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What Facebook’s new acquisition, Instagram, means for your brand

Apr 182012

The online world has been all abuzz with the news of Facebook’s recent $1 billlion acquisition of Instagram with some excited about what this could mean for their marketing, along with the critics who say the move is a desperate one to keep fans on board.

Details are still coming into focus as to how the two platforms will weave together in the future but for the moment Mark Zuckerberg insists that Instagram will be completely independent and will continue to be so.

Nevertheless there are plenty questions about the Instagram/Facebook combo and the new challenges and opportunities that will come up for marketers due to this alliance.

Instagram remains the place to communicate visually with friends via photos, artfully masking suggestions and influence with their users surpassing 30 million and many companies are realising that a picture of what you had for lunch (especially when there is a brand name displayed) can actually be worth the marketing involved. While this is the case, it is a small platform that brands are only just beginning to make use of.

With Facebooks members close to 1 billion, a powerful advertising program and the rollout of Timeline for Brands, Facebook has shown immense support for brands and has established itself as a reputed and imperative platform to make use of in marketing strategy.

By integrating Instagram into a brand’s Facebook communications, the potential is to create a much more visual conversation via rich stories and conversations. This could really revolutionise brand personification by fleshing out previously transparent personalities with no real humanity behind it.

The question really is whether as the branded Instagram content begins to work its way into users feeds, people will notice or mind the instrusion. Paid endorsements are supposed to be unobtrusive but whether this will hold true remains to be seen.

Facebook and instagram will need to maintain independence and their authenticity as separate platforms so as to not push users away. Marketing efforts really do need to have the end user in mind. This doesn’t just go for the way that Facebook and Instagram roll out their paid endorsements but also for the brands that are making use of the platforms.

It is vital that the brands and companies making use of social media marketing remember why their audience is even accessible: the need for entertainment and interaction online.

While this move may prompt many to join Instagram, brands need to continually evaluate their image and whether Instagram is a platform which will enhance their brand reputation or whether the integrity of the platform will be affected by misuse and guerrilla marketing tactics.

While Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook may bear the brunt of anything that may go wrong in the future of Instagram, the real responsibility lies with brands and their focus on user engagement. Used correctly, however, the two platforms could complement each other wonderfully.

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Facebook Check-in Numbers to be redefined

Mar 292012

Facebook has confirmed that over the next few weeks, they will be changing the way it counts check-ins numbers, photo posts and multiple visits over certain periods of time to locations on Facebook.

Whether this will impact overall numbers of check-ins remains to be seen but the change, according to the developers of Facebook on AllFacebook, aims to give a more accurate picture of how people are visiting your business.

If an individual checked into your business multiple times, each check-in was counted toward your page’s total check-in number. The aim is to be able to discount any erroneous check-ins by counting a person with multiple check-ins within a 12 hour period as one unique check-in.

When an individual checks in to your business and tags a number of friends in a photo they upload along with the check-in, the total amount of check-ins will be that individual, plus the number of friends that are tagged in the photo.

The numbers may not change much as the change occurs, or they may plummet slightly, however this will give page owners a more accurate idea of how many people are actually visiting their business on a daily basis.

Owners of brand pages may have to reconfigure the way they measure success on their page metrics but overall, the developers at Facebook feel this will be a positive step towards more accurate measuring of daily visits to businesses.

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Twitter Launches Ads for Small Businesses

Mar 272012

Twitter recently announced that selected small businesses will be able to begin using its self-serve ad platform for promoted tweets and accounts. The select group of companies with initial access to this feature will be American Express merchants and card members.

The credit card company has partnered with Twitter in order to launch the platform and has offered early access to their customers along with $100 credit for advertising for the first 10,000 signup companies.

The first batch of small businesses to have access to the platform will be notified via American Express and access to the platform will be increased to others over the next while.

The Promoted Accounts feature suggest a brand’s Twitter account to users with interests similar to those who are following the brand, while Promoted Tweets use existing tweets that have inspired more engagement than other tweets and promotes the tweet in the search results. A small business will only pay when their account is either followed or someone engages with a promoted tweet.

The self-serve advertising platform which was made available in November to a handful of advertisers remains closed to most businesses.

American Express has been involved in the past with Twitter-based promotions and has shown aggressive interest in pursuing partnerships with other social networks such as Facebook with “Link, Like, Love” and Foursquare loyalty rewards.

Twitter, being a private company, doesn’t disclose advertising revenue on principle but eMarketer estimates that Twitter’s revenue will more than likely total $259.9 million this year alone.

