With the latest predictions that the number of active Facebook users will reach 1 billion in 2012, some CEO and marketing managers may be wondering; why just jump in?

More than 8XX million people in one basket and Facebook still growing. All marketers wet dream. I have conducted a mix of strategic and tactical advices regarding Facebook. These advices are targeting both to newbie’s and intermediate skilled social media marketers and Facebook page community managers. Hopefully my tips will contribute in different ways to increase your (their) success factor.

Note: I write short posts and a few long posts. This post is long and more like an article and you will need to invest more than 3 minutes…. I could split it up in 2 or 3 parts, but that’s no point regarding this blog theme format. Too busy? Welcome back another time! That said; hopefully it will be worth your time! Comments appreciated ;-)

What is Likeonomics?

“Likeonomics is a term that explains the new affinity economy where the most likeable people, ideas and organizations are the ones we believe in, buy from and get inspired by.” Source: Rohit Bhargava Author of the new book Likeonomics – How to be more believable in the new affinity Economy (2012). 

STEP 1: What do we want to accomplish with Facebook?

Before your company create a NEW Facebook page or re-make your existing page to the new Timeline page setup, you should step back and re-think some important questions and brainstorm across your web, marketing and communication/PR department.

Start with some strategic questions:

• Do we want to sell (F-Commerce) our products or services on Facebook? Why?
• Do we want to increase sales & get traffic from Facebook to our WebShop? Why?
• Do we want to use Facebook for branding purposes? Why?
• Do we want to use Facebook for marketing? Why?
• Do we want to use Facebook for PR? Why?
• Do we want to offer customer support or service on Facebook? Why?
• Do we want to use Facebook as our #1 Community platform? Why?
• Do we want to use Facebook as prospect lead nurturing platform? Why?
• How do Facebook fit into existing or new market, communication/PR strategy & tactics?
• How do Facebook fit into existing or new social media platform mix?
• What is our wanted/expected ROI for our Facebook efforts?

In addition to these questions; if it’s too long time since your company did an overall “Status Quo” digital brand audit, including Social SWOT and Gap analysis, which should help your managers and team to agree on and understand where your company stands today.

Such audit will further point out your direction and help you build updated or new action plans for web, mobile and social media multi-channel marketing. You should also be able to decide what kind of content you want to publish at your Facebook page, uniquely and coordinated with your other platforms and channels.

Read more about this kind of strategic exercise in my post:  20 steps to consider building your digital strategy:  http://bit.ly/xX7R0Q 

I know you will find tons of other interesting strategic questions out there on websites, FB pages and  in the blogosphere, but my purpose with my prioritized top level yet “simple” questions mentioned above, is to PINpoint some key versatile strategic questions and considerations, either your business is B2C or B2B, small, medium or big size.

Imagine that Facebook is a giant toolbox, or a big box of Lego (We all played with Lego, and some of us still are!): All the parts are there, but you have to put them all together to make something interesting and/or unique. It’s up to you what you want to build, depending of your goal and objectives! Establishing your brand or company on Facebook means giving up some control (Technical and viral), but if you play your cards right, you will earn engagement and influence back.

If you want read more about Viral and Word-Of-Mouth marketing check out my previous post:

Empowered by the Crowd - Why is Viral marketing so Powerful?  http://bit.ly/x0ytIN

STEP 2: Identify & define your #1 Goal with Facebook

Before you write down your #1 Goal, brainstorm across your web, marketing & communication/PR departments. Brainstorm, write down all suggestions, then identify a top 5 list, then prioritize and choose and define your #1 Goal! Don’t be in a hurry! This is maybe your most important decision and choice after all.

I know this seems a little harsh, but it seems hard to succeed when companies tries to have too many goals with one channel. Remember what happens when chasing two rabbits? ;-) But of course you need to backup your #1 Goal with several objectives to support your Goal.

If your company both want to sell, promote, market, do lead nurturing with prospects, online branding, community building with fans and try to do reputation building as well….I know I’m  sounding grumpy now, but you have to prioritize and choose one path, one #1 Goal! It does not mean if your #1 Goal is selling more products, that you should forget your online reputation on Facebook.

It simply means “Eyes on the Prize” kind of advice. If you define i.e. 5-10 goals with your Facebook page you will probably get problems with your content consistency and to build trust over time.

It’s the same with your website front page or important web landing pages: You don’t want to squeeze all products, services, info, news, offers, promos etc. into one page. You do have different pages with different purpose and content, different call-to-action and desirable CTR (Click-Through Rate) and conversion goals.

If you do have managed to define and monitored your web metrics and analytics, you will shortly understand why I recommend some of the same steps with your Facebook page and with your Facebook marketing.

Here are some examples of Facebook Goals with example tactics to support the goal:

• Goal: We want to sell more stuff on Facebook!

Example tactics: FB page with F-commerce/store front, Sale & special offer with onsite Call-to-Action sale funnel, increase sales conversion rates, FB Insights or Google Analytics/Webtrends

• Goal: We want to sell more stuff in our WebShop!

Example tactics: On-Page + Off-Page SEO (Inbound link building), Google Adwords, FB page, FB ads, marketing & special offer content marketing, lead nurturing, get webshop visitors from FB, URL/campaign tagging & measurement, Google Analytics/Webtrends, increase WebShop conversion rates

• Goal: We want to market our products/services

Example tactics: FB page & FB ads, lead nurturing, closing sale at Website, increase conversion rates, FB Insights

• Goal: We want to build increased Brand awareness

Example tactics: FB page, FB ads, viral marketing, get traffic to brand website, increase Website unique visitors and CTR, FB Insights, Social Media/Brand/Buzz/ORM monitoring tool ( i.e. Radian6, Sysomos, BrandsEye, Trackur, ViralHeat) campaign manager (ROI) tool: SWIX (http://swixhq.com/)

• Goal: We want to build our online fan community

Example tactics: FB page, FB ads, super fan groups, contests, polls, funny stories/pictures/videos, engaging & sticky content, increase # of Likes AND engagement ratio

• Goal: We want to offer customer services/support

Example tactics: FB page, FB ads, service group, support group, increase # of Likes AND feedback rate

TIP: I recommend all brands to use Social Media/Brand/Buzz/ORM monitoring tools! In fact, I advise clients to first start listening and to learn the tone of voice & channel formats from their target demographics or stakeholder, BEFORE launching their first Facebook page.

Define your goals, objectives, KPIs and then choose tool (s) that actual are able to measure your objectives and KPIs. If you want to read more about monitoring the buzz; read my post:

HOW TO - Work more tactical with Social Media and ORM monitoring tools:  http://bit.ly/e60bw8

After your company have decided #1 Goal with Facebook, then it’s smart to break up your goal in some tactical objectives and then define your KPIs to measure your progress and success towards your ultimate goal!

STEP 3: Identify & define your tactical Facebook Marketing objectives

Ad objectives:

• Lower cost per click
• Higher CTR
• More impressions per buck

FAN boosting objectives:

• More relevant fans (Not only passive Likes)
• More influencers & advocates
• Lower cost per fan
• Faster fan growth

POSTING objectives:

• More impressions & reach per post
• Higher Feedback rate
• More comments per post
• More likes per post
• Higher Engagement rate

Web traffic (from your Facebook page ) objectives

• More clicks from posts to; web, landing page, campaign page or blog
• Web traffic from Facebook Ads
• Higher web conversion rates on desired pages (Fulfillment of planned Call-To-Action)

 STEP 4: Identify & define your Facebook Marketing KPIs

When your goal and objectives are defined, you need some easy to follow KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) metric, to measure your progress towards your goal. When your Facebook page or ad campaign project is 1, 2,3 or 6 month old, how will you know if your efforts are a success or not? Here is why you both need to define your KPIs and success criteria’s, and share these across your organization.

