Ever heard of Bebo? If you’re like us, it rings a few bells, but was long ago stashed away into the box reserved for social networks that fell before the behemoth that is Facebook. It appears that Bebo is aiming for a comeback. The social network, now owned by AOL, is targeting 18-24 year olds that have grown tired of Facebook.

I doubt Bebo will knock Facebook off its throne. Even if every 18-24 guy and gal abandoned Facebook, transporting their networks to Bebo, you’re only talking about 11.8% of the adult population (U.S. Census, 2008 Community Survey). While this demographic accounts for a greater percentage of internet users, older demographics are adopting at a faster rate, and they’re not likely to flock to networks made up of people half their age, or younger. Facebook’s user base will continue to swell. Bebo’s user base will also swell. So who should you be paying attention to?

Both!

The reality is that people adopt different networks and engage in various online behaviors for different reasons. Bebo’s niche targeting approach should serve as a reminder – when developing your online marketing and social media strategies, you need to do three things:

1. Go where your customers are today.
2. Plan for where your customers will be, or migrate to.
3. Pay attention to where the people who will one day be your customers are now, and where they’re going.

Few of our current clients are focused exclusively on the 18-24 market, but Bebo is on our radar. In fact, I’ll be setting up my Bebo account today. Please don’t tell them how old I am.

More than just a blip on the radar, or a short-lived social media meme, the Old Spice Responses video series is an online marketing campaign you should be watching. In case you’re not familiar with the campaign, Old Spice rolled out a new ad spot in February featuring a shirtless manly “man your man could smell like”. Tongue in cheek, humorous and full of over-the-top sophisticated machismo, the ad spot quickly became a favorite on TV and online. This week, Old Spice, marketing agency Wieden + Kennedy and actor Isaiah Mustafa recorded personalized messages to influencers and regular people, responding to comments and questions posted online. It’s important to note that, in many cases, the content selected for response has nothing to do with Old Spice brand or product line.

Watch a few Old Spice Responses. I guarantee you will laugh out loud, literally. Then watch the online response. Conversation in my social circles has gone from a roar, to a low study buzz as the video series has ended, but the blog posts and articles analyzing the campaign’s effectiveness will hum on for quite some time. And for good reason – it’s a smart campaign.

Three articles cut straight to the point on why Old Spice Responses worked so well:

1. Read Write Web – How the Old Spice Videos Are Being Made
2. Mashable – The Old Spice Social Media Campaign by the Numbers
3. justbrand.me – 5 Things @OldSpice Taught Us About Social Media

Still have doubts about the campaign’s significance, consider two more things:

• Reddit reader Pandarr asked @OldSpice Man to record his outgoing voicemail message. His request was granted, and within hours, other readers had downloaded the audio files, spliced it, and built the Old Spice Voicemail Generator. Now anyone can enter their digits and select from a handful of messages to create their own outgoing voicemail greeting.
• The wave of parodies, spoofs, and spinoffs has just begun, and the videos are being circulated nearly as fast as the Old Spice series. They’re unlikely to have the same reach or same effect, but they will continue to fuel the brand awareness of the very campaign they poke fun at.

Now that’s virality!

We have been working closely with a client to develop a reactive response protocol for identifying reviews from dissatisfied customers, addressing their concerns, and delivering service corrections. After four months of active listening, we found the majority of negative reviews occur on two consumer complaint sites; of 118 issues identified, 54% appeared on PissedConsumer.com, and 16% appeared on ConsumerAffairs.com.

There are three basic types of consumer review sites:

1. Consumer Reviews and Ratings – These sites are distinctive in that they require contributors to rate the business, often on a scale of poor to excellent, or 1 to 5 stars, as part of their written review. Built around the idea of customers helping customers, the rating gives a quick read of the company, while the written reviews detail strengths and weaknesses, and dole out advice. Consumer rating sites often allow users to rate the helpfulness of the reviews they find on the site, thus shepherding the overall trustworthiness of the content. Examples: Yelp or Rate It All
2. Consumer Awareness – These sites were developed to provide objective third party reviews of product or service strengths and weaknesses, as well as provide general consumer education. Many of these sites have grown out of long-standing, well-reputed publications that have been trusted by consumers and journalists alike. Example: Consumer Reports and Edmunds.
3. Consumer Complaint Sites – Unlike their digital cousins, complaint sites have only two purposes, to provide consumers with grievances a soapbox on which to vent, and to profit from those grievances.

