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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The ranking for March 2012 was steady amongst the five leading industries with FMCG Snackfoods having the highest volume of growth with over 300,000 new fans (‘likes’) over the four weeks of March. Retail oriented industries take up five of the top six positions, with Retail – Grocery & Alcohol being the big mover from the previous report thanks to the addition of brands such as 7-Eleven and Baker’s Delight to the analysis. This coincided with the demise of Air Australia / Strategic Airlines in mid-February, causing Travel – Airlines to move down to seventh position.

The addition of CUA in the Banking & Financial Institutions industry supported its one position upwards move to the ninth most followed industry. All industries grew their volume of fans (‘likes’) highlighting the Facebook users willingness to engage in mutually beneficial support of specific brands that relate to their lifestyle and how they view themselves.

click to view larger table

The highest relative fan growth was experienced by some of the less followed industries Travel – Accommodation (+20.9%) and Pharmaceutical (+14.5%), while Automotive increased by 13.0% and the most followed industry, FMCG – Snackfoods, was able to increase their fanbase 11.9%. No surprise that the two fastest growing industries also experienced the highest engagement rate, as growth was underpinned by promotional and marketing activities across a multitude of brands, Travel – Accommodation with 6.1% and Pharmaceutical with an engagement rate of 5.2%. Retail – Grocery & Alcohol and Automotive also had standout engagement rates of 4.4% and 4.1% respectively in highly competitive industries with strong promotional and marketing activity support driving the performance.

Data for this report was collected on February 28, March 6, 13, 20 and 27. Please review the methodology at the rear of the report for a clear understanding of each metric. To download the current report and be notified of future reports go to w w w . f a c e b o o k . c o m / f a c e b o o k – r e p o r t to register.

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Facebook hands every user a megaphone, it can be very challenging for businesses to manage their image if something goes wrong or if they find a very vocal user. But just as social media makes marketing more authentic, it also enables businesses to respond to crises in an especially effective manner.

A recent report by Altimeter has revealed that globally most companies have adopted social media without adequate ongoing management, leaving them open to alarming exposure and potentially uncontrollable risk.

The trick, of course, is knowing what to do and when. Here are some tips for using Facebook to manage different types of crises:

1. Figure out what the problem is. Assess the nature of the feedback and then determine the validity of the feedback.
2. Before you say anything on social media, take into account everyone who could be in your audience, not just the people you know for sure are in your audience. Think about any media representative? Any client or supplier? Remember, not everybody thinks exactly the same way you do.
3. Before you open up any type of social media forum, have guidelines in place that lets people know that certain types of speech aren’t going to be tolerated and that the platform is being moderated. It also gives you directions for different situtation eg. what happens when someone mentions a competitor.
4. If you find yourself getting emotionally involved in something online, take a step back. Don’t let commenters get you riled up as you could end up saying something that you regret.
5. Think about who is doing your social media postings. An intern may be comfortable using Facebook and Twitter, but are they the right person to be representing your brand online? It is easier to teach someone who knows your brand/business about social media than it is to teach someone who only knows social media about your company.
6. Set up (but review constantly) multiple administrators on all social media accounts just in case you can’t get in touch with someone when you need to – or they leave the company.
7. Make it easy to do the right thing when you are setting up your policies.
8. Own a mistake and do it quickly. Don’t try to hide from it. It’s not going away.
9. Have a friend or an editor check things out. It might seem funny to you, but it may not be to everyone.
10. Understand that you can’t control social media. Instead,  you can prepare for. Be ready to react and take ownership when something does happen.
11. Don’t be insulting or come off defensive. All it takes is one bad post to create a social media nightmare.
12. Remember, most of the time is not personal.
13. Have your PPC campaigns ready to go in case you need to intercept uninformed users to any website with your version of the facts.
14. Have you media person trained for Social Media videos and responses.
15. You DON’T need to have the last word.
16. Engage customer services and corporate affairs at the begin. They WILL help you.

Cheers

Lucio

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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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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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Facebook Pop-up Shops are a new form of C2C (Consumer-to-consumer) retailing

The first annual results are coming out and there is little doubt that the retail industry is doing it tough. People are spending less, being more selective and doing their share of bargain hunting. Not surprisingly, the internet economy is growing at double the rate of the broader economy and online shopping at almost four times the rate. The web offers convenience, choice and savings. Even better, the social web has evolved to the point where it can now offer what might be the drawcard to beat the retail blues: a little help from your friends.

“If I had to guess, I’d say social commerce is next to blow up”, predicts Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook.

Social commerce is any form of e-commerce that involves social media to assist in the buying process. Or, in other words, what some people call a C2C (Consumer-to-consumer) transaction. Great new social commerce strategies are already mainstream, such as groupbuyingcoupons. A new model that has a greater chance of success for many types of businesses is the creation of a Facebook Pop-up Shop.

