Entries from Category Facebook

A few weeks back, I received two emails back to back in my inbox. This is a regular occurrence of course, but both of these were promoting two different social analytics tools. One was for Instagram, the other for Pinterest. If you subscribe to news from any of the various social software programs, you’ll discover that they are quick to innovate a new way to track metrics for the latest social network. This is great if you’re already paying for a software subscription, and it’s added free of charge, but what if it’s not?

Measuring Objectives

Before you pull out your company credit card to place an order for the latest social analytics software, take a second to think about what you’re going to measure. Are you going to measure the trend of new “likes” or followers? The total amount of repins that each of your new products gained when placed on a company Pinterest board? Be sure to determine what your objectives are in measuring your social efforts. It often has something to do with the value of social referrals to your website or to the value of your greater social community.

The Value of “Like” on your Website

Do you ever link to your website from your social accounts? If you have some basic website analytics software, such as Google Analytics, Adobe Omniture, or WebTrends, pull it open, and see what sorts of traffic each network has generated for your website. Do you see a big spike in your Facebook-referral traffic after hosting a big fan competition, or a decline from Twitter when you took a vacation and no one bothered to send out a tweet or two? Mark down what dates you saw spikes or dips from your social networks, and any rationale for why you think it may have happened. If you track conversions, or purchases that users make on your site, check to see if they mirror the same spikes and dips that your social traffic experienced.

Social Value from the Network

If you don’t particularly care about traffic to your website from social networks, think about how your company generates revenue from social itself. Is there an app that they use to download coupons, or make purchases right on a particular network?

If you find yourself saying “we just use that social network to build community, not generating revenue”, that notion is completely fine. But then ask yourself: Is it worth spending money on a software for a social tactic that doesn’t usually generate additional money for your company? Are there analytics tools that you can use for free to track community growth? Facebook Insights provides some great baseline metrics, and tools like Crowdbooster can give you weekly emails on how your Twitter follower count is doing.

Digging Deeper into Social Analytics

This past week, I attended an event with the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA) presented by Adam Singer of Google. He showed us that there are even more options than just tracking referrals from social media, you can see some of the conversations that are happening on certain networks in Google Analytics. If you haven’t checked out this option, I highly suggest that you do!

He also mentioned Justin Cutroni’s social dashboard, which I quickly added to almost all of our client accounts in GA. Why? Just check out all the data!

Here, not only you can tell which social networks are getting you the most traffic, but which ones are actually making you money. You can see how it compares in generating new visitors to your website, and finally, how much traffic your site generates from mobile.

If your social efforts are purely based on building community and gaining the largest number of “likes” in your industry, then certainly check out those special analytics tools geared toward particular networks. But if you want to get down to the details and tell your CEO why you should stick with social because it will make you money, then I’d definitely make sure you have Google Analytics properly configured on your site and get started analyzing some results!

Target’s Timeline

Awhile ago, I was browsing through Facebook and I saw a great post from Target. It reads “What’s your first Target memory? We’re reliving our first (almost) 50 years as we start filling in our new Facebook timeline, with more milestones to come.”

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I find this to be an utterly brilliant social move by Target. As you can see there were already 1,000 comments and 50 shares when I first spotted it. People were sharing stories of shopping with their parents, and now shopping with their own children, or even how Target team members helped keep a store of customers safe during a tornado in Ohio. It’s personal, it’s engaging, it’s brilliant.

Not only does this encourage people to share their memories of Target for further consumer engagement, but for many of the top stories, they can pop them up on their timeline and give a deeper perspective to the brand.

Personal Posting

While Target is making the most of their timeline use, brands also have the opportunity to leverage Timeline for their consumers. Here’s an easy example: I purchased a car recently. I want to show my car off to the world, because I’m thrilled about it! I took some quick photos on my camera, and then went to Facebook to upload them into an album, which quickly became littered with likes and comments.

Out of curiosity, I searched to see if there was a “life event” on the Timeline that I could add for purchasing my car. Sure enough there was. It asked for the Make/Model of the car and where I purchased it, and next thing I knew, it attached both a page for the model, and for the dealership I worked with, which I didn’t even think of “liking” before. Thumbs up for both.

The life event asked for a story and for a photo, I added that I “Love my car!” and one of my photos and there was my new glowing life story.

Little does the dealership know this, but I just provided them with a great advertisement geared toward my social network. If any of my friends are considering purchasing a car and they see this good-looking car and that I’m completely happy with it, they might just ask me for more information, or check out the pages to get more information.

Brands: Encourage the Recommendation

While my experience at this dealership was great, and I’ve certainly rated them high on their rating systems, one dealership wasn’t so lucky. Unfortunately for them, the salesperson I worked with provided a link in email correspondence to their “glowing ratings” and in return, I gave them a piece of my mind.

When it comes to a large-scale purchase like a car, buyers will often consider customer service as a deciding factor on where to purchase. It’s crucial that they establish a high reputation for customer service, and customer recommendations can help in that regard.

Wouldn’t it be great to send a new eager buyer home with a card that says (using my own example here) “Welcome to the Hyundai family! Snap a photo and let us see your new Elantra on our Facebook page!” with a QR code linking there? Most dealerships want to help with the taking of pictures and enjoying your excitement, so it wouldn’t be that hard for a salesperson to include that in the final run through of the car. Doing this at the point of sale instead of asking a few weeks after, gets the most excited response and a greater likelihood that the buyer will be enthusiastic about recommending their experience.

