water. Standing on the sidelines will leave companies as relevant as Enron after financial reforms.

The winds of change swirling across the social landscape are going to make for an interesting year for social media practitioners. The question it begs to ask is: are you ready for it?