Ever wondered what happens to your Facebook profile when you die?’

Don’t worry, I’m in good health, my morbid fascination is prompted by Facebook’s, soon to be released ‘TimeLine’ feature, currently in Beta.

TimeLine produces a sort of scrapbook of everything that has happened to you since you joined Facebook, at the press of a button.

To see a chronology of your life, automatically generated, is a spooky reminder of just how much data is kept about our online activity and is more than a bit creepy.

Prior to the invention of social media, you needed to write an actual book to leave a lasting mark on the records of humanity. But now we all leave digital footprints online that may last longer than those left by the dinosaurs in the prehistoric mud!

Not just active social media users either. I’d bet that everyone alive today, with or without their knowledge, appears somewhere or other in a YouTube clip or uploaded photograph.

And every columnist or a blogger who pens an opinion, however misguided, is now digitally entombed with their words.  In fact, if you are reading this online and its 2050, I’ve just proved my point from the grave!

Even when you ‘checked-out’ for the last time your digital assets can still be of value.  You could have a cool domain name or a following on Twitter large enough to be of commercial interest!

As a member of the .com generation and likely to kick the e-bucket first, I may need to consider this in my will. Who will I leave my Avatar to and who will inherit my eBay sellers rating?

More importantly, how will I change my Facebook status to “dead” after the event, assuming there is no WiFi access where I’m going?

Turns out Facebook will do it for me on request from my next of kin. After seeing the paperwork (proving someone is dead is still an offline process) they will “memorialise” my profile.  This means only existing ‘friends’ can read and post eulogies to my Wall, and presumably be able to see my TimeLine; a lasting epitaph, of every ‘like’, LOL and OMG I ever posted.

Resisting the temptation to explain why they are not and possibly send this column down an un-publishable route, I must clarify that it is Facebook ‘likes’, for their clients fan pages, they are after.

According to the poll, undertaken by digital media pundit Mashable, an overwhelming number of marketers consider social media to be integral to their strategies and 70% plan to increase their social media budget by more than 10% this year.

The primary social media marketing objective, amongst the top US brands that took part, was is to increase Facebook “likes”.

Given that, thanks to mass media, politics is now just a popularity pole, perhaps the UK could setup a much more cost effective alternative voting (AV) system than currently being proposed by the Liberals.

Whichever local candidate has the most Facebook ‘likes’ on Election Day get to the seat in Westminster?

You may be interested (as you’re still reading this) to note that currently the Labour Party Page have 99K likes, the Liberal’s 93K and Conservative a whopping 136K which, in my opinion giving them a clear mandate to govern!

But I digress, if only to illustrate that ‘likes’ are no real measure of approval or real brand engagement.  Facebook now provide many more sophisticated insights such as  ‘interactions’ and ‘active users’ to indicate if you’re really getting through to your audiences.

Recently Facebook improved the capability of brands to interact with their consumers on its social network. Yet it also reduced the chance of fans reading their messages.  Now, by default, users only see posts from brands and people for that matter, who they regularly interact with. (Many are campaign to get this changed!)

So soliciting input from ‘fans’ is more important the building large database of ‘likes’.

Like real life, counting the number of likes/friends you have on Facebook, is not a real measure of success, or so I keep telling myself!

By adding new features to its business pages, Facebook now allows brand to participate more interactively with their fans and other business pages.

But in this uber social online world, is hiding behind a brand a good thing?

Considering Facebook was invented for Harvard student use only and spent much of it formative years preventing commercial entities from using it services, these new brand friendly features show how far it has come from its origins.

Many users threatened to leave Facebook when it introduced banner advertising back in 2007, but now this “social advertising” is accepted as a necessary evil needed to fund the free service.

Essentially brand can now use Facebook on more equal terms with users, leaving comments and ‘Likes’ on users profile walls and other business pages.

Note: they cannot initiate posts on profile walls; they can only comment/like on existing posts and users can prevent this from happening by adjusting there security setting – but few people will.

This means, businesses can now proactively use Facebook, participating in conversations it thinks are relevant to its products/services in an attempt to raise brand awareness.

But who wants to have a conversation with a brand?  Not me!

