Right now, in the USA there are more people accessing Facebook via mobile than desktops. Most of the Facebook mobile user interaction occurs via newsfeed, however mobile application integration is vital for business fan pages.

Via the new Facebook platform for mobile, there are 2 types of apps that users can access.

• The first one is Mobile web apps, anything that was created using html5 can be access, whether it is a web, canvas or tab.

• The second category is native apps, and these applications are downloaded to your phone.

Cheers

Lucio

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Pinterest is a Virtual Pinboard with over 11.7 million unique monthly U.S. visitors in January

Every time there is an online phenomenon there is rush from businesses trying to figure out what to do next.

One of the most recent phenomena is Pinterest, which received an interesting infographic animation by MDG Advertising .

In the video it is possible to get some understanding on demographics, growth and potential to expand inbound traffic from Pinterest. Did you know, 60% of the social network users are women and 80% are between the ages of 25 and 54? Another interesting fact is that Pinterest generates more inbound traffic to websites  than Google +, LinkedIn and YouTube combined.

In addition to information, the video provides some useful tips to show how brands can use Pinterest.

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The system allows local businesses to use their Facebook pages to promote special deals and promos direct to their customers, sending freebies and promotions straight to users’ news feeds.

When someone clicks on the offer, they can either redeem it straight from Facebook’s mobile apps or receive it by email ready to be used in store.

How do users get and redeem an offer?
Users can click “Get Offer” below the offer’s headline to send it to the primary email address associated with their Facebook account.
They then can bring the email to the business offering the deal and show it to the staff to redeem the offer. Users can show it in printed form or on your mobile phone.

It’s important to understand that users receiving the offer on their newsfeed can also share it with their friends.

How can Facebook administrators create their own Deal?

To create an offer:

1.     Go to your Page
2.     From the sharing tool at the top of your Page’s timeline, click  Offer, Event + and then click  Offer
3.     Type a strong headline for your offer, ex. “Buy one pair of shoes, get another free.”
4.     Upload a photo for your offer that will stand out in thumbnail size
5.     Choose to limit the number of claims by clicking Unlimited and selecting a number from the dropdown
6.     Set an expiration date by clicking today’s date and clicking a different day in the future
7.     Add terms and conditions of your offer
8.     Click Preview
9.     Review what your offer will look like, then click Post

If you want to make changes to your offer when you’re previewing it, click Edit to go back and make changes.
If you want to read more about Facebook Offers you can access Facebook Offers Help link.

What’s your opinion, will Facebook Offers help small, local businesses?

Cheers

Lucio

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The report, released 5 January 2012, highlighted that in the global proliferation of social media adoption, enterprise companies (1000 employees or more) had an average of 178 social media assets, with varying degrees of management. Such large numbers of assets present considerable coordination issues, but of more concern was the revelation that only 25% of companies offered training to their employees. The result – uninformed representatives engaging with customers on behalf of brands.

Another key failing highlighted was the lack of a business strategy – while 70% of global brand managers stated that their social media efforts met their business objectives, only 43% had a strategy in place detailing how.

“This report validates our concern that there is a considerable lag in the perception of social media as a serious media channel”, said Lucio Ribeiro, Managing Director of social media agency, The Online Circle.

“We consistently see companies, big and small, leaving themselves open to risk. Social media is not a playground. You can also waste a serious amount of money aimlessly ‘playing’ with social media!

The industry has ample intelligence and experience. Combine this with powerful insights into online behaviour, and sophisticated management tools and metrics, and we’re getting very savvy. It’s almost reckless not to be taking this environment seriously.”

Social media crisis costs to business

Symantec estimated (July 2011) that the global average loss from social media gaffes for business is $4.3million (USD). Their survey of enterprise companies found that the top three social media problems that led to crisis were:

• too much information shared by employees in public forums (46%)
• the exposure of confidential information (41%)
• an increase in exposure to litigation (37%).

