Dallas Lawrence is Chair of the Social and Digital Media Practice at Levick Strategic Communications, the nation’s top crisis communications firm. He blogs on emerging digital media trends and best practices for social media engagement on Bulletproof Blog. Connect with him on Twitter @dallaslawrence.

With 450 million users globally (and millions more being added each week) Facebook is dominating the web in unparalleled ways. Yet, even as the social network has steadily grown over its short but remarkable history, many brands have remained on the sidelines of the social media revolution.

Facebook was the most visited site on the web for the week ending on March 13, 2010, surpassing even Google in week-long stats for the first time in history, according to Hitwise. The shift in user habits and audience targeting is palpable and it provides marketers, brand managers, issue advocates, and political campaigns today with an age old choice: Adapt and change or face irrelevance and extinction.

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A Social Media Parable

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In many ways, the fundamental decision facing those looking to compete in the next decade of social media dominance is reminiscent of Dr. Spencer Johnson’s bestselling business tale Who Moved My Cheese? It’s the story of two mice named Sniff and Scurry and two “littlepeople” named Hem and Haw who find themselves facing this same predicament.

As the fable unfolds, the book’s four main characters arrive in their maze one day to find that their once abundant cheese supply has disappeared. Sniff and Scurry knew this day was coming. They recognized that their cheese supply was dwindling and set out to find a new source.

Hem and Haw, on the other hand, hadn’t noticed that their cheese was running out. Rather than adapt, they retreated into the all-too-human reactions of fear, denial, and disbelief as they hopelessly waited for the change to prove passing.

For those who have not read this late-90s change agent bible, I won’t spoil the ending. The moral of the story however is clear: Change happens. To survive it, you must anticipate it; and to be successful, you must embrace it.

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Realizing the Critical Value of Facebook

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In the modern day maze that is the digital and social media realm, these lessons were again on display as the online community debated the value of the new Facebook user statistics this past week.

Viewed simply, the cheese moved again this month –- and just as intelligent companies adapted their marketing and communications models for the advent of Google over the last decade, Facebook’s dominance has forced another “change or become extinct” moment. To thrive in a rapidly changing marketplace, you must understand that the shift now underway is just as powerful as the one that transformed Google into the modern Yellow Pages and turned a Silicon Valley start-up into a $200 billion everyday necessity.

Unfortunately, most of today’s C-Suite decision makers lack the foresight of Dr. Johnson’s furry friends Sniff and Scurry. Far too many people still see Facebook as a vast, uncontrollable outpost for college slackers –- one better equipped for picture sharing and random life updates than brand reputation management, crisis response, and brand bulletproofing.

But the numbers don’t lie. Almost half-a-billion users each spend an average of nearly 6 hours per month on the site –- inhabiting networks that are largely free of corporate messaging, spam, and expensive advertising. This ought to make at least a few corporate titans rethink that next $1 million Super Bowl ad buy (even if Google did buy its first in 2010).

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3 Ways Your Brand can Get Started on Facebook

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Facebook users are openly sharing their life’s passions, personal interests, and their affinity –- or lack thereof –- for corporate brands, political candidates, and the key public policy stances. In effect, they are openly sharing every bit of marketing data a 21st century company covets.

For those still wary of change but now ready to dip their toe into the waters and begin to understand and benefit from the power of social, there are three free and relatively painless steps to begin the journey through the social media maze:

• First, evaluate your current advertising efforts and identify how they can best be tailored to Facebook. Consider allocating 10% of your current Google AdWords or online advertising budget to a 90-day trial run on Facebook. Be sure to develop clear benchmarks for success, and remember, unlike Google AdWords, Facebook ads rely on both keywords and a variety of demographic information –- information you no doubt have already identified as key indicators of your target audience(s). You can now put this information to use to further micro-target your advertising buy, narrow the net you are throwing in the online marketplace, and increase the return on your investment.
• Second, conduct a survey of your or fans to see who is already on Facebook and thus, who may be your brand’s most social media-savvy fans. You may find that your fan base is brimming with talent just waiting to be unleashed. For now, these future brand ambassadors may be ideal candidates to develop your Facebook presence and initial advertising program.
• Finally — and this may seem obvious — become a face on Facebook yourself. Become familiar with the site, its features and the value hundreds of millions of people find in the world’s most populous online community. It may ultimately not be for you personally, but as with almost every new platform, the best way to understand its value is to give it a try yourself.

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For those still looking for meaning in the numbers released earlier this month, the message is clear: Not only has the cheese moved again, the entire creamery has up and relocated. It won’t be coming back. And no manner of hemming and hawing is going to change that fact.

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This post originally appeared here.  Thanks to Mashable.com and Dallas Lawrence for the content! -Kahlil (at) gigsmacked (dot) com

When I sent tapes of my one man show to Comedy Central in 2002 (yes, I’m old enough to remember sending tapes) they not only told me that I ‘wasn’t a name act’ – they assured me I would never play in their space (The Hudson Theater) in Hollywood.  Since then Comedy Central has flown me to Los Angeles several times to perform my play in their space for various industry performances, public showcases and development deals.