Remember: You can’t manage, what you don’t measure!

Ad metrics:

• Cost Per Click (CPC)
• Click-Through Rate (CTR)
• Cost Per Impressions
• Total number of impressions
• Budget/Spend

FAN boost metrics:

• New fans (Likes) added per day
• Cost per fan
• Click-Through Rate
• Action/Connection Rate

POSTING metrics:

• Impressions per post
• Feedback Rate
• Comments per post
• Likes per post
• Engagement Rate

WEBsite result metrics:

• Click-through Rate from FB post to webpage
• Web Conversion Rate of FB ad
• Web Conversion Rate of post traffic
• Other social media platform share referrals

Your KPIs should follow the SMART framework:

This means that the KPI metric has a Specific purpose for the business, it is Measurable to really get a value of the KPI, the defined metric have to be Achievable, the improvement of a KPI has to be Relevant to the success of the organization, and finally it must be Time phased, which means the value or outcomes are shown for an agreed time period.

STEP 5: Urge to fail, but fail fast!

Learning by doing. Learn from others mistakes. Learn from yours. Prioritizing what goes “Good VS. Very good” is essential. Stop doing what’s not. 

STEP 6: Selected Facebook tactics to consider

Pages

Setup your FB Page with the new Timeline framework. Use a header page brand image coordinated with your existing style, colors and logo etc. If you need more technical details to setup Timeline and Pinning, you find many good tips if you ask Google! ;-)

Groups

When numbers of likes and engagement amongst your fans increase, it is time to consider creating some groups as well. I.e. create groups for your products, services, events, super fan group etc. With a special or niche group, you get the fans to feel their treated in an exclusively way! 

Setting the Tone

Deciding your tone can be the most difficult thing to do, but is crucial. Facebook is about emotions, passion and interests. In many ways Facebook do have its own form for accepted communication and behavior. Be sure to learn from your target fans, before you launch. Learn how to do copy writing both for your posts AND ads.

Do not use your same business tone commonly used in websites. With Facebook its time to be more personalized and less business tone of voice. Dare to be unique, innovative and funny with your content. Be careful both with controversy and humor. That said; test it out on a small audience first. Don’t avoid it, just respect it.

A natural result of enabling conversations and buzz is that you cannot control those conversations, only influence and balance them.

Content Management

Choose your tactics wisely & Your Community Manager closely

Be clear what type of information you want to post on FB and not. Your social media strategy and multi-channel strategy should consider and define both the what, when and whom regarding what you publish on your website, blog, YouTube, twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest etc.  Most of us like to be treated exclusively; keep duplicating of content of your web/blog/twitter and Facebook page to a minimum.

Do not use auto post software too often. Keep both to a minimum. Facebook is for people. People talk. Remember that social media including Facebook is about creating interactivity and two ways dialogue. It is boring to have  trusted your brand with following both your blog and twitter account, AND your Facebook page finding out that you are posting exactly the same content in your blog and Facebook page every day….Not cool to be busted! If you lack resources or time (Or both), put your time into fewer channels and platforms, and focus on a few with higher quality!

Make a content plan with time schedule and responsibly person creating and publishing for i.e. your website news page, blog, twitter, YouTube AND Facebook posts. Distribute it internal and get your colleagues to create content! Creating content should be distributed and as many as possible should contribute.

Building fans VS. Passive Likes  

A social media strategy, including goal and objectives for Facebook should also describe the focus in content tactics. Content management is crucial for success. Just accomplishing 2000, 5000 or 10000 likes is NOT a goal in its self. You need a plan for how to create fans out of Likes, and how to be compelling and sticky to keep them engaged!

It is better with 3000 likes, with higher percent of feedback and engagement rates AND web conversion rates, than 10000 likes and 9000 passive “not real fans” Likes. You need to create your tribe. Perhaps create a unique group for your most engaged super fans and influencers.

You need to get likes from people who need what your brand offer! So do have focus not only on number of Likes, but quality VS. quantity.

Like Gating - “Sales tricks” out of date

Some brands are/was using Like Gating to build their target fans. They used Gating as FB landing page for new visitors. The upside with Like Gating is that the visitor can read why they should Like the brand/page and what to get in return (One-time special offer, coupon code, free e-book etc.) or expect when they become fans. This provided a kind of “quality filters” of your likes. The downside of Like Gating is that you can’t take a “free tour” and watch content on all available tabs before deciding.

Timeline have changed and closed this kind of landing page feature!

Non-fans, instead, will see the wall and all shared content as it exists on the Timeline. You can if you want still Gate, but the only way a user now can interact with this Like method will be to actively click your Tab that is Gated. This also means that to attract new Likes, with Like Gating, by some called “sales tricks” is out of date.

That again means that your main picture, copy writing, pinning and use of visual exciting pictures, compelling and sticky posts counts even more. And that’s good!

Test out what kind of Pinning that makes most Likes and engagement. You will be able to PIN your top piece of content at the top of your timeline for a 7 day period. Then you must change the content.

The 1% effect Rule

It is a lot of surveys out there about how often people click Like, number of post seen etc. etc. Most of them are biased from the company who ordered the survey or by the marketer. Nevertheless here are some “FaceFACTS” based on numbers and insights assembled by author and blogger Brian Carter:

The 1% effect Rule

• Most Google Adwords marketers look for at least 1% CTR
• Most e-commerce sites tries to get at least 1% of visitors to buy
• When a FB post ask people to like or comment, usually at least 1% of those who see it will do it
• When a FB post include a hyperlink, usually at least 1% of people who see it will click on it
• On average across different branches, about 1% of e-mail subscribers clicks on URL to your web

Regarding FB ads the common average ad get a 0,1% CTR (1 out of 1000). Search ads such as Google Adwords get higher CTR mainly because people actively type the search after their interests and favorite subject, and the Ads is then showed on the top of the page and the look is close to the search results. Source: Brian Carter.

So indeed, volume is important, but to increase engagement and deliver desirable Call-to-Action funnel and conversion rates, you really need a crowd of fans, not only Likes.

STEP 7: How to market your Facebook presence

In the same way you have to market your Website with tactics such as On-Page and Off-Page SEO and SEM/PPC to increase your digital visibility, you probably need to market your Facebook page in a few or many channels as well.

Not all your prospects or customers are on Facebook, neither all your blog readers, twitter followers etc. And to move your existing fan base from one channel to another will not solve much, will it?

Let me illustrate a scenario: A company has 2000 blog readers per day and 4000 twitter followers. They want to sell more stuff with their Facebook presence. Then they setup a Facebook Page. Is the starting fan base potential then 6000? Maybe, or maybe not:

The 2000 blog readers can be half of your twitter follower crowd (Of course this is often mixed). And let’s say you get “lucky” fast; and do get 6000 Likes from existing fan base to your brand new Facebook page. Does this mean that you now can sell more stuff if that is your goal? No, probably not!

