'Net Features : facbeook

Full Speed Ahead with SoLoMo Platform Velocity

Amberly Dressler — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 17:55:00 GMT

Scalability, automation and speed to market are three things Velocity platform by SIM Partners is hanging its hat on.

Platforms like Velocity, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution works with large, national brands to fill the increasing need of maximizing social, local search and mobile and the location level, play tribute to the growing focus on SoLoMo (social, local and mobile).

SIM Partners Director of Client Strategy Tara Thomas says what is happening with smartphones and technology as a whole, and what giants like Facebook and Google are doing (through Facebook pages and Google+ Local pages, respectively), is driving the need for localization.

The change should alert business owners to put a premium on localization, which includes launching geo-location and hyperlocal strategies, registering for services like Yelp and Foursquare and more.

The numbers back the idea.

73% of all online activity is related to local content (Google)
82% of local searchers follow up with a phone call or show up on your doorstep (TMP/Comscore)
66% of Americans use local search to find local businesses (Comscore)

As important as the stats, are the search implications. Businesses can no longer appear at the top of local search pages without a local presence. Velocity works to optimize everything for local search by creating standard and mobile business profile Web pages for a company’s locations and optimizing them to improve ranking and increase local traffic for all major search engines on smartphones, tablets and computers.

Using the Velocity platform, SIM Partners recently completed a full rollout (10,000 locations) for a leading national insurance brand thanks to a successful pilot program (of 250 locations). They were able to connect higher sales and engagement at the local level.

This isn’t an isolated case study. Velocity boasts a 95 percent renewal rate, based on the product’s performance. Part of the success is the malleability.

“If I am a large brand and need to create consistency, and every one of my locations needs to be on board and increase sales at their stores, using a platform like ours is successful because it’s automated and scalable,” says Thomas. “I can roll it out to 5 or 10,000 with the same system, using the same platform.”

Big or small, businesses needs to be hyperfocused about hyperlocal.

Timeline Extends the Life of Facebook Posts

Michael Garrity — Tue, 22 May 2012 04:45:00 GMT

Facebook’s Timeline update has been available for brands long enough now that we’re finally able to gain some useful data about the effect they have on marketing efforts, and the initial information seems pretty positive.

Most notably is a recent report from social media analytics firm Sotrender, which says that Facebook posts now live longer on Timeline that that did before the format change. Before, half of the comments made on a brand’s Facebook post were made within the first hour of it being put up, but since the Timeline switch, that average has increased to 2.5 hours.

Unfortunately, the study was fairly limited. The London-based company only looked at 130 U.K.-based brands and about 5,000 Facebook posts, giving them a usable but ultimately limited sample.

Still, this is the first such study since the big move to Timeline, and it does present some very interesting information that could interest companies on the social network.

For instance, the report shows a 13-percent increase in the average number of users that interact with a post. Plus, about 80 percent of comments are now made within 8.5 hours of a posting, a two-hour extension over the previous average.

But the more things change, the more they stay the same. Timeline hasn’t contributed to a significant hike in a brand’s overall number of fans, nor did it improve the average number of “likes,” posts and comments per user or cross-page engagement.

F-Commerce Growing at Impressive Rate

Michael Garrity — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 19:45:00 GMT

Many Web professionals are wondering if Facebook commerce is a legitimate and sustainable industry.

According to Payvment (which is, coincidentally, a Facebook commerce platform provider), f-commerce is showing some impressive growth as of late. This data was released in the company's F-Commerce Facts survey that looked at over 100,000 sellers on Facebook, many of which are small businesses with under 500 fans.

The survey says that most of these companies are rapidly adopting and favoring Facebook Ads, and they usually like the service so much that they plan on using it again.

In addition, smaller sellers tend to use a wide variety of outside marketing channels such as Twitter, Google ads and email to drive traffic to their Facebook storefronts. Thirty-eight percent of respondents advertise their Facebook stores on their primary websites, while 34 percent use Twitter, and 30 percent use email marketing campaigns.

Beyond general Facebook marketing, Facebook Ads are by far the top promotional tool for these brands, as 39 percent of the respondents are using or have used the service before. Facebook Ads also show high favorability marks amongst those sellers who have used them.

