With Hootsuite’s recent launch of their updated statistics module, marketers now have a one-stop-shop for tracking high level statistics for Facebook, Twitter and even their website.

Source: HootSuite

The easy-to-navigate interface lets you pick from a variety of snapshot statistics like:

• Twitter Profile Summary
• Twitter Mentions by Influencers
• Ow.ly Clicks by Region
• Facebook Insights: Daily Likes
• Facebook Insights: Gender Summary
• Google Analytics: Twitter to Web Conversion

Plus, you have the option to add in areas for headers and text to provide summaries or additional information.

While reporting is not available with the free version of HootSuite, at the Pro level and even Enterprise level, companies can provide management or event clients with a quick look at how their social media networks are performing without the hassle of creating a report from scratch.

With so many programs, including the launch of HootSuite’s analytics, what are people benefiting from the most? Is it the value-added metrics provided by sites like HootSuite, or are you tracking statistics by monitoring each site individually?

Photos User Interface:

For many of us, we just familiarized ourselves with Facebook’s tiled thumbnail layout for photo albums.

But a new user interface is making its rounds.  If you are not one of the lucky users to already have access to the new look, Facebook’s interface updates for Photos include the use of a lightbox and larger images in an effort to improve the user experience.

Source: Mashable

News Feed:

Have you noticed that some of your friends seemed to have “disappeared?” In late-January Facebook implemented a new setting that allows you to stay in the loop with those individuals and businesses you interact with most.  If you want to revert back to viewing status updates from all of your friends and fan pages, you’ll just need to update one setting.

1. From your News Feed, scroll to the bottom and select “Edit Options.”
2. Change Show posts from to: “All of your friends and pages.”

No need to worry, if you have blocked any individuals or applications on your news feed, those settings will remain in place.

Fan Pages:

Facebook fan pages received a face-lift and now display similarly to your personal profile page.  Tabs, which were previously displayed along the top have been relocated beneath the profile image; a photo strip with five images display at the top of the page; and page Admins can now post on the fan page as themselves or the business / organization.  All of these changes were made to help streamline the user experience and reduce confusion for users.

Let this be a friendly announcement that starting on March 10, 2011, all pages that have not yet upgraded to the new layout will be automatically updated.  Take advantage of the “Tour” option to preview the new layout and familiarize yourself with the changes in functionality before officially upgrading.

Custom Fan Page Tabs:

Facebook Mark-up Language (FBML) will no longer be made available to custom tab and application developers starting March 11, 2011.  This change comes as a follow-up announcement that Facebook is looking to move away from the use of FBML and move towards iFrame development.

What does this mean for your current custom Facebook tab? Facebook will continue to support existing custom tabs developed using FBML, but is encouraging developers to start using iFrame now.

While Facebook does not have any other updates planned in the coming weeks according to their Developer Roadmap, it is not unheard of for them to release updates unbeknownst to most users.  As Facebook continues to grow it looks to improve and streamline the user experience, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled for updates and changes – we sure will.

Even if you live in an underground lair, you have at least heard of Facebook.  Not only are your favorite sports team and primetime show asking for a fan request, but so are your local grocer, your dentist and your financial advisor.  Whereas Facebook began as a way to connect students, Facebook is now literally connecting the world, with no industry stone left unturned.

Facebook is not for young college students anymore as that signature blue box now shines light upon the faces of a much wider audience.  Today, Facebook is a powerful presence that provides marketing opportunities galore.  As the average age of the Facebook community continues to rise, so do the number of companies, both B2C and B2B, making Facebook an integral and newer element of their marketing plan.

And it is costing them, essentially nothing.  With the exception of pay-per-click and pay-per-impression ads, Facebook is friendly to sales and marketing budgets and requires only time, and perhaps a little bit of creativity and finesse.

So how do you cater for a party of 250 million Facebook users?  You don’t.  Instead, be smart in how you join the world of Facebook and make the right connections, seek out your appropriate audiences, and mingle.  Challenge.  Flirt.  Push.  Pull.  And join the conversation that may now be going on without you.

First, get started and create a Facebook Page.  It’s so easy a caveman can do it.

Your page will be the home base of your Facebook marketing presence.  Through it, Facebook users can become your fan.  When they do, your name and logo will appear on their profile page and you will be in their feed, visible to everyone in their networks.  You will be viral, in a good way.  Don’t fight it.

Then, explore other marketing uses of Facebook:

• Promote your events and occasions.  Facebook evites are a cake walk.  If you are a law firm, invite young law talent to your recruitment event…if you are a restaurant, promote your happy hour specials.

• Engage your audience with contests and polls.  Let your audiences interact with you.  Ask them questions, and listen to their responses.  Build a game for them to play with you online.  If they feel you are allowing them to impact your decisions as a company or organization, they will continue to share how they feel with you.

