Some of you may be mistaken for thinking that with all the hype about the likely launch of Google+ Project that nothing is happening with Facebook these days. However they have made quite a few changes to their network which can help those of you wanting to improve your engagement with fans, especially when they may be on the beach.

 

Can anyone guess where the beautiful beach is on this image?  Please comment below and I’ll blog its location next week.

 

Firstly many companies are starting to “Fangate” their customers which means that you can hide things until your Facebook visitors press the “like” button which you may wish to start to use.  See a Lady Gaga example of fangating in my last blog.

 

You can now target fans in specific regions only if you want to invite only those living in a certain area to a local event. I attach a link to a useful blog by Alison Zarella on how to do this plus using @tagging to link to other Facebook pages if you have some which fans may not have liked yet.

 

You can integrate your blog and twitter feed into Facebook to ensure that they get more readers and keep your site up to date. I attach an example below showing how you can do this

 

4. Maximising your “About” section
The “About” section of your Facebook page is very important as it’s visible from most pages and as you can see on the image here, it’s best to make it very easy for fans to find your web address here.

 
5. Focus on the newsfeeds where fans spend most time
Comscore have come out with some research showing where Facebook users spend the most time and this white paper nicely summarises that this means you need to be focusing on your news feeds and making sure that they are timed at the best possible time and are the best length.   The Inside Facebook blog nicely sums up the main findings.

 

6. Keep your posts short during holiday periods
Whilst many of your fans are on holiday in July and August in Europe you might want to make your posts a bit shorter so that they don’t crowd out their screens if they are reading their posts on their smartphones.

 

7. Updating to new Facebook groups
I’ve been working with a few clients who were operating an old Facebook group page and I have been recommending that it’s best to have a page which has the scope to do more things than you can on a group page. The key difference between both is that people “join” a Facebook group and “like” a Facebook page.  For more tips on rationalising your Facebook groups visit the Mari Smith blog on this topic.

 

If you have a physical location and have not checked out your Facebook Places Page then I recommend that you look at doing this and whether you want to merge it with your regular page. The benefits of the Facebook Places Page are that people can check in and you can offer them benefits for checking in and you can show your physical location on a map aswell. If you have two pages you can have them merged together.

 

9. Makes sure you download the Facebook plug ins on your website 
As I outlined in a recent webinar and blog there was a big difference (three times higher growth rate) of those travel companies using social plugins, surveyed by L2 Digital Think Tank versus those companies that were not using them.

 

As the take up of smartphones has accelerated across Europe as shown below and is still growing, as researched by Flurry Analytics, so don’t forget to make it easy for customers to book and browse your site on the move and remember to check how your Facebook posts look on a smartphone.

 

Please share your top tips with us and let us know what’s worked for you in Facebook and share your beach guess in comments below.

 

“Of course it does” I hear you shout along with the 70% of businesses surveyed by IBM[1] recently who believe that it does. However the survey showed that only 38% of consumers agreed. We know that customer loyalty is a fickle phenomenon but this research demonstrates the current “disconnect” between our ambitions as a business and those of our customers.

 



















Source: Flickr  Bobby
 

The number of suppliers and platforms has proliferated offering all manner of Social CRM solutions to help you better manage your customers across all these new channels. For those still trying to come to grips with the concept of Social CRM, I recommend reading the Social Media Examiner[2] blog on this topic highlighting the dilemma that many organisations do not understand the CRM value of their social networks.

 

However I thought it’s worth stepping back from the noise and considering how you are currently organising your social media activity. Have you really aligned it so that you have one view of your customers?  If you have taken rather a piecemeal approach, which is what the IBM research revealed, it’s now worth thinking strategically and organise your business around your customers.

 

If you don’t have:

·        board support for your social media efforts;  

·        cross functional team engaged with clear social guidelines;

·        key metrics;

·        sharing of learning in place;

your business is unlikely to be in fit shape to start adopting Social CRM solutions.