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Pinterest Driving more Traffic than Twitter …

Mar 092012

In a recent study by Shareholic it was established that Pinterest actually drove more traffic to blogs in the month of February than Twitter did. This is an amazing fear as the relatively new social network only has an estimated 11.7 million active users compared to Twitter’s 100 million or so users.

Shareholic’s sharing widgets are used by more than 200,000 online publishers, most of which are independent bloggers who altogether reach about 270 million unique visitors every month.

February saw a little less 50% of all the traffic coming from Google, Facebook generating just over 6%, Yahoo (1.61%), StumbleUpon (1.29%), and Bing (1.21%). Pinterest came in at 1.05% and Twitter only at 0.82%.

In January, Pinterest fell into line just behind Twitter and so it is clear that Pinterest is definitely growing in popularity. The biggest beneficiaries of the growth seen in the new social network have been women’s lifestyle, home décor and cooking magazines amongst others.

Would your brand or company benefit from being on Pinterest? If so, it would serve well to make sure you are on this new social network.

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Brands will get in on the new Facebook Timeline later this Month

Feb 162012

The Facebook Timeline format is going to be made available later this month for brands, according to a report from Facebook.

Facebook is apparently planning on using its February 29 conference for marketers in New York to announce the coming initiative. It will start in beta with only a “handful of brands” says Ad Age.

Facebook first announced Timeline, in September and since then the company has been very hush hush about if and when the format would ever be rolled out for brands. The photo-heavy format for profile pages was rolled out for all users in December.

Since the announcement and rollout of Timeline, both Twitter and Google+ have introduced brand pages. This leaves little choice for Facebook to open up Timeline to brands which gives them some new options for expressing themselves and their corporate brand images on Facebook.

The design of the Facebook Timeline layout allows for a large image at the top of the Page, which could make individual pages more distinctive than the old template that we are all used to. Keep an eye out for how brands start to make use of this interesting layout to market their brands and think of ways that you could optimise your brand page in the future.

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Essential Spreadsheets for Social Media Stats

Feb 102012

There are many social media monitoring tools on the market for analysing social media stats but these can get quite expensive and if you can’t afford these, you may need some other smart tricks to get you through.

Social media marketers are in constant search of free alternatives to the paid versions and I’ve gotten a couple of tips from Mashable on how to get ready-made spreadsheets you can copy and use for social media analytics which are free, customizable and easy to use.

Most of these scripts are public and have been reviewed and approved by Google Spreadsheets. They are available from the Tools + Script Gallery.

1. Twitter Search Results

GetTweets is a Google Spreadsheet script which allows you to export Twitter search results into a spreadsheet.

Spreadsheet details:

Copy the spreadsheet here.
Spreadsheet credit: AutomateAnalytics.com.

2. Facebook Likes and Shares

The FacebookLikes script evaluates Facebook user interaction for a given range of URLs. It displays:

Facebook likes.
Facebook shares.
Facebook comments.
Overall Facebook interactions.

Additionally, the embedded chart lets you compare Facebook interaction for the number of pages provided.

Spreadsheet details:

Copy the spreadsheet here.
Spreadsheet credit: Facebook Likes Counter.

3. Comparison of Facebook Pages

FacebookFans is also a Google macro based on Facebook API. It will fetch the number of fans for any Facebook page ID and visualizes the data with a pie chart. Track your page, as well as your competitors’ Pages using the script, and the numbers update each time you open the spreadsheet.

Spreadsheet details:

Copy the spreadsheet here.
Spreadsheet credit: Facebook Fans Counter.

4. Social Media Reputation

This spreadsheet generates Google search results for the terms you provide, and also fetches Twitter and Facebook counts for each page returned. A search for a brand name will easily show how actively that brand name has been discussed in social media.

Spreadsheet details:

Copy the spreadsheet here.
Spreadsheet credit here.

5. Extract and Archive Your Followers

This is the hardest spreadsheet to set up, and also has the most complex functionality. It allows you to extract your friends and followers and easily search and filter your Twitter contacts.

The script requires your Twitter API key, and provides easy-to-follow set up instructions. Go to Tools + Script Manager and run Test script.

If you have done everything correctly, a Twitter Auth will pop up so that you can authenticate the application. Go to Twitter + Get Followers and you will see the tool importing your following list. If you have large following, you probably won’t be able to import it all.

Spreadsheet details:

Copy the spreadsheet here.
Spreadsheet credit: Export Twitter Followers and Friends.

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How can Pinterest’s design elements make your website stand out?

