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I Pity the Fool who doesn’t keep an eye on Trendsmap today!

Mr. T., April 1st 2011

Don’t be fooled, check here before you:

• retweet a post,
• share a link,
• email a link!

Trendsmap has you covered with real time coverage of all the #AprilFools chatter on Twitter as well as trending links and media.

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…

Anyway, back to my wife on the couch.

The Facebook page she had just opened was Bubbamia Fabrics (web site here too).  They sell fabrics for crafty types. Anyhow my wife was after some groovy fabrics for a toilet roll holder she was making (not really) and if she had logged in 5 minutes earlier she would have got the ‘Start Shopping’ post that signalled the start of the Bubbamia Sale Night! Confused? read below:

So what Bubbamia are doing here is sort of a flash sale / private sale / group buy all in one. Her fans (all 4,902 – respect!) love fabric, and they’re passionate enough to connect with her on Facebook for the chance to purchase. Bubbamia then upload a gallery of pictures (the products) and the sale is on. As soon as the sale is announced all the fans rush in to the album as fast as possible and type “SOLD” in the comments of the product they want. It’s unreal. It’s social Shopping!

What’s even more amazing is that there are game mechanics here too, it’s the competitive nature of being first, of getting your comment in before someone else when you know there’s minimal stock. genius.

And it’s viral by default! You comment, your friends see you comment.  You (win) and  buy the item, your friends see the item you purchased.

Genius.

Payments are then worked out via email.  everyone’s happy,

And the best thing about this genius idea, is that it’s organic. It feels right, like a natural extension of a fan page on Facebook rather than an app that’s been bolted on.

So I dug in a little deeper, and a whole new world opened up to me, there are heaps of these ‘pages’ on FB and they all help each other out. It’s like an F-Commerce Fan Page Network. And while not all I found run the ‘Sale events’ as described above (many still transact via their web site) they are all driving massive engagement within their niche markets, and making sales.

Here are a few more I found:

• Vintage Marketplace
• Charlie&Jax
• Giggle Berry Creations
• Lil Dilberry Bags
• Little Snuggle Monkey

Do you have your web site ready for PAID traffic?

It’s very easy to get carried away at the thought of instant traffic to your site in the form of AdWords clicks. But if that site of yours is not ready for traffic, then you’re just wasting your time and money.

I’m not talking about conversion optimisation here – all these things follow later. I’m talking about giving your business the best possible chance of generating ROI from your ad spend, and forming some kind of relationship with the user that just clicked through. Conversions that matter are not always transactional in the form of money in the bank and a product sold. They can often be as simple as an email sign-up or a ‘White Paper’ download.  Building a relationship with the researchers and the information hunters is just as important as converting those ready to buy.

The idea here, in simple terms,  is that even if this user (who’s click you just paid for on AdWords) does not purchase from you on their first visit, if you get your ‘hooks’ into them somehow, then you may be able to get them back to your site for free the next time when they are ready to buy.

Here’s a list of things I’d consider:

• Email sign-up form (even if you don’t send out emails yet)
• Facebook Fan/Business Page and a ‘Like’ box on your site. (yes, simple as that. They’re free, 500 million ++ people might see it… so go get one).
• A Contact Us form that works… (You know who you are, the site with the broken contact form that emails no one, or the incorrect email address listed.)
• Follow Us on Twitter link. (If you are on Twitter make sure you let people follow you easily).
• Local business?  Phone number and even your address on every page!

OK that’s just a few ideas for now.

The other question to continue to ask yourself even while you are paying for traffic is:

Are you also doing everything you can to build a consistent and reliable source of ‘free’* traffic?

* nothing’s ever free… in the case of free web traffic I refer to that which you have not had to purchase it via amedia buy. Eg.  SEO  versus PPC (SEO you pay for on-site dev, and off-site factors, not the actual click from the search engine).

The social media specialist walks into the bar and thinks “I need to find the influencers here, they are the key!”

The old school marketer walks straight to the bar, asks for the manager, and starts pitching a sponsorship deal.

The search engine marketer walks into the bar and buys the beer…

I’m not yet sure why there’s a big road in the top graphic, but it’ll come to me.

I just figured that it looked old school, like ‘The Information Superhighway’… 1999 all the way… When we were worried about Y-2-K…

So I admit it, I’ve been slack on the blog posts of late, sorry, but it’s been pretty busy at work.

I’m also the guy who tells his class at RMIT  to ‘blog regularly, or not at all’…. so yeah, I FAIL.

But I will  write more, so ask me questions here or on twitter or on quora.

I will answer them.

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 work 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.

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.

This is no attack on journalist, professional internet marketers, or other prominent individuals who are using twitter to enhance their personal reputation.  But if you’re the local car dealer or dentist, you’re unlikely to be driving many leads from tweeting.  You get real value for your time by running PPC ads against keywords related to “pest control“, “denver liposuction” or other terms that are indicative of purchase intent, versus casual entertainment.  If you’re just hanging out with friends and use twitter socially, that’s a completely different matter than serious business to drive revenue.