The survey also showed that most respondents (61 percent) said that the ability to promote their products using social media was the biggest benefit of f-commerce, while 60 percent said they like that customers don't have to leave Facebook to complete a transaction. Brands utilizing f-commerce solutions appear to be convinced of their benefits, and over one-third of the respondents use Facebook as their sole sales channel.

On the more negative side of things, the biggest problem the respondents came up with was their small fanbase.

Feeding Facebook More Data

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 15:30:00 GMT

Facebook this week rolled out an interesting enhancement to its API which will enable developers to extend the same capabilities of a status update – including adding friends and indicating location – directly from any Facebook-enabled app.

Location and friends can now be added as properties to any photo, video, link, or status.

What this enables developers to do is essentially feed Facebook more data. Instead of a user indicating where they are eating, they are now able to indicate where they are eating and with whom.

In short, app developers can help their users share more detail on their timelines. Facebook is essentially giving developers the same functions it already provides users to when they are creating status updates.

Facebook has also added some controls for managing tags. New app users will be able to select the audience they would like to share their app activity with in a permissions dialog box and choose to feature, hide or route the stories for tag review.

Facebook Ad Budgets Grow Faster than Paid Search

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 03:00:00 GMT

Digital marketing software provider Kenshoo has unveiled some interesting growth metrics based on analysis of more than 100 billion ads delivered on Facebook through its Kenshoo Social platform.

Kenshoo customers spent 109 percent more on Facebook in Q4 of 2011 than they did in the whole of Q3. While much of that can be attributed to the holiday, what is interesting about the increase is that it compared very favorably to search channels (Google, Bing, and Yahoo) that, in aggregate, saw a paid search ad budget growth of just 27 percent globally quarter-over-quarter.

“Brands using Kenshoo Social to manage Facebook ads saw impressive response rates leading to large increases in advertising spend that dwarfed paid search budget growth in the 4th quarter," says Aaron Goldman, chief marketing officer of Kenshoo. "We see these trends continuing in 2012 and beyond as the Facebook ad ecosystem expands and marketers get more savvy using tools like Kenshoo Social to drive tangible results.”

The Kenshoo analysis also revealed that ad impressions grew by 47 percent in Q4 vs. Q3 2011. Consumers are clicking more as Facebook ads are gaining acceptance too, with clicks growing by 105 percent in Q4 vs. Q3 2011.

Be Like Mark: Facebook IPO Takeaways

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:00:00 GMT

Just in case you've been living under a rock, Facebook announced its epic $100 billion IPO this week.

From old media to new media to social media, and within every digital business in between, everyone's talking about it. Whether you're concerned, confused or could simply care less, there are indeed some valuable lessons that entrepreneurs can take away from this week's news.

Here are the ones to which you should pay the most attention:

Be Prepared to Evolve: There are few instances where the original idea came through (intact) from the point of inception. While Facebook might have had a desire to fulfill some form of unspoken social need, it has ultimately evolved into a real company with real responsibilities -- and soon real investors demanding a return on their own real investment. Staying true to an ideal is important, but evolving into something better, over time, is where all digital entrepreneurs should focus their energies.

Use Technology to Bring Value: In today's fast-moving business world, the most innovative, disruptive and valuable technologies are what separate companies from one another. Facebook has in part opened itself up to the possibilities of new technologies it can bring to users; look no further than the Skype partnership for proof. If you're not investing in technology -- not buying it, not building it or even partnering with the leading providers -- you will quickly find that you are going to be left behind.

Relationships Are the Most Valuable Asset: Facebook has provided the digital world with an opportunity to create, develop and maintain social relationships. Look at the most successful people in the business world and you will find that their capacity to find and foster positive, meaningful relationships is one of their best characteristics. It’s not my best quality and it may not be yours, but setting forth towards this realization can yield opportunities that you may not have realized.

Stay Focused, Keep Shipping: The world is full of glass half-empty types: those who want nothing more than to see you fail (or see themselves succeed). You will have both successes and failures in your online life, but having the ability to maintain consistency and stay focused in your work -- constantly moving the digital ship forward -- is the best chance you have to guarantee success.