Businesses battling the parasitic effect of consumer complaint sites find themselves up against a daunting challenge. For starters, their names can instill a sense of paranoia in a consumer before they even read a review, for certainly nothing on pissedconsumer.com can be good. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to most visitors, consumer complaint sites are for-profit entities. They generate revenue primarily through advertising with Google AdWords and other ad networks, they sell business reputation management services, which I’ll touch on again later, and Pissed Consumer even goes so far as to charge users to feature their complaints. Called preferred positioning, the site promises greater visibility by other consumers and better chance of being contacted by the company for resolution in exchange for “a small fee”. I find it hard to imagine any consumer would pay for this so-called service; although I suspect a competitor might see it as a viable defamation tactic.

While I am no fan of these profit tactics, my greatest concern with consumer complaint sites is that in this age of customer-to-business dialogue facilitated by social media, consumeraffairs.com and pissedconsumer.com effectively amputate opportunities for true dialogue.

ConsumerAffairs.com does not provide a response mechanism for companies that want to reach out to, and solve the problems of, dissatisfied customers. Nor do they provide the ability to comment on individual postings. They have one form: a complaint form. Businesses who wish to respond to user reviews are instructed to use the complaint form. All complaints are screened by moderators before publishing, and my experience has been that company responses do not get published.

Pissed Consumer allows commenting, which provides businesses with the opportunity to respond within the thread to both the complaint’s original author and others who have commented on that thread. Unfortunately, comments are not tied back to user accounts, even when a user is logged in at the time of submission. This prevents readers from viewing other activity by the author. Notification of follow-up activity is also wanting. Both businesses and users are forced to manually search for responses to their posts.

ConsumerAffairs.com and Pissed Consumer do promote reputation management as premium services, enabling businesses to respond directly to consumers, but they are secretive about the features and benefits of these premium services. To find out more, I had to fill out a contact form and wait to be contacted by a sales representative. When Pissed Consumer called, I quickly discovered that they would not talk to me because they “don’t do business with agencies”. Pissed Consumer will deal only with the actual company that complaints are against and require a signed non-disclosure agreement before discussing any of their premium services. I advocate that companies manage social and customer service internally for greater authenticity, but agencies help clients by vetting service prior to recommending them. If you won’t talk to me, I cannot, in good conscious, recommend your services to our clients.

I’ll admit it, I felt affronted by this exchange with Pissed Consumer, but I hope that you are too. As businesses adopt social media to deliver customer service, consumers will begin looking carefully at how companies are responding to negative reviews. I firmly believe that sites that don’t provide a response mechanism do a disservice to customers who are looking to answer the question “if I have a problem, will the company help me resolve it?”

During the 2010 f8 conference, Facebook announced that it would be launching a new set of data permissions as part of the new Graph API.  The permissions themselves, while they provide more granular coverage of the data available via Facebook, aren’t really that interesting – the interesting part of the new data permissions are what Facebook grants to clients in terms of license to use and store the data.

User Experience

The user experience has changed as part of launching the new data permissions.  Using the old permissions required a user to click through a number of authorization dialogs, one for each permission required.  This series of dialogs sometimes caused confusion for users, depressed conversion, and sometimes left developers with an incomplete permission set as users began authorizing the app but quit when they felt they were giving too much away.

Figure 1 – Facebook previously required four popups to log in, allow offline access, and read/write access to the user’s stream.		Figure 2 – With the new permissions dialog, all of the required permissions are displayed in a single authorization prompt.

Facebook’s CTO Bret Taylor wrote in the Facebook Developer blog  that this change increases conversions for applications by 28-41%.  If only we could get that kind of conversion rate increase from flipping a switch on other websites.

Better Data Provisions

One of the most debilitating parts of a Facebook application, performance-wise, were the restrictions on data that prevented most Facebook data from being cached for more than 24 hours.  As Facebook’s Ethan Beard wrote in the Developer blog, we often had to write special code paths to handle Facebook data due to the 24 hour caching limit, or worse, we never actually stored the data at all, instead using FBML or XFBML to access it.  Now with explicit consent, we can access the user’s preferences and store it forever (as long as we provide a way for the user to opt-out).  This opens a number of new possibilities – imagine a business like Amazon.com taking advantage of knowing a user’s preferences.  All of a sudden, they could start recommending books similar to Anthem or 1984, even though I’ve never bought those books on Amazon, because I listed them as part of my favorite books on Facebook.

