Digital Impact Recap: Tapping the wisdom of friends through Facebook

Everything is in constant change,” said Caryn Marooney, vice president of technology communications for Facebook. She gave this morning’s opening keynote address at the PRSA 2012 Digital Impact Conference, themed “Influence and Persuasion,” at New York’s Sentry Center in Midtown.

In her address titled, “Tap the Wisdom of Friends: How to Thrive in a Connected World,” Marooney said that there are three things that all communicators need to remember to navigate constant change in a digital world:
• What is the audience we are trying to reach?
• What are the goals we are trying to reach?
• What are the best tools to reach this audience and these goals?

With more than 845 million people on Facebook, the social media platform has tremendous reach. “And with more than 100 billion friend connections, it’s this wisdom of friends that people are trusting more and more,” she said.

Users also upload 250 million photos to Facebook per day and generate 2.7 billion Likes and comments per day. People like visuals and Facebook is a very visual platform — even more so with the new “Timeline” layout. Use photos and videos strategically on Facebook as they significantly increase engagement, Marooney said.