Be Creative & Surprise People: The most surprising bit of information (at least to me) from the news of Facebook’s IPO this week was about graffiti artist/mural painter David Choe who took Facebook stock instead of cash for painting the walls of the social network’s first headquarters. Shares owned by Choe are expected to be worth upward of $200 million. Surprised? You should be. To be truly great, you need to tap into your creativity, be generous and surprise people.

Friday 15 for Web Pros

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 20:00:00 GMT

Friday is the perfect opportunity to take a moment and look back at the most important and interesting business and technology developments of the week – those that will influence you in the future and likely are impacting some aspect of your Web enterprise right now. This week, let’s look at 15 key developments in the world of Web business.

- The Open Commerce Ecosystem of Ebay Arrives
Ebay has been the talk of the Web this week with its X.commerce effort, which aims to connect developers with merchants to create a complete commerce operating system. A few of the integrations announced at the Innovate Developer Conference include those with Facebook (integrating Open Graph functionality through Magento and GSI), Adobe (integrating its digital marketing platform), Kenshoo (which automates digital marketing campaigns) and online bookkeeping tool Outright.

- The Value of Real-Time Search Data
URL shortener bit.ly played its trump card this week – an immense set of real-time data. The company released a reputation monitoring service for enterprise customers based on its search technology which weighs results by cross-platform social engagement. Bit.ly joins several other vendors in the real-time search and analytics space including Topsy and Google.

- Google+ Closes in on Twitter
The Google+ network/platform has surpassed the 40 million user mark, inching ever closer to the 100 million active users of Twitter but still quite a distance from Facebook's 800 million users. Revenue was up 33 percent year-over-year, and quarter revenues were just short of $10 billion for Google, but questions remain about its ability to foster social communities.

- Can Anyone Save Yahoo? Comscore Search Data
Comscore reported that Google’s share of the search market increased a half percentage at the expense of Yahoo – which fell to its lowest search volume levels ever. Perhaps an Alibaba acquisition isn’t such a bad idea, after all. While Yahoo! has a strong foothold in the display advertising market, the network might have seen better days.

- Let’s Take it Offline
Mobile payments company Square, which offers apps that allow merchants to process and manage credit card transaction with a swiping device that plugs in to the headset/microphone jack, announced that it is now processing 2$ billion in payments volume per year. Square also announced that it is dropping several requirements for new Swype merchants.

- Jumping on the KickStarter Bandwagon
Crowdfunding service Kickstarter has seen 1 million people sign up and offer financial support for projects listed on its site. Kickstarter also indicated that of those who have backed projects 89% of them have supported at least one idea that was successful.

- Search Ad Spend Rebounds
SEM and software provider Covario released its global spend search ad spend analysis which indicated that PPC spending was up 26 percent from the previous quarter and 24 percent versus the same period last year.

- A Local Vibe from MapQuest
MapQuest unveiled Vibe this week, a local search/mapping tool which identifies neighborhood-level hot spots. MapQuest Vibe profiles more than 50,000 neighborhoods, 27,000 cities and 50,000 hotspots in the U.S., reaching 98 percent of the population.

- Ad Boosters from GreyStripe
Mobile advertising network GreyStripe released several new industry-focused and social ad units this week dubbed Ad Boosters. The customizable “boosters” allows advertisers to direct users to take specific actions. A retail booster, for example, could include a “Find Store” button, a coupon or buy now button. This is somewhat similar to the way that Google has introduced the +1 button on its display ads.

- Foursquare Gets Real with Radar Notifications
It seems as if the hottest new trend on the Web is in real-time data retrieval, and now location-based social media service Foursquare is hopping on the bandwagon. Earlier this week they announced Radar, a new real-time feature that will sends notifications to users when they're close to businesses that fit into their "to-do lists", or any other Foursquare lists to which they've subscribed. This tool will be especially useful for driving relevant customers to local businesses when they're in a city or area that they're not familiar with.

