Google and Bing now have relationships with Twitter!

Search Engine Impact

Indexing Twitter with Google

Would you be more likely to become a fan of something that your friends and family are fans of? Of course! Facebook knows this and they’re leveraging it. Today, a new feature is available to marketers that will allow targeted ads to display who in your network is a fan of the brand.

If you have a fan page and have struggled with growing your fan numbers, this might be the fix you’ve been waiting for. You already know that you could only target those who opted to become a fan of your brand, but now you can connect to others outside of your fan base through your fan networks. Let’s say that I am fan of Pepsi. If Pepsi wants to run an ad that connects with the Pepsi Fan Page, they could easily target me as an existing fan, but now, they’ll be able to reach out to my entire network of friends who will also see that I am a fan of Pepsi. The idea is the expand marketers reach, but also to allow brands to associate with individuals in hopes of bringing in new fans. Facebook has always been careful to keep networking at the center of its operation, and this type of approach will ensure that brands aren’t able to maliciously infiltrate the network. It’s believed that this new tool will allow fan pages to not only create larger numbers, but will allow them to create more meaningful conversations and connections with users are most likely to become valued customers.

For the official information published by Facebook, Click Here

What’s for dinner this Thanksgiving? A big pile of social media, that’s what!

This week NextBee Media released the findings from its annual holiday media survey and should we be surprised that social media spending is increasing? No, probably not, but what may surprise you is that 70% of the businesses surveyed said they are increasing their social media budgets by 18% while at the same time pulling back 8% from their traditional efforts. This is big for more than one reason.

First, social media spending is positioned to see its largest media buy ever. Call it the recession, call it going green, call it saving on postage, call it better targeting, call it whatever you’d like, the reality is that social media going to take on an incredibly important role this season for retailers. It’s believed that most consumers think they will find better deals or amazing coupons online, to respond to this companies are shifting their media strategies over to the more contextualized and highly indexed areas of social networks the single place where internet users are spending nearly 20% of their online time. Retailers hope to target these frugal shoppers with discounts, last minute promotions, and gift ideas.

Second, the fact that retailers are pulling back 8% of their traditional budgets is even more staggering. We are not talking about half a percent or even one percent, we’re talking nearly 1/10 of traditional budgets getting pulled during one of the most important advertising seasons of the year. It’s also believed that the majority of shoppers will have all their gifts purchased by December 7th this year which means shoppers are looking for discounts now.

This might be the big push social media marketing has been waiting for. The landscape of social media will change dramatically after this holiday season if retailers get the ROI they are looking for, but there is also fear among social networks that this new push will make social communities feel crowded by advertisments. We saw this happen with Myspace a few years ago when it was overrun by advertisers. Users jumped ship to Facebook and Twitter to escape the unchecked and unregulated spam that Myspace openly allowed at that time.

I’ll retouch on this topic once the dust settles in mid-January, but for now, all we can do is get our appetites, email accounts, and status updates ready for the sea of advertisments coming by way of our favorite social networks this Thanksgiving.

So you’re tweeting, blogging, talking, laughing, and sharing, but are you researching? An often overlooked part of this wonderful social world is the ability to collect information, learn about the consumer, and make your brand better.

Sure, you can talk and talk until no end and you can be very successful at that, but why not use social platforms to start learning something more about your consumer. GM has recently implemented several programs that revolve around social media and are designed to get instant feedback from consumers on everything from concept models, to accessories, to the automobile lifestyle. The idea is that consumers can connect with the GM products and give input into the development of these products over time.

We’ve said in the past that to be successful in social media, you’ll need to begin to hand over some control to the members of your social communities. This can mean allowing them to share honest views and opinions of the company, creating their own ad parodies, making home videos using your product in unconventional ways, or even allowing them to help develop product ideas.

Vans, Fox, Apple, CNN, along with many others have reached out to their consumers via social media for feedback and suggestions on how to make their products better, more useful, and to meet needs more effectively. Vans has even created contests on the web that allow consumers to make their own commercial and the winner’s work would be presented on national television. Frito-Lay has carried out similar strategies as well, allowing consumers to truly become part of the brand.