Until now, you have just relocated and/or duplicated the same people interesting in your company or brand. If they haven’t taking your content bait in other channels, they probably will not bite on your Facebook hooks if you continue with your same content.

Therefore: Adjust your content for posting on your Facebook wall. Your content tactics including timing, frequency and consistency are all crucial factors towards success.

The viral mechanism and ecosystem inside Facebook is unique. People trust their friends and their peers, and gladly (and easily) give away their Likes and pass on their recommendations. Therefore have some brands really succeeded in growing huge crowd of fans.  

But there are brands that succeed in building big crowds with twitter, others with their blog and others again with YouTube. And some have been reaching their social media goals without Facebook.

As I try to describe in this post, success on Facebook depends on several factors, and i.e. success with twitter do not necessary mean success with Facebook and vice versa. And remember that your web is still the hub in your multi-channel marketing mix.

Your web is your first place to promote your Facebook page

The first thing to do is to tell your web visitors about your Facebook presence, and tell them WHY it is a must to join you there! Use easy to find (In header or footer) Facebook icons on every webpage to signal your other digital places.

E-Mail “Like us on Facebook” Campaigns

Bad title, I know, but very common. You should do copy writing so good on your website and in other channels, so you don’t need to express: “Like us on Facebook”. You should instead communicate your value propositions, and think as your audience: “What’s in it for me?”. Explain WHY. Give them a good reason to Like your page.

If you are smart (I know you are, because you have read to this line), you have a link or button that tells your web visitors that they can subscribe to your e-mail newsletter etc. If you have built a good e-mail subscriber list, of course you create a smashing visual web 2.0 mail (With MailChimp or other similar services) with optimized copy writing text & Facebook link bait, and include viral marketing text to create “Tell a friend” and “Pass it on” actions.

Twitter marketing

If you have a crowd of twitter followers, tweet about why they should Like you on Facebook. Twitter is a very good tool to promote new (And existing) websites, web pages, and campaign pages and to market a new Facebook page.

Opposite to PPC ads, twitter (still) is free to use. Use relevant #hashtags to find your new target Facebook fans.  Tag your Facebook tweets with URL/campaign tags so you can track which tweet and version of copy writing that gives most traffic to your Facebook page (or web page).

Facebook Ads

Facebook ads are cheaper than i.e. Google ads. So if you want a jumpstart and need to create volume fast, you need to start ad campaign with a adjusted budget related to your wanted ROI.

Google, Yahoo, Bing ad campaigns especially for your Facebook IF you need it, but put your money in Facebook ads for your Facebook page and spend some minimum budget on the top 3 SEM providers to market your website/blog.

Check out what recognized Nielsen Company say about Ads VS. Social Ads:

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/ads-with-friends-analyzing-the-benefits-of-social-ads/

Sponsored Stories

"Sponsored Stories is an ad format that turns your friends’ actions into promoted content. Sponsored Stories is “a way for marketers to sponsor activities that happen throughout the News Feed,” Facebook Product Marketing Lead Jim Squires told Mashable. Companies can choose to take certain user actions — such as checkins or actions within Facebook apps — and feature them in the column on the right side of the News Feed."

Source Mashable: http://mashable.com/2011/01/25/facebook-sponsored-stories/

How Facebook Sponsored Stories Can Boost Engagement

"Sponsored Stories depart from the typical Facebook ad unit. By incorporating social endorsement prominently into ads, Facebook sponsored stories are more relevant to the average user, and more likely to be clicked on than traditional Facebook ads. When done right, sponsored stories provide a significant boost to click-through and conversion rates, in part because these ad placements appear not only on the sidebar, but also within users’ News Feeds."

Source Mashable: http://mashable.com/2012/03/13/facebook-sponsored-stories-advertising/

STEP 8: Facebook Lead Nurturing

Your goal is not only your 5000 or 10000 Likes right? With Facebook Lead I mean all (both prospects & customers) fans that you want to fulfill any wanted Call-to-Action on your website OR embedded F-commerce storefront, start point Facebook.

Website Call-To-Action will depend on your goal and objectives and whether you sell stuff or not. Getting donations, recruit new members, download a whitepaper or submit to an event is all examples of Call-To-Actions. Your Lead nurturing goal is conversion! 

Here is what HubSpot says about the important Lead Nurturing process:

"How did an individual lead first come to find your website? In search? Via Facebook? From direct traffic? Is that lead an active part of your email subscriber base, often clicking and converting on marketing offers presented via email? Do they read your blog? Marketing analytics can tell you all of this and more, providing you with extremely valuable lead intelligence that can be applied to such marketing initiatives as Lead nurturing. 

This enables you to track how your individual prospects and leads are interacting with your various marketing initiatives and channels over time.

So what exactly makes marketing analytics different than web analytics? HubSpot CMO Mike Volpe can clarify:

"Web analytics measure things a webmaster cares about, like page load times, page views per visit, and time on site. Marketing analytics, on the other hand, measure business metrics like traffic, leads, and sales, and which events (both on and off your website) influence whether leads become customers. Marketing analytics includes data not only from your website, but also from other sources like email, social media, and even offline events. Marketing analytics are also usually people-centric, featuring the prospect, lead, or customer as the unit of focus, whereas web analytics usually regard the page view as the unit of focus in its reports."

With marketing analytics, marketers can understand the effectiveness of their marketing, not just the effectiveness of their website. Using marketing analytics allows marketers to identify how each of their marketing initiatives (e.g. Social Media vs. blogging vs. email marketing, etc.) stack up against one another, determine the true ROI of their activities, and understand how well they're achieving their business goals." Source: HubSpot

Read more: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/31705/Why-You-Need-Marketing-Analytics-Not-Web-Analytics.aspx#ixzz1pHT72TBF

 

TIP: Make a unique landing page at your website for your FB fans, with adjusted unique content!

STEP 9: Identify your ROI of Engagement

Some people are talking about that measure ROI of social media efforts is difficult or a waste or not possible. They are wrong. It is possible and highly recommended to identify and define your wanted ROI for many aspects of your social media efforts and campaigns. And it is both possible and analytics can be real time delivered for fast changes and tweaks of your tactics.

You should define your own ROI metrics based on your specific goal and objectives, and you can monitor your results manually or use social media/campaign tools to setup your goals and measure your results. One example of such social media campaign tool is: http://swixhq.com/campaignmanager.html 

Common social media ROI metrics are related to influence, reach, engagement, sentiment, and numbers of X, and ultimately conversion rates.

I have conducted some common metrics in my post: Social Media ROI metrics to consider: http://bit.ly/vkH87N 

You will find several similar metrics within Facebook Insights, or you can setup Google Analytics or Webtrends to monitor your goals.

