For some time now I have been expounding the virtues of brands becoming far more data-centric in their approach to marketing and communications. No company understands this better than Coca Cola. The marketing world is going through a rapid transformation driven by the mainstream adoption of social media. In turn this transformation is changing the way that companies are viewing their role in communications. In August last year Jonathan Mildenhall, Vice-President of Global Advertising Strategy for Coca-Cola created a YouTube video showing how the company is approaching this changing landscape and how it will effect their creative output.

This video is challenging for the traditional advertising model in every respect. The first statement is that Coca-Cola is moving from a company built on “creative excellence” to a company that is focused on “content excellence”. This is the company’s way of acknowledging that it no longer controls what is being said about its brands. Yet this is an opportunity to be seized with both hands. Coke now plans to use the power of social media to tell stories that cannot be controlled; stories that become infectious.

This move to “content excellence” is the way that all brands should be thinking about marketing in the coming years. And it applies to both B2B and B2C companies. No matter what you are selling, the consumers of your messages are people, and people need to be engaged at an emotional and intellectual level. From a social media perspective try to avoid thinking “Facebook is for B2C and LinkedIn is for B2B”. The participants on those two platforms simply need to have the story about your brand expressed differently. Every contact point with a customer should tell an emotional story.

The other – and in my opinion most important – point the video made is that data needs to be at the core of marketing strategy. It needs to fuel the creative brief. Marketing is now about collaboration, personalisation, telling stories and developing relationships. This can only be achieved at a very high level by collecting and utilising data. And social media gives us unprecedented access to data.

This very public statement of Coke’s future marketing direction is telling us is that marketing is going to be much less about “the one big idea” and much more about lots of ideas, many conversations and constant activity. This is a good thing. For far too long brands have been asked to invest heavily on a single big idea. While this has worked some of the time it is very risky. It’s kind of like being asked to bet all of your money on one horse.

History shows us that where brands like Coca-Cola go the rest of the market follows. Can you afford to wait before exploring this new frontier?

Social media marketing is a long term game. To the initiated this is an obvious statement, but I still find it surprising how often social platforms are used to try generate spikes in interest – in other words used in the same way the “one way conversation” media channels such as television and radio are used. The only time I have really seen social media marketing fail is when it planned, executed and measured for the short term. So let’s examine how best to plan for the long game.

It’s beneficial to think of social media marketing as a process. Like any business process you plan, document, measure and get more efficient all the time. Seeing social marketing from this point of view makes it much easier to think and plan for the long-term. Taking the long-view also allows you to take advantage of the continual feedback loops that exist as your market lets you know what they think about your activity. As your understanding of your market develops, you will no longer see comments as a threat, but as an opportunity to continually improve your approach until you have it right – and create a significant competitive advantage in doing so.

As a practical step I recommend developing a rolling 12 month plan. It should detail the content that will be created, who will be doing it and what actions need to be taken to get it distributed online. Planning this far in advance allows your company to recognise the long term investment timeframe. It will also allow you to set appropriate KPIs. It is vital to realise that the plan is a tool. You will still need to be flexible and responsive to customer behaviour. It should form the foundation that drives the changes necessary to succeed, and so will necessarily take some time to develop .

Every phase in your social media communications process should build on the preceding one. This means documenting and reviewing what works and what doesn’t. This then becomes a cycle: plan your next communication, execute the program, check how effective it is, act on the data and then back to the planning stage. This continual improvement approach will allow you to gather data while also ensuring you are picking up “quick-wins” along the way.

Communicating with your market will always bea fundamental part of doing business. Social media has made this quicker and easier, but also turned it into a public conversation. You may be planning on using social media as straight forward marketing channel, a customer service channel, or a channel to reward loyal and influential customers. It really doesn’t matter what the communications strategy is as long as you treat it as a process. This is  your key to success.

Social media can seem like a chaotic environment full of risks and uncertainties, especially as you are starting out. Collecting and analysing the data you collect over time will see those risks fade. Then you are just managing a process, like any other in your organisation.

