'Net Features : facebook

8 Ways to Create & Portray Brand Authenticity

Administrator — Tue, 21 May 2013 13:20:00 GMT

:: Eric Taylor, Qwaya ::

A positive brand reputation is something that will serve your business well, especially in the realm of social media. Not every brand is going to become a household name with millions of followers, but well-respected companies stand a better chance of influencing who buys from them (and why) and to what frequency.

Developing a brand’s reputation isn’t something that’s going to happen overnight, but there are many different and useful tips to help you improve your own company’s reputation as an authentic, high-value brand.

8 Ways to Create and Portray Brand Authenticity

1: Figure out Your Purpose and Vision and Match Values

Before you begin your social marketing quest to brand your business, you have to start by taking self-inventory. What are your values, and how do they relate to what you want your brand to stand for? Since a brand should be a personal thing, it should be built on your values – on the values of your business. Your brand should be unwavering in this regard, and unafraid to hold that line.

2: Build a Network Using Organic Elements

Paid advertising is OK and, in most cases, actually necessary if you’re using Facebook, but organic reach has its place too. This is especially true when you’re dealing with brand authenticity. Allowing a network of social sites to develop and share organically—at least in part—really pushes a cleaner, more authentic image.

Editor’s Note: Check out “7 Ways to Build Authority on Google+” and “4 Creative Ways to Use Tumblr for Business” as both of these social networks can affect both a brand’s reputation and search standings.

3: Cater to the Right Market

Authenticity in branding is sometimes as easy as catering to the right audience. For instance, if you’re catering to a broader market than you should be in an attempt to develop mass followers, then your advertising and branding methods are going to stand out as a little all over the place, subsequently giving you a fake, inorganic appearance.

Editor’s Note: Today’s brand marketing isn’t about reaching the largest audience, it’s about personalizing the experience for one person to build loyalty, as a result of brand authenticity and personal relevance. Watch your inboxes and mailboxes for our July issue, which covers this hot topic in depth.

4: Learn From Your Competition

Learning about your competitors is always a fantastic way to glean important information about your branding efforts. The more you understand about how others are appearing authentic, the easier it’s going to be for you to tweak things and to come across in a positive fashion. Sign up for your competition’s newsletters, Like them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter and Pinterest.

5: Ask For Feedback Regularly

If you want to know how the public views your brand, then make an effort to ask. It could be as simple as releasing a status update that asks the question, “What do you think about us?” Asking for feedback is par for the course, but make sure to follow up with each responder, so they know their feedback is heard and valued.

Editor’s Note: Discover the top digital survey solutions.

6: Honesty and Transparency as a Policy

One of the premier ways to ensure your brand is seen as authentic is to be very open about what’s going on behind the scenes and also with what’s coming down the pike. Make it a policy to be open and transparent, not only in your social media branding (e.g. posts, responses, who your brand follows, etc.) but in all of your online marketing. You will benefit greatly from this.

7: Don’t Lower Your Standards

There are many times when you will be tempted to roll around on the floor with the heathens on sites like Facebook, Twitter and Yelp, or even in your own comment sections. But if you care to notice, the biggest, most well-respected brands out there that engage with fans on social media only do so when they’re approached with positive intent. In other words, the flame-happy trolls don’t receive any feedback. And this is how it should be. Don’t lower your standards by playing around in the mud. Companies should attempt to take brand “distractors” offline by asking them to email someone within the business, so they can solve the issue at hand.

8: Incorporate an Actual Personality

No brand can remain all business, all the time and actually appear to be personable, transparent and authentic. What are you actually doing for the real people following your brand if you’re not allowing your brand to have its own personality? Your brand is a living, breathing thing that needs to have its own voice and personality. And while that voice should directly coincide with your values and your message, it’s still important to inject personality into it. This could include posting images of a company picnic or publishing notes on how a product launch really went down (e.g. long nights and lots of pizza).

Coming across as an authentic brand will open many doors that were seemingly unavailable. Believe it or not, brand authenticity and brand size have a direct correlation. In other words, those brands viewed as authentic are those brands that become household names and big players. Fortunately, social media and the Web, in general, can even the playing field. But before you go tinkering around with the recipe in order to boost your brand’s reach, look at it from an organic, authentic standpoint.

Author's bio:

Eric Taylor is a social media enthusiast, freelance writer and business developer for a Facebook ad campaign tool - Qwaya. The company also provides extensive information, tools and up-to-date news about social media marketing strategies latest trends, most specifically in Facebook.