STEP 10: F-Commerce & Marketing

A recent survey of more than 100,000 retailers on Facebook, many with no more than 500 likes. Findings in this survey tell that the retailers use both Facebook ads and getting traffic to their storefronts via outside channels.

e-Commerce platform Payvment, which conducted the poll, found that nearly 40 % of respondents were using Facebook Ads, and 70% of those respondents saying they would do so again, with their reasons including:

• Like and customer acquisition, 68%
• The ability to start and stop campaigns, 60%
• Facebook’s targeting capabilities, 60%; and
• Ease of use, 55%

Of the 30% of Facebook ads users who said they would not return:

• 68% said they were not successful in acquiring likes or customers
• 65% said Facebook ads are too expensive
• 25% said they didn’t understand how to use the platform

Payvment also found that the retailers in the poll said their non-Facebook marketing methods were being used to drive traffic to Facebook storefronts:

• Company website, 38%
• Twitter, 34%
• Email marketing, 30%
• Print ads, 12%
• Direct mail, 9%
• Google search ads, 8 %

Source: http://www.allfacebook.com/payvment-infographic-2012-03

To sum it up:

Facebook is Social Media on steroids. It is the World’s biggest digital social river. When Facebook changes something, we follow. Most people find something to love and hate with Facebook. But they keep using Facebook.  The ease of Liking, connecting, publishing, sharing and commenting, are all mechanisms which facilitates Word-Of-Mouth and pass-it-on habits.  

With low priced hyper target marketing possibilities (Ads), social commerce based pages (F-Commerce) and easy viral capabilities, shows that The Recommendation Age is truly documented by Facebook. Just remember to start with your social media & content strategy and your multi-channel tactics first.

Fish where the fish are! Use bait in several rivers, not only one. Fishes swim both inside and outside Facebook. Choice of social media channels and type of content depends both on the nature of your business, products and services, AND where your target fish swim!

Facebook is not for every kind of businesses, yet. Today’s “One size fits all” Facebook statement, does not give all marketers their wanted flexibilities. They love their blogs instead.

My advices are; if your company is small or have few resources or time, it can be smart to start with a blog. Learn and grow your digital communication skills there, and then create your Facebook page when your ready to rock the world!

If your company size is medium or big, be sure to include both digital multi-channel tactics, (i.e. blog, twitter, YouTube, Facebook) Social SWOT and Gap Analysis into your digital strategy planning process.

For all; when the platforms and tools are alike for everyone, it is HOW you use them, and WHAT content you publish that can support your digital i.e. storytelling, marketing, branding, image, reputation and sales.

It is with HOW and WHAT you can innovate and differentiate!

Welcome to the Facebook Era! What’s not to Like?

My question to you: What is your number 1 Goal with your Facebook page?

Please share a comment, start a discussion or share your insights if you like?

This post is based on insights from the following sources:

Bhargava, Rohit (2012) Likeonomics - How to be more believable in the new affinity Economy

Carter, Brian (2012) The Like Economy

Haugestad, Rune (2009) Social Media Strategy. SlideShare: http://slidesha.re/w5bAZx

Haugestad, Rune (2009) e-Marketing Strategy. SlideShare: http://slidesha.re/xBTAjG

Klososky, Scott (2011) Managers Guide to Social Media

Safko, Lon & Brake, David K. (2011) The Social Media Bible

Shih, Clara (2011) The Facebook Era

 

 

Word-Of-Mouth (WOM) is probably the world’s oldest form of marketing. Viral marketing is word of mouth in an electronic context. Viral marketing uses the connectedness of the Internet and the social networks characteristic empowered by the still increasing masses (YOU) to build online brand awareness and reputation exponentially. 

We all live in the recommendation era, empowered by the online crowd. 

“With apologies to Marsall MacLuhan; the medium is NOT the message. YOU are.” (Quote: Adam L. Penenberg, Viral Loop). 

   

I have no viral marketing big secrets to share, only some observations: 

People pass it on, give their recommendations on twitter, in their blogs, or post it on their Facebook wall, making a statement in a video and upload it to YouTube or Vimeo and share things that provide value to their friends and peers.

If you want to read specific about Facebook marketing check out my post:

10 steps to learn more about Facebook marketing: http://bit.ly/wrfzQJ

Understand the Power of The Recommendation Era!

Anything that truly entertains, informs, shocks, amuses or intrigues the recipient is likely to be further distributed. Viral marketing is limited only by the creativity of the e-marketer.

Word Of Mouth is a very common e-marketing and social media phrase to describe the passing of information online from person to person. Originally the term referred specifically to oral communication (literally words from the mouth). 

The phrase viral marketing and viral advertising refer to e-marketing techniques that use e-mail and/or existing social networks to produce increases in brand and identity awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives such as product sales or online branding through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of i.e. computer viruses. 

Viral promotions may take the form of i.e. text, chat, tweet, blogging, audio or video.

Viral campaigns have three vital components: 

·         Message/storytelling

·         The choice of medium

·         The delivery platform/technology

 “Unless your campaign has a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night” Quote: David Ogilvy 

The first online viral loop? 

The term "viral marketing" first became prominent when used to describe a marketing campaign for the e-mail service Hotmail.com. When the company launched, every outgoing message contained an advertisement for Hotmail and a link to its website at the bottom of the e-mail. As people e-mailed their friends and colleagues, they were also advertising the service.

Recipients could simply click on the link and sign themselves up, and as they e-mailed friends from their new account, the message spread within existing social networks and was passed along with little effort from the company. This example demonstrates all the key elements of viral marketing. 

Think content, message & storytelling 

A key mistake many businesses make is that they believe that once they are on social media networks such as Facebook, Google +, twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn etc., activity will happen automatically. Friends, prospects, customers and followers will come instantly and they all will start to engage with the business. Happy days. Dream on. This is not what happens. 

Unfortunately, many businesses focus more on just being on social media networks instead of focusing on what, why and when to share and talk about on their social networks. That’s a fundamental mistake. Your online branding strategy and social media strategy including your main message and storytelling should be consistent and coordinated across your multiplatform communication. Try to build your content really "sticky"!

Of course, you want to be on Facebook, Google +, Pinterest, YouTube, Linkedin and twitter etc. but it’s far more important to think about what you’re going to do, say and share. In other words, think about your CONTENT before you think about using all the different channels and platforms. And especially your content on your index webpage and important landing pages.

Your WEB is still the hub in your digital communication funnel. 

The social graph and the fourth digital revolution

Today social media communication is done by systems like i.e.: Google Hangouts, Facebook (video) chat and Skype, LinkedIn group chat, MSN and with many other social media networks and other chat sites and blog commenting. Today`s solutions are easier to use and the user interface are much more advanced using technologies such as i.e.; Java, Ajax, Joomla, Typo3, WordPress, .Net, XHTML 5 and CSS3 based solutions and services.

These technologies evolved and boost from approximately 2004, the same year as the beginning of Facebook. Both the increase of social media type of communication plus new and updated Web software started the Web 2.0 era. This started the fourth revolution (Shih). With the fourth revolution, Internet really democratizing privileged access to people. Online social networking takes this further, democratizing privileged access to people.

Word of Mouth Marketing (#WOMM) is a form of promotional campaign which operates through an individual’s personal recommendations of specific brands, products or services.

Like its literal meaning, word of mouth marketing spreads from one person to another outside of a formalized setting, without heavy intervention by advertisers. “Due to transitive trust and decentralized distribution, word of mouth is the most effective and least expensive kind of marketing that exist. To the recipients of such marketing, it feels less like spam if the endorsement is coming from someone they know” (Shih, The Facebook Era). 

For people who refer, giving a recommendation can be a gratifying experience that allows them to provide value, express themselves to their friends and in their online communities. Facebook, Google +, twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, LinkedIn, Ning and similar platforms have empowered word of mouth marketing.

