Posts Tagged ‘Facebook’
Does Your Website Make It Easy To Share?
Facebook has surpassed 800MM users. Google+ achieved 25MM users in one month and continues to grow at an exponential rate. Justin Timberlake is trying to revive MySpace. Pinterest is rapidly gaining traction as the place to share pictures of things you like.
Why, then, do so few websites have the tools to help people share more easily?
In today’s digital social realm, making it difficult for a user to share can put your business at a disadvantage.
If a customer likes a pair of shoes but wants to share the pair with her friends before she buys, she is going to post it on Facebook or Pinterest. If you make it easy for her to do this, she’ll share it directly from your site and then all of her friends will go to your site to learn about that pair of shoes. Voila: instant exposure.
Sites that make sharing easy:
They easily call out where you can share and are optimized to work with Pinterest’s browser tool as well as Facebook.
There is significant benefit to making your site sharing-friendly, whether your customer wants to share information or a potential favorite shirt. Believe it or not, it’s easier than you might think.
There are multiple widgets available to make your content shareable, including:
Your audience might not be looking for your business on Facebook or Twitter, but it’s still smart business to let them share your products and services via their own social media pages.
Do You Know How Much A Like Is Worth?
In this age of social media everything, companies are scrambling to find ways to measure and quantify their social media activity.
Likes, Followers, Shares and ReTweets have given way to a cottage industry of measurement tools, but, in lieu of traditional ROI, do any of these metrics, like Klout Scores and Peer Indexes, provide a key indicator for success?
I’m of the mind that they don’t. While they measure activity, they don’t translate this information into sales or at the very least learning.
Creating engagement through social channels is important. Here are a few ways to move your friends and followers into a more results oriented relationship:
- Incent people to opt-in for email communication. Doing so allows you track how they heard about you, and then you can actively market and test offers.
- Use microsites and unique URL promotions on social channels to measure interest of your fan base.
- Use coupon codes (or actual coupons if a CPG company) that are specific to a social channel to track activity to sales.
By knowing if people are coming to your site or store from social channels you can begin to measure the value of a Facebook Fan and the return on your marketing efforts. This will help you determine if it is worth growing your fan base or followers.
Social media can play an important role in your marketing communications plans, and just like any media, you need to put the tools in place to determine what its worth to your company.
Why You Might Want To Consider Having An Active Facebook Page
There is significant debate over whether creating and managing a Facebook fan page is worth the time and investment.
A recent study conducted by Syncapse and Hotspex suggests it is. In their June 2010 review of 20 consumer brands, ranging from Nokia to Secret to McDonalds, they found:
- The average Facebook fan spent $71.84 more than the non-fan on a given brand
- They are 27.7% more likely to continually use the product
- They are 40% more likely to recommend the product
- Affinity for the brand is 2.5 times that of the non-fan
Furthermore, Syncapse and Hotspex positions the average fan value at $136.38 versus a non-fan, using a formula that incorporates actual spend, loyalty, recommendation, earned media value and acquisition,
It’s no surprise that people who “like” a brand on Facebook have a greater affinity for a brand; Syncapse and Hotspex has now assigned a dollar value to it. The whitepaper can be downloaded from Syncapse.
If your audience is on Facebook, it’s time to reevaluate how you can interact with them.
What is your Facebook page worth?
Companies are constantly asking themselves if they should have a Facebook presence and, if so, what is it worth?
To help answer that question Vitrue has introduced their Social Page Evaluator that takes into account the health and potential value of your Facebook presence. It also provides tips on how to improve your value.
While this is not a tool I would bet my business on, it is fun and can give you bragging rights versus your competition.
How much is your page worth?
The United States of Facebook
Interesting statistics of Facebook users versus the United States population.
By the Numbers: Facebook vs The United States [INFOGRAPHIC]
Posted using ShareThis
Are You Treating All Your Social Media Channels The Same?
Social media marketing is getting easier every day, especially with great tools like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck that simultaneously spread your message across all your social channels.
A recent study by ad network Chitika suggests that broadcasting the same message across the various social networks may not be the most effective way to engage your customers.
The study noted that the type of information consumed on four popular social networks – MySpace, Digg, Facebook and Twitter – varied by network.
Twitter users were significantly more interested in news, while MySpace users had a penchant for gaming and entertainment. Digg users had the greatest interest in news, celebrity & entertainment, and gaming, while Facebook users were interested in news and community.
Just like your audience varies on different social channels, the information they desire is different as well. So if you are treating all the channels the same way, you may be missing the opportunity to truly connect.
Social media is about creating a forum to communicate with your audience, listening to them, and providing them with information they want to receive. Doing so creates interest, trust and ultimately evangelists.
By engaging your audience with relevant messaging, you can learn what they what they want from your company, what you are doing well and where you can make improvements.
Passive social media gives you the ability to listen to your audience and understand their wants and needs. Listening can help your company become more efficient, more innovative and more customer-focused. And when that happens, both your company and your customers win.
