Due to tremendous demand and futile attempts to resist, we’re pleased to announce the release of our new RoosterComm Facebook page. It’s been a long time coming, but it was worth the wait—we promise. Now you can get groovy updates on social media, SEO, websites, and other online marketing related stuff by clicking that little blue Like button. Like us, yo! #youwontregretit
When Facebook announced Timeline, the new, picture-heavy profile format in mid-September, users were excited about the opportunity to humanize and enhance their profiles by showcasing important life events. Meanwhile brand Page admins were left to speculate about the possible impact of Facebook Timeline for businesses: if Facebook enables Timeline for brand Pages, could businesses benefit from the new profile format in a similar way as regular users? You bet.
Improved brand authenticity. Timeline will allow businesses to tell a more authentic brand story through a better organized and more engaging way of displaying company information. In the new profile design, content from the current, rather boring “Info” tab will be relocated to the top of the Page in a clear navigation bar. In addition, a new infinite scroll will prolong the lifespan of information posted to the Page’s wall (In other words, posts will no longer disappear “below the fold” of the Facebook wall). This reorganization will not only shift the focus on content from quantity to quality, but also enable brands to strategically express what makes them unique today, as well as in the past.
More photos, more branding opportunities. We increasingly consume information through images on the web in the form of infographics, photos, and illustrations; Facebook understands the value of imagery and has made photos a central feature of Timeline’s design. Take the “Cover,” an image about 840 by 310 pixels at the top of the new Facebook profile. It’s the first thing a Page visitor will see and presents a huge opportunity for branding, raising awareness, and getting creative. Might it be the perfect space to display a shot of your new product or to make a promotional push?
Increased brand awareness. The benefits of Timeline for businesses would extend beyond brand Pages themselves. Most companies rely on recommendations, or “likes,” to increase their fan base, but those endorsements often get buried beneath more recent updates on a fan’s Facebook wall. This won’t happen with Timeline. If a fan “likes” or comments on a brand Page, it will be cemented on his or her timeline, giving businesses yet another opportunity to cash in on brand awareness.
Timeline’s release. When can we expect Facebook Timeline for businesses? The social media giant recently told Mashable that “Consistency in both functionality and appearance is really important to Facebook, so we hope to make Pages more consistent with the new Timeline in the future.” While Facebook has yet to confirm that brand Pages will employ Timeline, clearly there are many reasons why we hope they do.
The look. Are you curious about what brand pages might look like with the new Facebook Timeline? Check out these mock-ups created by Skinny.
The success of a social media contest, as measured by participation, comes down to two basic factors: the effort required to participate and the value of the reward.
Seems simple enough, right? Yet when running a Facebook or Twitter contest it can be deceptively difficult to get this right. Asking fans for user generated video or photos is enticing — who wouldn’t want their foot soldiers to become evangelists? Without the proper reward, however, participation simply isn’t going to happen.
Here’s a simple chart to illustrate the point:
A Twitter contest that only requires someone to retweet or become a follower and offers the reward of an iPod, for example, is going to result in high participation and more followers.
A Facebook contest, on the other hand, that offers a free six pack of Coke to the winner of a finger painting contest who is first required to fill out a series of web forms to enter, will result in low participation.
It goes without saying that there are many types of rewards, including those intangible in nature, such as the pride a Wikipedia volunteer might experience in exchange for editing services. A reward could be considered high from simply offering a finger painter the chance to have his/her creation posted on a Facebook page with 1 million fans. In this case, the recognition is the reward and should be evaluated as such.
In developing your social media contest strategy, don’t take for granted the effort required and make sure your contest has the adequate incentives. Doing so will result in a high participation and will turn your contest winners into brand evangelists.
Did a presentation last week for a group of mortgage loan officers. Many are reluctant to jump into online and social media marketing, so I presented some facts that are pretty hard to ignore.
Search
The fun part is that Search, Facebook, and LinkedIn are still on a skyrocket trajectory and aren’t slowing down a bit. Furthermore, it shows that online has truly reached critical mass and has become ingrained in our daily lives.
If you’re wondering why I didn’t include Twitter in there, well, I didn’t recommend it to the group of loan officers. The argument was that setting up their website bio pages, optimizing a LinkedIn account, and getting a Facebook page up and running would give them the best value for their time and a decent base of visibility. Plus, once those are set up, not a lot of updates and posts need to be made — unlike Twitter.
While LinkedIn doesn’t have the numbers of Facebook, it is more tightly focused, since mostly all of its members are there for business and networking reasons. It’s great for loan officers looking to stay in front of their community online, it’s free, and requires little maintenance and updating once it’s set up properly.
A Facebook Page is also free and doesn’t require a lot of time after set up. Nothing will get you blocked or unliked faster than chronic over-posting, so I recommended that the loan officers post only once every week or two. If they can take the leap in their mind to post something they find interesting in the moment it happens, posting will feel like it takes even less time.