Over 90 % of survey respondents who experienced a social media crisis also incurred costly consequences including:

• reduced stock price (average cost: $1,038,401 USD)
• litigation costs (average: $650,361)
• direct financial losses (average: $641,993)
• damaged brand reputation/loss of customer trust (average: $638,496)
• lost revenue (average: $619,360 USD)

In an early report, Altimeter indicated that social media crisis has been on the rise since 2001, yet 76% of these could have been averted with ‘proper’ social media investment (August 2011)

“We’re used to being approached to help recover businesses from crisis as a result of them not managing their social media effectively,” added Ribeiro.

“While individual details are protected, I can say that our work alone has addressed many online brand protection issues that have cost businesses many tens of millions of dollars. We’d rather such otherwise well managed brands adopt the cheaper, more effective and less damaging strategy of being on the front foot – to be on top of their online presence through good management early on.”

The social media experiment is well and truly over

Confirming that the ‘experimental’ period with social media is over, apparent laggard Proctor & Gamble finally conceding last month that Facebook and Google can be more “more efficient” than traditional media (January 2012) with the layoff of 1,600 staff. This social media trend is not about to slow down.

“Given our extensive experience in mitigating crisis through responsible social media management, we feel a sense of urgency in better informing brand managers,” said Ribeiro. “We’ve just released the latest training Social Sessions: Responsible Social Media, to advise brand managers of industry best practice: what we deal with on a daily basis. At a minimum, we’d like to see managers focussing on these five key areas…”

Top 5 things brand managers should be managing in social media now:

1. A social media strategy based on business objectives aligned with appropriate metrics and goals
2. An annual social media audit plan including, as a subset, regular Security, Design and Function testing (SDF)
3. Staff social media Policy and Guideline documents, along with moderation guidelines for daily moderation of assets (owned and earned)
4. Staff training and certification for regular asset managers (owned, earned and pirated)
5. A crisis management plan including risk assessment, escalation procedures and contact detail

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While he was there another customer walked in and said to the shopkeeper, “I’ll have that digital shop please”.

Can I have that Digital Shop please?

The shopkeeper nodded, went over and gave him a full digital shop. He wrote a contract, gave to the lawyers, and then handed it to the customer, saying, “That’ll be A$5000″. The customer paid and walked out with his digital shop.

Startled, the Brand Manager went over to the shopkeeper and said, “That was a very expensive digital shop. Most of them are only a few hundred dollars. Why did that one cost SO much?”  The shopkeeper answered, “Ah, that agency can do Facebook updates very fast, very cool Flash Websites, funny tweets, well worth the money.”

The tourist looked at the agency in the far corner. “That one’s even more expensive – $10,000! What does it do?”
-” Oh, that one’s a Social Media dedicated agency; they can manage your Social Media strategy, Risk Mitigation, Customer Service integration to Social communication – it can even save you from an online crisis. All the really useful stuff,” said the shopkeeper.

The Brand Manager looked around for a little longer and saw a third agency in another corner. The price tag around his neck read $50,000. He gasped to the shopkeeper, “That one costs more than all the others put together! What on earth does he do?”

The shopkeeper shrugged and said, “Well, to tell you the truth, I haven’t actually seen him do anything, but he says he’s a Social Media consultant.”

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This set of modifications only affects apps’ background coding – there is no interface change (visual) or new user facing feature, and for this reason it is not getting much media attention.

But the Facebook changes are drastic and, in simple words, will make you app unusable if not followed through.

Just test it yourself.

This morning, a number of high profile pages were presented with the warning below instead of their glossy app tab.

Facebook Apps on non-secure server are now being blocked for a big number of users

The main breaking change is that all apps have to be stored on secure servers – those with a valid SSL certificate installed.

From now on, when a user with secure browsing (HTTPS) enabled, and that is the default setting affecting the majority of people on Facebook, lands on a tab stored on a non-secure server, the warning above is presented.

Even though savvy users may find a way around it, there is no easy link to proceed and access the app anyway.

More than that, Facebook hasn’t ruled out banning the app altogether, even for users not on secure browsing, as the safety of personal information is more and more sensitive to the social network.

“We may announce other steps in the near future that will limit the distribution of Apps on Facebook that do not support Secure Canvas or Page Tab URLs”, the company has announce on its Developers blog.