When people are updating a status message, writes on a wall, receives a message in their news feed, makes a comment, sends or receive a gift, endorse a RSVP for an event, becomes a fan, or plays branded game, other people are instantly being notified. 

The same effects are happening when people login in to corporate Web sites with i.e. Facebook Connect (Social login) API (Application Programming Interface) or twitter API installed. All this user generated content based alerts are called push (from push and pull technology) content, and the alerts called push alerts. 

Internet and social media makes our world flat

Thomas L. Friedman`s claim are belonging to the fourth revolution era. Friedman tells about in his book The world is flat about 10 flattening effects, 3 of them (flattener four, nine and ten) are truly related to social media and blogging.

Flattener #4 is about uploading. Friedman has located three main uploading areas: community-developed software, blogging and podcasting (Friedman 2006 p.96). Flattener #9 is about in-forming. “In-forming is the ability to build and deploy your own personal supply chain of; information, knowledge, entertainment. It’s about self-collaborating – becoming your own self-directed and self-empowered researcher, editor, selector of entertainment. In-forming is searching for knowledge”. Flattener #10 is about the steroids: digitized storage, Instant Messaging (IM) and file sharing, mobility/wireless, VoIP (Voice over IP) personified and virtual technologies.

Social media is a social flattener. The flattener effect, in-forming and the ease of uploading and sharing are some of the important reasons to understand the underlying forces of viral power.

Why is Viral marketing so powerful?

Because; we trust our friends and peers more than commercials and ads.

Just uploading a white paper or a brochure about your products or services isn’t good enough. Sending out a tweet with a link to your price list won’t do it either. Your content needs to be viral to be shared.

Viral means that your content must include at least one of these or combinations; funny, amazing/extraordinary, helpful or controversial to be liked. Your content including message or story has to be really sticky! Just remember digital marketing ethics during your planning and execution.

Make it easy on your web pages to share your content, articles and posts with social sharing widgets etc.

Remember to tag your planned viral campaigns (e-mails, tweets, blogposts, FB posts, YouTube video etc.) with URL tagging with tools like i.e. Google Analytics URL Builder or WebTrends Campaign ID parameter so it is possible to track and measure your different viral efforts. 

Viral marketing and its cost to the marketer is minimal. Instead, it takes advantage of existing resources by making everyone who uses the product an involuntary spokesperson. It exploits common social media behaviors, such as i.e. re-tweeting, posting and “likes”.

Creating buzz is about creating discussions, reviews, comments and debates in entries, posts and articles around the Web, at aggregators and in social media and in the blogosphere.

It’s all about creating positive buzz related to your business, brands/products, services, your identity and your reputation. Consumer experiences driven by basic business fundamentals such as quality, website UX, online and mobile shopping experience, online/offline service and experience seem to fuel Word of Mouth.

Viral marketing implies endorsement and/or recommendations from a friend or peers. People who received a recommendation (on a Website or within a social media platform) from a friend using the service learned that the product works and that their friends use it.

And most importantly, viral marketing offers the ability to spread a message exponentially faster and to more people than conventional third party ad campaigns, but the message has to be “sticky”. The authors of the book “Made to Stick” Dan Heath and Chip Heath have outlined six principles to mastering “sticky” techniques. It is all about; simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotional and storytelling.

There are different types of viral marketing, all using the same fundamental principles. Pass along messages encourage users to send them along to others, such as e-mails with instructions to forward at the bottom or humorous video clips. Incentive driven messages offer rewards in exchange for providing e-mail addresses.

Undercover viral marketing presents messages in an unusual page or news item without any direct incitement to pass it along, in the hopes that word-of-mouth will spread the message. Viral marketers seek to get people talking about something by creating controversy. Viral marketing has been criticized by consumers, privacy advocates, and marketing pundits because of concern over unsolicited e-mails.

Building trust

The best campaigns, however, use the principles of viral marketing tactfully to avoid negative reactions and ensure a high pass-along rate - the number of recipients that will pass the message to others. Much like the common cold, effective viral marketing uses people to unwittingly transmit a message within their social network. Viral marketing are depending on network (domino) effect, and social networking sites are boosting network (domino) effects. It takes the concept of word-of-mouth and enhances it with the instant global communication afforded by the Internet and social networking.

“Trust is built on reputation and reputation is generally NOT built on advertising. It is built on what others say about you” (Quote: Beal & Strauss). We are living in the recommendation era, and surveys from Forrester Research support this in their findings: “90% of consumers Trust recommendations from others (their peers), while fewer than 10 % trust ads” (Quote: Beal & Strauss).

Trust must follow the two-ways conversation model; organizations must trust their stakeholders, and stakeholders must trust the organization. “Trust, reliability, sincerity and authenticity all contribute to a good reputation” (Quote: L‟Etang). Most important; build trust in an authentic, consistent and transparent way with your key communities and stakeholders.

If you are able to make your content viral, then you are most likely to see a positive, and maybe huge impact across social media channels.

If you have managed to read to this line (this post is long), you deserve some bonus:

Get inspired  

15 Of the Best Viral Marketing Campaigns:

http://www.prospectmx.com/15-of-the-best-viral-marketing-campaigns/

The Top 10 Viral Video Ads Chart:

http://www.visiblemeasures.com/adage

The best viral marketing campaigns:

Or learn from others viral campaign mistakes:

(Google search phrase) http://bit.ly/wvE5rG

What is the funniest viral video you have discovered?

The comments are yours. :-)

 

Corporate communication was much less complex before the Facebook era, the Google age or the recommendation age arrived on everyone’s doorstep. Web 2.0 technologies, mobile Internet surfing and the exploding force from all the people joining social media networks and the blogosphere, create challenges for organizations who do not grasp the forces from the social sphere, media convergence, and new digital user trends.

Digital multichannels

 

While effective Online Reputation Management (#ORM) may be a relatively new concept to some brands that’s still no excuse. These suggestions to recovery should provide a practical approach for brands facing an online reputation threat. 

Before you can recover from an online brand attack you have to be aware that your brand can be attacked, no matter how big it is or how untouchable it may seem. Whether the negative buzz is based on fact or fiction, the first thing you need to do, once you’ve decided to take your brand’s online reputation seriously, is to swallow some pride. 

You may think your brand is beyond reproach but clearly the customers don’t, and the longer you avoid facing that reality the worse the situation will become. Once you have a clear understanding of the scope of the possible effects of an online attack and are to maintaining your reputation online; you’re half way there. 

Next you’ve got to understand how the process of consumer complaints has evolved.

Digital smart brands are watching consumer generated content, listening to what their customers are saying and learns from this. The rest of the brands out there haven’t yet woken up to the fact that listening & monitoring are vital and can be detrimental to a brands survival. 

Listen and monitor the Internet for conversations about your brand, and then learn from it. You can’t react to something you have no idea about. One of the easiest ways to solve the majority of brand attacks is to respond fast, with monitoring tools you will be able to do that. A brand that shows it is listening and does indeed engage and care will go far when it comes to ensuring a solid online reputation. 

The very same unhappy consumer or detractor who is complaining is actively keeping an eye out for your reaction. Conscious reaction and acknowledging what has been said and reacting accordingly is the only way forward. 

If the mention of your brand is factually incorrect, in a friendly tone, send the blogger, journalist or analyst evidence that they are wrong, ask for removal or retraction of the entry, offer to keep them informed of future news, and only if no action is taken by the blog author then add a comment. If the mention is negative but TRUE then send your side of the story, try as hard as you can to take it offline.