One of the business benefits of using social media is that it allows consumers to penetrate large, often faceless organizations and deal directly with individualswithin them.  Empowering your staff to us social media to interact with consumers is a powerful way to build customer loyalty.

Thanks to social media the old adage that “people do business with people” has never been more accurate. So I would recommend signing any comments you make on behalf of your brand personally.

Facebook have made many other changes, both cosmetic and functional, to its business pages, so now would be good time to review your Facebook marketing strategy.

One that stood out was an article by Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian about turning the internet off. Or more to the point, how it is never off these days causing ADHD, civil war and neurotic children.

Perhaps you can relate to a lot of what Freedland says. I can!

I watch TV now with one eye on the iPhone or the laptop. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs, forums – updates, updates, updates! Refreshing constantly. And for what? What do I actually expect? It has become, not a necessity, but a habit.

Why is this so?

Maybe it’s because every now and again something rewarding happens that makes us keep coming back for more. We are Pavlov’s dogs. A new friend request, an invitation to an event, a fascinating blog, an interesting new business connection or just someone commenting on or retweeting something we’ve written.

It truly is addictive stuff. Freedland categorises people in his article by how much they use the internet. I use the internet and social media every day, often for most of the day. It’s my business – literally – so this is no surprise. However, social media strategy and marketing besides (yes, I did just say that!) I have found myself becoming more and more distracted from other personal things I used to enjoy, for example reading a good book.

I have found myself reading in bed (as I’ve always done) and after even one page my mind might start to wander, shifting slightly into a zombie-like state… “I must check Facebook. I must refresh Twitter”. And so I do and then get drawn into something else. Five minutes later I stop myself. “Just read your book and relax”.

And then… and then… I will read about something I absolutely have to research on Google or Wikipedia. Not tomorrow or a more convenient later date but now, right NOW. So I stop reading again and spend half an hour reading about the history of the Battle of Waterloo. All very interesting, but it would never have been enough “pre-social media” to have interrupted my beloved reading.

Am I addicted? Is it wrong? Never mind those children, it’s making adults neurotic too!

However, I think the tide is turning. This obsession is a relatively new thing, especially considering the use of smartphones meaning that we’re always “connected” and available for comment.

I have already taken steps to manage this offline/online life balance and I know that many more people are doing it too. As ever, humans adapt and it takes time for that to happen. We are perhaps “growing up” in our interaction with social media.

So it was great to read Freedland’s article because it’s part of the narrative of the evolution of the internet, social media and how we communicate with each other in the 21^st century.

The internet and social media is no longer a fad, it’s a way of life. Like anything else we have to find a place where it fits naturally in our lives.

Or maybe you do, if your brand has successfully built significant Facebook, Twitter and YouTube audiences and you don’t know how to keep them under control.

If so, CrowdcontrolHQ, ( invented in Birmingham no less) might be for you.

Read Chris Tomlinson latest column in the Birmingham Post to find out why.

Friend was tasked with raising brand and event awareness for this year’s London 2012 Open Weekend in the West Midlands. With short notice and a limited 4 week window of opportunity, we embarked on an initial Twitter campaign to test the role of social media for Open Weekend.

London 2012 Open Weekend comprised more than 975 events staged across the UK – ranging from sport to art; dance to exhibitions. Each event featured a special challenge, and gave visitors the chance to try something new or take an existing skill to a new level. There were over 50 separate events across the West Midlands.

Friend created a Twitter campaign to connect with influencers and a targeted community interested in the types of events on offer. We interacted regularly with 30 influencers over the period, provided ‘customer service’ to people wanting to find out about specific events, organically built up a highly relevant following of over 400 in just 3 weeks and gained recommendations by many others via Twitter’s “listed” feature.

Well in the case of a Facebook fan page this can literally be true!

Read Chris Tomlinson’s latest Birmingham Post column to find out why.

Once again, I woke up this morning to the fat opera singer, belting out that annoying jingle. The wife’s insistence on watching Sky News, at an inhumanly early hour, means I’m bombarded with ads before I’ve even had a cup of tea!