On top of the new data retention policy, Facebook is actually going to start pushing data to application owners via a process they’re calling Real Time Updates.  Now, application developers don’t even have to query the data – it gets pushed to us as users authorize our applications or as they change their profiles.  This will hopefully speed up Facebook by not having numbers of redundant queries being made on behalf of applications, but it will also provide the opportunity for more interesting development tools to be included.  I’m happy to say that real-time updates were important enough to me to include support for real-time updates for users as part of OpenGraph.NET, an open-source .NET Framework-based toolkit for developing for Facebook’s Graph API.

Like It or Not

As of June 30, you can access these changes via the Developers application .

Figure 3 – The New Data Permissions setting is disabled by default for existing applications, but enabled by default for new applications.

I haven’t seen in our applications that the new permissions are causing much trouble because of the way they’re used, but as always, your mileage may vary, and it would be better to check it out now before they’re forced on your app.

On a Friday night this past September, over 170 people gathered at Aloft Tempe to party on behalf of charity. They gathered to eat, drink, and be merry in each other’s company at Twestival Phoenix Local. Twestival is an “international movement where people meet offline for one night, have fun and do some good for an important cause”. Galas, balls, and other social events have always been a core fundraising tactic, but what sets a Twestival apart is that it is promoted almost exclusively by tapping into online social tools.

Invitations are sent via status updates on several social platforms, event pages are set up on Facebook and Upcoming, and tickets are sold through Amiando, which leverages Twitter API and Facebook Connect integration to allow users to tell friends that they’re attending Twestival. Because most user social graphs are not constrained by geographic boundaries, each person who posts about attending Twestival is not only inviting friends who live in their same city to the local event, they implicitly invite friends across the country and the world to participate in the Twestival event occurring in where they live. The effect is that the money raised for charity is multiplied. A quick look at the numbers from 2009.

Like social media networks, Twestival is a connector. The event itself enables attendees to not only catch up with friends, meet new friends and discover local food vendors, businesses and artists who participate through sponsorship and auction item donations. Meanwhile, the planning process teaches small businesses and local charities about the potential of social media to drive awareness.

For the September event, Twestival Phoenix event organizers wanted to be certain that the selected charity benefitted from more than just money raised. Chris Lee, who spearheads much of the planning, said that locally, they looked at how engaged each non-profit was involved in social media. Were they heavily involved and well-versed? Were they avoiding social media altogether? Or had they dipped their toes in the water, demonstrating interest and a real potential to flourish under a little guidance? Event organizers also invited community to participate in selection process by recommending and voting on charities through UserVoice.

By inviting community participation throughout the process, from planning to partying, event organizers helped Saint Mary’s Food Bank through a sustained awareness campaign. Some notable results:

• @StMarysFoodBank’s Twitter followers increased 241% from July through the night event.
• They received countless tweets and media hits they wouldn’t have otherwise received if they had not been the beneficiaries of Twestival Phoenix.
• On the day of the event, www.firstfoodbank.org received double the average number of hits for a Friday.
• The money raised at Twestival Phoenix enabled St. Mary’s to distribute food for over 65,000 meals.

The third Twestival is tomorrow night (March 25, 2010). Another global initiative, it will benefit Concern Worldwide, working towards the elimination of extreme poverty in the world’s poorest countries. Twestival Phoenix will be at Martini Ranch. You can follow their efforts and get event information by following @TwestivalPhx on Twitter join them on Facebook or visiting the Twestival Phoenix website.

Geosocial applications have been hot this year. At their most basic level, geosocial apps allow users to share information about where they are and what they are doing with friends in real-time. All updates are geotagged to a particular venue, and venue pages show the latest activity specific to that place. Brightkite, Foursquare, and Gowalla are the top three applications, though with South by Southwest (SXSW) approaching, all the talk seems to focus on the last two.