By handing over some control to the consumer, you’re letting them know that you trust them and that you want them to be involved. This is a great way to build brand loyalty and to create a lasting connection with social communities as a company that is so interested in their consumer that they are actively allowing them to make the brand into what they want.

When is this market going to turn? Has it already? What indicators should we look to? Everyone has their own set of answers to these questions. Here’s another.

In the past, we would have notice an up swing in traditional media spends as a sign of a positive change, but we haven’t been through this serious of a recession since the world of online was considered a legitimate medium. The truth is, online still only accounts for a very small portion of media spends, but it’s obvious that more and more budgets will be given to online as consumers turn off their TV sets and close the magazines to view content online.

According to eMarketer, online ad spending is up 11% from the first quarter, and ROI on that spend is up approximately 6%. While the actual dollar amounts are still low, a 11% increase is a great thing to see considering how the last 18 months have been going. More encouraging is that ROI is up 6%, which will hopefully cause marketers to look to online as another tactic to add to their arsenal.

Another interesting fact - 22% of all online ads appear on social networks according to Neilsen, with Myspace having a slight edge over Facebook as of September 29, 2009. The more surprising number is 3.5%. That’s the percentage of online spending used on social ads. This is huge. 22% of the ads on the web are being purchased using 3.5% of internet ad dollars! The jury is still out on the true effectiveness of that investment, but being able to speak to very specific targets on the place where Neilsen also reports that American consumers are spending 17% of their internet time is something to take into consideration. Imagine if you could get that type of exposure on television!

Business Week is also reporting an increase in search spending over the past two consecutive quarters by 7.7% This is reflected in Google and Bing as well who both showed at least a 9% increase in search revenue.

Back to the question of indicators. Is this is a sign of recovery? Yes and no. The problem is we aren’t necessarily seeing an increase in actual dollar spending in overall budgets yet. This could simply be a shift in spending. It’s clear that online is beginning to recover nicely, whether this will spider out to other mediums, we’ll have to wait and see.

Building a efficient and productive social campaign takes a lot of work, but sometimes we get carried away and lose focus, so today we are bringing it back down to scale.

Why are you putting so much effort into social in the first place? Social is a great place to connect with people, and we all have big dreams of our brands going viral and having the whole world know about us in a very short amount of time without doing much heavy lifting. This is possible, but the reason you got on the social train in the first place was to talk to people in a more personal and casual way than you do in your traditional efforts. Keep this in mind.

I’ve said before that your social efforts are like a dinner party - full of different conversations that are relatively short, consist of many different topics, and have an ever-changing dynamic. It’s important to go to the party well dressed and smelling nice, but don’t wear a tuxedo and don’t be so formal. This is an environment where you can really get to know people and talk about something other than work.

Social efforts need to be interesting. It doesn’t matter if it’s a blog, a Facebook profile, or a YouTube channel, your content needs to be interesting. These sites aren’t the place for you to put on the game face and make a million sales. This is a place where you make people smile laugh for a moment, or make them think for a minute or two, not a place where you try to tell them everything you can on their first visit.

It’s a two-way street, don’t forget. It’s hard to not do all the talking, but people want to talk also, so listen. Here, you can learn about what’s really important to your target, so let them speak, let them engage, and let them know that those are important things to you. If people feel valuable, they’ll want to keep in touch and they’ll defend you when you make a mistake.

Don’t try to be all things to all people. Social efforts can defiantly have a more broad impact than other mediums, but that doesn’t mean you should be trying to get everyone to fall in love with you. Get connected to the groups, discussions, blogs, and profiles where your targets are congregating. Don’t try to take control either, just be a contributor to the community and join in on the ongoing conversations. With a little time and a good strategy, you’ll become a trusted expert in those spaces and users will start to look to you more often for solutions.

Keeping your efforts simple and focused is the lesson for the day. Be friendly, be discreet, and have fun!

