Retailers Get What They ‘Want’: More Facebook

As the old Rolling Stones song goes, you can’t always get what you want. However Facebook and retailers across the web will soon let you at least tell your friends what you want. Maybe they’ll get it for you. Facebook and eBay … Continue reading →

Just Because They Liked You, Doesn’t Mean They’ll Convert

What’s the value of a “like” of a fan page on Facebook or even a “recommendation” of a piece of content if your customers aren’t converting? Is it worth your efforts to continue if your customers and visitors are not … Continue reading →

What’s your favorite social media site?

The Facebook Ticker: Good News for Brands

by Gary Stein

My friend Tracy came this close to giving up on Facebook.

A social person by nature, she had gathered a good number of friends on the service. She also connected with the people she worked with and others whom were just passing acquaintances. She hooked back up with people she knew in college and high school and even someone from third grade. Along the way, she also became a fan of (and later “liked”) a series of brands that she had some connection to or affinity for. Facebook became just what the founders wanted it to be: the central hub of her social life.

But, then, slowly, it moved from a nice, orderly hub to a chaotic mess. Not a mess in the way that MySpace became a mess, with blinking backgrounds and odd color combinations. No, it became an information mess. People Tracy hadn’t spoken to in years were now informing her of what they were having for lunch. Long lost and little cared about connections were giving updates on workouts they just finished, movies they were watching, and virtual fish that needed virtual feeding. Facebook was beginning to bend under the weight of its core value proposition and she was ready to just turn it off. Facebook would have been one of those things that she did for a while, a couple years back.

Of course, this happened to a lot of us. And marketers were starting to get uncomfortable. We had relied upon the social draw of Facebook to amass large audiences to show ads to. Even more importantly, we relied upon the social nature of the site to allow us to develop a new, deeper conversation with consumers. But if the experience on the site was starting to frustrate users, simply because there was too much, users would stop coming. The relationships that we had forged with consumers would fade away.

There was real reason to worry, in fact. In June of this year, Facebook saw a significant drop in traffic and it wasn’t clear that the site was continuing to add users at the same pace that it had. Couple that with a serious attempt from Google to create a social network, and people began to openly ask whether the Facebook era was beginning to enter its twilight phase.

The Big Fix(es)

Tracy has, at least so far, decided not to abandon Facebook. The reason being that she got a chance to see and play with the newest tweak to the interface of the site. The good news is that not only does it make the site more useful for her, but it also shows the way that brands can be somewhat sure they will continue to be a part of a consumer’s social life.

In particular, the big fix that Facebook introduced is the “ticker.” ClickZ has called this feature a way that Facebook will be friendlier for brands, and it’s easy to see why. The ticker is a box on the side of the interface that provides a scrolling list of everything that is happening inside your social network. Coupled with this is some smart technology that figures out which stories are “top” and puts those (and only those) inside the main news feed.

This is a great improvement to the Facebook experience in that it takes so many of those little actions and places them in a tidy box. The ability to interact with a story (i.e., see more, watch a video, or leave comments) is extremely elegant. Yes, this is a firehose of information from your friends, but it is the right kind of firehose. It is even interesting to sit and watch the updates scroll by, just to see what else may fly in for you.

A lot of the content from brands that consumers like will end up in here as well. Most likely, a consumer does not want to see daily information from a brand on Facebook. What would end up happening, then, is that content would be hidden from view, unless you clicked over to the “most recent” tab on the screen. Which is to say that a lot of the posts that brands were putting up were never getting seen.

The new ticker fixes this, since every story gets posted and scrolls by. I’m sure the great hope is that users will become addicted to this feed and keep it open all day long. I would assume we’ll see this functionality broken out as a part of the mobile app as well. Of course, there has been a small furor from Facebook users complaining about the change. That will pass, I’m sure, as people begin to see that this is a great balance between the big stories that people want to see, pulled out of the rolling tide of updates.

The ticker, I suppose, is not exactly built for brands. There are other improvements that are more focused on providing brands with opportunities to market, connect, and engage with consumers. But, ultimately, if consumers – people like Tracy – start to feel that this platform is not for them, than any ad product innovation is pretty meaningless. With this improvement, I think Facebook has taken some great steps toward making sure that using its system is fun, rewarding, and not too cluttered.

Which is to say, Facebook bought itself a few more months before something else crops up.

Clickz: Marketing News

B2B Researchers Prefer LinkedIn Over Facebook

Marketing Pilgrim

With all of the focus that has been placed on Facebook lately (and for good reason since they are changing the rules of the social media game) it’s important not to lose sight of the B2B segment of the social media marketplace.

It’s quite easy for social media pundits and the like to dismiss B2B uses of the Twitter, Facebook etc because it’s not the sexy side of social media. Well, like many things in this life, just because it’s not all shiny and pretty doesn’t mean it’s not effective. In fact, our obsession with all things glitzy and polished often blinds us to areas where things actually work. The B2B social media space is one of those.

A recent report shows just how one “unsexy” player, LinkedIn, stomps Facebook in its level of importance in the purchasing research process for B2B companies. Take a look from the data fromTriComB2B and the University of Dayton’s School of Business Administration as reported byeMarketer.

 

So why do you suppose this is the case? The obvious answer is that LinkedIn is for professionals and the B2B space is for professionals. That’s correct but it’s likely to be more than that. This research speaks to the often “flighty” nature of a large open social network like Facebook versus one that is more direct in its mission.

Facebook users are not very deep engagers when it comes to brands. They like things then leave them for dead unless a deal comes along. To think that a “Like”, or whatever it is now, on Facebook for a brand is a sworn allegiance to that brand or even a recognition of wanting to follow that brand more closely is naïve. Many want us to believe that people who like brands on Facebook are pledging a vested interest in that brand. That’s a ridiculous notion considering the depth of most Facebook “business” interactions.

The following chart helps to further understand just why a site like LinkedIn has more value to the professional / B2B customer.
Informal contacts on LinkedIn are defined more by the industry they are in and their level of expertise than on Facebook. Brand interaction on Facebook is more transactional whereas information gathering on LinkedIn is about, well, information.

So people trust informal contacts in their industry. Where would they go for that? Facebook? Not likely. LinkedIn and maybe (right now it’s a big maybe) Twitter. The likelihood of this dynamic staying in place for the foreseeable future is evidenced by Facebook’s huge announcements last week. Did any of those announcements talk about a business’ presence on Facrbook? Nope. Those announcements were about getting deeper into the existing user base and their psyche so that advertisers could know when to be in front of the right people at the right moment.
Has Facebook laid all its cards on the table thus showing where they are going to concentrate their efforts moving forward? Did last week’s announcements along with their discontinuation of their Deals offering and the deemphasizing of place tell others just where their focus lies? I think so.

If we could all just take a step back and look here it is obvious where a competitive opportunity lies for other social networks. It’s in the B2B world and taking it beyond a consumer only approach. If Google+ wanted to really see their user base grow they should go after those looking to leverage social media for their business and in the B2B space. Going head to head with Facebook for individual identities right now is a long shot. Where Facebook is weak is with the business side of social networking. If you are trying to slay a dragon do you hit it on the hardened protective shell on top or the soft white underbelly? Facebook’s soft white underbelly is the business side of social networking and they admitted as much last week by concentrating on individuals rather than businesses.

What’s your take?