 

In fact Gartner[3] predicted that “

 

Let’s first look at the proofs that social media is changing behaviour and advocacy. I dipped into IBM’s global research and found some interesting differences across markets. In China it showed more people doing microblogging 75% (i.e. tweeting) and blogging 66% than in the West where this is still a minority activity, (24% and 12% respectively)  for baby boomers (aged 46 or older).  The survey points out that this is due to different usage as we see it more as a form of publishing for larger audiences whereas it is done more in Asia for friends and family only. You cannot therefore assume that “social advocacy” works in the same way across markets or across age groups.

 

The IBM research highlighted three main types of social media user:

 i) “Engaged Authors” 5% ,

ii) “Casual Participants” 75%  

iii) “Silent Observers” 20%.

 

It’s clear that the “Engaged Authors” are the ones that are likely to give you the best ROI and this percentage is likely to match the percentage of active Facebook fans you may be seeing in your stats in a “best case scenario”. We know that not all fans are created equal and if you were to focus on your active Facebook fans you are likely to get a better ROI. In some cases we have named them the “Influencers”, however their numbers are small, and the key to driving more volume change is to galvanise the others into action and this is where many of them need some incentive to do so. This is where a closer look at the profile of your active fans will help targeting of new customers across all channels.

 

You need a good Facebook welcome page to show them how to “like” and give them a strong reason to do this. It reminds me of the famous market research mantra that “customers don’t always do what they say they are going to do”. It may seem blindingly obvious but if you don’t make it easy and give them a compelling reason to “like” you, it won’t happen. Mari Smith[4] shows us the increased usage of the “Fan Gate” or Reveal Tab for businesses on Facebook. This tab gives fans exclusive content, only after they have pressed the “like” button, thus helping to grow your fan numbers.

 

The IBM research shows that customers want “tangible value” so without this they are unlikely to “like” you and many will not return to your fan page unless they are given a strong reason to come back. Taking a close look at your conversion rates from invite to actual “like” will give you an insight into your level of customer advocacy, especially if you take a segmented, phased approach and invite by each type of customer.

 

The IBM research does provide a couple of examples showing how social media was effective in driving an 18% increase in net present value in the education sector. However the University didn’t just use its Facebook statistics but looked at corresponding page impressions on its website from their social sites, to see the patterns between the two.

 

A focus on your registered website users is also likely to reap bigger rewards according to recent Gigya and Edge[5] research but we are all aware of the barriers that registration creates. Few organisations are using social sign ins[6] on their website however the Edge research suggests that they offer a simple solution for consumers to return to sites.

There is some doubt that social sign ins would work in a B2B situation as shown by the comments to an article about social sign ins on Social Media Today[7]. However recent research from Blue Research [8] shows that a site having a social sign in is seen as preferable to other online registration hurdles. It helps to build confidence if you can see in the example that 2,000 customers have liked the same page. The gap is closing between the adoption of social media channels by Business to Consumer companies versus the Business to Business players. Whilst companies are starting to invest in social sign ins it’s not clear that they have really looked at how this should inform their future communications at each customer touch point.  Few companies have integrated customer social IDs into their customer database and user profiles.  The L2 Digital research shows us that only 28% of the top 89 travel brands are using social sharing icons on their websites and yet their sites are showing three times the level of traffic growth than those that are not, as discussed in a recent blog.
 

We are seeing the development of nationwide customer loyalty programmes like Bamboo, on social networks such as Facebook, coming to the UK travel industry soon to reward fans with benefits from third parties, for “liking” pages. However unless we get to grips with recognising our active fans across our business we are unlikely to see customers rewarded appropriately.  

 

What is clear from my research findings is that less than 50% of companies surveyed by IBM were doing any monitoring of their brand using social media so consequently have little idea which people are talking about their company. Given that there are free tools like Google Alerts, this is surprising. This probably explains why the majority of companies are also still not allowing their employees to use social media in the workplace. They live in blissful ignorance of who their customer advocates are and the damage that incorrect perceptions on third party review sites may cause to their brand.

 

Research done with marketers carried out in the 2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report[9] showed 72% of marketers said social media had increased their traffic and subscribers and 51% said it had generated leads. However we are still far from understanding what impact social media is having on advocacy. The sooner we stop talking about fans and followers, and get back to a focus on value for customers and advocates, the better.

