by Elizabeth Brown, Social Media Community Manager, Dalton Agency

A friend of mine, Aliera, asked many of her Dalton Agency co-workers (including me) to send a Christmas card to her brother’s unit currently serving in Afghanistan. (more…)

When you have a clear, compelling message that you want to tell everyone, it’s hard to beat the reach and frequency of out-of-home. (more…)

By: Matt Verrecchia, Dalton Agency Account Executive

We’ve talked a lot these days about the importance of engagement. It’s the single most desired action by social media strategists. (more…)

Just as advertising is constantly evolving, we as an agency must take steps toward continual improvement as well. (more…)

Pat McKinney, the Dalton Agency’s Chief Creative Officer, celebrated 20 years with the agency on October 31, 2011.

“Pat is the heart and soul of the Agency.” Jim Dalton told the agency staff during an afternoon celebration in Pat’s honor. “On this day, 20 years ago, a young creative star was born. He’s been our fearless creative leader ever since. Happy Anniversary to our Chief Creative Officer and my friend/business partner, Pat McKinney. By far the most creative person I have ever met, and the guy you want in the foxhole covering your back, here’s to 20 more years of great creative with you at the helm.”

In true “Pat McKinney” fashion, Pat came in today wearing the same tuxedo he wore on his the first day of work with the agency back in 1991. And the same smile.

Everyone at the Dalton Agency is proud to join Jim in saying “Happy Anniversary” to Pat. And looking forward to the next twenty plus years of great work.

A classy McKinney affair.

Pat and his cake.

Twenty years later.

For over 50 years, Colt has been supplying U.S. troops with the most dependable, accurate and field-tested rifles in the world. (more…)

The Dalton Agency is proud to announce that The Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens has broken all previous attendance records for the Zoo’s fiscal year October 1, 2010, through September 30, 2011. (more…)

Part two in a series where two of our social media managers, Aliera Peterson and Caroline Winegeart, tackle a few key questions regarding the updates from the perspective of both individual users and brands. Aliera is approaching the questions from a personal user perspective, while Caroline is approaching from a brand perspective.

How do you see Open Graph and the evolution of social apps affecting users/brands?

Aliera:
The Open Graph application platform is encouraging developers to give Facebook users novel ways of connecting with their friends through shared interests. For example, the Spotify and Netflix applications will make it easier than ever to share your taste in music and movies with your friends. If you watch or listen to it, they can share the experience with you. Facebook calls this “frictionless sharing.” Once you’ve signed up for this, you don’t need to do anything else to “share” your activity with Facebook. It’s completely automatic.

Caroline:
I think brands that wouldn’t have even thought about entering the social app game before are now going to take a second look at how they can create a valuable experience for their audience online. With the ease at which apps will now be able to automatically share activities to users’ Timelines and through the Ticker, this is how many users are going to now stumble across brands. Users are also going to get more accustomed to sharing their activities on Facebook, as they have become more used to sharing links to content over time, and this is an opportunity to create something worth sharing, if it works for your business. However, it’s important for brands to be mindful of the fact that not all users will want to share everything, and that needs to be a consideration when developing a social app. A perfect example is Spotify’s “Private Listening” feature that was introduced after many users complained that Spotify was sharing all the music they were listening to without their knowledge.

How does this change the landscape for sharing TV, movies and music online?

Aliera:
One of the biggest changes for users is that now, more of their world than ever before will be exposed on their Facebook page and to their friends. As we addressed in the privacy question from our previous post, the new changes being rolled out across Facebook have significant impact on user privacy. Before the changes, you could visit an e-commerce site like Victoria Secret and “like” them via that ubiquitous Like Button. In fact, you had to do this in order for that web page to be visible on your wall. However, now with the new Open Graph API, the permissions  request comes as a one-time access popup that will allow brands future access to your Ticker and Wall.

This access allows the website to pass information on to Facebook without your knowledge, and it can be anything, such as your comments and search surrounding a particular Pink! Product at Victoria Secret, which could then be posted on your profile. For savvy users, I see this as a quick and easy way to share with friends about the great bargains, music, events or products they’ve discovered. For those concerned with keeping their web activities more low key, naïve users or beginners, it’s going to be a true challenge for them to actively participate with the Facebook community without giving away more information than they’d like.

Caroline:
These are the types of brands that will have the most obvious benefits from the new app features and the new Ticker. Entertainment is inherently social and people love to discuss what they’re watching/listening to. Facebook has partnered with a dozen entertainment companies thus far that will make entertainment sharing more “frictionless.” For instance,  when your friend is watching their favorite show on Hulu through the Hulu Facebook app, you’ll be able to discover that through your Ticker and instantly begin watching it as well. Facebook calls this “realtime serendipity.” This is a huge opportunity for entertainment service brands to “own” those experiences if they can create a user-friendly app that people will love to use.

How will the changes with Ticker vs. the News Feed affect how information is stumbled upon for both users and brands?

Aliera:
For many Facebook users, the ticker comes as a relief.Instead of being tormented by a veritable plethora of updates from applications like Farmville showing up in their newsfeeds, they’ll instead see a ticker of activity from friends as they happen in a discrete sidebar. The new format for friends lists is another great tool for update distribution, allowing users to prioritize their feeds by groups that denote shared interests, schools, industries, work places or geographic location.

Caroline:
As I mentioned before, brands that are able to develop apps that are useful and compelling, will benefit from the lightweight activity streams that come through the Ticker, because friends will be able to stumble upon that app if their curiosity compels them. However, this could mean that Facebook’s standards for what information is “important” enough to pop up in a user’s News Feed will become more strict. Since this is how a number of users interact with information from brand pages, this could be potentially harmful to the level of engagement brand pages receive in the future.