Feb 082012

Pinterest’s design elements have been popping up everywhere since the startup went mainstream last year. You may not have visited the social bookmarking site but you may recognise the layout in many other websites you may have visited since its start.

The entire concept of Pinterest’s web design is to put web content into block format which users can organise onto pinboards that fill the entire browser screen. Most of each block is filled with a photo, as well as the ability to “like”, “repin”, or comment at the bottom. It makes each block look almost like a mini web page and flattens the information hierarchy normally found on traditional websites.

The social bookmarking website has been gaining popularity, along with its unusual design, and although the company is keeping user numbers to itself, a quick study of the site by Mashable shows that it, in fact, drives more traffic to websites than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined.

While Pinterest didn’t invent the look and feel of this basic design structure, it has moved the layout to the top of the “cool” list. Most designers use the layout plugin called jQuery Masonry when describing the look of the Pinterest site.

This also allows designers to organise information without having to use reverse chronology, which is favoured by most websites, including Facebook and Twitter. The Masonry pluging was launched in February 2009, by designer, David DeSandro, in order to create vertical layouts such as that of Pinterest.

After Pinterest showed that they could use this way of organising information in a structured way without scaring away users, the design really caught on with many companies following suit, wanting their websites to be almost as cool.

Since most internet users read information online in a non-linear way, it almost makes sense to present your information in a non-linear fashion.

What do you think about the Pinterest web design layout and would you want to incorporate this into your company website?

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Facebook brings ads to Mobile

Feb 072012

In keeping with the moving forward of mobile marketing and many companies seeing value in this relatively young advertising medium, users of Facebook apps – on Android, iPad and iPhone – will possibly be seeing adverts as soon as March as Facebook looks to gain additional revenue just before it goes public.

Facebook has been discussing proposals with ad agencies, according to the Financial Times and began running sponsored stories in December of last year. Featured stories will appear in the mobile news feed, similar to Twitter and their promoted tweets, which will be mixed in with posts from friends.

Facebook filed for its Initial Public Offering on Feb 1 of this year and clearly pointed to mobile as a potential revenue source. The lack of mobile revenue could be one of the things that could make or break Facebook as nearly half of Facebook’s 845 million users use Facebook via mobile devices.

Facebook will be holding an event for marketers in New York at the end of February in which they will highlight the new ways in which they will be able to use the social network. We can also expect the Timeline brand pages to be revealed in coming weeks as Facebook rolls out Timeline for all users.

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Is Facebook the right social media tool for your small business?

Feb 062012

Many small business owners have been hesitant to take the plunge and develop their social media presence as besides being time consuming, it also requires determining whether or not a social media network makes sense for the business itself. One needs to look at it realistically so that the business’ social media presence can be built up and developed into a network of consistent readers.

So how does one determine whether a particular network is relevant to your small business?

Let’s take Facebook as an example:

Any small business owner will tell you that they are extremely busy as a sole business owner doesn’t always have the staff available to dedicate their time to marketing activities and most of these activities are slipped in between meetings and actually getting the work done. Essentially, the small business owner has to stop ‘real work’ in order to undertake marketing activities.

1. Is your Audience present?

The first question that needs to be asked is whether your audience is present on Facebook, and since Facebook is one of the most used social media networks, you will probably find that at least a part of your audience is available on Facebook.

2. Do you know how the social media network works?

The next question is whether you understand how the network works, what content works better on the network and what kind of interactions your audience will most appreciate from your business. The best way to gain this understanding is to actually spend some time on the network, such as Facebook, in order to get a good idea of how it works and what type of messages other similar brands are putting out there and what type of response they are getting from their audiences. Join a few well known pages, and even some of the pages of your competitors so that you can get the understanding you need in order to target your audience in the future.

3. What are the benefits of using the social media network for business?

Before spending time on something like social media marketing, one should have a clear idea of the outcomes one can expect and what it will entail in order to put time and effort into a social media network such as Facebook. Some of those outcomes may include building awareness within a certain industry, staying at the forefront of your target market’s minds, being able to communicate in real time and to spark word-of-mouth recommendations via internet marketing.

4. Can you commit to real interactions on the social media network?

Facebook and most social media networks are not simply one way conduits for delivering your marketing messages to your audience. They simply don’t work that way and treating it as such will mean that you will lose half your audience before lunch. You can’t simply post sales pitches and hope to gather an audience. Real interaction is required and if you can’t devote the care and commitment to post content daily – such as updates, pictures and videos – and to ensure that when others post on your wall that it is not spam but relevant to your business, then this may not be a job for you to undertake on your own. One needs to ensure that when a user comments that you do at least check these daily, and respond to them timeously – this doesn’t mean that one has to become a complete slave to the social networking platform, but it does mean that a certain allotted amount of time needs to be set aside on a regular basis. The important thing is consistency and your connections knowing that you are indeed available to them.