I’ll repeat that for effect, take it offline, it’s so much harder for people to listen. Will this help? 

You’d be surprised, if you are not sure; in most cases the author will remove the piece or add information that will help you. Keeping even more people from reading negative things about your brand is imperative – once the negative musings are listed in the search engine results pages chances are some people (read: a huge crowd) are going to find them.

What you can do, however, is knock them off the first page of the search engine results and in doing so stop most of the people seeing them, with use of basic SEO initiatives. Start with finding out what terms the page is getting good rankings for (these will generally be around your brand name and related keywords) then make sure that your website is ranking higher, in all fairness this should be important to you regardless of an online threat, though. 

This should take 2 of the 10 first page places, now all you need to do is fill the other 8 spots with positive pages. It’s not as daunting as it sounds, the other eight spots could be filled by other sites that you don’t own, but with articles that you author and publish online, social media pages such as Facebook, your corporate blog and external blogs you write at, or forum posts to mention a few. 

To boost your number of tweets will also help so your tweets ranking high at the SERP‟s as well. So, you’ve sorted out the issue, you can sit back and relax now, right? Wrong! Just because you think you’ve put out the fire, doesn’t mean it can’t flare up again. 

If you aren’t an active member of the social sphere or your stakeholder communities it tends to be a little harder to recover from an online attack. If your company doesn’t have a corporate blog or Facebook page start one. Participate in industry forums and blogs.

Build genuine credibility as a member of these conversations and you’ll find that firstly, the likelihood of a brand attack will decrease because people will have more respect from you (generally the more distanced a brand gets from its customers, the more they start to despise it).

Secondly if you are attacked again, you will (hopefully if you’ve done your job right) have a community of allies and advocates who will support your brand and its efforts to clear its name.

No brand is immune from an online brand attack; no matter how much you think your customers love you. The best brands in the world do have strategies in place to immediately identify a reputation crisis and respond to it quickly enough to balance it and to stop the negative word of mouth spreading. 

Do not fall for the temptation to use black hat SEO tricks if the search engine companies found out, they will remove all about you in their cached and stored servers and you will be banished…! 

Hopefully, will you not need to perform this exercise in a long time or to often........:-)

What is your recovery tips or recomendations?

Thanks for visiting my blog in 2011!

I will try to write some stuff you will find interesting and read also in 2012.

As a newbie biz blogger with limited time, I am happy with above 15.000 postviews last year. I wish all the best for my readers in 2012!

I hope you all will achieve both your business, career and personal goals this year. 

We are all still learning and on an exciting journey.

Every digital marketer and Web manager have for decades measured web traffic, and included both SEM and SEO into their digital marketing planning process. But with social media you need to define some new metrics to monitor your progress over time. Digital communication managers or social media managers need more intelligent metrics to monitor their efforts and results to take good decisions. Number of visitors, unique visitors and bounce rate (Common web metrics) will not give the social media manager the analysis needed related to day-to-day engagement or social trend data. 

 

We still need those web metrics mentioned and others to continue optimizing our websites, call-to-action processes and to monitor conversion rates etc. But more useful is to identify and define your main focus social media metrics. Then define related Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to monitor your progress over time, AND then do mashup of both web analytical data and social media data. Combining data results from search referrals, website and social media all together gives you REAL insights. 

Why is it so hard to identify and define metrics for social media marketing? I think it is because many organizations do not have a written social media strategy, and lack defining their social media goals and objectives. Goals and objectives always come first, and then you define your social media KPIs to monitor status and progress for your objectives. You should both identify and define quantitative metrics, and maybe more important; qualitative metrics. Choice of these “social” metrics depends of your social media objectives.

The easy metrics to identify are quantitative ones:

Quantitative metrics (Web conversions) - examples

• Sales
• Leads from contact forms
• Leads from Facebook
• Facebook “likes”
• Facebook comments
• Leads from tweets
• Re-tweets
• Web Traffic
• Blog post comments
• Inbound Links
• Subscribers (RSS/Newsletter)

Quantify ratios (# or %) with time limit for i.e.:

• Increased members/customers
• Increased Positive Brand mentions
• Increased buzz & social share of voice
• Social lead generation (use campaign ID tags)
• Increased referral traffic from social media sites 
• Increased article/blog comments/posts
• Virality (# of RT and posts on Facebook profile) 
• Increased Activity 
• Increased Influence
• Increased Reach
• Engagement duration 
• Community size (# of followers, fans, members) 
• Decrease in customer issues
• Reduction in costs, time and processes

Qualitative “social” metrics

Qualitative metrics are metrics which will define your future social media success. For these metrics you need to use social media (SaaS) monitoring tools. 

Qualitative metrics - examples

• Online Brand Awareness
• Positive Online Reputation
• Interaction & Engagement
• Trust & Loyalty
• Influence & Authority
• Visibility & Reach

Measure your progress with Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Objectives should always be defined so they can be measured. One way to do this is to define: KPI`s (Key Performance Indicators). KPI`s are quantifiable performance measurements used to define success factors and measure progress toward the achievement of business goals and objectives. The Web Analytics Association (WAA) defines the term KPI in the context of web analytics: ”While a KPI can be either a count or a ratio it is frequently a ratio. A KPI is infused with business strategy - hence the term Key”

All KPIs should be SMART:  Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely 

One Facebook example

Goal #1:

Get leads from Facebook

Objective:

Create a FB Page/Group about our product/service X, with 1000 members by end of Q3. 

KPIs

 10% conversion rate from FB leads by end of Q1

 12 % conversion rate from FB leads by end of Q2

 15% conversion rate from FB leads by end of Q3

Key data analysis

If you do a mashup of data trends both for search referrals, website traffic and social media patterns, you will gain a higher level of digital insights you can really learn from. The insight should be included into your tactics for i.e. Facebook, twitter, YouTube, blog, website and e-mail campaigns.

Some tactical questions to consider:

• What functions and features do we want to have available to our community? 
• What will be the costs of building and manage and engage the community? 
• Will we be able to use internal and/or external human resources to build and maintain the community? 
• How long time will it take to get chosen tools and services launched? 
• What can we learn from our competitors, partners and others in these matters? 
• What is the wanted business Social ROI? 
• Which SaaS tools do we pick to monitor conversations, buzz and word of mouth? 

Set realistic goals and expectations. It probably took several iterations to arrive at your current communication/marketing, CRM, Social Media and Website strategy. Coming up with an optimal social network presence will require the same kind of learning by doing inside your organization. Starting off overly aggressive can set companies up for disappointment down the road and create “information overload” scenarios.

How do you determine social ROI? What is your top 3 social ROI metrics? 

 

I recently talked at the SEM 2011 Conference in Oslo about Competitive Analysis and how it should be an intergraded part of any online marketing efforts. 

As a follow-up I decided to write a short though piece about it, kind of an Online Competitor Analysis 101, as my session in Oslo was mostly about the tools and quick glans at their merits you are likely to find topics here that I did not touch on in my session and remember we do not have to agree on things, the tools, the method or the outcome.

