New Facebook Opportunities

Facebook recently added some new services such as "Places, Questions, and Groups" and expanded their services on "Photos and Likes". Mashable also does a good job of explaining their new services in this article. Here are a few of our ideas on ways to leverage these updates and services, and create value.

1) Photos
Photos are an integral part of Facebook's value. As Facebook continues to upgrade their photo offering and sharing features, there will be more opportunity to expand your brand and engage your customers and advocates. Photos also help bring your companies Facebook page to life. Businesses should not overlook the interaction power and sharing opportunities that photos can create between you and your customers. Video falls into a similar category as photos.

2) Groups
You can read more in this previous article on facebook's new groups in a weekly recap. The new group features allow for live chat, and can be used for business purposes by creating more targeted customer focus groups or event oriented groups. Be aware though, when using groups you must have a definitive strategy regarding who you invite, and the purpose of the conversation.

3) Questions
Facebook Questions is an area that will continue to evolve and shape the boundaries of social search. Businesses can take advantage of Facebook Questions by answering these questions as a business and/or thought leader or expert in that particular field. It is also important to tread carefully with this and use as soft sell approach when asking questions as a marketing or informational tool to your community. It is important to note that all questions are open to everyone and live outside of your community, so this needs to be remembered when asking and answering questions.

4) Places
If your business has a physical store or location, than Facebook places is another utility (Foursquare) that can help increase foot traffic, by encouraging people to check-in. An "I was here" message gets delivered to the friends and posted to the place page. So go claim your page, because Facebook has 500+ million users, which means most the people that come into your business are on Facebook and have a network of friends that you can easily reach out to.

5) Likes
Some consider "likes" and "fans" as the end all, which I disagree with. A smaller but more targeted fan base can be far more effective than a large number of likes by unqualified people. However, having more people that "like" your company or page creates a larger distribution network, and therefore has incredible marketing power. There are many creative ways to drive people to "liking" your company, however the most effective way is to have a strategy and be persistent... which I'll save for another post.

7 pages every business Web site must have - Office Live Small Business Community

7 pages every business Web site must have - Office Live Small Business Community

Facebook Pages Update

Facebook recently released a new Admin Panel for Facebook Pages. The new panel is designed to make your Facebook Page easier to control and more intuitive than the previous setup.

Now when you click "edit page" under your Page's profile picture it will take you to a screen that looks like this:

The red box indicates the new "top level" admin menu as a column on the left hand side with a "help" link at the bottom.

John Hayden does a good job explaining the changes in further detail HERE.

Social3i on the Road

It'll be a busy couple of weeks for the Social3i team, and you can find us in a few alternate locations.

• Monday 11/1, we'll be at the University of Washington, taking part in a panel discussion for the Center of Innovation and Entrepreneurship's "Entrepreneur Week."
• Wednesday 11/3, we'll be at Williams-Helde Advertising, running a Northwest Entrepreneur Network "eIQ Session" on "Social Media for Startups."
• This weekend, our Sports Division heads to LA to participate in activities around the U.S. soccer community and the 2022 World Cup bid.
• Next Friday, 11/12, we'll be all over the Northwest Entrepreneur Network's "Entrepreneur University" at the Bellevue Hyatt. Xavier will be moderating a panel entitled, "You Get What You Measure" featuring Rand Fishkin, Galen Ward and Kabir Shahani. It should be a great event. (And don't miss Cranium founder Richard Tait, as he takes the stage for a keynote speech about lessons starting his newest project that launched last week.)

Social Media can Improve your SEO & SEM

A common question that decision makers ask when referring to a social marketing strategy is a very simple and appropriate one: Why?

Although we are starting to see more and more concrete examples around the ROI of social programs, it has still been a struggle for people to quantify the value of a good social media strategy for brands. Companies are used to seeing the value out of a good SEO or SEM program, because of the direct data analysis that corresponds with them. So here are few reasons of how a good social marketing strategy can affect these more understood initiatives.

Search is becoming social. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is changing and will have to change around the social graph. The reason for this is that the goal of Search Engines is to deliver the best result based on any given search. SEO strategy plays off of this by structuring & optimizing your content and links so that the SE's can read it. However, content is changing from static content to real-time social content. So SEO will have to change around social because the Search Engines are having to change around social media. Bing recently announced a deal with Facebook, where in the Search Results you will see Facebook likes from your friends related to the results. You can imagine the benefit to those companies that have a large or targeted fan base. Google has been testing other social elements, including "tweets" within the results based on keywords. The web is being rebuilt around people and dynamic real-time content, and therefore the strategies for your brand must adapt as well.

As search becomes social, naturally Search Engine Marketing (SEM) will be affected. Aside from the obvious benefits if SEM platforms start adding social elements within the ads or delivery context, there are other benefits. "Trust Elements" such as Badges, Testimonials and Word-of-mouth conversation are some of the most important factors when building quality landing/conversion pages, therefore they can have a significant impact when measuring SEM conversion rates. As you pay to drive clicks to a certain landing page, showing that you are engaging with current customers via social channels can be a statistically significant influence on your conversion rates for this traffic. In past SEM campaigns I have run, I saw conversion rates jump by over 30% by clearly showing we were actively social, and allowing clients to read the natural conversation taking place around our brand and products. We also included 'twitter testimonials' on our conversion pages with the twitter handles so people could validate the claims, because the conversations are live on the web.

So not only will social marketing add tremendous value independently of Search Engines, it can also add measurable value to the current programs you have in place within the more understood "search" environment.

Busy Seattle Technology Marketing Week

If you're in technology marketing and advertising, this is going to be a busy week.

Tuesday: Social Media Club October Event "Building Ambassadors Using Social Media" at The Canal in Ballard, 5300 34th Ave NW, Seattle, WA 98107 (6-9pm)

Wednesday: TechFlash Meetup at Spitfire Grill, 2219 4th Avenue Seattle, WA (5-8pm)

Thursday: NWIAG.com October Event at Havana's Social, 1010 E. Pike St, Seattle, WA 98122. (5-9pm)

See you all there.

The sFund and Space Travel

This week's Headlines in Social Media

The big story of the week is the announcement that Kleiner Perkins, Amazon, Zynga, Facebook, Comcast and others are all betting on Social.

"Social is just getting started and the opportunities are vast. As in the early days of the Internet, the race is on. Today every business, organization, and entrepreneur should have a social strategy." -KPCB Partner Bing Gordon

Together these giants launched the 'sFund' this week, which will be a $250 million dollar fund dedicated to funding entrepreneurs and companies delivery social applications and advancing the social web. Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg says:

"The Web is being rebuilt around people"

It is great to see that companies of this magnitude and are combing their resources to drive further innovation in the "social web". One of the first investments for the fund is "Cafebots" which is in stealth but is being dubbed as a "Friend Relationship Management" service with the goal of helping users make better use of their social graphs. This gives an idea of the next generation of companies that will add value to the social web.

Foursquare

An Astronaut checked into Foursquare from outer Space today which is a first in the realm of outer space social media. It kicks off a partnership between NASA and Foursquare helping to promote other NASA venues that the rest of us may be able to check-in to.