The important thing with regards to social media, is establishing a presence on a social network that will make sense for your business or brand. If it is on a network where you simply don’t find your audience, it is a waste of time and can be potentially damaging to your brand instead.

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Is Pinterest the ‘next big thing’ in social media?

Jan 062012

With claims from within the industry that Pinterest will explode in socialmedia in the future, we take a look at this article from Don Resinger from The Digital Home – CNET to see whether these claims are founded. Unfortunately, far too many services with plenty potential endu up falling short.

by Don Reisinger January 5, 2012 6:12 AM PST
Original Article here

I’m always cautious when I hear that a particular service is the “next big thing” in social media.

The industry is littered with the remains of services that seemed to have potential, only to fall short before long. But a well-known serial entrepreneur is willing to wager that Pinterest might just succeed where so many others have failed.

In a blog post yesterday, Elad Gil took a deep look at how Pinterest’s so-called “social curation” fits into a trend that has developed across the social landscape. He points out that around the turn of the century, long-form content via blogs was all the rage, but over time, short-form content has taken hold with services like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. This year and beyond, however, Gil thinks “push button and curation” will reign supreme.

Pinterest, of course, sits at the crossroads of that. The service, which is currently invite-only even though it launched in 2010, lets users take content they care about from around the Web and organize them into “boards.” The company cites examples of people using boards to sort content for their wedding or a recipe book. Think of it as scrapbooking on the Web.

Pinterest isn’t necessarily unique. There are currently several sites across the Web that offer a similar service, including Snip.It and Quora, which launched its “boards” last month.

However, Pinterest so far has been the only company to distinguish itself. Late last month, Experian Hitwise, a company that monitors consumer behavior on the Web, reported that Pinterest had 11 million visits during the week ended December 17, jumping 4,000 percent compared with six months earlier. The massive bump catapulted Pinterest to the 10th spot in Experian’s listing of the most popular social networks, just behind Yelp.

Experian also discovered that Pinterest has found a loyal following in women. In the past three months, women have accounted for 58 percent of its userbase, and nearly 60 percent of those women are between the ages of 25 and 44.

Opinions are mixed over why Pinterest has been able to attract such a large audience. Is it the service’s solid design? Is it the attention it has received from media outlets shocked by its growth? Is it, perhaps, the fact that it recently raised $26 million from venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, giving it bundles of cash to play with? It could be all that. But Gil thinks it might also have something to do with its ease-of-use.

“Pinterest was one of the first sites to take push button content generation (via bookmarklets and ‘re-pinning’) and structure it into sets of curated content called ‘boards,’” he wrote on his blog. “This allowed users to collect content from across the Web, as well as from other users on the site.

“In some sense it took what a site like Tumblr had been doing but transformed blog-like streams into structured, curated collections users could share,” he continued. “Importantly, it was easy for new users to consume these sets of content visually as structured sets, and to share these sets with others.”

It’s hard to argue with the logic. But Pinterest has yet to offer its service publicly. And once it finally moves beyond its invite-only phase, the company will be truly tested. Can it save itself from buckling under the increased pressure placed on it by the deluge of users that might come in? And perhaps more importantly, will the mainstream Web user who typically joins the social game after early adopters pick up their invites, find value in it?

Chances are, we’ll get the answers to those questions later this year.

Pinterest did not immediately respond to CNET’s request for comment.

5 New Year’s Resolutions to market my business

Jan 022012

We have officially entered 2012 and as many of my Facebook friends are posting away what their New Years’ resolutions are, I feel compelled to at least make a list of things I may not achieve. Granted, my list is purely on the business side as a new small business owner trying to get my little company off the ground. So, here are my 2012 New Year’s resolutions:

1) Use email as more than just another communication medium

Email can get a bit overwhelming at times and I tend to check it at least every 15 minutes but I don’t think I am using it nearly enough to market my business. Email marketing can be an integral part of a business’ success so while I use it effectively as a communication medium, I want to be more proactive this year and send out marketing messages to my target market this year – all to legitimate subscribers, of course as I wouldn’t want to spam anybody. Nobody likes a spammer.