The same goes for really any sort of product or service, whether repairing/installing windows, or a hospital visit (minus the pictures, of course). Ask for the review at the end of the visit and encourage them to write about it on your Facebook page or theirs (while tagging you). Your prospective customers will be excited by the stellar reviews of your current customers and more motivated to choose you for their next purchase.

With these tips, not only will you re-engage your current customers, but you might also get some prospective customers to tune in as well. What are your thoughts on these Facebook strategies? We’d love to hear them in the comments!

Is Facebook a viable advertising platform? Are Facebook Ads effective?

As search engine marketers, we find ourselves when talking about any new ad platform asking: will it be effective? Given the popularity and mass adoption of Facebook, it is logical that there are many conversations about the effectiveness of Facebook Ads. Here is how we’ve focused on this conversation.

Two Common Scenarios

When evaluating Facebook ads’ effectiveness, we consider two common scenarios for people or businesses considering Facebook as an advertising platform:

1. I have a Facebook Page and I want more fans.
2. I have a website and I want more traffic.

In regards to #1 the clear answer is: Yes, for driving your desired conversions (fans), Facebook will be the most effective advertising platform.

#2 has a slightly more complex answer. The effectiveness of Facebook ads depends on your target demographic. Facebook is no longer the home of teens, it’s the home of everyone! From teens to men and women in their later 50s, they are on Facebook. You can target on city, education, workplace, language and personal interests! It’s hard to imagine a demographic that couldn’t be effective.

Facebook ads can lead a visitor from one page on the site to your brand or organization’s Facebook page. Or an ad can lead them from a page to an external website. These internal and external ads are both effective and can bring about an effective return on your investment.

Two Questions for Facebook Ads

The greatest question with any advertising campaign is: what is your objective? This will greatly influence the direction your Facebook ad campaigns will take.

• Are you looking to build a community?
• Are you looking to build loyalty?
• Is there another objective in mind?

The next question is: who are you trying to reach?

As we mentioned before, Facebook allows for very specific ad targeting:

• Country
• State
• City
• Education
• Relationship status; dating, engaged, married
• Age
• Gender
• Workplace
• Personal interests: from hobbies to actors to competitors of your company.

Will My Facebook Ads Be Effective?

Once you have these questions truthfully answered and a campaign set up to match it, there’s nothing that should hold your Facebook ads from being effective. If your objectives match your targeting, we believe you can find success in Facebook advertising.

What’s your story in regards to Facebook ads and their effectiveness? Have you seen great results, or are still trying to figure out how to improve your ads? Leave us a comment, we would love to hear what others have to say about their experience with Facebook advertising!

Why should you spend advertise on the world’s most popular website?

Questions to Consider

• What is better, a person who purchases one item of yours once or a person who purchases an item every month?
• Which of those two people is more likely to tell their friends about your product or service?

The choice is obvious and the difference is loyalty. The second individual is loyal to your company and wants more.

• Do you trust your friend’s opinions and take them into account when considering purchases?

The person who recommends your product effectively becomes the best salesperson you could ever hire.

This close social interaction is the answer to why you should advertise on Facebook. A person who joins an active community created by a shared interest has their opinion enforced with every additional fan. That is the band wagon approach mixed in with a social layer. “Look at all these fans! They all love (your product here) just like I do!” These individuals have made a public statement that they have an affinity to your product, service or company. You have encouraged loyalty and repeat purchases and have given your fans ammunition to sell their friends to expand your fan base.

So what are you waiting for? Get moving with Facebook Advertising to help generate loyalty and buzz around your company!

I have heard this enough and I would like to put this rumor to rest.

Facebook has continually stated that it will not charge users for its basic service. It is even stated when you login:

What Facebook Charges For

You can pay for two things (to my knowledge).

1. Facebook Credits

Credits allow a Facebook user to use a virtual currency to pay for things on Facebook. It is usually associated with upgrades in games and a myriad of other uses. More information on Facebook Credits can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/credits/

2. Facebook Advertising

If you want to promote your website, Facebook Page, or something else, there are numerous options you can pursue through Facebook Advertising. If you are interested in Facebook Advertising, please contact Three Deep Marketing for more information. If you are looking for some general information visit: http://www.facebook.com/adsmarketing

Do you have questions about Facebook advertising? We have answers. Contact Us Today.

There has been a lot of chatter on the web recently about how Google better watch out, because Facebook ads are gaining on them.   While it may be fact that Facebook is experiencing a higher percentage of growth than Google (naturally, since Google has already reached critical mass, and Facebook had minimal revenue in 2008), the reports of Facebook being the next “Google Killer” are downright irresponsible.

While I cannot definitively say that no advertisers have had positive experiences with Facebook (Shoemoney’s Facebook Ads article from earlier this year is still the best example of success that I have read to date), I can say that I have had poor experiences thus far with Facebook advertising.  I’m embarrassed by how bad they performed!

As a performance oriented marketer who tends to look at campaigns from a direct response point of view, my results from an August 2009 campaign were absolutely putrid.  Even removing my direct response glasses and putting on a “brand hat” – the results were about as poor as they get.

In fact, I’m so embarrassed by my results that I’m almost ashamed to show them in public… but in the spirit of transparency, they will be shared at the end of this post.

However, I would first prefer to share what I have learned from my recent foray into Facebook ads:

• Be Specific With Your Targeting – Demographic targeting is your friend!  Find your target market and make sure you only advertise to them.

  Continue Reading Facebook Ads Perform Poorly →