Bing’s Social Sidebar Gets Interactive

Allison Howen — Mon, 13 May 2013 17:47:00 GMT

Microsoft is making its search engine even more social, by allowing its users to comment and like stuff on Facebook directly from Bing.

The search engine’s social sidebar, which was launched last year, now allows users to view comments on relevant Facebook posts within the sidebar, as well as allows users to add their own comments or like posts without leaving Bing. This enables users to see what their Facebook connections might know about the topic that they are searching for and engage with them without leaving the search page.

Bing’s blog provides this example:

“Let’s say I’m searching for Beyoncé tickets because I know she is coming to town soon. I can see that my friend has recently posted that she has an extra ticket to the show. Now without leaving the Bing results page, I comment directly to her post letting her know that I’d love to join her for the concert. I’ve gone from simply browsing to attending a concert in just a few easy steps – all thanks to Bing.”

In order to leverage this interactive feature, users must connect their Facebook account with Bing, which can be done in the top right corner of the search engine.

Five Mother’s Day Social Strategies

Allison Howen — Wed, 08 May 2013 20:00:00 GMT

Sunday is Mother’s Day, which not only means that you still have time to pick up gifts for the most important ladies in your life, but also that brands have put their Mother’s Day marketing campaigns into full force across all social networks.

In fact, every holiday, event and change of season provides marketers with a timely promotional angle. And naturally, all brands take a different approach in their holiday-related campaigns. For example, a retailer typically promotes products as gift ideas, while content publishers create relevant content or contests to increase engagement. Yet, the best and most complete strategies combine multiple techniques in order to cater to every fan and followers’ preferences.

Website Magazine located five stellar Mother's Day social examples to offer inspiration for this holiday and future ones, too. Remember, Father’s Day is just around the corner…

Goal: Get People Talking

Brand: Seventh Generation

Social Network: Facebook

Strategy: Seventh Generation took to Facebook to ask a feel-good question and remind us how important moms are in our lives. The company’s use of an image to assist in asking the question “What is the best advice your mom has ever given you?” certainly grabs fans’ attention better than a text-based post and most likely leads to better engagement rates. Additionally, these fan interactions help Seventh Generation foster better relationships with its customers, as well as helps to increase brand awareness.

Goal: Generate Conversions

Brand: Sephora

Social Network: Pinterest

Strategy: Retailers and Pinterest go together like peanut butter and jelly, as this social network has proven to drive valuable traffic to e-commerce websites. Beauty company Sephora is taking advantage of this influential social network by creating an entire board devoted to Mother’s Day gift ideas. Not only do these featured items take visitors directly to product pages on Sephora's website when clicked on, but many of the images also include the hashtag, #mothersday, in order to increase the product's and Sephora's visibility on the pin boarding social network.

Goal: Boost Follower Numbers

Brand: ExtraTV

Social Network: Twitter

Strategy: Giveaways and contests are always a good tactic for increasing your social following, so why not combine these promotions with a timely event? Not only does this strategy from ExtraTV help the brand obtain more followers, but since the company asks for retweets, it also increases their visibility. Plus, this strategy will ultimately leave the two winning followers very happy.

We're giving away 2 @bfflco gift bags for #MothersDay! Follow @extratv & RT this message for your chance to win! bit.ly/MDWin
— ExtraTV (@extratv) May 7, 2013

Goal: Increase Brand Awareness

Brand: Google

Social Network: Google+

Strategy: Another feel-good strategy comes from Google, who has chosen to use Sunday’s holiday as a way to shamelessly promote its very own social network. That said, this video is very relatable (almost a tear-jerker), and truly shows how technology can be used to connect with the most important people in your life.

Goal: Improve Visibility and Engagement

Brand: Beats By Dre

Social Network: Twitter

Strategy: Advertisements are always a good way to increase your brand’s visibility, but Beats By Dre takes this strategy a step further by using an interactive and timely Promoted Tweet to reach new audience members. In fact, once someone clicks on the link to make a #Pillconfession (Pill is the name of one the company’s wireless speakers), they are directed to the company’s website where they can explore products and interact with the #Pillconfession campaign by posting a Mother’s Day confession either on Twitter or Facebook. Additionally, visitors can view the confessions of other consumers at the bottom of the webpage, which features an interactive collage of tweets and posts.

Got a #pillconfession? Make yours on beats.is/PillConfessTW. Apologies to moms everywhere! twitter.com/beatsbydre/sta…
— Beats By Dre (@beatsbydre) May 2, 2013

Predicting Facebook Post Popularity

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 19:05:00 GMT

The role that social citations play in the search marketing landscape is increasing dramatically. And don't think for a moment that smart software solution developers are not fully aware of that fact.