Social networking won’t save you, but that doesn’t mean it should be ignored or go unused. The truth is, going to social networks to revitalize your brand probably won’t work on its own. Just because you can make small talk with your consumers, share some fun photos, and tweet until you’re blue in the face doesn’t mean your brand will become as good as gold. Yes, connecting via social marketing efforts is good, and you should do it, but don’t put all your hopes in this vast new and ever changing world. Obviously there have been brands who have had great success on the social fronts and have made some notable waves (Virgin America, Dunkin’ Donuts) but the majority of brands today have to use multiple channel and many layers to truly create a buzz.

Here’s what you should know about social marketing - it’s changing the way consumers think about brands and how they relate to them. It seems that each of our lives so are wrapped up in this world of social networks that whatever we do, whatever we say, whatever we buy, those become part of who we are, part of our web identity. If you only drink a certain brand of liquor, or only fly on a certain airline, or wear a particular clothing line, those things come through on social networks and the brand becomes part of your image.

From a marketing perspective, it is important to approach social marketing with the goal of connecting to the consumers lifestyle, not just trying to make as many friends as possible or create a viral buzz. Those are great for the short-term, but if you want to be ahead of the curve and remembered in the long-term, it’s time to start thinking about connecting on a personal level with consumers, they’ll return by promoting your brand through their own web identities. Networks will change, but the ground work has been laid that is changing the way consumers look at brands, advertising, and in which brands they will give loyalty to.

How much would you pay to have consumers seek your brand out, give you their email addresses and full names, and the have them tell nearly 1 million of their friends to do the same?

Restaurant chain, TGI Friday’s, is now on the tail-end of their subtly ambitious Facebook campaign designed to do just that, and they’ve succeeded. It’s a modern day word-of-mouth effort that started with a seemingly normal Facebook member, simply known as Woody. The young twenty-something began to tell as many people as he could on Facebook that if he were to get more than half-a-million fans before the end of September, that TGI Friday’s would agree to give those people a free burger. Now it’s clear that this “Woody” has been in on the whole thing from the beginning, just take a look at his interest and date of birth on his Facebook profile. But there is something interesting about the rapid success of this campaign - truly viral.

In just over two weeks, 875,371 Facebook users became fans and registered their email addresses and names with Woody to receive a free burger (since this was posted, that number has increased by 132). Users didn’t just stop there, they’ve created 46 separate discussion board topics, added 233 photos and posted over 250,000 wall comments. Simply said, they’ve done more than what’s required to get a free burger, they’ve become involved, contributed, and told their friends.

TGI Friday’s has struggled with its brand image. They’ve been viewed as dated, out-of-touch, and sleepy, but come October 1st when all the free burger vouchers hit email inboxes, you better believe that TGI Friday’s across the nation will be full of a younger, more social demographic. Hopefully they’ll be able to make a good impression and keep these twenty-somethings coming back.

The viability of social networks has been in question since the beginning of their existence. How can they be monetized? Will they be self-sustaining? The largest social network, Facebook, is answering with positive cash-flow.

Social networks, especially the larger ones, have a unique set of problems. They offer services to users free-of-charge, which means they must provide the storage space and bandwidth for all the candid photos, “I love you” messages, and karaoke videos. In turn, these networks hope to generate revenues by selling highly contextualized ad space. But success has been limited simply because network membership has increased far more rapidly than these sites can sell ads.

Facebook, however, is finally getting results. “It’s certainly meaningful to show that this is absolutely the real deal. Facebook is executing. People are spending money on the site,” said Broadpoint Amtech analyst Ben Schachter.

Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg explained at his keynote presentation this week that this news will allow Facebook to be a “strong independent service for the long term.”

Just like every other business, Facebook depends on user and advertiser engagement. The services that Facebook now offers have become popular and unique enough for users to now spend more time on Facebook than any other social network, which has clearly been grabbing the attention of not just big budgeted marketers, but smaller ones who are also looking to connect.