-Location-based Marketing with Hootsuite
HootSuite acquired location-based marketing tool Geotoko this week. This geo-aggregation tool collects audience information from check-in tools like Facebook Places and Foursquare. The integration of this tool with HootSuite will especially help multiple location brick and mortar businesses better understand audiences, based on data such as location, sentiment and demographic. With this data, businesses will be able to reach out to consumers with specific offers, promotions and campaign adjustments.

- Google Commerce Goes Mobile
Just two years after Google Commerce was launched, this week Google announced Google Commerce Search for mobile. According to Google, the launch of Google Commerce Search for mobile came about after consistently finding an increasing number of shopping queries from mobile phones. Timberland is one of the first Google Commerce for Search customers, and claims that since its mobile-optimized website launched, mobile sales have grown 20 times faster than desktop sales.

- LinkedIn Acquires IndexTank

Linked acquired hosted search service IndexTank this week, which will integrate its technology with LinkedIn’s search. IndexTank’s real-time search technology already powers many searches, such as Reddit.com, Twitvid and Spoke. Currently, LinkedIn claims that it will release key components of IndexTank as open source software, which will allow others to run the IndexTank API.

- Microsoft and Skype Seal the Deal
Microsoft finally made it official with video/chat software application provider Skype after being in talks to buy the company since May. The software giant finally closed the deal and purchased Skype for $8.5 billion. For now, Skype will operate as an independent division, with their offices and employees remaining and over time it will be integrated into Microsoft products like Xbox Live and Windows Live.

- Facebook Friendly
Facebook, the reigning King of social media, recently acquireded the startup friend.ly, the company behind a popular social question-and-answer service featured on the social network. Friend.ly will still exist and operate as a standalone service on the site, while the company’s team will begin focusing on new projects at Facebook.

DIY Social Promotions with Strutta

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 14:30:00 GMT

Brand marketers looking to run their own online promotions on Facebook and the social web might want to take a good look at Strutta.

The company’s latest releases aims to simplify the process of setting up and launching content and sweepstake campaigns. Social media marketers can now launch branded promotions on Facebook pages (in a page tab or as a Canvas app), within an existing website through an iframe, on a standalone microsite and with mobile accessibility and full HTML5 video support.

One of the big issues with social media promotions has also been the lack of focus around measuring return on investment. Strutta has marketers covered on that front with an analytics dashboard which supports goal setting and the ability to map user interaction within promotions.

“Strutta has established itself as an industry leader by offering the richest set of tools available in a do-it-yourself platform,” said Ben Pickering, Strutta's CEO. “We want anyone to have the ability to quickly and successfully launch their online promotion anywhere they choose, so we’ve done the heavy lifting on the technical side and made our platform more intuitive than ever. Our clients can instead focus on what’s most important to them – launching promotions that drive participation, create brand loyalty and ultimately, build a list of qualified prospects or sell a product.”

Strutta doesn’t come cheap. It’s advanced Promotion Builder stats at $299 for small businesses with its Pro package stating at $1999.

Screenshot of the Strutta promotion builder below:

Facebook Launches Subscribe Button

Michael Garrity — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 15:00:00 GMT

While Facebook continues to be the undisputed leader in social media, it also seems to be very interested in modifying itself to look like other prominent social networking sites. That seems to be the case with the rollout of the new Subscribe Button, which has to remind one a bit of Twitter.

After unveiling new privacy features last month that are reminiscent of Google+ Circles, Facebook posted on their blog today about the new subscribe feature which is said to make it easier for you to alter your News Feed to block specific content, specify which friends you want to see more content from (and which you want less of) and hear directly from people you're "interested in but don't know personally," artists or politicians.

They corrected this by adding the Subscribe Button, which will shortly start popping up on profiles.

According to Facebook, the button allows you to:

- Choose what you see from people in your News Feed
The button allows you to decide just how much you want to see in your Feed from certain friends. You can select between all of their updates, most of their updates (which they define as "the amount you'd normally see") or only important updates, such as a move or new job. You can also choose the types of updates; for instance, you can choose to only see photos from one friend, block out posts about games from another and see absolutely nothing from a third friend (which begs the question, "Why are you even friends with them to begin with?").