Adobe, for example, recently announced new predictive capabilities for its social media optimization platform Adobe Social (part of the Adobe Digital Marketing Suite).

What makes the development so interesting is that Adobe uses historical data — in aggregate and at the customer-specific level — to predict engagement levels (as well as sentiment) around a specific type of Facebook post. The platform can recommend keywords, content types and even timing that could lead to a better response (deeper engagement et al).

Adobe Social users can see the estimated range for the amount of Likes, comments, and shares a post will receive, as well as identify other metrics that matter to them (which Adobe will then track and predict in the future). Before posts are published, the service will notify users if post elements exist that could be improved — for example, perhaps there is a better time to schedule a post.

Rumor has it that Adobe will quickly expand beyond Facebook (and that's good news as, apparently, Google+ is gaining ground on Facebook which is (also apparently) losing millions of users.

Facebook Dominates the Social Login Scene

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 02:50:00 GMT

Social login is one of those technologies or tactics that have been a truly meaningful development for Internet businesses.

By enabling users to log in to adigital property with the credentials they use from popular services such as Google or Facebook, (or LinkedIn, Twitter or Yahoo) it is possible to remove - or at least reduce - a rather significant barrier to the conversion process - getting users to turn over at least some of their personal information. For this reason, it's important to stay on top of any data available about usage patterns.

Janrain, a provider of social login features, has released information for the first quarter of 2013 and the results are quite interesting. The data shows that Facebook currently leads as the most popular identify provider for social login. Facebook did lose some ground to Google for the second straight quarter though. Facebook however has remained the most popular choice for nine (yes, nine) consecutive quarters which is impressive by any measure. If Facebook usage is falling as many suspect though, there could just be an end to the social network's rein.

Janrain goes into detail about the login trends for specific industries - from music and entertainment to consumer brands and retail sites.

Set Goals in Facebook's Ad Manager

Allison Howen — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 15:35:00 GMT

Monitoring your advertising success on Facebook just got easier; because the world’s largest social network has made some updates to its Ad Manager.

The updates allow marketers to set a goal for their ads, such as getting more page likes, obtaining better post or app engagement, acquiring more app installs or increasing event responses. Once the advertising goal is set, the Ads Manager campaign summary will display metrics related to the goal, such as “Page Likes,” more prominently. Moreover, the campaign summary calculates the cost per action, so that marketers can better evaluate the performance of their ads compared to the intended advertising goals.

Facebook has also made it easier for marketers to calculate the return on investment for an ad campaign. Marketers who are running ads that drive people to a website and use conversion tracking will automatically see their conversions reported more significantly in Ads Manager, along with the calculated cost per conversion for each ad. Furthermore, if the marketer sets a value to each conversion in their tracking pixel, Facebook will calculate the total “Conversion Value” of all conversions for a specific ad.

According to a blog post from the social network, the new updates to Ad Manager are currently being rolled out globally, and should be available to all advertisers in the coming weeks.

SEO's Integrate Facebook’s Open Graph Markup

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 19:15:00 GMT

Search engine optimization SaaS provider RIO SEO is going really local, unveiling an upgrade that enables the integration of Facebook’s Open Graph Markup into “hyper-local” website landing pages. That’s a potentially valuable feature, particularly for businesses with multiple locations.

RIO SEO users can tag (and thereby optimize) local landing page information (e.g., name, phone and address [NPA]; map data; description content; and links to store promotions), and then connect the data with Facebook Places pages. At the same time, Schema.org micro data markup (which RIO SEO has supported for some time) is automatically included with relevant, local business data and content snippets, which can play a significant role in local SEO and organic search rankings according to the company.

"When it comes to search, social and content marketing, we have the first scalable SEO platform and content management system right out of the gate to offer local search integration with Facebook Open Graph Markup,” said Bill Connard, vice president of local search solutions at Rio SEO. “This is a real game-changer for enterprise brand marketers who need to support hundreds -- even thousands -- of individual store-fronts, franchisees, distributors, and/or dealers with local SEO and social media marketing."

Integrating Facebook’s Open Graph Markup is one feature in Rio SEO’s local solutions – there’s actually much more worthy of note. The platform also allows usesr to integrate new campaigns and content into their local landing pages, but also access real-time analytics which provides visualizations of metrics related to consumer traffic and click activity on a business’s local website – from click-to-call initiatives, driving direction requests and coupon downloads/redemptions.