For those that don’t have my slides you should be able to find them on SlideShare or through this Dropbox link: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3159298/SEM11%20Competition.pptx

Ok, so where do I begin but with some basic question:

1. Do you know who all compete with you for your target customers’ time and money?

2. Do they sell directly competitive products and services, substitutes or possible substitutes? 

3. What are their strengths and weaknesses? 

4. What is their position in the market vis-à-vis yours? 

An online competitor analysis is a great way to determine the worth of your own marketing strategy while also learning from the marketing efforts of your competitors. Competitive analysis can vary as per the industry and country (as we could see in my #SEM11 session most of the tools out there did not work so well in Norway) you’re in and your specific web plan situation but there are some common themes. The most important thing is to get a clear idea of the nature of competition that you face: 

• What factors do the customers consider while making a purchase – price, business reputation or visibility of the business? 

• Are brand names important for your and your competitors’ customers? 

• How influential is the word-of-mouth in getting you long lasting customer relationships?

In the online world there is always a competition for visibility in search results and clicks from target customers.  A business may be at the top of SERPs for its main keywords one day and on the next it can slide down to page 2 of results.

The huge space on the Internet and the ease of creating content through blogs, social networks such as Facebook, maintain a good PPC strategy make online competition even more intense. You do need to stay ahead and in the top rankings of search engine results. You must ensure that your online visibility is better than that of your competitors or at least as close as. 

There are lots of tools that a business can use to monitor its online competition efficaciously. 

Beside the tools I mentioned in my slides, here are a few online tools that you can use for free:

Yahoo Alerts:  I did mention Google Alerts but forgot to talk about Yahoo as they also send you personalized and free notifications on the topic of your interest. Yahoo Alerts can be received via email, instant messages, pager or mobile phone. The service is categorized into: 

Breaking News Alerts – Sends the news as soon as it happens

News Alerts – Sends news customized as per keyword news research tools and summaries of top stories in various categories

Stock Alerts – Sends the latest updates from stock market with price quotes 

Yahoo 360 Degree Alerts - Lets you choose the settings for receiving messages from Yahoo and notice of communication from other members 

Google Finance – This tool gives the latest income statements, latest news stories and blog posts about the companies that trade publicly. If you have a competitor in this category, Google Finance will offer the latest reports on their stocks, mutual funds and audit reports. 

The Free Library: You will find loads of business and industry categories on this platform. This can be a great source of articles and information pertaining to the latest in the world of your competitors. Browse for the articles of your interest by keyword, title, author or topic. 

It’s also important to track the popularity of your competitors in social media. Check out their popularity on Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin and analyze the factors that help them get more traffic, traffic that you should be getting, right?

Typically, in the business world it is very important to understand your competition for survival and growth. Indeed I often say that ‘you need to know the competition better than you know yourself’!

Online analysis can identify new ideas for keyword optimization on your pages and you can always use it to improve your site’s performance and offerings.

One important thing, don’t forget that you might be monitored so be innovative in changing your tactics and throw in curve balls.

 

I am back posting…. at last! To Stacey (@BrandsEye) and others who be wondering:  I have been prioritizing more time with my fantastic son Julian (now 9 months), than blogging for the last 2-3 months, in addition moving from our old apartment to a new one in the same period. It has been more twitter usage for me during this period, but also way too many RTs of others tweets.

I think it was a little bit ambitious to start a blog in retro perspective, knowing that my days would be full of changing diapers, walking a stroller with amazing efficient metal brake disks (a must for us men, looks cool), carrying stuff down too many stairs and carrying stuff up too many stairs and painting the roof in our new place….and then ordered to re-allocate the furniture once, twice and… in a military commando “No excuse” style…

So, I have a question for you other dads and mums:

How do you get time every day to write on your blog, tweet several times, update your Facebook wall post, networking and start a discussion on Linkedin, work, spend time with your kid(s) and surprise your partner with a homemade dinner surprise on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday?  

Auto-tweet and auto post solutions are not answers to my questions…..:-)

Oh, I forgot to mention that my girlfriend Nina, is really busy with her start-up business, developing and marketing (with use of viral marketing) a web based SaaS career tool for professionals (http://karriereverktoy.no/). But she often smiles to me with an average conversion rate at 20% of her trial users…..

No trofè wife here……;-)

More and more people surf the net with mobile phones and especially with smartphones. A standard website is not made for smartphone browsing.

Step1: Identify the why, how, and when!

How critical for future success is a mobile optimized or mobile app for your business? How will it affect your customer base? If all your existing website visitors’ starts visit your website from a mobile, does this mean you get higher traffic and sales? Is an app better for your digital branding than “just” mobile optimization? Is it easier or faster to get new customers/visitors with an app?

Mobile app use outpacing Web browsing in US, says Flurry Analytics June report.

The pace of native mobile apps now outruns the pace of mobile optimized sites (browser based) in US!

Identify and define your (why) goal and objectives for your mobile project first! Before brainstorming your goal and objectives start with what I always recommend: SWOT analysis and define also both your wanted ROI and TCO for your wanted solution(s). When can alternative solutions be launched?

Let’s start by looking at some basic options when it comes to decision making between mobile optimizing your existing website and/or develop mobile apps for smartphones such as Android based phones and iPhone.

Step 2: Analyze your existing mobile user visitors

My suggestion is to develop your web code so you can watch in your web analytical software what type of mobile device visiting your existing website. One way of doing this is to find some already developed code/scripts.

For example at detectmobilebrowser.com which provides an Open Source (FREE) mobile browser detection script for multiple platforms including .net, .cfm, .php and several other implementation methods. The site creates a complete script you can copy and paste into your code. Of course make sure to test it on a test server first, it may happen that you must tweak it a little before launch. Your analysis will now tell you about mobile device trends on your site.

How many want to use the browser or install an app to their mobile?

Comscore’s November 2010 report shows that the numbers are actually very similar, with about 35% of smartphone users accessing a browser on their device, and about 33% downloading apps.  

Step 3: Identify development and launch paths, time and costs

It is differences in the development paths and costs, delivery time, maintenance TCO and ROI for each. Decide your requirements in your planning before you start your project. A medium advanced mobile optimized website can often be developed for less than a native app and launched much more quickly without the need to pass it through an app store approval process.

Mobile sites with adjusted coding can detect your mobile device and deliver the appropriate experience based on the device capabilities and their screen size. Since Android based phones and iPhone are leading the pack, you should ensure to give these big groups an excellent browsing experience. Then you can build a standardized fallback solution for older phones with smaller screens to take care of the rest.

Mobile optimized websites can be updated and enhanced quickly by the developer while native applications force the developer to re-submit, get approval from the app store, and require the user to download an app update for new features.

Also, unlike the mobile optimized site that can be developed to be compatible for multiple devices and browsers, native apps must be developed for each device and submitted separately to each device’s proprietary app store. This can mean that a native app is a more expensive path.

But also opposite; if you decide to build an advanced mobile optimized website which both gives unique pages for Android, iPhone, iPad and fallback solutions the costs can be similar (or more expensive) to an low cost native app for one OS platform i.e. Android.

Step 4: Build Mobile opt site: Easy and fast

The mobile optimized website is my recommended first step for most businesses that have survived with a traditional website for many years but are now seeing many of their visitors using smartphones to access their site. If your old website is really out of date, I suggest you start build your mobile opt site first and then build the full desktop browser version later on. It helps to create a good user experience and to reduce all that unnecessary stuff.

The fastest way to create a new site today is to use i.e. WordPress website/blog templates. They have a huge range of mobile site templates aswell and you can easily change the look in the CSS files.