All told, lots of good nuggets to discuss when developing a presentation for a specific group of people. More to come.
Facebook contests are a great way to spark interactivity and engagement on your Facebook page, not to mention substantially increase your Likes. Before you dive in on contests for your page, though, be sure you have your ducks in a row — Facebook has pretty stringent rules and terms on where and how contests can happen, and you want to make sure you’re in compliance.
Facebook’s promotion guidelines read like the Ten Commandments, just more long-winded and stuffed with legalese. Highlights as of 12/1/2010 include:
- “You will not administer a promotion through Facebook, except through an application on the Facebook Platform.”
- ”You will only allow users to enter the promotion in the following locations:
- “You cannot: Notify winners through Facebook, such as through Facebook messages, chat, or posts on profiles or Pages.”
So, technically, you can’t come up with a cool promotional contest and run it on your page wall without adhering to the full Facebook Promotion Guidelines.
What happens if you don’t comply? If you’re a smaller business with less than 10k Likes, Facebook is probably not going to notice. Facebook can’t regulate everyone (at this point), and it isn’t set up to give all page owners the “prior written consent” their broader terms say is required for promotions.
If they do take notice, however, your account could be suspended or disabled entirely. Your safest — though more expensive — route is to contact a friendly Facebook developer to create an app or use an off-the-shelf service like Involver or Wildfire.
Overall, you’ll want to gauge the cost benefits of setting up an app before you embark, and the risk/reward of skirting Facebook terms and attempting to fly under the radar.
This is a post in a series ranking the Big 4 social media sites — Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Foursquare — for B2B, retail, and real estate. Read the introduction for background.
For retail social media, there is a clear loser — LinkedIn — though mainly for a lack of effort. LinkedIn simply doesn’t play in that space and never will. That leaves Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare to vie for retail supremacy. Unlike B2B and real estate, however, there isn’t a clear winner. This is fitting since all seem to offer their own virtues and can compliment each other nicely in a social media campaign.
1. Facebook
Facebook gets the number one slot for its sheer volume. 500 million users can’t be sniffed at. With more and more people communicating through Facebook, and more and more young people ditching email and choosing Facebook for all of their communications needs, it is a powerful and still largely untapped medium.
Retailers can set up standard or customized pages and interact with customers like never before. Facebook promotions have been very effective in building consumer loyalty and driving repeat purchases.
2. Twitter
Twitter offers the most potential for viral promotion for retailers, and is a great way to jump start interest in a product or brand through competitions and promotions.
Being the fastest moving source of info on the planet, Twitter is also an excellent way to get in touch with media, since every reporter known to man seems to use it. That said, Twitter can quickly become all-consuming and turn into a full time job if you let it. Building a following takes blood, sweat, and tears. It’s worth the commitment if you have the resources, and eventually you’ll build your list and start to see the needle move. If you don’t have the resources, focus on Facebook, which doesn’t require constant updates to be fruitful.
3. Foursquare
Though Foursquare has savvy interplay of mobile and brick and mortar, it get the #3 spot, because, simply put, it still hasn’t achieved critical mass. Though the same Foursquare promotion could easily be promoted on Twitter, the geo-location feature actually requires a store visit. Retailers using Foursquare can offer incentives for bouncebacks and repeat purchases and, like Facebook, reward customers for being loyal followers. Last, in a nod to small business, it doesn’t require 24/7 monitoring and maintenance to be effective.
4. LinkedIn
See intro pp.
Given that the basic version of Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare is free, all of them have played in a role in the tremendously democratizing force that social media has become. If resources allow, it’s a good thing to do all three. If they don’t, it’s more than acceptable to pick one or two and get the most out of them. In retail, you can only go wrong if you stay on the social media sidelines.
This is a post in a series ranking the Big 4 social media sites — Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Foursquare — for B2B, retail, and real estate. Read the introduction for background.
Not every social media application is right for B2B marketing. Yes, there are tools that allow you to post the same content to the Big 4, but that ignores the nuances of each site and can make you look spammy and out of context. In the end, picking the proper channels and doing right by them will drive the most value.
Here’s how we rank the the Big 4 for B2B -
1. LinkedIn
LinkedIn has basically taken the posting functionality of Twitter and Facebook and optimized it for business. Also like Facebook, they now allow businesses to set up their own pages and accumulate followers.
So why not just do Facebook? If you’re like me, your LinkedIn contacts are business people who want business information and will have a genuine interest in the information you’re providing. Don’t be shy about asking for followers and posting interesting content that reminds them of who you are and informs them of important milestones, new hires, and client acquisitions.
2. Twitter
Let’s be honest, Twitter is a pain the @ss, especially for Type B’s such as myself. You need to post frequently and do a lot of interacting to build a following and make it work. That said, you’ll find a lot of general and industry Media on Twitter, and if you work the relationships, you’ll be able to slip in your news and other timely content items.