People are at the centre of almost every business. Customers, shareholders, staff and other stakeholders are increasingly having conversations online via social media platforms. So whether you like it or not you are in a social media business. To avoid the risk of not knowing what is being said about your brand, developing a “social business” strategy is vital. Let’s explore some of the elements of what social businesses are doing.

One things that separates a good company from a great company is how much they focus on the customer. Great companies are relentless in their quest to give the customer what they want. If “the customer is always right” then the fact that 65% of the Australian population is on Facebook might tell you something about what the customer wants. The innovative brands know this and are rethinking how they communicate with their customers. It’s not just about doing media differently – it’s about being social and open.

These businesses are thinking carefully about building “sharing” into every communication their brand has. They see their role now as being part of a conversation, enabling an eco-system of communication around their brand. They are thinking carefully about how to build ‘social design’ into their digital assets to ensure these conversations have the best chance for viral spread.

Social businesses are also embedding social media tools inside the business. Communication platforms like Yammer are enabling teams and individuals business-wide to communicate and collaborate. This is driving innovation by breaking down the traditional approach to internal communications. It allows innovative businesses to develop new KPIs and rewards for highly active and engaged staff members. Having an internal social strategy is not so much about changing the way your staff work, but using technology to increase productivity.

The next frontier in businesses going social is how they communicate with shareholders. This is more relevant for listed companies, but private companies would do well to think through the issues. Shareholders are increasingly communicating online about the strategy of the companies they have invested in. Social businesses are not only encouraging this but trying to enable it. The logic to this is if you can’t stop conversations, which no business can do, then you can participate to reduce risk or even better create the platform for the conversations to extract even more intelligence.

The concept of the social business is now mature enough to draw from the successes and failures of other businesses when developing your strategy. The tools and techniques are now well tested and developed. Creating measurable return on investment models is easily manageable. “Going social” is now less about experimentation and more about developing a competitive advantage. We have seen what happens when industries are slow to respond to the developing digital market. Make sure your business is not struggling to catch up by starting your social business plan now.

Facebook is increasingly being viewed as a way organisations can develop a dialogue with potential consumers and build their brands. Many Australian companies have spotted this and have put up a page for their brand. On the 30th of March a new format means that all of these pages will change forever. So to be sure that your company is not left behind let’s review what’s happening and how to prepare.

The new format for Facebook brand pages is called the Facebook “Timeline”. It fundamentally changes the way your brand page works. To date, the content on a brand page has been ordered chronologically. The new format takes this a big step further. It makes it possible to create a complete visual and interactive history of your brand – from the time it started out until now.

Above this new timeline organisations can now add the main visual representation of the page. It is referred to as a cover image. This is a large image that can be used to create a story or brand the page. To see what can be done with the cover image have a look at Nike’s livestrong page or check out the Fanta page.

The new format now provides ways to construct a time-based narrative for your brand. You can choose to highlight key milestones and events such as new product launches and expansion events. Pictures and videos have always attracted more attention on Facebook than other forms of content. This will only increase with the roll out of Timeline. The combination of highlighting milestones and images gives you an opportunity to create ‘behind-the-scenes’ stories and generate a new type of connection with your audience.

If you have apps embedded on your Facebook page you may need to review these as well. The old tabs on the left hand side of the page are now gone. They will still be visible but will be displayed differently. This means marketers need to spend time thinking carefully about how to use and display apps. Gathering data on page analytics will help determine what work and what doesn’t.

The new formant ushers in a major change for stakeholder engagement. Brands can now send and receive messages to and from fans. This means that conversations can be taken off the visual timeline. This will reduce clutter and allow conversations to be ‘private’ – if you wish them to be.

You will now also have analytics embedded on the page once you log in as an administrator. The analytic tools can help you construct and manage your page. They can also help organisations analyse the ‘return on investment’ from activity on your Facebook page.

Facebook’s influence and reach in the world of consumers and brands will continue to grow - and be boosted by the forthcoming IPO. Staying across the changes and opportunities in the ‘platform’ is the best way for organisations to remain relevant.