2013: Social SEO Required

Administrator — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 13:47:00 GMT

By Clayburn Griffin, Organic Search Director at Catalyst

Good SEOs can no longer ignore social. It may have been possible last year, while search engines were still experimenting with the incorporation of social signals into their algorithms, but in 2013, Social SEO is required.

The Web is an evolving system. The old system of using backlinks to determine authority and relevance by the search engines has become outdated. This was the system pioneered by Google, and while links are still important, search engines are realizing that social media has changed the very nature of the Internet.

Now people online engage with content and websites in a variety of ways that all tie back to their identity. Identity is the key to Social SEO. Search engines are giving people their own authority and relevance, just as they would a website, and the signals that a user gives to a piece of content pass the user’s authority and relevance to it. These signals tell search engines that a user, a specific user with certain interests and proficiencies, approves of pieces of content. These signals range from simple votes (likes, +1’s) to shares (tweets, posts) and even commenting. Search engines incorporate these social signals into their ranking algorithms.

Social SEO is about optimizing for these social signals in order to boost search engine rankings. To get you going in the right direction with your Social SEO initiatives, here are a few tips that will help to ensure your Social SEO strategy is successful.

Optimize Your Site for Engagement

You drive traffic to your website from several channels, but without engagement from these visitors, you’re missing the opportunity to enhance your authority. You can increase engagement by making it easy for them by including proper social sharing buttons. Don’t go with one of those catchall widgets that clutter your website and look tacky. Use the buttons that matter most, namely: Facebook Like, Twitter Tweet and Google +1.

These buttons allow easy sharing and should be placed within or around the content that they’re meant to share. Don’t put these buttons in your header. People expect share buttons to be associated with the content they’re positioned around on a Web page. If you have a Like button in your header, then it may seem to be for your brand’s page or your homepage rather than the specific content being shared. And a single page that lists many pieces of content should include each piece’s associated share buttons in an intuitive way.

Facebook Like:

• Consider whether you should use Like or Recommend. Should you include Send?

• Set the proper Open Graph tags on each page so that the posts to Facebook contain the appropriate information. Always include a thumbnail image (e.g., the og:image tag to designate the specific image on the page).

Twitter Tweet:

• Set the tweet text. Use an engaging message that will describe the link and help get click-through from impressions.

• Use relevant hashtags. You can set the hashtag attribute to pre-populate the tweet with a hashtag. If your content is relevant to a popular hashtag, include it to help every tweet get more exposure and add more relevancy to the link being tweeted.

• Identify yourself as the author (via). After the tweet, users are suggested to follow the Twitter handle. So, help them connect with you when they share your content.

• To make a secondary suggestion, fill out the Related attribute. This account will be suggested alongside the author recommendation. Commenting is also important to engagement. Make it easy for users to comment on your content without the need to log in. If you include a login feature as well, provide multiple options. Disqus is a particularly good commenting system and is a social network of its own in a sense.

Use Google+

Don’t neglect Google+. While the activity numbers may not be as impressive as Facebook’s, it has a far greater impact on search results. Whether people actively use Google+ or not, many are performing searches while logged into their Google account (and in many cases this is also their Google+ account). Organic traffic from the (not provided) keyword has been increasing substantially recently, and this traffic is from people signed into Google when performing a search.

So, even if they aren’t posting to Google+, their search results will be affected and their social connections will have a big influence on those results. That means the people who are using Google+ regularly have considerable power to shift rankings.

Make sure you’re on Google+ connecting with people and sharing your content. Gain additional exposure for your brand by contributing in relevant Google+ Communities, as well.

Empower Your Employees

Having a social media policy that encourages employees to be active in social media can help create many brand evangelists on the Web for you. In addition, key members of your organization may be in a good position to lend major credibility and authority to your Social SEO campaign.

Provide a list of your social media profiles so that employees are able to find them easily. On occasion send out a company email to promote new content on your website and ask employees to share it via their social media accounts.

Read More

For a more in-depth analysis of Social SEO, you can read Catalyst’s newly published ebook “Social SEO Strategies: Mastering the Art of Social SEO.” The publication explains the nuts and bolts of Social SEO, as well as provides a roadmap for campaign set-up, strategy development, execution tactics, tools, automation and performance metrics. The complimentary eBook (PDF format) is available on the Catalyst website at:

By Clayburn Griffin

Clayburn Griffin is an Organic Search Director at Catalyst, a pioneer in strategic digital marketing services for Fortune 1000 brands. Catalyst’s services include: SEO, paid search marketing, social SEO, content strategy, digital asset optimization, e-retail optimization, and more.

