Random

    Facebook Marketing

    Underdog Billionaire.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    I had a theory a while back that Steve Ballmer (CEO of Microsoft) blew billions of dollars on technology missteps just so that he could learn a couple of important things about the future.  With all the money it prints and the legacy business it controls, Microsoft has had the luxury of launching challenger devices and services that were dogs — but from which Mr. Ballmer gathered data, insights, and ways forward.  His overbuilt, over engineered products were real-time usability tests. Costly but smart. Poor Mr. Ballmer.

    Mark Zuckerberg is scary because all the news out of this year’s Facebook developers conference, called f8, points to Facebook’s desire to own to world’s user data. If banks or the treasury owned the data Facebook will and does – knowing how, on what, and when we spend our hard-earned, it would be a major antitrust violation.  And all Mr. Z has to do is put some software code, cookies , crumbs and apps behind his platform and it will become a one-stop-shop for everything behavioral. When behavior becomes data and sortable as such, allowing for 1-to-1 targeting, the game will be over. That’s why Google was scared into Google+. 

    No one likes an overdog, but that is what Facebook is becoming. Mr. Zuckerberg will soon need to hire a Chief Overdog Officer.  In this light, Mr. Ballmer will be the underdog billionaire. Peace.

     

    Like, I’d like to like it, but like…

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    It may be a New York thing, but get in a car with a bunch of teens or young 20-somethings and count the likes.  It’s the new um.  Liking is a thing on Facebook and now +1 is a the new like on the Google platform.  

    Public Displays of Like (PDL)

    There is a time and place for liking.  Public displays of like, though, are becoming annoying. And with +1 they’ll get worse.  The presumption is that Likes and +1 are food for the hungry consumer, but not everyone on the web wants to transact business.  Not everyone on the web is looking to buy something.  Fotchbook (an Italian pronunciation) did not grow to the size it has by  feeding the commercial needs of the people, it created a means to connect and network new and old friends.

    Not everything on the web is a product. Just as I need to get out of the car when the teens and 20-somethings start the like talk, Ima need to jump off the web for a few hours when the Likes and +s abound. Careful Google. Careful Facebook. Peace (especially you know where) !

    A little “Friendly” Advice for Facebook

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    There was a fascinating quote in The New York Times today in an article on Facebook’s privacy decisions. (Facebook’s privacy actions will either create mad blowback or turn it into the world’s first trillion dollar company.)

    “If I’m looking for day care for my 6-year-old, I’m going to put that in my status (Facebook) message, not do a Google Search.”  (Sean Sullivan, F-Secure.)

    Search, Curation, Advice.

    In the world, and on the internet, there are important common behaviors: search, curation and advice.  Search is a great way to find things and it’s clearly a huge business; results are organized and prioritized… by the algorithm.  Curation, on the other hand, growing in importance online, is search but with a human hand.  Social networks help curate in a sense because one “friends,” organized by degrees of separation, share content they care about.  But advice?  Many a web property was built around advice.  Most have failed or languished.  

    Mr. Sullivan’s quote points to the need for trusted advisors, not algorithm results of independent ranking experts (e.g., Better Business Bureau, Consumer Reports, your newspaper).  Mr. Sullivan’s important day care decision will be assisted by the advice of friends and respected Web friends.

    As Facebook creates tools that blur the lines between search, curation and friendly advice, it will likely lose its way. People are their own best filters and Facebook needs to make sure it doesn’t cross the line. Peace!

    Hubspot Spot On with Facebook.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    Hubspot, in Boston, is a company  doing a very nice job marketing itself.  Their logo is pretty poor and they probably invented using the word “so” to start every sentence, but I used their free website grader a long time ago and it proved their digital marketing chops.  Some of Hubspot’s overzealousness about traditional is a bit grating but, hey, they’re selling.

     So (hee hee), Dan Zarella a real social dork (as he likes to say) put on a webinar yesterday highlighting some best practices of Facebook marketing and they were quite well done.  Dan is a social scientist, which means he really parses the data, so his insights are real.  Here is a topline:

    – People have profiles, brands have pages. (Thought I’d start easy.)

    – Facebook is not about making new friends, it’s about improving relationships with existing friends.

    – On Facebook you are a performer – and being judged.

    – Help your users look cool.

    – Let your users perform in a brand-relevant way and you win!

    – Women have 55% more posts on their walls than do men.

    – Pages with lots of marketing buzz words don’t have as many friends, e.g., leverage, productivity, etc.

    – Facebook users like food.  And they talk about it.

    – Most “liked” activities: movies, books, music, TV show, television.

    – Least “liked” activities: real estate, auto dealers, religion, dogs,

    – Be entertaining — lay off marketing stuff.

    – Social proof is big.  Lots of friends, likes, tweets, vitality wins over the opposite.

    – Posts with the word “video” in them are shared more on Facebook than Twitter. Way more.

    – Posts with digits (numbers) in them index high for sharing.

    – Sex indexes highest for sharing. Positivity, learning, sharing, work, media and constructive are words and ideas also highly shared.

    – Least shared idea: negativity.

    – Write plainly and simply.  Don’t use lots of adjectives and adverbs.

    – 51% of companies block Facebook.

    Good stuff Dan. Peace!

    Facebook Advertising and Creativity.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    Facebook had a big marketing day in NYC yesterday at the American Museum of Natural History.  They shared how they’re going to garner big excitement in the advertising world by creating new opportunities for marketers and their agents who advertise on Fotch-book. Advertiser pages will have special functionality, new ad positions will open up, mobile ads will be more something and, of course, data and ad tailoring will improve and be revolutionary.

    This is Facebook’s post IPO.

    The problem with all these announcements is two-fold.  People don’t like ads, because most of them are poorly constructed, and people don’t like those who profit excessively from anything.  Jeremy Lim anybody?

    So if Facebook and marketers are going to make this work, the ads (20-30 words though they may be) are going to need to be better. On a NYT cover story today, it was mentioned that 250 millisecond load time is competitive advantage for a website. That being said, do you think a crappy ad in your load or stream is going to be welcome?  And if the universe of unique daily ads goes from 500,000 to 10 million, are those ads likely to be good, creative and engaging?  Creativity will be at a premium. This is going to be a wild ride. Peace.

    Facebook’s toughest decision.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    Facebook had some nice earning yesterday.  50% of Facebook log-ons occur via mobile devices and mobile is hot. Facebook’s mobile ads accounted for 14% of rev. Nice news indeed. 

    As someone who is a member and student of the marketing community, I’ve marveled at Facebook’s user growth. (While with Zude.com (who?) I competed with Facebook when they had only 18 million users.)  FB has spawned whole new industries of social and digital ad agencies. It has created a head down behavior for teens and millennials that will give birth to millions in chiropractic business. Facebook is of the moment and the masses love it. For now.

    Some financial analysts are predicting the way for Facebook to capture mad new revenue is to sell the data it collects via user clicks and behavior.  That data will be used to plan media buys on other platforms.  So beyond making money selling ads on its own site, a la Google, it will make money selling our data. (I’m guessing these same analysts are not heavy Facebook users.)  If Facebook takes its eyes off the “communications utility for friends” prize (the brand Is-Does) and follows this rev gen trail, it will begin to lose face. And faces.

    When you confide in a friend and that friend sells those secrets, trust is lost.  Were the phone able to hear your conversations and send you ads based on what was said, that would be bad right?

    Fotchbook can make money many other ways.  Selling our data, behind our backs, is not a good long term strategy. Mr. Zuckerberg do not listed to those portfolio hounds. Peace.     

    © Newsmag WordPress Theme by TagDiv