Brightkite has been around for several years, and having built a critical mass of users, the app enjoyed wide spread use last year at SXSW -  attendees used the app to let friends know what sessions and parties they were at, and what the vibe was. In many ways, Brightkite laid the way for Foursquare and Gowalla, both of which launched last year, and have seen rapid adoption since. As their one-year launch anniversary approaches, some have dubbed this year’s SXSW a geosocial showdown, forming hypotheses as to which application will secure preferred status among users.

Despite the buzz, geosocial is not a one app show. Like any industry, there is room for multiple players. And for all their similarities Brightkite, Foursquare and Gowalla have some key differences that appeal to different segments of the market. To illustrate these differences, I’ll draw very loosely on the work Margaret Mark and Carol S. Pearson have done on brand archetypes. In The Hero and the Outlaw, Mark and Pearson describe archetypes as prototype characters that run through all stories, fictional and historical, that help us understand the key motivations and potential weaknesses of each character we come across. When applied to brands, archetypes can provide insight into why certain brands appeal to certain customers.
Brightkite, Foursquare and Gowalla all appeal to explorers. A key attribute of each app is the ability to discover new places, and to also discover and share insider information about that place. The ability to view the check-ins of others enables users to participate in the discovery process.

Beyond basic exploration, geosocial apps diverge in their appeal toward user groups. Brightkite, which encourages posting notes to a location, and which is the only application to allow users to post photos, appeals to storytellers. Active users collaborate in creating the evolving narration of a place.

Foursquare and Gowalla trend more toward gaming than informational storytelling. Foursquare, with its emphasis on points accumulation, place mayorships and a weekly leaderboard, appeals to rulers. Often demonstrating a competitive nature, rulers aspire to hold designated positions of status. Gowalla, with the introduction of items that can be found, traded, or vaulted, appeals to collectors. These individuals express themselves through the accumulation, ownership and display of objects. With SXSW right around the corner, both Foursquare and Gowalla are further emphasizing their respective gaming qualities by rolling out new challenges, badges and prizes to be won or found by this year’s conference attendees.

Understanding the unique functionality and user profile of various social media applications is a key identifying the ones that best aligns company and user goals. Much like the persona development we do to inform our strategy, web development and online marketing projects, we evaluate social interaction patterns when developing social media strategy. So while others at SXSW will be watching data sparks fly in the hyped geosocial showdown, we’ll be watching user behavior for the implications on platform evolution.

In related news, if you are headed to SXSW and want to meet up with Terralever while there, please drop any one of us a line (preferred communication method listed).

Scott McAndrew, Director of Strategy
Twitter: @scottmcandrew

Erin Enriquez, Account Manager
email: erine [at] terralever dot com

Courtney Crane, Marketing Manager
email: courtneyc [at] terralever dot com

Heather Herr, Social Media Specialist
Twitter: @MsHerr

Update to Mashable Fans: Pawns in the impressions game – The Social Media Guide responds to fan feedback and adjusts their publishing frequency, but not their engagement.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about Mashable’s practice of phrasing all Facebook updates as questions, most likely in hopes of stimulating fan interaction and conversations, while being noticeably absent from those same conversations.

This past Wednesday, Mashable changed their content posting strategy in response to fan feedback that they were simply posting too much content. Mashable is now using their primary fan page to highlight top stories, and has set up eight additional channels for specific interest areas, such as tech, video, jobs and social media.

The language and style of Mashable’s Facebook posts has also been changing since our initial piece, as Mashable experiments with different approaches. They are still leading many updates with questions, but they are mixing it up a bit, sometimes posting headlines only, sometimes questions only, and sometimes combing both. They have also changed the structure of most questions from the simplistic “Will you watch?” to include references to key points in the article.

I have also noticed a slight increase in Mashable’s engagement in the comments attached to any one post. It is very slight, but perhaps a sign of more to come.

If you’d like to find and follow any one of those channels, visit the Mashable Facebook fan page and check out their favorite pages.

The Social Media Guide asks fans to join in discussion around posts, but don’t participate themselves.

Do you follow Mashable on Facebook? Have you noticed the change in how they post? They’ve recently started asking questions. A lot of them.

Do you think the school was justified in its actions? Or are you simply creeped out?

How do you plan to celebrate Photoshop’s 20th?