How to Disappear From Facebook

Amberly Dressler — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 20:00:00 GMT

Diversity is key when it comes to driving traffic to your website, but social media, in particular Facebook, is in the driver’s seat for many brands.

Facebook can assist in multiple digital efforts: engagement, search, advertising and brand awareness, in general. This is why many companies assign their most valuable resources (time and money) to this social network, but Facebook reserves the right to reject or remove Pages for any reason. And they do – to not only the chagrin of Page managers, but also to the detriment of profits and reputations.

Here are real-world examples of how to disappear from Facebook.

Offer Lottery Winnings, Offend the Masses

New Zealand’s gourmet burger joint, Velvet Burger, likes to push the digital envelope. Among its Facebook acceptable posts, such as promoting its vegetarian burger options, supporting its local rugby team and sharing company-produced memes, were a couple posts that got the trendy brand in hot water. So much so that one tactic led to its Page being deleted (see image) and the other heeded an official company apology.

Let’s look at where Velvet Burger went wrong. In the case of its promotion to share lottery winnings (if the company won) with anyone who shared the post, the Page violated multiple stipulations in Facebook’s Promotions terms, including:

1. Promotions on Facebook must be administered within Apps on Facebook.com, either on a Canvas Page or a Page App.

2. Promotions on Facebook must include: a complete release of Facebook by each entrant or participant; acknowledgement that the promotion is no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook; and disclosure that the participant is providing information to [disclose recipient(s) of information] and not to Facebook.

3. You must not use Facebook features or functionality as a promotion’s registration or entry mechanism. For example, the act of liking a Page or checking in to a Place cannot automatically register or enter a promotion participant.

(Note: For an example of how to run a compliant Facebook “Like” contest, check out BioSilk Haircare’s current promotion.)

After this debacle, it appears that Velvet Burger was able to get its nearly 10,000 fans back on board (today it has 12,796 Likes), but it may have taken nearly two months to sort out. The brand regularly posts daily, sometimes even twice a day, and there is a notable brand absence between March 29, 2012 and May 18, 2012 (with no posts whatsoever). Additionally, its official Page has a born date of 2011, which most likely means the company regained all of its previous standings.

(Editor’s Note: Velvet Burger was contacted via Facebook for this article, but seeing that it is headquartered in New Zealand, which is 18 hours ahead of Website Magazine’s central time zone, a representative did not get back to us in time.)

As for the aforementioned company apology, Velvet Burger managed to apparently stay out of Facebook’s radar with a controversial ad generated through a Page post, but offend consumers in the process. This is because the ad made light of the infamous domestic violence case between Chris Brown and Rhianna, as it stated “beatings by chris brown” with the post, “come down and ‘smash a burger.’” As seen in the previously linked articles, the company pulled the ad and replaced it with an apology. Velvet Burger’s Facebook administrator, which one article on the situation claims to be a college student, clearly thought he or she was being clever, but Facebook’s Advertising Guidelines state that ads must not offend users. Although defining offensive is overly subjective, Facebook continues that “ads may not be shocking, sensational or disrespectful, or portray excessive violence.” It’s important to note that Page post content are considered Ads and commercial content by Facebook and fall under its Advertising rules.

Velvet Burger, in this editor’s mind, absolutely did the best thing for its brand when it apologized for the ad on its Page, rather than deleting it and not referring to it. In fact, that is what Intel instructs its employees to do.

Raise Money for Charities – The “Wrong” Way

By its very name, Hell Pizza is a bit unorthodox, and the brand certainly plays up its namesake with its marketing. But that’s not the reason why the U.K. pizza chain was deleted (and ultimately re-established) by Facebook, in 2012. Several reports, tell us that Hell Pizza sponsored a charity, The Little Lotus Project, and pledged $1 for every Like the Page received.

“Very soon after that the page was taken down,” wrote TheMoshHouse Director, Jon Emile Randles. “To this day we still don’t know how we offended; was it by promoting ‘Likes’ to a page? Or because we were raising money for a charity directly on Facebook? Or because Facebook’s spiders picked up on keywords and they pulled the trigger first to ask questions later?”

By Randles’s report, the company filled out multiple forms, but after weeks of no action by Facebook, it was meeting someone who worked for Facebook Australia at a barbecue that got the company’s page turned back on.

Brands without Facebook connections, should be wary of any “Like us and we’ll do ___” promotions if they are not administered within Apps on Facebook.com, on a Canvas Page or a Page App. Another reason might have been that Hell Pizza’s promotion did not set clear rules. For example, when BioSilk and CHI representatives appeared on Celebrity Apprentice this year, the winning team’s project manager would benefit from a $1 donation for each new fan who Liked these Pages between March 24-March 31 at 9 p.m. EST. There was also a maximum set of $50,000. It’s still really unclear as to the reason for Hell Pizza’s ban, but learn from its agency’s mistake and assign multiple people within your enterprise to track Facebook’s T&Cs. And, always add, “This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook.”