On Facebook, there is a separation between personal and business profiles.  We wouldn’t put BlitzLocal as a group or personal profile– it would have to be a Facebook fan page for the many benefits that you get from fan pages– the ability to target ads, run insights, install custom applications, and so forth.  And if your group hits 5,000 users, you’re cut off from messaging.  Plus, you get more SEO juice from doing pages– Facebook said so themselves many times.

Regardless, test out what works.  Use your analytics to tell you what’s driving you the most traffic and leads.  Your time is limited, so choose your battles wisely.  If you have questions or would like to argue a different point of view, this is a great forum for discussion.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily SEM Samurai..

Background – In May, my car got trashed by a hail storm in Melbourne and After much back and forward it has been written off.

So the good, is I don’t have to go through the headache of getting it repaired, the bad – I love my car… and to add insult to injury, I’d spent $900 replacing the radiator 2 weeks before the attack of the killer hail storm occurred.

Anyway…  enough about me!

So my tweet was actually to see if CGU are monitoring their social media presence.

Verdict is no they are not.

In this day and age, there is simply no excuse for a consumer focused company to not be monitoring Twitter and Facebook etc. No excuse at all… CGU even have a Twitter Account!

I really wasn’t expecting much from them if they did respond to my tweet.

To be honest, I would have just liked a reply.

I’m also pretty sure the reason for the delay is the sheer number of claims post the ‘Killer Hail Storm’. That’s cool, I get it, but CGU, you need to communicate better if that’s the case.

The point of this post is that I was playing the disgruntled consumer who vented via twitter, and I got nothing back… Nothing! But the good thing, for CGU, is I’m actually not super disgruntled, just a little frustrated.

What CGU, and any other consumer facing service not listening to the social web, must ask themselves  is how many really disgruntled customers are complaining about them on Twitter every week only to have their voices go unheard?

Shame.

Disclaimer:  I received this one-sheeter from Google last week. While I don’t yet have any hard data to support these strategy recommendations, they’re definitely worth considering.

Google Content Network Strategy

Invest Time Upfront

-    Set up your campaign correctly from the start

• Choose the right targeting option to meet your campaign goals. Use contextual targeting with keywords grouped by theme to achieve direct response goals and use placement targeting to reach domains and pages for branding goals.
• Divide and conquer – Manage search and content campaigns separately to customize content keywords, placements, bids, and budgets. This will give you the flexibility to test different content strategies without affecting the performance of your search campaigns and will tighten control over your content network spending.
• Measure and track conversions – Set up Google conversion tracking before running a content campaign. With conversion tracking, you will be able to see your cost-per-acquisition (CPA) for each ad group and placement to better inform your optimization decisions.

Guide Your Consumer

-    Make it easy for people to respond to your offer

• Drive action with compelling ads. Attract potential customers to your ad by highlighting unique selling points and promotions with engaging, descriptive messaging. Include call-to-action phrases in your ad to reference a desired action post-click.
• Match destination URLs to what’s being advertised in your ad. Create a seamless experience and keep potential customers engaged by linking your ad to customized landing pages that load in less than one second, or even faster.
• Remove distractions and pave the way for conversions. Provide an easy path for users to purchase or receive the product or offer in your ad. Make it visible on the landing page by placing your call-to-action button on the top half of the page, above the fold.

Track, Tune and Prune

-    Manage your campaign closely as it ramps up, then put it on auto-pilot

• Evaluate performance at the placement level. See where your ads are showing in the Networks tab in your account or with a Placement Performance Report (PPR) and spend more time evaluating sites that make up 80% of your spend.
• Extend your reach by replicating success. Get more of what’s working by noting where your ads are performing well and creating similar ad groups and related placements to reach additional high potential areas of the content network.
• Refine ad groups to improve ROI. Fix what’s not working by decreasing bids on poor performing placements, excluding undesired placements, and adding negative keywords to refine targeting.
• Auto-optimize with Conversion Optimizer. Another benefit to implementing Google’s conversion tracking is Conversion Optimizer. . Turn on Google’s Conversion Optimizer and select a maximum CPA and Conversion Optimizer will automatically manage all of your bids to drive the most conversions at an average cost below that CPA.

The Sydney event, held recently, received great reviews and I have no doubt Melbourne will be the same.

So what’s it about, and who should attend? Barry Smyth has set up this half day event in order to help people get the most out of Twitter as a marketing tool.

Who will benefit? Advertising  / Marketing Professionals, Individuals,  Business owners, and more. Ultimately, anyone interested in improving, or beginning, their Twitter experience.

The agenda’s fantastic and covers the following topics:

- How to use Twitter
- Writing for Twitter
- Correct etiquette
- Pitfalls to avoid
- Understanding the ROI
- Case Study

I’ll be discussing ‘What is the Return on Investment’ for your Twitter efforts  so if you’ve any thoughts or comments, I’d love to hear from you.

I look forward to seeing you there!

@leighhanney