What do you think of brands using augmented reality? Does it make you more likely to buy the product?

Be honest: Would you buy/wear these, or is this just a little too nerdy?

And my personal favorite: Will you watch? … Well now, that’s vague.

In the last 3 days (1pm on Tuesday to 1pm today…it’s Friday, by the way, but don’t let me get off topic), Mashable has posted 73 updates. Of those, 58 are questions. 79% are questions. W00t! Mashable wants to know what we think. And they’re going to engage in conversation with us. Right?

Wrong.

Mashable is not participating in the conversation. They’re inviting interaction by asking questions in an attempt to increase activity around each post, which will increase likelihood that posts will make it into the news feeds of more fans and friends-of-fans*, but they are not engaging in the conversations that play out in the comments. The most recent post Tim Burton Talks “Alice in Wonderland” Live on MySpace Tonight [VIDEO] had 24 comments at the time of writing, not a single one from Mashable. A scan of the previous ten posts shows an average of 33 comments, and again, not a single one by Mashable**.

At Terralever, we find this very disappointing. It’s one of the things that we insist our clients not do. Mashable is “The Social Media Guide,” and is the de facto news source for what is happening right now in social. They have also made efforts to truly be a guide by providing several how to resources that help newcomers understand the cultural norms and etiquette that govern social media interaction. This makes their current Facebook behavior all the more deplorable.

We’re not the only ones bothered. Scan fan posts on the Mashable wall, and you’ll see other discontents.

On Monday, Mashable posted this feedback request:

We’re looking to do a better job at serving our Facebook community. Some questions: 1. What would you like to see more of on Mashable’s Facebook page? And less of? 2. Would you like more questions & contests, or would you like us to stick to headlines? 3. Should we share all Mashable posts here, or just selected ones? 4. What other changes would make our Facebook page better? –Pete

Another request for interaction, to which they’ve received 204 comments. Here, Mashable has responded. Once. Out of 203 opportunities.

If Mashable wants to simply leverage their Facebook presence as a firehose that gives fans easy access to their wealth of information, cool. But please don’t use us, your fans, as pawns to gain impressions. That is a violation of our trust, and we will unfan you.

*Facebook uses a complex algorithm to determine what stories appear in your news feeds. This algorithm is a guarded secret, but stories that receive high interaction, via likes and comments, are deemed more relevant and are more likely to appear in your own news feed.

**Disclaimer: Mashable has several writers. It is possible for writers to participate in conversations under their own name, as opposed to as a Mashable admin, but my quick investigation did not reveal any of this activity.

Social Media Shapes Perceptions About You as an Employer

The warnings for any job seeker are loud and clear: be careful what you post because companies are scouring your social sites, from LinkedIn to Facebook to YouTube, digging up any and all information they can to ensure that they are hiring quality, reputable talent. Those pictures of you doing a keg stand at your alma matter’s football homecoming game, or of you riding the subway in your underwear in the most recent Improv Everywhere No Pants Subway Ride may come back to bite you in the butt, no pun intended.

We’ve heard the messages targeted to job seekers several times and we’ll likely hear them several more times because they are worth repeating. But the message we don’t hear so often is one targeted to companies looking to hire savvy new talent.

You Google job candidates before hiring. Has it occurred to you that those candidates are doing that same thing to you?

If you’re a business, I’ve got a homework assignment for you. Yes, homework. As the evening draws to a close with the kids long since in bed and thoughts of following suit dancing through your head, sit down with your laptop. Switch the television channel to whatever network is playing reruns of your favorite comedy or crank up whatever tunes you bump when no one else is listening. Don’t crank it up too loudly though (remember, the kids are sleeping). Take another drink from your half-finished beer, fire up Google’s mighty search engine, and type your company name into that little box in the center of the screen.

Does your website come up first? If you’ve optimized your site properly, it should. What comes up next? With the increasing authority being given to social sites, you’ll likely find Facebook, Twitter and other social sites showing prominently above the fold.

One by one, search the social networks where your company has a presence. Look at your profiles and reflect on what they say about you. What does your brand stand for? How do you treat your customers? Do you have personality? Do you have soul? Look at the people talking with you and about you on these sites and other social sites, including blogs. Who are they? What are they saying? Does the content and tone of these conversations appeal the type of talent you want working for you?