A Facebook Pop-up Shop is a temporary shop owned and managed by a user. First, the brand elects a fan and grants him the right to setup its own pop-up store (or open the possibility to anyone). Secondly, the user chooses the brand products he wants to sell and has the option of writing commentaries or reviews about each product. Next, the store is created as a tab on the user’s profile and messages are published on their wall. Finally, his friends visit the store, read the recommendations, choose a product and click to buy. The transaction actually takes place directly on the brand’s original store and the pop-up store owner is rewarded with a commission.

Facebook Pop-up shops have been around for a while, but mainly as a property of the brand itself. Sony Pictures has a successful app allowing US movie goers to find session times, buy tickets and invite friends. Domino’s Pizza has an affiliate widget in the UK rewarding users with a commission for pizzas sold through it.

Retail fashion chain 7 For All Mankind has gone a step further and created a sophisticated hack to have little mini shops appearing on people’s Facebook feeds. But the recently announced and yet to be launched MyPopupShop app is the first turnkey solution to offer a pop-up shop on the user’s page, backed by a background retailer platform.

Incentives and scarcity

Apart from tapping into the social validation and from converting your brand advocates into your actual sales people, a good pop-up store should also offer incentives to the buyer. These could be anything from direct discounts to access products before the official launch. Even simple tokens of recognition such as a nice wall post from a friend who you helped to find an invaluable offer goes a long way.

In Brazil, one of the fastest growing Facebook user bases in the world, a leading retail chain is aiming to reach 1 million new consumers within the first nine months of its launch of its Facebook social commerce app. It offers each user the ability to create its own shop, with selected products, and promotion to friends. The sales commission range from 2.5% to 4.5% depending on the product. To get the initial push, a few of the company’s employees were selected to choose one relative each to have the rights to open up their own shops. After the initial trial, anyone will be able to join in, setup their little interactive catalogue and start door knocking their friends, as the good old Avon Lady would do, but from the comfort of their own homes and mobile phones.

Want to discuss your idea to join the social commerce bandwagon and beat the retail blues? Talk to us.

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In Jaymee’s last article about Facebook hacking, she discussed the plans of the hacking group Anonymous to hack Facebook, in this article I present 7 tips to protect yourself from being Facebook hacked.

Facebook is now one of, if not the most trolled and targeted websites for hackers and cyber crooks in the world, and with most of us being too trustful for our own good we are easy targets. All it takes is for one ill-informed or misguided decision to occur, and a hacker not only has access to all your personal information, but you have also exposed your friends to the same fate.

I don’t know about you, but over the last few months I have noticed a clear increase in the number of spam or malicious looking posts appearing within my Facebook News Feed and on my Wall. It is rare that a week goes by where I do not encounter at least one suspicious looking link, which has supposably been sent to me from one of my “Facebook friends”.

That fact is though, that these links claiming to have come from one of my trusted friends have more than likely originated from a hacker, or some form of hacking software.

The hacker has gained unauthorised accessed to my friends Facebook account through the very same or very similar link that they are now “sharing” with me.

When a person’s Facebook account is hacked, it is not just the hackee who should be concerned, but their Facebook friends should also be alarmed as they are now more at risk of being hacked themselves. Once an account has been hacked, the hacker will begin sending out fake Facebook posts containing malicious links, while making it appear as though the victims themselves have posted them. Hackers may also choose to send a Facebook message to the user’s friends via Facebook’s message service or chat feature, suggesting users check out a malicious link. If a friend is fooled into clicking on one of these malicious links, they are now at risk of not only having their personal Facebook account information stolen, but also any personal, financial or private information they have stored on their personal or work computer.

The dangers also extends to the pages that the user is an admin of. It’s easier to hack into an admins account, than it is the actual Facebook Fan page. Once you’ve hacked into an admins account, you get access to the Facebook Fan Pages he or she admins!

How your account can be hacked?

There are many different ways your Facebook account can be “Hacked”. The most malicious and damaging form of hacking occurs through phishing, or when a hacker gains unauthorised access to an account after the user has clicked through to a fake app or link. Once the user has clicked through to the link or app the user will be redirected to a page that looks almost identical to that of Facebook’s login screen. If the user then enters in their username and password without identifying the page as a fake, the hacker will then have complete access to their account. The hacker is now able to utilise the users account to spread the infection further via their newly acquired friends.

Listed below are 7 simple tips to help prevent you from being Facebook hacked:

1. If it looks suspicious, it’s probably is

If you don’t like the look of a post, link or App, do not click on in it. Obvious right? Yet people continue to fall into the trap. Most malicious links or Apps will offer you something too good to be true or use statements like “Shocking”, “Embarrassing”, “Unbelievable” or “Check This Out” in an attempt to draw users in to clicking through.  If you are in any doubt as to the nature of any posts from a “Friend” do not click on it, there is no point risking being hacked for a cheap thrill.