As I’ve said in a previous post about building real relationships behind Twitter, it’s important to press the flesh with your Twitter network in person. Get that Type A go getter in your company a Twitter account and send him/her off to industry conferences to hob-nob and meet the media. You’ll see your posts getting much more traction and respect, and the publicity will follow.
3. Facebook
Imagine logging into your Facebook account to see what your friends are doing and seeing something in your news feed about the latest advances in PVC piping. Construction guys aside, I probably only Like your page because you’re a friend of mine, you suggested it, and I feel obligated to follow it.
Unless your B2B product or services cross into areas of social and hobby, you can feel free to leave Facebook alone. It simply isn’t the right context for B2B communication in most cases.
4. Foursquare
Of the big four, Foursquare is most blatantly geared toward consumers. Unless you’re trying to — okay, I honestly can’t think of a real Foursquare/B2B scenario. Can you?
If you insist on doing all of the Big 4, do yourself a favor and use a service like Hootsuite to manage your accounts. You’ll be able to post simultaneously, which is nice. More importantly, you’ll have the option to NOT push content through certain channels.
In summary, don’t stress yourself out thinking you’re missing something if you don’t do everything. Internet marketing, like traditional marketing, is about making choices, and it’s more important to do one or two things well than everything mediocre. B2B companies will find the most fruit with LinkedIn and Twitter, and should focus on building those channels first.
Okay, let’s settle down and take a deep breath with this Social Media thing. You’re not going to burst into a ball of flames if you don’t do Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, and LinkedIn RIGHT NOW.
Saying you don’t have the time and resources is a legitimate concern. So are questions about how your business is actually going to grow through Social Media, or whether these social media sites have anything to do with your customers.
For one, social media isn’t one-size-fits all. A real estate agent is going to use it much differently than a stock broker or a retailer. Two, like all marketing initiatives, you have to do the strategy groundwork to make sure you’re casting your net where your customers are swimming. Last, you better have some good, creative talent in-house, or be prepared to commit to outsourcing if you’re going to make it work, because it isn’t a one shot deal.
With this in mind, I’m doing 3 posts (maybe 4) that rank the big 4 social media sites for different businesses: B2B, retail, real estate, and a yet to be determined 4th option.
The goal is to express that, at the end of the day, you need to make social media work for you, not the other way around.
The first is the B2B Social Media Rankings Edition.
We’ll do the others soon. We’d tell you when, but we’re a small business here and we have lots of things to do, so keep your pants on and subscribe.
My brother is a professional sailor. Yes, a pro sailor. He gets paid by wealthy boat owners to help race their boats in regattas in St. Martin, Charleston, Italy, and anywhere else in the world where there’s a competition afoot. Right now he’s sailing from Newport, RI to Bermuda on a 3-day overnight sail on a mini-maxi called Bella Mente.
My bro started his professional sailing company a few years back and just started up a WordPress blog integrated into his site to keep people posted on his whereabouts, and also to help raise his profile among local Minnesota yachtsmen (he gets a decent chunk of income from local sailing lessons). His formula is simple and has worked very well so far after only a few months of blog work.
First, he started up a 42 Marine Facebook page. He has a built-in community of people who are naturally interested in what he’s doing, so it was just a matter of establishing a connection on Facebook. Right now he as just under 100 followers and it’s growing fast.
Second, he blogs pretty well. He’s got a bit of a tell-it-like-it-is voice, nothing too flashy. The stories are pretty entertaining on their own and don’t need a lot of flair, and he’s good at letting people draw their own conclusions.
Third, he promotes his blog posts. He’s got Feedburner set up for email updates and he posts a link on his Facebook page whenever a post goes up. Simple but effective. His Google Analytics account shows nice little peaks on the days he posted a link on Facebook.
Time will tell how big this thing will get. He’s starting to get long tail organic traffic from his posts very quickly because using Feedburner tends to get posts indexed in search engines right away. If he continues circumnavigate the globe and report back in his style of voice I’m sure he’ll be just fine.
Old media advertising means picking a communications medium, like TV, a magazine, or a billboard. You have a good estimate of how many eyeballs you’re getting. You also know the demographics, generally, without having to get several online degrees to figure it out. You can measure your ad through special promotions and by watching for sales increases. But you don’t know who saw your ad exactly, how old that person was and where they live, and you can’t filter out the people who aren’t supposed to see your ads. You’re speaking from a soapbox, and hopefully your target market is in the crowd somewhere.
Search ads certainly changed things, with the ability to track impressions and clicks. Facebook, however, takes it another step. Since all of its users are required to enter their age, sex, and other information, they are organizing user data to allow advertisers to only communicate to who they want to communicate. Plus it has many of the same tracking, capping, and reporting tools as Google AdWords (though not nearly as advanced).
So, for a Real Estate agent who wants to use the Facebook advertising platform, and you have a listing for a house priced at $1 million, you can select females over the age of 40 with college educations living within 50 miles of the city where the house is located. This takes the 400+ million Facebook users and distills them down to only the people who fit your target audience, ensuring that your advertising is efficient.