Make Enemies with Your Competitors

Facebook provides two different ways to report Pages to its staff (see image), but either mistaken or malicious complaints can get a company removed from the network, which could have been the case for this blogger whose Page was deleted in 2011.

“Although I absolutely love what happens on our FB page, what's the point when even one of the most spectacular communities on the Web can be ‘removed’ on a whim, on the say-so of one competitor?” the blog stated in 2011.

Additionally, a quick search on Quora, turns up the following question, “How can I report my competitors to Facebook if they violate FB’s promotion guidelines?” People suggest reporting the page to Facebook continually and asking friends to mark the Page as spam.

The moral of the digital story is to follow the rules and color in between the lines. The most white-hat companies can make mistakes, but the Facebook Pages Terms are available – in black and white – for an enterprise to study.

Chirpify Brings In-Stream Commerce to Facebook

Michael Garrity — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 21:00:00 GMT

For in-stream commerce platform provider Chirpify, it’s time to leave the nest and venture out into the great, big world of social media. That’s right, it’s finally bringing its service to Facebook, so now users can buy products on the world’s largest social network with just one comment.

Until now, Chirpify was only available on Twitter and Instagram, but by inserting its social commerce product into the Facebook news feed, it has brought its capabilities to an average of more than 618 million daily active users. Now, businesses, non-profits and consumers can buy, sell, donate or raise funds from within their news feeds without ever having to leave Facebook.

This could be beneficial, of course, to some of the nearly 80 percent of American businesses that have a presence on the social network, especially if they have an active and engaged collection of “fans” on the website.

To use Chirpify on Facebook, a customer simply has to create a listing in the Chirpify dashboard and include various important details, such as item, dollar amount, shipping time and price, as well as indicating whether the product is digital or physical. Once that’s done, they simply need to click on the “Facebook” button to turn the listing live. From there, the post will show up (and work) in both consumer and brand page news feeds.

Consumers will then buy, donate or enter a giveaway on a posted listing by commenting with either “buy,” “donate” or “gimme,” respectively. From there, Chirpify takes over and makes a payment happen automatically, before sending the consumer a secure download or receipt via email. Chirpify customers can manage all transactions and data from their Chirpify dashboards.

Facebook Graph Search Secrets Revealed

Michael Garrity — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 19:00:00 GMT

Late last week, the Facebook team wrote a blog post that let users “under the hood” to show them how Graph Search goes about indexing and ranking search query results on the social network.

Knowingly or not, what Facebook really did was reveal the secrets of social media optimization. Since "knowing" how things work is half the digital battle, let's dig into the details to accelerate your future Facebook (and more specifically Graph Search) success.

Graph Search and You
Of all of the information released in the blog post (and there is a lot), perhaps the most important and useful of it all is that Facebook is not only going to use Graph Search to find data, but also to build upon it and include new features that will quantify important elements of a search query to provide the most relevant information based on factors unique to a particular query. This includes the distance between a searcher and a place, how close a searcher is from user results in terms of friend connections and the amount of overlap a query may have with an entity name, among others. In other words, naming things right and having many friends are both great ways to improve your Facebook page’s performance when it comes to graph search results.

If you care about social media optimization at all, use this information as a digital blueprint for a successful Facebook presence in Graph Search results.

In the future, this could mean that an entity (person, place, etc.) will have several different scores assigned to it, and Graph Search can select the top results based on those score. So, for instance, there could be three different scores for a “nearby” search that account for overall popularity, social bias and distance, thus allowing for greater diversity and more relevance in search results that are, ultimately, more useful for those searching, as well as those being searched for.

Let's Get Technical
It appears that Facebook uses a blending of data-driven techniques and “intuition” to rank the best results for a query by coming up with an idea for a ranking change (based on information from both ranking engineers and user feedback), implementing it, testing it and then launching it to a small fraction of users before measuring the impact it has on ranking changes. And it all starts with Unicorn.

Unicorn is an index framework and in-memory database that lets users (Facebook, in this case) create various vertical databases to house specific information, and then use a query language to retrieve that information later. However, before Facebook could begin to utilize Unicorn for Graph Search, the company had to add to its search ranking capabilities by adding things like query rewrites, forward indexing, A/B testing and extended retrieval operations with weak “and” and strong “or” recognition, in addition a number of other changes.

