After months (if not years) of speculation Facebook finally filed for an initial public offering on Wednesday the 2^nd of February 2012. The actual stock will be available to be snapped up in May.

Facebook has enjoyed meteoric growth, and will probably continue on this trajectory for a while longer; however, it is unlikely that it will be able to live up to the expectations that everyone has of it, including its creator and bosses. Facebook has the ability to generate an immense amount of pageviews, and I have experienced this first hand, when I set up a CPM ad campaign , and watched my budget go up in smoke within minutes (without resulting in enough clicks to even remotely justify the spending of any additional sums). Of course, this was a once-off experience, but it does illustrate the problem that Facebook has always had, and continues to have, and that is the fact that those using Facebook become increasingly blind to the ads the longer they use Facebook. I am signed onto Facebook every day, and don’t remember the last time I noticed an ad, much less the last time I clicked on one.

It has been widely reported that Facebook’s 2011 revenues were around $4.27 billion. There were also reports at the end of August of 2011 that Facebook’s monthly pageviews reached (or approached) 1 trillion per month. Assuming that Facebook had overall pageviews of 10 trillion during 2011, that would mean that its CPM revenue was a little over $0.425, which seems abysmally low for a company which is being hailed as one of the most (if not the most) powerful technology firms.

I was one of the late arrivals on Facebook—I created my account about 2.5 years ago, by then most of my friends had already been on Facebook for a while (some years, some months). During the first few months of my Facebook experience, I felt under attack by the stream of constant updates that everyone was making. Eventually, the barrage slowed down, and has now became a trickle. Having asked others, their experience is not unlike mine. As the novelty of Facebook wears off, and as people connect with the friends that they had lost contact with years ago, those relationships moves offline, or simply die off again.

Facebook’s valuation is predicted to come close or even surpass $100 billion. But I wonder if we are experiencing yet another MySpace-like implosion in slow-motion. Predictions, have a tendency to leave those who make them red-faced, so I’ll leave that to others, and watch intently.

Often people look to emulate successful individuals in order to hopefully replicate some if not all of the same type of success. Taking inspiration from such individuals may be invaluable; however, emulating them or trying to replicate their success in social media based on their insight of this new medium is mostly a wasted effort.

Let’s stick to twitter as the main example. If someone’s success on twitter depends mostly on their success in another line of work, then there is very little to be learned from this experience for the average user. There is a particular ‘guru’ (who shall remain nameless), who exploits his past success to frame himself as a person with a deep understanding of how to successfully use twitter to positively impact your business. His success on twitter is largely based on notoriety gained from his past success in business, and has very little, if anything, to do with his nuanced understanding of twitter (and social media in general). Because he is well known, by default he has amassed close to 230,000 followers, most of whom know him from his previous work. He frequently speaks about how social media and specially twitter can help businesses, and all this does is provide content for the websites who choose to publish his articles or webcast his interviews, and also gets him more followers. But his advice about twitter is largely without value for the average user.

So, the moral of the story is that if you want to learn about social media, ask someone who built their success on social media not someone who figured out how to port it over from their previous success. Unless, of course, that is what you are looking to do.

Before Google Buzz became available, it was a promising new way of communicating with family, friends, and colleagues; however, the way it was launched and the lack of control it gave to users resulted in it becoming nuisance at best, and a violation of trust and privacy at worst.

The Mistakes

1. Google did not make Buzz an opt-in service

With so much concern about privacy, Google made a big misstep in automatically activating buzz in every Gmail account. Even without the privacy concerns, this was a horribly flawed decision on Google’s part.

Every other Google service, up to this point, had been something that users had actively pursued and used, but with Buzz, it was simply forced on the users.

2. Lack of an easy-to-use control interface for privacy and settings

With Google’s renown for user-friendly design and controls, this was a shocking shortfall for Buzz. After an outcry from the online community, Google scrambled adding a Buzz tab to the settings menu in Gmail; however, the lack of control and customization is embarrassing.

3. Integration option with Twitter but not Facebook

This blatant move in a brewing war among technology giants is inexcusable to a company like Google. With Buzz, Google have moved away from concentrating on the benefits for the user to the benefits for themselves.

Give the public something like Gmail and watch them flock to it; don’t create a cheap tool to fight a new opponent.

What Could Have Been (And Still Can)

1. A new way of communicating with contacts who do not have social media accounts (nor have the desire to sign up for them).

This would have been a brilliant way of capturing the segment of the population who does not feel the need to sign up for yet another website to keep in touch with friends and family. Buzz provided the perfect platform to bring this type of user into the world of social media.

2. Buzz could not only have been a new communication tool, but also a hub for all other social media activity.

Arguably, many Gmail users have accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, and many other social media and bookmarking sites; why not provide these users the tools to control all their activities through Buzz? Instead of trying to get them away from services they love, by giving them half-baked imitation, why not provide your users with tools to integrate their online activities into Gmail?

Alas, Google has made a mess of this opportunity, but hopefully it will be able to course-correct and make Buzz into a useful tool, or have the decency to slowly put it to ‘rest’.