So instead of getting mad, I’m going to exact social-media-revenge on the insurance price comparison site by telling you that I was thanking my unlucky stars the last time I went to GoCompare.com.

The insurance firm that appeared at the top of their results page reneged on the quote that got them there, then hassled me by phone with hard sell. Ah – now that feels much better. So, on to the main point of this blog. I wonder how many of us after the World Cup, will be driving a Hyundai, drinking Lucozade or Castrol GTX for that matter, or flying Emirates this summer?

More generally, I don’t have a cat or eat dog food and I don’t wear nappies. I seldom purchase female hygiene products and, being follically challenged, have absolutely no use for shampoo, however life enhancing it appears to be.

Don’t these brands know they are wasting their money selling to me?

More importantly don’t they know I’m not alone?

Don’ t they know we are living in the Post Advertising age?

Or the Post-Interruptive advertising age at least, where people consume media at a time and place of their choosing and filter out TV adverts both mentally and physically via DVRs and on-demand services.

Perhaps that’s why the brands that still have budgets to waste on TV are clamouring for world cup slots, as live TV events are the last bastion of this old fashioned, poorly targeted advertising model. But, given the modern consumer is a more critical, cynical and in my case irritable audience, the potential to damage a brand by annoying them has never been more real.

I, like most, would rather have seen Stevie-G’s goal against the USA than the Hyundai ad ITV-HD decided to broadcast on Saturday and will now never ever buy one. And carpet bombing news channels with a jiggle more annoying than a stadium full of vuvuzelas is never going to turn me into an advocate.

It’s a well-known fact that during austere times, the sillier or more self-deluding your job title is, the more likely you are to be made redundant.

Post-recession, the new boy on the marketing job title block is: ‘social media manager’

But is this is a silly job title or not ?

Read Chris Tomlinson’s article about flamboyant job titles in last Thursday’s Birmingham Post

I can help but think that if Sky add three celebrity judges, a premium rate phone vote and put on a ‘results’ show, an hour later to remove the worst ‘candidate’ from the next debate- they could have a seriously good game show on their hands!

Admittedly the studio audiences are not allowed to heckle or clap, but the x-factor-meets-blind-date format is starting to disturbing me.

Judging by the subsequent plethora of posts on PR agency blogs after each debate, the election will be won and lost on the best performer in these debates.

But judging the acts, sorry I mean ‘priministerial candidate’ on how well they listened to their PR trainers is not a good way of choosing a government.

We all seem to be obsessed with discussing this charisma contest rather than the future of the country – perhaps that is because it is too hard.

Old media has long since turned elections into personal popularity polls, where the personality of the candidates and how good looking their wife is, seems to become more important factors than the policies of their parties.

Meanwhile the real political debate is happening in social media. Follow the tag #leadersdebate on Twitter before, during and after the final debate and you’ll see real enguagment and quite a few expletives too!

During last nights show alone, 117 thousand live comments were tweeted featuring the above hash tag  (source @Tweetminster).

And a real debate – i.e with more than the half dozen carefully fielded questions and only three people allowed to speak – is happening on Facebook too, but not on the parties official pages.

The Conservatives seem to be winning the Facebook war, with 53K fans to their official page, the LibDems close behind with 50K and Labour languishing with a megur 27K ( as of 22/4/2010).

It is worth visiting these pages just to see which of your friends’ mugs appear as fans divulging their political persuasion. Note: I have become a fan of all three parties while researching this blog – in case you see mine.

However, in true X-factor style the ‘We got Rage Against the Machine to #1, we can get the LibDems into office!” unofficial discussion group out trumps them all with 134K members so far, where a lively pro Nick Clegg debate is raging.

However, given that the original RATM campaign gained 500K+ followers you could say that more people cared about getting Simon Cowell off the Xmas #1 spot than getting Nick Clegg into number 10! Which is an interesting measure of the nations interest in the election outcome

(More election fun can be found at Facebook’s own ‘Democracy UK’ page where there is even an App to help you decide whom to vote for!)

With UK electoral turnouts on the decline, some argue that the TV debate will improved the population’s engagement with the political process and records turns will result on election day.

But if they are voting on superficial style, not policy, this will be a hollow victory for UK democracy.