The Graph Search Lifecycle
All of these modifications serve Graph Search at different points throughout a query’s lifecycle, which largely takes place in two distinct phases: the query suggestion phase and the search phase. In the query suggestion phase, the query that a user types into the search box is parsed based on grammar by a Natural Language Processing (NLP) module, which then identifies the query for potential entities, before sending them along to Unicorn to conduct a search for them.

This is perhaps the most important step in the whole process, as it defines what type of entity the searcher may be looking for, thus signaling where Unicorn should look for the information, as Facebook altered the index framework to keep different entity types in separate verticals. In other words, it tells Unicorn what kind of results to present. For example, if a user types in “people who live in Sri,” the query will be sent with a strong bias toward cities and places, meaning location-based results will be more likely to appear because of the particular grammar qualifications of the query.

The search phase begins after a user had made a selection from Graph Search’s suggestions. Again, all of this new information is sent back to Unicorn via the “Top Aggregator,” which takes in raw query and user metadata information and then represents it at the end as the blended and rescored search results. This is where Graph Search is able to narrow down the original query to provide only relevant results unique to a user’s search. In addition, Graph Search is able to rewrite queries into a social context to bias the results socially, as every user is indexed with his or her friends.

Pinfluencer Gets a New Name and Social E-Commerce Product

Michael Garrity — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 17:15:00 GMT

Pinfluencer literally made a name for itself by providing marketing and return-on-investment (ROI) analytics to brand’s using the Pinterest social network. However, as the company begins to move away from only using information from Pinterest and Facebook to incorporating image-based sites like Twitter, Tumblr and Polyvore into its platform, it felt like maybe a name-change was in order.

From now on, Pinfluencer will be known as Piqora, a marketing suite that will include analytics, promotions, content management and even social e-commerce.

“We have changed our name to Piqora, because it is an elegant blend of piquing one’s curiosity and inquiry about products,” explained the company’s CEO, Sharad Verma. “The new name also implies pictures and the IQ lends itself to deep analysis. This encompasses the essence of what we do.”

As mentioned, the new moniker isn’t the only big news to come from Piqora; the company is also launching a new social e-commerce product for brands on Pinterest and Facebook known as Gallery, a tablet-optimized and automated visual feed of a company’s current stock and top trending products on social media. Not only will this establish a social commerce experience for consumers, but (more importantly), it helps marketers turn their social traffic into conversions.

Since Pinterest is such a visual discovery experience that promotes browsing, pinning and purchases, it seemed like a natural choice to the folks at Piqora that they should find a way to turn these users into customers. Naturally, the best way to do that is by offering visually compelling product options on channels like Pinterest and Facebook. The Gallery landing pages for Pinterest-driven traffic promote on-site product browsing, pinning and purchases.

“Our new Gallery product gives brands a way to nurture their discovery traffic from social networks and tablet users,” said Verma, adding that it can also “showcase what is most popular and offer customers a rich, boutique-type browsing experience.”

In addition, Piqora will also monitor the social “pinning” activity on Facebook and Pinterst and examine search queries, traffic and purchase data from Google Analytics, Omniture and Coremetrics.

Hilton Focuses on Quality, Locality in Quest for 1 Million Likes

Amberly Dressler — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 17:45:00 GMT

Increasing global engagement of qualified fans in target demographics was the goal behind Hilton Hotel & Resorts' strategic campaign to achieve 1 million likes on Facebook. Hilton reached its goal this month and became the first hotel brand to do so.

Through its strategy for Facebook promotion, Hilton targeted its key demographics.

"By engaging qualified fans through wide-reaching targeting of users who like travel-related interests, we were able to reach an audience who already expressed an interest in hospitality," said John Forrest Ales, Senior Director, Global Brand Public Relations, Hilton Hotels & Resorts. "Not only did we seek out these qualified fans, we were able to also focus our efforts on target countries and regions where Hilton has a strong brand recognition and presence. By reaching these qualified fans, we are in a strong position to grow loyalty and create relationships that provide value to the individual Facebook users and give us unique insight into the expectations of our guests and how we can best meet their needs."

Additionally, Hilton reached qualified fans in target countries through translation of content into local languages and ensuring culture and regional accuracy.