1. What should the social media marketing campaign accomplish?

Like any other undertaking, it is best to know where you are going before you set out on your journey. Figure out exactly what it is that you are trying to accomplish through your efforts in social media. Are you trying to increase brand identity? Are you trying to keep current customers up-to-date about your products and services? Are you trying to increase traffic to your website?

These are just some of the questions you might ask yourself. Once you know where you want to end up, then you can plan the route(s) which will lead you there.

2. Which social media site should you target? And should you target more than one?

Depending on the type of your business, and the nature of your online presence, you may need to pick a specific network through which to market your website. The variety of options available makes it important to pick the right social media site(s). For example, if you site relies on advertising dollars (it doesn’t matter if you use a CPC or CPM model, or both) then your main goal most likely will need to volume of traffic. In such a case Digg, and Stumbleupon should be your main target since they can send massive amounts of traffic, if you can capture the attention of users with good (and usually entertaining) content.

Study the social networks, and figure out which one is the best fit for delivering your goals. This does not mean that you should only pick one or two and ignore the rest of the social networks. What it does mean is that you need to pick network from which you are going to start.

3. Study the culture of each social network, especially the ones you want to target.

Step 2 and 3 are very closely tied, since picking the right social network will require you to study each network. Studying the network will involve signing up for an account, and actively using (e.g. adding friends, joining groups, posting, reading, discussing, submitting) it for at least a few weeks. During this process you will become more intimately familiar with the workings of the network, the mindset of the people using it, and the potential avenues for reaching new eyeballs.

Some of the social media sites such as Twitter can be a bit of a mystery to new users. Many sign up and never tweet (post) for months, because they cannot understand the point of Twitter or how it can fit into their lives (or how they can fit into it).

So study each network, and be a real user so that you understand not only how to use the network, but learn what the people on the network look for and thrive on.

4. Figure out how you can provide what the users want through content that is related to your business.

In most cases, people using the social media networks are looking for a means to find information, groups, and communities they are already interested in, or simply want to be entertained (or both). This is an important element in developing the right approach, because Facebook users are much more likely to join a fan page for a footwear ecommerce website which provides funny anecdotes or interesting facts about shoes on their Facebook fan page, than one that provides weekly discount coupons.

Find creative ways to get the attention of potential clients.

5. Respect the connections you make, and don’t spam.

It will take a lot of hard work developing a relationship (however cursory) with social network users. These are relationships that can be very powerful while at the same time extremely fragile. Every hard-earned fan, follower, or friend can be a valuable means for spreading the word about you and your company, so long as you make sure to not abuse the fragile relationship that you have created. Losing a fan or follower is only a click away, and most users will not hesitate to make that click if they realize they are being spammed or otherwise abused.

These five steps are not meant to be a definitive guide to social media marketing, but will help anyone interested in harnessing the power of social networks to get started on the right path.

People, by nature, are quick to jump on the bandwagon, as it were. If the bandwagon is all about fun and entertainment there is usually no harm in it; however, when it comes to business, there is a good chance that business owners can hurt their own interests by misusing new means of promotion and marketing. This is doubly true when it comes to social media.

It is very important to understand the mindset of the users of social media services. The overwhelming majority of users are not there to do business or to participate in commerce in any shape or form—they are there for connecting with friends (and strangers), and for entertainment. Understanding this is crucial in having a successful social media initiative. Often, companies will look for newer and cheaper ways of promoting their products or services without realizing the damage they can end up doing by misunderstanding fundamentals of a new medium. Let’s confine our discussions to Twitter, since it is the newcomer in the social media arena. Most inexperienced users (marketers) will inevitably end up using Twitter to ‘talk’ about their product or services (which is fine), but will fail to ‘listen’ to what is being said about them, when listening is supremely more important than talking. Let’s review a simple example. A hosting company has just discovered Twitter, and wants to utilize it as a means of marketing. The first thought that pops into the marketers head is “I need to have a lot of followers, so that I can send them offers.” Though this may be the right mindset when sending out flyers or email offers, it is not the right approach when it comes to social media.

One of the best known ‘laws’ of business is the fact that it costs a lot more (you can pick your multiplier) to earn a new client than to keep an existing one. This law should automatically dictate listening as opposed to talking when it comes to Twitter and promoting your business. Listen to what people are saying about you. Is someone complaining about your hosting service? Reply to them. Find out what their issue is, and resolve it! Social media is about word-of-mouth, and that satisfied customer will do more for you than any discount offer will. So, listen first, and then talk. But what should you say?

To figure out what you need to be saying you should understand that most people are on Twitter to socialize and to be entertained—they are not there to be sold a widget (don’t be a telemarketer). The only people who think about business when they use twitter are other business people trying to figure out how to extract value from the social media phenomenon. So what is business person to do? Innovation and the willingness to establish a less rigid business culture (at least publically) are the basics one needs to succeed in social media marketing.

Volumes can be written about this topic; however, each company/business has to find their own innovative approach to benefit from the true value of social media (or hire someone knowledgeable to do it for them).