How you participate in social media should be rooted in strategy developed around your business objectives, but don’t underestimate the potential for shaping perceptions about you as an employer. Even something as simple as an around the office photo album on Facebook can give job seekers a feel for the company’s culture, from how the office is laid out and how people dress to whether you place higher value on conformity or individuality.

Finish the last of your beer, and answer me this: What about your social presence makes today’s job seekers want to work for you?

Today Google delivered a much-anticipated new product announcement for a new social networking platform by the name of Google Buzz. Their strategy looks to, rather than build off of their investment with Orkut, to build new social network platform as an extension of Gmail. Interesting approach, and most likely a necessary departure based on the lack of Orkut’s success globally against Facebook. A few initial thoughts on what I saw and what it means:

• While using the popularity of Gmail as a great launching point was most likely Google’s best strategy for rapid user adoption and a good start for building my social graph within Buzz, I wonder if it’ll be enough. For those hardcore Google users that use Gmail as a primary email provider or Google Talk as a primary chat client, I have no doubt that Buzz will be an easy, natural addition to their Google experience.  For the rest of the world (including me) who don’t use either of those services as a primary method of communication, I’m left to manually build my social graph within Facebook. That’s a big ask considering users’ investments in building and maintaining these social graphs in environments such as Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn.
• I wonder what this means for the future of Orkut. Granted, Orkut never had the legs to compete with Facebook globally, but it did have success in a few international environments such as India and Brazil. A social product launch with no reference to Orkut doesn’t bode well for continued innovation with that platform.
• As is typical for a product announcement and demonstration, we didn’t get enough detail on core social topics such as privacy or integration options. While an open, social web is everyone’s goal, when considering the portability of both a user’s social graph and privacy preferences this conversation rapidly becomes complex. It’ll be interesting to see what’s under the hood here with Buzz.
• Completely and conspicuously absent from the announcement, demos and q&a were any sort of integration with any other social platform such as Twitter, Facebook, blog platforms, etc. For all the criticism Facebook gets for being a walled-in environment, they’ve done a great job of enabling integration with these platforms and providing a platform that can effectively integrate with anything. Google chose to launch only with integrations with Google products such as Gmail, Google Chat, Picasa and YouTube, which is curious for an announcement claiming to be the most open social web platform possible.
• What I found to be the most intriguing was the integration of locally aware information with Google Maps and their mobile offering. With their ongoing investments in Google Maps and Google Local, Google has been the defacto standard for local data worldwide. Using this investment to their advantage to instantly create the most locally-aware social platform was a savvy and powerful move. It effectively makes services such as Brightkite obsolete over time and pushes services such as FourSquare and Gowalla deeper into a mobile-game niche.
• Also noticeably absent was any reference to how this will effect Google search engine results. As with most things SEO related I’m sure we’ll be left to discover those effects on our own and it’s something we’ll have a keen eye on in the coming weeks and months.

Again these are a few, off the cuff thoughts on Buzz, I’m sure I’ll have more in 3 minutes when I can actually play with it. I’d be interested in your opinion on Buzz and what it means to the evolution of the social web. Comment here with what you’ve got!

Since business fan pages have gone on the rise in the last year or so, there have been some great campaigns focused on gaining fans for those businesses. I’m sure you’ve noticed that there has been a large amount of businesses offering FREE goods to consumers in exchange for their fan-ship. I mean, who wouldn’t simply click a button and become a fan for a free bag of Oreo cookies? I did. I still don’t have my cookies, but all I had to do was become a fan. So, the time and energy investment for me was low while the outcome could possibly, maybe, fingers-crossed, be high for me and my family. No loss there. But what happens when these campaigns go bad and the experience leaves a bad taste in consumer’s mouths? Social media backlash. Companies typically want to avoid social media backlash of any kind. It’s quick and painful and it’ll hit you in the face before you know what’s coming. So, to avoid this, a social media campaign needs to be thoroughly planned out. If a campaign is poorly planned and managed, it can create a horrible experience for all those involved.

Let’s use this mornings Incredible Edible Egg (IEE) disaster as an example. Being the frugal consumer that I am, I heard through my online money saving network that starting at 10am EST, IEE was offering a free BOGO (Buy One Get One Free) coupon to the first 30,000 people to become fans. Simple, right? Click a button. Fill out a short form (which was pretty much filled out for you). Click submit. Coupon is emailed to you shortly thereafter. FREE eggs. So exciting!