 

We know from the IBM research that most consumers interact with brands via social media primarily to get discounts or coupons or to buy products and service.  I believe we will see more adoption of “Social Commerce[10]” very soon as Best Buy demonstrate an ROI through their $5million call centre cost savings and increased revenues and other retailer case studies like Dell, Zappos and others listed in previous blogs and in the Delta example below.

 

As we all know it can be up to five times cheaper to get existing customers to buy more than to go searching for new customers. In addition to that all important question “How did you hear about us?” maybe we should start asking

 

“As an existing customer have our social media channels changed
i)  how you buy?”
ii)  how you recommend us to others?”

iii) how much you buy?”

iv) how frequently you buy?”

 

Answers to these questions will help us with our social business cases. If you know the answers to these questions for your business please share your insights with us.

What have you learnt so far from seeing how your customers interact on your social channels?

Please share your comments with us below.

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So what has Google’s new social network called Google+ Project got in store for us? When I read the buzz about it on Techcrunch it’s clear that many of the techies are quite excited about it and some are predicting a defection from Facebook. Let’s not get carried away though and imagine that 700m users are going to suddenly switch to Google+ Project. However Chrome claims it has over 10 million users already. That’s not a bad growth rate for what has, in effect, been available by invite only, for the past two weeks.

 

However one reader reminds us that we should not forget that Google has a user base that is eight times bigger than that of Facebook. We have to remember that Google has tried before to launch a social network which was called Buzz which they had to withdraw due to some classic errors, but as we all know we can learn valuable lessons from our mistakes.

 

According to Techcrunch they’ve have had the benefit of one of the original Apple designers Andy Hertzfeld who worked with the Macintosh team in the 8Os so the design is much more attractive.

 

Some of the cool features will be the integration with Android and the group video chat called a Huddle which will enable you to have a video chat with your friends on your phone when you’re trying to decide where to go. For those of us that grew up with texting and chatting on Facebook with your mates, this will feel quite normal, however those who did not will wonder why you can’t just speak to each other.

 

The Sparks feature will be all about sharing content that’s related to what you’re interested in and this will be Google’s big money spinner as they will be able to exploit this detailed view of their users and match content to their interests and draw in advertisers. This is where I can see that social content will heavily influence the search rankings and if you have not started to build your base of fans and followers you will be at a distinct disadvantage if you want your content to have any visibility in the search engines.

 

At this stage I’m not sure if it will be the endgame for Yahoo which has been losing market share and has an email system which is creaking under the volume of popups and interference from advertisers. Let’s hope Google takes lessons from Yahoo on how not to over burden the interface with too many adverts. From experience I think Google with its deep pockets can afford to wait until Google+ has good critical mass before the ads start to intrude. However let’s also not forget that Google staff have let slip that Google+ will eventually only be available to those with a gmail address.

 

I think the Google+ features will be another reason to buy a smartphone and secures Android’s continued lead in this market as shown below. Apple will have to come up with something fairly revolutionary to combat the advantage that Android already has. I think the winner in the smartphone market will also be the player that can stop the continued phone hacking scandals and make this a thing of the past. No amount of expensive government enquiry will stop this as long as the phone platform allows it to happen.

Company	1Q11 Units	1Q11 Market Share (%)	1Q10 Units	1Q10 Market Share (%)
Android	36,268	36.0	5,226	9.6
Symbian	27,599	27.4	24,068	44.2
iOS	16,883	16.8	8,360	15.3
Research In Motion	13,004	12.9	10,753	19.7
Microsoft	3,659	3.6	3,696	6.8
Other OS	3,357	3.3	2,403	4.4
Total	100,769	100	54,505	100

 

It’s clear that Circles, Huddles, Hangouts and Sparks are only the first phase and Google will not have forgotten that to monetize its new social network it will need to look at other opportunities such as gaming and payment so watch out for more developments coming soon.

 

Google’s engineers have been responding to questions as to why they have not opened up the platform to the public yet and it’s clear that this is only part one of a fundamental new roll out.

 

If you are interested to sign up to use Google+ you can do so here and they will let invite you when they open up more capacity.

 

If you were one of the chosen few do let us know what you think about the new Google+ network and if you think it will overtake Facebook.

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