Pivot Study Shows There’s Life Outside of Facebook

When talking about social media marketing, Facebook and Twitter usually rise to the top of the conversation. But believe it or not, those aren’t the only games in town. Pivot Conference released a new study today called “The Rise of the Social Consumer“ and in it, they show that marketers are starting to move past the popular choices in search of something better.

If you look at the second column, you’ll see a group of 20 – 26% that represents the next move for most social media marketers. These are the social networks they hope to explore in the coming year. Foursquare, LinkedIn and YouTube are all excellent choices with very difference audiences.

Foursquare is the best choice for those promoting a brick and mortar establishment, especially an eatery or entertainment venue. LinkedIn is perfect for anyone in the B2B biz and YouTube is a nice catchall that includes younger consumers, techy consumers and anyone who enjoys a good laugh!

What’s really interesting is Zynga, with 13% of the vote. This is in-game advertising, a segment that is very hot, but not on the radar for most small business marketers. I haven’t looked into the numbers, but my gut feeling is that it would be expensive and more complex than putting up an ad on Facebook. If I’m way off base with this, please do let me know in the comment section.

In spite of the fact that social media marketing feels like old news, almost all of the people surveyed said they thought it was still gaining momentum. More than half said they were shifting money away from other forms of marketing and they thought they were getting better at using social media. What’s truly amazing is that 23% strongly agreed with the statement that social advertising can deliver a greater ROI than other forms of advertising. Actually, I believe we believe it, we simply struggle with a way to prove it.

I’ll leave you with this final chart, which I found extremely interesting. Pivot asked marketers what their objective was for social advertising and the answers are all over the board.

What I get from this, is that marketers don’t know what to expect from social media, so they’re throwing it all out there and waiting to see what sticks.

Pivot Conference: The Rise of the Social Consumer is loaded with lots of interesting charts and stats and you can download it for nothing more than the cost of your contact info. So go forth and learn.

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Facebook Marketing for Microsoft Partners: A Primer

In-Depth

Facebook Marketing for Microsoft Partners: A Primer

New functionality additions in the social networking tool mean creative Microsoft partners have more ways than ever to get the word out about the great things their companies are doing.

• By Joe Dysart
• August 01, 2011

With the rollout of Facebook’s new makeover this spring a fait accompli, many Web-savvy businesses are rejoicing that some of the service’s new features will make it much easier for them to market on the social network — both creatively, and from a business analytics perspective.

Millions of Facebook users have been watching the latest evolution of the service — which includes a new look and feel for everyone who has a Facebook account — metamorphize across the network since late 2010.

“If you look at Facebook’s growth you can see that by 2012 about half of the U.S. and a big chunk of the global population will be using Facebook once a month,” says Simon Solotko, a senior advanced marketing manager at chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. “That’s a tipping point in terms of the scope and influence in social connectivity of people everywhere.”

One of Facebook’s most anticipated marketing changes is the network’s new ability to easily add framed content to a Facebook page — technically known as content presented within iFrames. Essentially, the change enables any business to easily mirror the Web design on its Web site on a Facebook page — as long as it’s within an iFrame.

Scores of Web designers are celebrating the move, because attempting to duplicate the look and feel of a company’s Web site pages on Facebook had previously presented quite a challenge in many cases.

Moreover, Web marketers say the introduction of easy iFraming also makes it much simpler for a business to crunch visitor analytics, including tracking visitor activity on Facebook pages, and thoroughly analyzing how sales and other sought-after conversions unfold on a Facebook page.

One caveat: If you or your Web designer plans to take advantage of iFrames on Facebook, be sure that you protect such content from would-be computer hackers, who can compromise iFramed Web pages if those pages are not secured properly.

Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook, has grown the social networking site to more than 750 million registered users.

“Good programming and updates [to all the software you're using] are key to protecting this kind of content,” says Catalin Cosoi, head of BitDefender Online Threat Labs, a division of the BitDefender Web security firm. “Actually, this means applying strong security policies to all of the company’s Web pages, including those on Facebook.”

All told, the Facebook makeover has stimulated marketers to update their best marketing practices for the service in myriad ways. Here are some of the most popular:

Understand Why Facebook Is So Powerful
While social networking has been around for a while — people were socializing on Web forums long before Mark Zuckerberg got his first tricycle — Facebook was one of the services that made such networking so effortless, so fun and so multifaceted.

For example, once someone signs up for your “fan” or business page on Facebook, they immediately begin getting info about your business in their News Feed, can instantly share your offers to others in their social network, can effortlessly engage in discussions on your Facebook page, can give their opinion about your products or services and can shop on your Facebook page — all of which is extremely intuitively. Small wonder Facebook now has 750 million-plus registered users, and growing.

Moreover, Facebook represents a chance for marketers to reach out to an audience that’s often pre-qualified, and often already extremely interested in what a company has to say.

“Facebook is a place where there’s self selection,” says Lisa Dreher, vice president of marketing and business development at Logicalis Group. “People choose what organizations they will befriend. That’s unique in marketing. As in most cases, we’re putting messages in front of people whether they want to see them or not.” Now with social media, the people are choosing what they want to hear about. “It means your audience is highly qualified — presuming you’re doing the right things to get the right people there in the first place,” Dreher says.

Get Creative with Facebook’s Newly Unshackled Web Design Features
For years, Web designers have bemoaned the fact that they were forced to use Facebook’s propriety programming for much of the designing they did on the Facebook site. No more. With the rollout of Facebook’s latest makeover, the service is now offering Web designers complete creative design freedom within specified framed areas of company pages on Facebook.

“I, for one, am thrilled with this long-awaited news,” says Janet Driscoll Miller, CEO of SearchMojo, a Web marketing firm. Essentially, any content that appears within these specially designed iFrames is no longer subject to the limitations of Facebook’s design format. Instead, the content can be easily designed with more robust Web design programs like DreamWeaver or Microsoft Expression.

“This is a huge timesaver when you’re trying to program pages to match your corporate brand,” Miller adds.

[Click on image for larger view.] Figure 1. Company Facebook pages no longer need to all look like a running list of status updates. While customized pages were possible before, a new approach called iFrames allows developers to reject Facebook’s proprietary programming and create pages with familiar tools such as DreamWeaver or Microsoft Expression.

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