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A major airline refused to allow me to upgrade because I hadn’t flown the required amount of miles within one calendar year.  By the end of the phone call they had upgraded my frequent flyer status two tiers and offered me free access to most first class lounges in N. America and the UK.

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During my three year stint performing nightly at Caesar’s Palace I couldn’t get any agents to come and see my show.  So I called the Mirage and asked for Bill Cosby, who has performing there at the time, and invited him.  Spoke to him for almost an hour. Luther Vandross and Drew Carey too.

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The battery on my laptop died and the folks at the Vancouver Apple store refused to replace it because batteries aren’t included in Apple Care.  I walked out of there with another battery – free of charge.

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Jesse Warren’s web series The Bannen Way was turned down by every major studio and even some minor ones.  With 13 million streams since January 6th and a production deal with Sony that includes film, television and a book, The Bannen Way is being called the future of television, taking the world by storm as the most successful web based series in existence.

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Life is a game.  You don’t get what you ask for, you get what you negotiate. Learning to get past the word ‘no’ is crucial to getting what you want.

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Jesse Warren could have stopped when he got turned down again and again.  In his words, he got tired of waiting for agents to call.   He got together with a trusted collaborator, maxed out two credit cards and called in a lot of favors to get The Bannen Way on its feet.  Because he put in the several years of work to educate himself on leveraging the power of social media while creating a quality brand, once it hit the web Hollywood came calling.

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So maybe you don’t have two credit cards to max out or enough contacts to create a web series.  Maybe you don’t have the resources to create a one person show or fly around the world.  What does that leave you with?

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Desire.  You gotta start somewhere.  If you want something bad enough the word NO is an invitation not a rejection.

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The rest is up to you.       -Kahlil (at) gigsmacked (dot) com

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8 Mile is one of my favorite movies about an artist – maybe because it’s relevant to anyone struggling to make it.

Here’s what it says:

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Do what you can where you are. The movie opens with Jimmy “B. Rabbit” Smith (Eminem) competing in a freestyle rap battle in a dingy Detroit club. He wants to be a hip-hop emcee, and anyone can compete, so that’s where he goes. There’s no sense that music industry people go anywhere near the place, but that’s something to worry about later. For now, get on stage. Learn your stuff. Get good enough to hit that first ceiling.

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There will be setbacks. Rabbit chokes in the battle. He leaves the stage not having rapped a word, booed and laughed at. Not every set is going to go well. Some will be absolute disasters. It might be hard to imagine a young Richard Pryor or Robin Williams or Ellen Degeneres bombing in a comedy club, but they did. If you think a great author can do no wrong, try reading Salman Rushdie’s first novel, or Yann Martel’s, or Kurt Vonnegut’s. Everyone bombs, especially when they’re learning. But you have to start somewhere. Despite his humiliation, Rabbit comes back and competes again.

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Get to Work. Your life won’t come to a halt as you try to make it. One scene shows Rabbit riding the bus to his job at an auto plant, holding a pad of paper, pen in hand. The pad’s covered in his writing – lyrics, we’re left to assume. If you’ve only got enough time to snatch a few minutes here and there to work on your art, then a few minutes will have to do. Better that than waiting till you’ve got the time, the perfect work room, the energy, the inspiration, the grant. You can wait for those things forever. And even if you get them, there will always be more reasons why you can’t start yet. Get over these delaying tactics. Get to work. Find a way.

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Focus on the present, not the future. In one scene, one of Rabbit’s friends talks about the record deals they need to sign (no record company is courting any of them). Another one talks about putting the profits from their records into savings bonds so they can build their own studio. Another says they need to get “fat bitches and fine rides”. Rabbit berates them all: “Man shut the fuck up. All of us never do shit about nuttin’ and we’re still broke as fuck and living at home with our moms.” Dreaming about the future won’t help you get to that future. Facing up to the imperfect present can give you the kick in the ass to do something about it.

Be ready for a long, slow climb. Rabbit wins the battle at the movie’s finale, but there aren’t any agents or record execs in the audience who slip him a business card and tell him to call them in the morning. We grow up with the Cinderella story of success in our minds. Someone drops into your life, and poof, you never have to worry about anything ever again. But what do you do if that doesn’t happen? Rabbit leaves the club, grabs his change of clothes, and heads back to the auto plant to work a graveyard shift. In a previous scene someone asked him what he’s trying to earn all this overtime for. His answer: studio time. That’s the formula. Work hard. Save up. Do what you can. Persist. You still might not make it. But your odds are a lot better than if you stay at home, waiting for a fairy godmother to notice you.

-TJ Dawe

This is a guest post from TJ Dawe, a successful Vancouver based writer/performer/director who’s toured solo shows at more than eighty comedy and theatre festivals in the last decade and a bit. He’s got six published plays, a humour book, and his directing credits include The One Man Star Wars Trilogy, which played Off-Broadway in New York for five months. He also blogs, tweets, podcasts, and has stuff on youtube.