- Hear from people, even if you're not friends
This is where things get Twitter-y. It's a simple premise, if you see a Subscribe Button on the profile of someone you're interested in, you can, you know, subscribe to them by clicking it, which allows you to see their public updates in your News Feed. It's just as customizable as your friends, as well, allowing you to choose how much and what kind of content you see from them.

- And let people hear from you, even if you're not friends
You also have the option of adding a Subscribe Button to your own profile, which will allow people who subscribe to you to see all of the posts in their News Feed that you make "Public" with the new privacy features. This is an opt-in only feature. After allowing subscribers, you get to decide who can and cannot comment, as well as the specific notifications that you'll get. There will be a tab on your profile where you can see who is subscribing to you.

Needless to say, it should be interesting to see how these changes affect the Facebook landscape in the months to come.

Facebook Announces Changes

Allison Howen — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 02:00:00 GMT

Facebook has announced new updates to its privacy features that will give users more control over the way things are shared.

Some of the new changes are similar to Google Plus’ Circles, making it possible for users to decide exactly who can view shared items like posts, photos, tags and other content.

These changes moved some of the privacy controls inline from the settings page, so now when posts are created, users will also decide who will be able to view specific posts with a dropdown menu that is located below the post. The dropdown menu gives the options for posts to be shared with everyone, friends of friends, friends or the ability to customize who will see the post.

Improvements have also been made with tagged photos. Instead of logging into Facebook and being surprised by random tagged photos that have appeared on your wall, users will now have the ability to approve tagged photos before they are displayed.

Additional changes include the ability for users to view their profile as another person with a “View Profile As…” button, as well as better options regarding location.

Previously locations could only be added through a smart phone, but now location can be added to anything— including previous posts. Soon the “places” option will be removed from smart phones.

Lastly, we noticed this change a few weeks ago— a recommendation option on business pages. This option provides a little box that is visible on the right-hand side of a business page, which allows someone to leave a recommendation.

By making a recommendation, consumers are sharing their comments with their friends and that business’s fans. The feature kind of brings back the “share” feature that allowed someone to share a business with their friends.

Take advantage of this feature by visiting your favorite business pages, and feel free to drop by our page and recommend us.

Publicize Available For Facebook Pages

Allison Howen — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 13:41:00 GMT

WordPress has announced that its Publicize feature now includes Facebook Pages.

Publicize makes sharing WordPress posts easier by automatically sharing your posts to websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo!, Message Connect and LinkedIn.

Now, Publicize has the ability to post on Facebook Pages, which is a good communication tool for businesses. However, currently Publicize can not post to both a Facebook page and wall— only one or the other.

Messages that are sent out through Publicize can be customized by clicking the edit link and typing in the custom message box.

Using Publicize helps increase traffic to your site because your posts are also automatically updated into a variety of search engines, making it easier for someone to find your WordPress site.

To learn more about Publicize and its new feature, visit WordPress.com.

Shopping and Facebook - Hit the Payvment

Pete Prestipino — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 19:00:00 GMT

Payvment, an ecommerce platform for Facebook, today launched a shopping mall on the social network with over one million searchable products.

Features of the shopping mall include:

- a directory to make locating stores or brands easy
- the ability for user to “like” what they want
- personalized recommendations using the social graph
- a dashboard for likes and what friends like too

“The Shopping Mall on Facebook is where online shopping gets truly social,” said Christian Taylor, founder and chief executive officer of Payvment. “We are confident that the Shopping Mall on Facebook will be the place people go to discover new brands, great deals, and the products they and their friends want.”

Facebook Beats Google

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:51:00 GMT

Hitwise is reporting that Facebook surpassed Google in the U.S. to become the most visited website last week.

This is big and very important news for Web professionals (and timely as our next issue is tentatively titled (SEO in a Social Media world) who are increasingly turning to social networks for consumer traffic and brand traction.

The market share of visits to Facebook.com increased 185% last week as compared to the same week in 2009, while visits to Google.com increased 9% during the same time frame. Together Facebook.com and Google.com accounted for 14% of all US Internet visits last week.

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