2. Don’t be a Friend whore

We all love logging into our Facebook accounts and seeing that we have a new Friend request waiting for our approval. It‘s in our nature to want to make friends, but it’s also in our nature to want to compete with others and to have more Facebook friends than what our real life friends have. It is this need to make as many friends as possible, and to one up our friends that makes many of us willing to accept any friend request, even when we don’t know whom the request is coming from.

Hackers, understanding that it’s in our nature and take advantage of a Facebook user’s eagerness to grow their Facebook friends list by sending out a countless number of fake friend requests. They hope to fool the user into accepting at least three of these fake requests. Why three you ask? Facebook has measures in place to allow users who lose or forget their Password and secret answer to recover there account with the help of three of their “trusted friends”.

To gain access to your account, all a hacker needs to do is pretend that they are you and that they have forgotten your account password and secret answer. Once they have been directed to the Facebook password recovery page they are able to, with the help of the three fake friends you have previously approved, reset your accounts password.  After a 24 hour freeze out period following the password reset, the hacker is able to have full access to your account.

This method of hacking is especially concerning to businesses that may be operating a Facebook account for marketing purposes, as they are more likely to blindly accept Facebook Friend requests in an attempt to increase their reach. This is one reason why businesses should only set-up Facebook fan pages and not personal profiles to promote a business.

3. “Password” is not an acceptable Password

Having a strong password will not prevent your Facebook from being hacked if you have fallen victim to one of the many phishing swindles hackers attempt. It will however make it incredibly difficult for hackers to gain direct access to your account through less extensive and more primitive hacking techniques. The most primitive technique is simply making a calculated guess of a person password.  The users; name, their wife, boyfriend, sibling, pet, birthday or the word password are examples of passwords hackers expect people to use, due to their easy to remember nature.

It is recommended that your password contain a mixture of letters, digits, punctuation and both capital and lowercase letters. It is also recommended that your password be at least 6 characters long, however the more characters in your password the belter. If you are afraid that you may forget your password, write it down and hide it in a safe place. I would also suggest that you change your password on a regular basis.

4. Always check the URL

The aim of phishing is to get the user to unknowingly share their Facebook login details with the hacker. The most common way hackers achieve this is, is by tricking the user into entering their Facebook details into a fake Facebook login page. These fake login pages are usually a near perfect copy of Facebook’s actual login page. A fake login page will usually appear after you have already logged into Facebook via the real login screen, and are usually prompted after you have clicked on a malicious link or application.  A clear indication of a fake login page is found within the URL of the page. Although hackers can make exact copies of the actual login page, they are unable to use the same URL. Whenever you login too, or are asked to re-login to Facebook, you should always make sure that the URL is www.Facebook.com. A common way hackers deceive people is by having a URL that may appear to be the same but is in fact slightly different. For Example: www.Faccbook.com or www.FBook.com.

5. Don’t grant permission to unknown or suspicious Applications  

One of the most popular features within Facebook is Applications. To be able to use, or access most applications you are required to grant access to the application to use some of your personal information and to promote the group via your wall. Most applications that ask for access are trustworthy and genuinely need access to your information, but there are some Apps out there that are designed specifically to exploit the access you give them. If you receive a “Request for Permission” from a Facebook App you should always ensure that the page asking for access is reputable, and is coming for a person or company you trust. Much like my first tip, if it looks suspicious, just don’t risk it.

6. Beware the “Smart Phone”

It is becoming increasingly more popular for Facebook users to access their accounts via their mobile phones, with many mobile phone service providers even offering free access to Facebook as part of their service. Although smart phones and free access makes it easier for users to check their Facebook accounts it may also be making it easier for hackers to hack their accounts. In many countries, the network signal provided by service providers is not encrypted, so hackers have the ability to access the data that flows between the mobile and mobile operator with relative ease. They can gain access to all of the information that the user is sending out and is receiving.

My tip is to always check to see if you service provider offers an encrypted network signal.

7. Enable Secure Browsing

In my final tip, Facebook now allows its users to put their Facebook Profile in a type of safe mode. Putting your Facebook in to this safe mode means that the information that is transferred between you and Facebook is now encrypted, meaning hackers are unable to easily intercept the information being sent and received. The safe mode is a HTTPS Secure Connection, a type of connection financial, ecommerce, banking etc sites use to protect their most sensitive information.

Secure browsing is not a default setting, so users have to enable it themselves. To enable secure browsing on your Facebook account follow these steps:

Log into your Facebook account > Choose “Account Settings” from the “Account” menu> Select “Account Security” and select “change”> Ensure there is a tick next to the “Browse Facebook on a secure connection (https) whenever possible” option > Click “Save”.

I would also recommend that while enabling Secure browsing you select “Send me an Email” under “When a new computer or mobile logs into this account”. This means that whenever someone logs into your account from an unknown access point, you will be sent an email.

Have you ever had your Facebook Account Hacked? Let us know how they did it, and what you have done to prevent it from happening again.

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