Then your customers avoid the obstacle of first be forced to download an app before accessing a site or e-commerce platform. And since the smartphone screen sizes are increasing and the available browsers can give you full web surfing experience, you should take care of these users first anyway.

You should also create a mobile domain i.e.: m.mybusiness.com. Remember to make your site fast regarding planning; Information Architecture, font size, low resolution pics, video etc.

Avoid or replace Flash and JavaScript with standard W3C validated code.

Step 5: Build your mobile App

Apps are the way to go especially i.e. when your content change often, if you have e-commerce solutions, if you offer services for people on the go, if you want to use GEO location services etc. Consider the potential to drive users to a mobile website with one touch of the screen through traditional marketing, social media or endless opportunities with QR (bar) codes.

The main advantage of building an app is the user experience! Most mobile browsers can't handle JavaScript and Flash. It is also easier to get online PR and buzz with a new app than to “just” mobile optimize your website….. Building an app which receives positive mentions gives your digital image a boost.

The chance for your existing customers to use your services more often from a native Smartphone app with a greater user experience is big.

But building an App for multiple platforms such as Andriod, iPhone and Blackberry will be expensive to maintain. Each time you update some key elements, you need to update all native applications. But you will find more mobile app developers now than before, and because of their new market competition, you can get lucky and get affordable prices. It’s up to you to offer your app for free or to get paid for it.

To sum it up:

I think that it is smart to re-vitalize your existing website and meet today’s mobile web expectations. You need to mobile optimize your existing website or re-direct mobile users to a new mobile site. If you have the budget to also build native mobile apps – just do it, not wait! The mobile revolution is not a future event, its happen now…

Apps are great both as a tool for your digital visibility and reach. If your app happens to get huge downloads, you will certainly get attention and this can be very positive for your digital image, branding and to build loyalty.

What have you experienced in your mobile project(s)? What criteria’s was identified?

NO to apps OR yes both paths? Take the poll!

http://host1.easypolls.net/poll.html?p=4e102488a34eb0e4e4a04f91

When you have an updated Social Media or Online Reputation Management (ORM) and/or Online Branding strategy in place; identifying, testing and evaluating monitoring tools can be a success factor for analyzing your target stakeholder’s conversations/buzz and for your engagement tactics, online damage planning and tactics. But first thing first:

 What kind of Social Media & ORM monitoring tools is out there?  

 There are two main categories of monitoring tools: Ad hoc analyzing tools and trend data analyzing tools. They can both be quantitative (Only counting mentions), qualitative (Shows the content) and sentiment/tone (Text analysis of the content) based tools. There are many tools in both categories out there.

Most of them are SaaS (Software as a Service) vendors. Some of them are calling themselves either Brand monitoring, Online Reputation monitoring, Social Media monitoring, conversation tracker, buzz monitoring, online PR monitoring providers and so on. For example can software called Brand monitoring or Reputation monitoring do the same main thing.

They all scan, track and monitor news sites, blogs, micro blogs and social networks. So the output depends on how you are using the system and how you create and manage your searches and what you monitor.

4 common dimensions you should monitor and focus on 

1. Visibility: How many online places is your organization visible? Many or a few?

2. Reach: When an article/post mentions an organization or brand, how many people does it reach? Is it a popular website/blog or not? High Page Rank, many inbound links, huge community/members etc.

3. Influence: Does this particular publication or journalist/blogger carry more credibility than average so that what he or she writes have higher impact on the reader? Is it a key influencer or advocate writing about your brand or competitors?

4. Sentiment: Is it positive, neutral or negative?

 

Perform a stakeholder audit analysis

Identify your organizations target stakeholders with an audit. The people inside your key stakeholders can be categorized for example in this way:

• High power, interested people: these are the people you must fully engage with, and make the greatest efforts to satisfy

• High power, less interested people: put enough work in with these people to keep them satisfied, but not so much that they become bored with your message

• Low power, interested people: keep these people adequately informed, and talk to them to ensure that no major issues are arising

• Low power, less interested people: again, monitor these people, but do not bore them with excessive communication.

The next step is to define them by the following categories; influencers, advocates, promoters and detractors, and to plot both their name and blog/website URL into your monitoring systems.

Some tools are created for marketers; other for communication/PR and other tools again does have a crossover strategy and usability. The sooner you get a hold of what people are saying about your brand and plan how you will respond and manage those stakeholder relationships, the more successful you will be in the social sphere.

This area is still relatively new (Many of the SaaS vendors are less than 5-6 years old) and no Reputation, Brand or social media monitoring companies has gotten it 100% right yet regarding sentiment/tone analyzes. Their sentiment analysis algorithms are not an exact science, but a very useful research, trend and engagement tool.

Always deploy tools which have the technology, APIs, structure and reporting possibilities to monitor your Social Media or ORM objectives and KPIs, whether they are subscription based paid or free solutions or a mix of them. Start with your objectives and KPIs, and THEN choose your tools.

Web analytical software + social media monitoring = real tactical insights

Ensure to use several (i.e.: Both Web Analytical + Social Media tools) tools and data trends related to Social Media and ORM. Define both Web KPIs and Social KPIs. Using only one tool increases the risk of not getting the big picture. Using a tool which covers; Facebook, twitter, blogs, news and the rest of the social sphere reduces your need for one tool per channel.

Combining monitoring news, articles, blogs, social media and external and internal website traffic (I.e. Google Analytics), referral traffic, tracking and trends can give multi dimensional Social Media/ORM analysis. Use their APIs to connect the search data results to your (Social) CRM system or other databases (Intranet etc.).

Share insights with dashboards built with Excel/OpenOffice or with Dashboard/BI software. Most of the free low end ad hoc search tools don’t save and store your searches, but with using their APIs you can store the dataflow yourself and build useful trend insights to your advantage.

Here is a little overview of (Mix of English and Multilingual based) monitoring tools:

Qualitative based free tools

• Google Blogsearch: http://blogsearch.google.com/
• The Nielsen Company: http://www.blogpulse.com/
• IceRocket: http://icerocket.com
• Twitter search tool: Klout: http://klout.com/
• Twitter search tool: TwitterAnalyzer: http://twitteranalyzer.com

 Qualitative and Sentiment based free tool

•  SocialMention: http://socialmention.com

 Subscription & Pay based SaaS tools

•  Alterian SM2 (Medium and Enterprise solution): http://socialmedia.alterian.com/
• BrandsEye (Small, medium and Enterprise solution): http://www.brandseye.com/
• Radian6 (Enterprise solution): http://www.radian6.com/
• Sentiment Metrics (Medium and Enterprise solution): http://www.sentimentmetrics.com/
• Sysomos: Map & Heartbeat (Medium and Enterprise solution): http://sysomos.com/products/overview
• Visible Technologies (Medium and Enterprise solution): http://www.visibletechnologies.com/
• Viralheat (Small, medium and enterprise solution): http://www.viralheat.com/

By choosing subscription based tools you will get tools that save all your searches, search results and trend data including reports from day to day, weeks and months. The tools you decide to use will impact the rest of the monitoring funnel, so choose carefully…and good luck testing out the trials offered by the vendors mentioned in this article.

What is YOUR advice to others regarding use of monitoring tools?

Feel free to start a discussion or share your insights in a blog post.