February 5, 2012

Add comment “SOLD” to purchase! – (Real) People Powered F-Commerce

March 29, 2011 By 10 Comments

Work From Home Mums are showing us what social shopping on Facebook is all about.

f-commerce

My wife makes stuff. hair clips, t-shirts, quilts, soft toys, etc. She also loves shopping online, and spends hours and hours lots of time on Facebook.

But a funny thing happened the other day, we were sitting in the lounge room (she was on Facebook) and she suddenly cursed the air and said…

If I’d logged in [to Facebook] 5 mins ago I wouldn’t have missed that sale! Now all the fabric I want is gone.

My ears pricked up. I’ve been keeping an eye on the F-commerce, Facebook Commerce, Facebook shopping cart (etc.) developments over that last 12 months, not for any reason other than I think it’s potentially going to be huge!

The sad truth however is that I’d not seen a lot to really get me excited.  Sure there are ecommerce apps that you can add to your Fan pages (Payvment is awesome) and this is a huge step forward in terms of enabling purchases, but the whole shopping cart experience still feels destinctly ‘anti-social’. Do you know what I mean? A shopping cart is not inherently social (although you can ‘share’ purchases’), they’re transactional! Don’t get me wrong though I still think the e-commerce shopping cart apps on Facebook are great,  they just don’t excite me as much as I thought an integrated social ecommerce application would…

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Filed Under: Ecommerce, F-commerce, Facebook Tagged With: , , , , , ,

17,180 People in Melbourne over 25 like pizza…

June 22, 2010 By 1 Comment

Facebook Ad Targeting Options PizzaNext time you’re struggling to think of where to advertise your local business, don’t ignore the potential of Facebook.  The example here is not a bad one, think about it.

If you were Pizza Hut, would you want to target people who like Dominos? Hell yes!

And if you were Dominos, wouldn’t you want to target people who ‘like’ Pizza Hut? Damn straight! It just makes sense!

Think of the potential.. throw up ads with Dominos coupons targeting all the fans of your competitors.  sneaky, but that’s what Facebook targeting is all about – Being smart little marketers.

Another example… My father is a part owner of an organic olive oil business. Could Facebook advertising wFacebook ad Targeting - Olives and Organicork for him? (Dad, if you’re reading this – hint, hint!).

Let’s see what Facebook says.

Targeting: Over 25, Australian, expressed a like or interest in ‘organic food’, ‘organic’, ‘olives’ = 5,000 people. For a small business, that’s a market.

Filed Under: Facebook, Facebook Advertising, Online Marketing Tagged With:

Facebook vs. Twitter For Your Business? Dennis Yu Gives Blunt Advice

May 14, 2010 By 4 Comments
facebook_logoEditor’s Note:  I’ve spoken with Dennis on many occasions about his view on using Facebook and Twitter for Business. Following is his very blunt advice. Agree? Disagree? Let me know!
- Leigh

I get this question a lot.  So let me put it bluntly.  If you are not a celebrity or household brand, forget about twitter.  Unless people care about what you just ate or who you were seen in public with, as is done in the tabloids, you’re not going to get enough followers for it to even be worth your time. My twitter account has 3,502 followers, while my Facebook account has only 2,082 fans.  Facebook is the #7 referrer to my blog while Twitter is #20.  So even though I have more followers on twitter, I’m getting 6 times the traffic from Facebook.

And if you consider that the Facebook fan page for Dennis Yu has only 496 fans, the contrast is more stark.  Why?

Twitter is for existing brands and personalities that have massive recognition.  What you can say in 140 characters can’t possibly have much depth, though you can retweet pithy sayings, post interesting articles, or even communicate casually with friends.  But to generate more awareness, traffic, or sales for your business?  Unlikely.  The exception proves the rule– there’s that one donut shop that people cite as the example for small business success on twitter.

Facebook is where you can connect with real friends. You can interact with them and share in deep, meaningful ways (or at least as far as is possible online).  I’d challenge you to tell me what share of twitter users are bots, what percentage of tweets are done by bots, and what percentage of tweets go unread.  I’d wager that the ratio of spam pages on the internet approximates the spam ratio on twitter– although, I’d say that Facebook would be MUCH cleaner because of reinforcing mechanisms of the newsfeed filter and social graph.

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Filed Under: Facebook, Guest Posts, Online Marketing, Twitter Tagged With: , , , , , ,