"Being a global brand with properties in 80 countries gives us great advantages," said Ales. "Our global page has become a valuable channel for conversations about hotels, regions, openings, news and promotions, and showcases our position as a global hospitality leader. With every activity, we operate with a global mind and a local perspective. On Facebook, this translates to connecting with a global audience while also sharing local content that resonates with different regions around the world. We accomplish this in a variety of ways including: posting during hours when Facebook users in a specific geographic area will be most likely to engage to using local language and thinking strategically about feeder markets and travel patterns. Our properties do a tremendous job of sharing information with us in local languages and alerting us to cultural nuances, seasonal activities and other items that are authentic to their locations."

Earlier this year, Hilton also launched Mexico and U.K. specific pages through the Facebook global pages structure.

"This helps us connect more directly with travelers in these priority markets for us," said Ales. "Region-specific pages enable us to further tailor our content to ensure it is targeted directly to these users. We localize select posts by geo-targeting certain regions or fans depending on the type of news that we are posting, and share news in Spanish and Portuguese for the Mexico page. These pages provide great opportunities for us to show both our relevance in the region and the exciting things happening in destinations most visited by travelers originating from those markets."

From Facebook Comments to E-Commerce Transactions with Soldsie

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 18:20:00 GMT

Social commerce has been dragging its virtual feet.

Sure, American Express and Twitter certainly have super high aspirations in this regard, but all those F-commerce solutions so highly touted a few years ago just aren't capturing the attention of Internet retailers like they used to (or maybe should).

The reason could be obvious - that social network users aren't in a buying frame of mind when they spend time there. Or it could be something else - like that existing solutions just don't make it easy enough for consumers to actually purchase on the network from the retail brands they follow. That seems to be the opportunity recognized by Soldsie, a startup launched last year that could be one to watch in the future for retailers.

Soldsie is rather unique in that it is a platform and application that lets shoppers buy something directly from a brand's Facebook page by simply typing in the word "sold" into the comments section. Once they do that, Soldsie then sends an email invoice of their order and they can checkout. Glam Grab Accessory Auction's Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/glamgrab) is using Soldsie now. In a March 3rd update, it looks like the company generated two "sold" responses from its 20,000-plus following on a post which garned over 350 likes and 12 shares - not bad, not bad at all.

The Soldsie service is free for the first $700 in transactions; but merchants will need to pay a three percent transaction fee after that. Soldsie apparently just received a cool $1 million in seed funding from institutional investors including 500 Startups, e.ventures, and FundersClub, so at least the venture capitalists see the value.

But as an Internet retailer, is Soldsie something you'd consider?

Facebook's News Feed Gets Personal

Michael Garrity — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 19:45:00 GMT

For the first time since 2006, more or less, Facebook has finally made some massive changes to its news feed, giving it a new look and enhanced functionality to act more like a “personalized newspaper.”

Perhaps the biggest change to come from Facebook’s facelift, or at least the most noticeable, is a clear image-heavy focus. Now, news “stories” are going to be much more visual, which is in line with the type of content that social media users tend to favor sharing and engaging with. Images will be larger and more heavily emphasized, taking up almost half of all news feed stories. Bigger photos will also be accentuated with a cleaner, easier-to-navigate design.

Although images are getting all of the attention, the more useful upgrade to the news feed is that users now have access to an even greater number of feeds with specific types of content; they will also be given more control over how those feeds are displayed. For instance, a user can subscribe a to new type of news feed (such as All Friends, Close Friends, Photos, Games, Music, etc.) that will only show posts from certain individuals or that feature a certain kind of content. Plus, these news feeds will (finally) feature an option to view posts chronologically.

And last, but not least, the news feeds are going to be compatible with mobile devices; in fact, they were built with mobile users top-of-mind. Many will notice that it looks quite similar to Facebook’s mobile applications, as it features a side navigation bar and a lot more white space. The new news feeds will help provide a much more consistent user experience across multiple platforms and devices.

Of course, many of you are probably wondering what effect these changes will have on your business, especially as it relates to promoted posts or sponsored stories. Well, the fact is we just don’t know, yet (this was all just announced yesterday, after all), but Chris Marentis, founder and CEO of Surefire Social, thinks that there are two important things that business owners on the Web should remember.

The first is that all of these social media technologies, including Facebook, are still young and “will continue to change and evolve over time.” But that being said, he still thinks that they can provide a great opportunity right now for your brand to reach out to and engage with your target audience in a way that was heretofore impossible for most companies.

In addition to that, he said, “Whatever changes Facebook makes are in an effort to be more advertiser-friendly without disturbing their relationship with the users. They want to maintain the integrity of the user experience. Also, the changes that Facebook has made recently, particularly with the introduction of Graph Search, prove that the company is serious about advertising, as well as search and discovery for businesses on the platform. As a business owner, you should want to be on top of and taking advantage of these changes.”