If your app has been impacted by the secure browsing issue, the solution is not too hard to implement.

The 2 steps – The Online Circle‘s suggestion to accomplish the fix:

1. Purchase of an SSL Certificate and installation on the server where the app is stored (or migration of the app to a secure server);
2. Update of the apps settings on Facebook to reflect the new secure URL.

The secure browsing change is not the only breaking modification introduced by Facebook today.

The other changes are more likely to impact only complex apps, but may still be causing your tab to malfunction or totally disappear.

The links below will provide plenty of resources and documentation to understand the issues and act on it when appropriate.

• OAuth 2.0 and HTTPS Migration
• Next steps towards a modern Platform: OAuth 2.0 and HTTPS

And this is not all.

A new 12 months schedule of major changes has also being announced. The mark-up coding language used by hundreds of thousands of apps around the world, FBML, will be no longer supported from 1st January 2012 and totally phased out by 1st June 2012. So if you want to keep your audience engaged and protect your investment on Facebook apps and landing tabs, go on and make sure your provider is up to date with the rapidly shifting platform changes happening on the world’s biggest social network. Or drop us an email at The Online Circle, we would love to help your page!

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Paid, Owned and Earned Media - Defining Digital Strategies

If you are familiar with the concept of Owned, Earned and Paid Media you understand that Google Pay-Per-Click (PPC) can play a colossal role for your Social Media seeding campaign.

But just how much is too much?

I thought it would be interesting to share with you a study from Wordstream.com which shows the most expensive keywords in Google AdWords.

The 20 most expensive keyword categories with the highest search volume and highest costs per click, thereby netting Google the most money, are:

1.     Insurance (keywords in this category include “buy car insurance online” and “auto insurance price quotes”)
2.     Loans (keywords include “consolidate graduate student loans” and “cheapest homeowner loans”)
3.     Mortgage (keywords include “refinanced second mortgages” and “remortgage with bad credit”)
4.     Attorney (keywords include “personal injury attorney” and “dui defense attorney”)
5.     Credit (keywords include “home equity line of credit” and “bad credit home buyer”)
6.     Lawyer (“personal  injury lawyer,” “criminal defence lawyer)
7.     Donate (“car donation centres,” “donating a used car”)
8.     Degree (“criminal justice degrees online,” “psychology bachelors degree online”)
9.     Hosting (“hosting ms exchange,” “managed web hosting solution”)
10.     Claim (“personal injury claim,” “accident claims no win no fee”)
11.     Conference Call (“best conference call service,” “conference calls toll free”)
12.     Trading (“cheap online trading,” “stock trades online”)
13.     Software (“crm software programs,” “help desk software cheap”)
14.     Recovery (“raid server data recovery,” “hard drive recovery laptop”)
15.     Transfer (“zero apr balance transfer,” “credit card balance transfer zero interest”)
16.     Gas/Electricity (“business electricity price comparison,” “switch gas and electricity suppliers”)
17.     Classes (“criminal justice online classes,” “online classes business administration”)
18.     Rehab (“alcohol rehab centres,” “crack rehab centres”)
19.     Treatment (“mesothelioma treatment options,” “drug treatment centres”)
20.     Cord Blood (“cordblood bank,” “store umbilical cord blood”)

When I am asked about ROI on Social Media I like to consider that if your Earned and Owned media presences have been created and maximised, you reduce your reliance on Paid media. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t sometimes also pay for some extra attention, but it certainly means you depend less on these paid channels. And, because AdWords and other programs like it are based on an auction system, competitiveness and costs for them will continue to be driven upwards.

Generating ROI based on traffic – a simple formula

Let’s assume you are in the Real Estate industry and you want to decide between the immediacy of Pay-per-click and the long term benefits of Social Media and SEO.

You consider investing in Pay-per-click and generate immediate traffic.

If you generate about 1,000 visits a month paying $50 this equates to $50,000/month

If you invest the same amount of money across your Owned media and start to generate the same qualified traffic you have built yourself a long term asset and you can therefore amortise the investment over time.

This is an easy way to start a polemic on ROI in Owned Media versus ROI for PPC.

Which side are you on?

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