• Create Discussion Boards to solicit user feedback and generate brainstorms.

• Keep it exciting and new.  Make sure your Facebook page is equipped with fresh photos, videos and updates.  Would you go to CNN.com or STLToday.com if the information never changed?

• Sync up your Twitter updates with your Facebook account.  Take advantage of one data entry point so you still have time to stop and smell the flowers from time to time.  Need to learn more about Twitter?… read our article.

• Integrate Facebook with your web site.  Inspire your existing site visitors to become a fan of your organization on Facebook.  Perhaps let them see a different side or you, or simply use Facebook to push out information that they would otherwise have to seek out themselves on your site.  Add Facebook Share links on your site as well to help your fans talk to their friends about you.

• Implement the Fan Box widget on your website to gain more fans and share your Facebook updates.  This implementation requires pasting only 4 lines of code.

• Or add a Comment Box to your site, allowing Facebook users on your site to comment on your content, post those comments to their profiles, and share them with their friends on Facebook.  Kick up your feet and let your fans promote you.

• Try out paid social ads.  Target your ads to your audience.  Determine age, gender, geographic, interests, marital status, etc.  Cast your net as small, or as big as you would like and pay only for performance.

• Capture your vanity URL.  Make your Facebook page easily accessible: http://facebook.com/yourcompanynamehere.

• Set up Facebook Insights to track your fans and their activity on your page.  Understand who is in your Facebook network and how often they are checking out your page.  Explore metrics of gender & age, page views, weekly trending, etc.

• And be sure to talk.  That’s right, get out there.  Converse.  Give them something to talk about.  Be clever.  Be personable.  Be professional.  Spell everything right.

• Finally, reap search engine optimization (SEO) benefits.  Facebook pages have proven to rank very highly in Google search results, so enjoy the boost of your SEO rankings.

With that, you are off!  See you on Facebook. (Visit Paradigm’s fan page on Facebook!)

New media-heads have been busy.  Long hours have been spent polishing our crystal balls, and developing our (un)tried and true predictions for the implications of Social Media for 2009.  That being said, feast your eyes on our 2009 Social Media forecast:

1.  Consumer satisfaction / customer service are absolute musts!
Be good to your clients & customers, or they will dislike you, and defame on Youtube, Facebook, & Twitter, to name a few accessible soapboxes.

2.  Companies hire “Community Managers.”
The power of social media has actually produced a new occupational trade.  Unemployed?  Want to turn consumer frowns upside down?  Companies that struggle with Rule #1 are finding a growing need to temper moods of unsatisfied customers, with either the goal to keep them loyal – or simply keep them quiet.  Community managers also serve to facilitate active communications with the companies’ biggest fans, fostering residual applause and flattery, without the PR agency price tag.

3. Yes, we are on the air…
We are going to see everything as it happens, in real-time through a variety of media sources/ networks.  Oh yes, we will see the good, the bad and everything else – with little to buffer us from our connected, streaming worlds.  Have kids?  “Earmuffs!”

4. Do you MOSOSO?
Mobile Social Software will rush in full-force, and like everything else,  join the list of things “we don’t know how we ever lived without.”

5.  All aboard the Social Media train!
Tightened budgets will not thwart marketing activity in 2009.  Instead, 2009 will be full of smarter marketing.  Investing in “community” is free, and proving more effective than even the costliest of media.  A Social Media presence takes time and these communities are not built overnight.  Good thing you hired your community manager yesterday.  Even the B2B’s will come out to play, producing private online networks.  There, they can personally connect with and serve their clients, with both parties taking a collaborative dip in the community pool.

6.  Social Capital is the new SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
With over 600,000 Facebook users joining daily, and over 3 million “tweets” on Twitter a day…much of the Internet has been occupied by social media conversation.   Social Capital is the power of one’s social network in referring business. To gain social capital, you must link to, and develop relationships with others that are also well connected.  In the same way blogs changed our search results in the last couple years, social media is doing the same.

7.  Some fear becoming white noise.
With everyone networking and talking online, (including dogs – http://apps.facebook.com/dogbook/) … at what point will it be too much?  With the exponential growth of this online world, overpopulation and limited resources are both looming threats.  You may be wondering, “If I speak, will anyone hear me?”  This is why managing your presence closely and creatively is of growing importance.

So get ready for Social Media in 2009 – everybody and their brother!

A year full of online blabbing, some love, some slander, corporate damage control, better customer service, real reality TV, increased driving distractions, cost-effectiveness, smarter marketing, a new way to tackle SEO, weird dog owners talking through their pets, and the challenge to perpetually evolve and reinvent ourselves within the ever-changing new media landscape.