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Want to learn how companies like Zappo’s, P&G, Burt’s Bees and others are improving their business through social media? Attend IIR’s Social Media & Community 2.0 Strategies conference. To learn more visit http://bit.ly/d7mUWG and use code XM2205SMB to save 15%.
Let's Make Sure This Goes Viral
Have you ever uttered the words “this is going to go viral” or know someone who has? Are you amazed at how a video of a kitten playing the piano can reach 3 million people, but only 15 people view the corporate video you posted on YouTube – and 12 of those people are employees or relatives?
Why some things go viral can’t always be explained; however, in the book “The Viral Loop“, Adam Penenberg does a nice job discussing how businesses can create success by knowing what a customer wants and creating an environment that encourages people to share.
Penenberg gives real world examples like Twitter, Facebook and Ning as well as Tupperware – one of the earliest examples of viral marketing.
“The trick is they created something people really want, so much so that their customers happily spread their product for them through their own social network of friends, family, colleagues, and peers.”
The key to success is designing your product or service the right way.
As you start looking towards 2010, take a look at this book to see how you can apply some of its principles to your business.
The Power Of Being Passive In Social Media
To me, marketing through social media falls into two camps: Active and Passive.
Active is when a company disseminates information through channels like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogs.
Passive is about spending time listening to what consumers are saying about your company, your products, your competitors and your industry via social media.
In their efforts toward active social media marketing, companies post press releases on Facebook, put commercials on YouTube and talk about how great their service is on their company blog.
The greatest challenge, however, is making sure you have a large enough audience to warrant implementing a social media marketing plan. Spending hours on your company’s Facebook page to market to 75 “fans” is not a good use of your time.
Creating a strong passive social media strategy, on the other hand, can provide you endless insight into your audience and help you develop a more strategic active strategy.
Tools like Tweefind, Technorati, BlogSearch, plus searching YouTube and Facebook, can help you find out what is being said about your company in social media.
Passive strategy is also monitoring your competition. Techrigy and Vitrue can provide you a picture of what your competition is doing in social media.
This type of social media monitoring will bring you closer to the consumer. You see trends being created, identify problem areas and monitor consumer reaction to product changes.
This information allows you to improve your products and will drive your active strategy when, for example, you respond to consumers to help educate them on why you may do certain things.
Passive social media marketing in action:
A client of mine manufactured clay poker chips, so we monitored blogs, forums, etc. and found out people liked the chips, but didn’t like the powdery residue on the chips. The powder was there to protect the chips during shipping and went away after playing with the chips a few times. Upon our recommendation, they began including a note in the poker chip case explaining the residue and those comments went away.
If your company wants to develop a social media strategy, start with a passive strategy first. Figure out what is being said and who’s saying it. Once you have that knowledge your active strategy will be more compelling and successful.
The next hot thing in marketing
In the latest issue of Fortune magazine, prominent people talked about the best advice they ever received. Lauren Zalaznick, President, Women & Lifestyle Entertainment Networks, NBC Universal, stated the best advice she ever received was to listen.
Great advice – probably the best for anyone in marketing. And with today’s social media tools, it is now easier than ever.
Twitter: Peter Shankman (twitter.com/skydiver) tweeted about the great service, but poor wi-fi, at a hotel he was staying at. Someone at that hotel was monitoring Twitter and immediately had the problem resolved.
Facebook: Totino’s Pizza has 47 fan groups on Facebook where people talk about their favorite pizza, best toppings to add to a pizza and products they don’t like. Think about how much the Totino’s product team could learn about their evangelists without paying a dime for formal research.
Rating Sites like Yelp, Kudzu, City Search: Ratings sites allow people to post what they like and don’t like about your company. If you aren’t getting five-star ratings, do you know why? Looking at your customer reviews will let you know what you are doing well and where you need improvement.
Blogs & YouTube: People are passionate. And now they have the tools to express their passion through words and video. What are bloggers writing about your company? Have people posted videos about your service? Remember the YouTube video where a Comcast service tech fell asleep on the couch while waiting on the phone for Comcast technical support?
Every day I am asked how to use social media for marketing. My response? Listen to your audience.
Marketing Checklist
We get so caught up in the day-to-day crises of our jobs we often forget the communications basics.
Use this checklist at the beginning of each week to keep tabs on your company and your competition.
Your Company
- Check all the links on your website to make sure they are still live
- Search your company on Google, Yahoo, etc
- Search your company on blogs through technorati or blogsearch
- Update Google Alerts
- If you are using paid search like AdWords, test different terms. Test ad content.
- Monitor web traffic
- Update your blog
- Determine what to post to Twitter this week
- Update your Facebook page
Your Competitors
- Check your competitor’s websites
- Check your competitor’s web traffic on Compete.com.
- Search your competitor’s on Google, Yahoo, etc
- Search your competitor’s on blogs through technorati or blogsearch
Starting the week off following this checklist gets this out of your way and, more important, gives you time to work on anything you might discover.
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