A little over a week ago, Facebook announced some very significant changes at its annual f8 conference. Given these new developments, many people are wondering, What exactly does this mean for me? or What does this mean for my brand? Two of our social media managers, Aliera Peterson and Caroline Winegeart, have briefly outlined the changes below, as well as tackled a few key questions in a two-part series regarding the updates from the perspective of both individual users and brands.

Here’s a quick summary of what’s changing.

-The Facebook profile will evolve to the Facebook Timeline, which is a dynamic, chronological account of a user’s history of sharing onFacebook.
-Apps will now only ask your permission to post content once when you first begin using them.
-App activity from friends will show up in your “Ticker” (a real-time feed of “lightweight activity” to the right of your News Feed) but will not show up in your News Feed unless it is an important event.
-Users can now share activities through the new apps, and not just content. (ie. I’m watching this show, hiking this trail, cooking this meal.)

So what does this mean for you or your business? Our social media intern, Emily, has put together some broad questions for us to explore. Aliera will be answering each question from the perspective of the individual user, and Caroline will be answering from the perspective of the brand.

What effect, if any, do you believe the new changes will have on the usage behavior of consumers or brands on Facebook?

Aliera:
As Mark Zuckerberg stated in his f8 address, Facebook is working to make it even easier to share EVERYTHING with your friends – music, movies, interests, you name it. The new Timeline feature has been crafted to allow users to not only easily share, but also highlight their most memorable posts, photos and life events, based on their own preferences – a first.

This gives users a unique control that’s been lacking in earlier versions of the platform. However, it’s important to note that with the new integrated application platform made possible by Open Graph, it also means that users will be sharing their preferences more and more with outside audiences, i.e. marketers, app developers, Facebook, etc. This “breach of privacy” has some Facebook users threatening to jump ship to Google+.

Caroline:
I expect more people interacting with social apps, or at least those interactions becoming more visible. I think there is a real possibility of losing some of the older demographic or light Facebook users with the changes, because there is an increase in the amount of activity on the Home page with the addition of Ticker. I also think that when the profile rolls over into the Timeline for everyone, the changes might be too drastic for the casual Facebook user that doesn’t want to learn the new functionality. This is something that businesses should keep an eye on, as it’s always important to know where your audience is, as well as where your audience is not.

Do you think this will cause another wave of debate over privacy on Facebook?

Aliera:
Facebook platform updates have been the cause of the privacy debates since the network first launched back in February 2004. Facebook’s Timeline announcement has instigated a renewed fervor around the topic of user privacy, although Facebook is assuring its users that those settings are fully customizable to share as much or as little as the user want.

So why the renewed debate over user privacy?
1.     With the new Open Graph model for applications, apps only have to ask users for permission to post activity once. While you can choose which friends have access to that activity stream, the process can be a little daunting depending on how many apps you have active on your profile. You can also choose to hide all activity from the app.
2.     It’s easier than ever to tag your friends, locations, and Facebook pages, whether they want you to or not. To ensure you’re not the victim of a tagging gone wrong, make sure to tweak how others can tag you. Head to your privacy settings and click on the link, “Tags – How They Work” for a list of options.
3.     The recent activity stream is another issue that has some users concerned. As with app activities, the stream can be customized so that only certain types of recent activity are displayed and so that they’re only available to certain groups.
4.     Another issue that’s come up with the new timeline is the fact that in some cases, Facebook is publicly displaying mobile phone numbers. This issue is a little tricky. Even if you’ve take the precaution to set your mobile number as visible to “only me,” if you have the box checked “Share with friends,” it’s possible for outsiders to score your digits.

For any easy to follow rundown of how to customize the new privacy settings, check out this great video by CNET.

Caroline:
Privacy will always be an issue when it comes to Facebook. With each new change it’s important to be mindful of what settings have changed and what needs to be adapted to keep the level of privacy that you want to retain. Any brand that decides to get into the social app space will need to keep this a priority. People love to share information, but they also love to be in control of how and when that information is shared.

Do you think the new Timeline is beneficial to users/brands. In what ways?

Aliera:
As Mark Zuckerberg stated during the big Timeline reveal, “millions of people spent years curating the story of their life with no way of sharing it.”  Timeline reorganizes and changes the presentation of the information users have spent years accumulating, letting them choose which stories are featured, and in essence, creating a virtual scrapbook of their life through content posted on the site. Users will be given access to more robust options in how they choose highlight specific life events, friendships, vacations, memories and more – deciding who they share with and the relative prominence of certain types of content.

And it doesn’t stop there. With the reinvention of Facebook applications, Zuckerberg has promised users reports of various activities. For example, if you’ve incorporated the Nike+ application, you’ll be able to send yourself weekly, monthly or annual reports of all the miles you’ve run.

Caroline:
If the new Timeline is opened up to brands as well as users, there are certainly some aspects that could prove advantageous for businesses. For instance, the huge cover photo at the top of the Timeline is prime real estate. Whether you want it for a product shot, an extension of your branding, a promotion, contest, or a new product launch – the sky is the limit. Any community manager that has explored the boundaries of creativity with the current profile image and photo strip would be ecstatic to have all that new space to play around with.

Via Mashable. Not official McDonald’s page – just a look at what is possible.

Also, the Timeline’s layout presents content in a more visually compelling way than a simple static list of wall posts and photos. The changes to layout lend themselves nicely to more rich, interesting storytelling. I’d love to see brands use this as a way to recreate their company’s history in a very visual way over time, because you do have the ability to add events to your Timeline retroactively.

Check out our new Bealls Fall fashions campaign. It captures how much fun fall in Florida can be if you shop at Bealls. Relax. Save. Smile.