2) Make at least one business lead per day

When everything is online and you spend 7-8 straight hours communicating with people all over the world, you may be pushed into the misconception that you are working … when all you are really doing is networking with people who may never become solid business leads. I resolve to make one legitimate business lead a day. Whether that means phoning possible business leads, or being a little pushy when I meet new people about whether they may require my services, so be it. While not everybody likes that person who pushes their business at social engagements, the fact is if you don’t ask, you don’t get an answer. You may just meet a very important business connection at a social gathering.

3) Double My Twitter/Facebook Audience

While some people may think that the number of Twitter/Facebook followers you have doesn’t matter and it’s all about the quality, in fact, I think I may have said that on occasion, social media really is all about 1) networking and 2) getting traffic leads. So, if you communicate with people and you’re trying to get your message spread across your industry, why wouldn’t you want to have the largest audience possible? I have plenty followers who are not necessarily in my home country and so may never develop into legitimate business leads. Perhaps they just like my articles and enjoy hearing what I have to say about social media and implementing it as a marketing method in their marketing mix. But I would like more people in my home country to be aware of my business and even more international people to read my articles. I guess the main thing I am going to have to do in order to accomplish this is just to be consistent with what I have been doing as I can’t very well control how many people follow me on Twitter or Facebook at the end of the day and buying followers isn’t something I would recommend to anybody. But nevertheless, this forces me to be consistent with my article writing etc.

4) Revamp my website

I guess this is par for the course of being a web developer. As you develop more and more sites, you look at other websites and when you look at yours you start to realise that what you did 6 months to a year ago is stale and really does need a revamp. I want something cleaner, with bolder headings and more colour. I can’t very well sell web design when I am not happy with my own website – but as said before, this is probably just because as you go along, you develop bigger and better websites and since you are so busy with other websites, as a one-man-show, you don’t get to put the attention you may want to into your own.

5) Complete my Facebook Timeline profile

I love the look of the new Facebook Timeline but I must admit I find myself so busy with responding to messages, and the general everyday stuff, that I haven’t had the chance to update all my info on Facebook. I haven’t even found that profile header that will really express who I really am yet. But I will make sure I get this done in 2012. Otherwise it looks as though I have just dropped into Facebook one day and that’s just weird.

So, these are my resolutions, and hopefully, by next year, I will have accomplished them all. In reality, I hope to have accomplished at least 2 of these by the end of the first half of the year, but that is me being over-zealous and optimistic as I tend to be when it concerns business. Have a great one, peeps, and I hope all your New Year hopes and dreams for your businesses come to pass!

How to use Social Media to boost employee morale

Dec 192011

Social Media gives companies the ability to promote your business whenever you want to whomever you choose without the necessary middle man. It has opened up countless new avenues in order to reach these people and countless new ways in which to reach them. It can also be used to encourage your employees.

What? You don’t allow the use of social media within your company during company hours? While we understand that this may be a result of misuse of the medium, have you ever thought that you could use social media in order to build up morale, communicate staff appreciation and make your company look good all at the same time? If you employ social media as a positive acknowledgement tool, you will improve staff morale in a low-cost way.

People love to be acknowledged for the things that they do, even things you may consider to be just a part of their job description. When someone goes out of their way to ensure the company runs as it should, take the time out to recognise your employees’ accomplishments and you will shine a positive light on your company as well. How can you do this?

Nominate employees to receive an award and encourage engagement from the rest of the staff in order to influence the judging process.
Boost morale by recognising accomplishments such as studies completed, training courses passed, great sales achieved or awards for great customer service. Include pictures and tag employees so that recognition spreads to friends and family as well.
If you want to keep company information private, try Yammer. It is a password protected site which is Facebook-like but it’s designed specifically for business and could be a great place to recognise employees.
Send a shout-out via Twitter using the @tag so that it shows up in the employees Twitter feed. Create a hashtag for all employee recognition tweets so that they can be easily grouped together.

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1. Twitter Search Results

2. Facebook Likes and Shares

3. Comparison of Facebook Pages

4. Social Media Reputation

5. Extract and Archive Your Followers

Subscribe to our mailing list

Subscribe to our mailing list

Subscribe to our mailing list

1. Is your Audience present?

2. Do you know how the social media network works?

3. What are the benefits of using the social media network for business?

4. Can you commit to real interactions on the social media network?

Subscribe to our mailing list

1) Use email as more than just another communication medium

2) Make at least one business lead per day

3) Double My Twitter/Facebook Audience

4) Revamp my website

5) Complete my Facebook Timeline profile