Now, I have to tell you that as an experienced “become a fan” promo goer I am typically not optimistic about these sort of things. 30,000 coupons sounds like a lot, but when you’re dealing with a pot of over 350 million active Facebook users only 0.08% of them are going to get the coupon. I can pretty much guarantee you that if it was promoted well, there were probably over 30,000 people patiently waiting at their computers for the clock to reach “go time.” Everyone loves free stuff. Especially in this economy. So, chances were that I was not going to get a coupon, but I gave it a shot anyway. I figured I would have my answer in a few seconds and be able to get on with my day either way, right? Maybe not.

Here was my IEE BOGO coupon experience and an example of how things can quickly go terribly, terribly wrong.

At about 8:10am MST I clicked on the link, went to IEE’s Facebook page and became a fan. However, instead of being taken to the coupon sign-up page, I get this:

Now, because I work in, on and around the Internet all day long, it was clear to me that IEE hadn’t planned for all 30,000 (or more) users hitting their server at once. But to the average everyday Facebook user the experience is perceived much differently: The Incredible Edible Egg is broken. They hate me. They ran out of eggs. They scammed me. It’s a fake promotion. Really, they’ll come up with anything and they’ll tell people about it. This is why it’s best to avoid these perceptions completely.

So, I headed over to their fan page to check out the status of things. Their wall was already filled with comments from angry coupon-less deal goers that were being turned away by their server issues. Within 10 minutes they had hundreds of wall posts related to the promotion. Most angry, some calm and a few funny ones that included the expected egg related pun like, “Well, this didn’t go as EGGspected” or “Looks like the yolks on us.” Har har.

What’s amazing is that, even though they were angry, some fans were still trying to get their coupon 3 hours later and posting about how much of their day they’d wasted trying to get this coupon. They must really love eggs.

In attempt to keep diffusing the situation, IEE had been posting updates every now and again asking people to be patient, but at this point the damage had already been done. The experience IEE provided had not fulfilled fan’s visions of 12 free eggs all nestled away in their fridge for future enjoyment. And trust me, there’s no easier place to express your anger than a forum where you can post your feelings and run away with no consequences. Especially when you get a mob of people doing it at the same time. And it all stems from the fact that users feel entitled to receive what you said you were going to give them and it’s completely unforgivable if they don’t get it. Especially if it’s free.

So, when moving forward with a simple social media campaign like this, make sure you plan out every minor detail. Make sure that the user’s experience is fast, simple and easy. Let them get in and out without any hassle so that they are compelled to leave a positive message on your fan page and possibly even pass along your promotion to their friends through their many social media avenues. You want and need them to pass it on to make your campaign more successful. And ensure that you plan for worst case scenarios so that your promotion doesn’t die within the first two minutes of its launch.

I’m sure that IEE will recover from this incident. They’ll get the system working again and will probably have to give all of their fans coupons, well beyond the 30,000 they originally intended. Once they do that, everyone will be happy again and IEE will be able to live a more enjoyable existence. But, with better planning and guidance IEE could have saved themselves the heartache by doing it correctly from the start and keeping everyone happy all along.

Here are some of my favorite posts:

A recent case study presented by Marketing Sherpa shows that social media is a solid marketing tool for generating leads

The case study discusses 6 social media steps to help fill the sales funnel:

#1 Create a blog to start and join online conversation

#2 Establish an active Twitter account

#3 Create a LinkedIn Group (or Facebook page depending on your demographic)

#4 Modify your press release strategy for blogger coverage

#5 Promote social media channels on your company website and in email signatures

#6 Measure growth of social media accounts and web traffic

Results:

Results of the researched company’s social media campaign showed that there was a dramatic correlation between the use of social media channels and the growth of the company’s web traffic and leads.

After only six months, their campaign resulted in:

– 10,230 unique blog page views in Q3
– 280 Twitter followers
– 141 members of their LinkedIn Group
– 155% increase in unique web visitors

The most important thing to note is that the increased web traffic contributed to the majority of the teams leads.

Leads by source:

– 55% inbound web
– 23% trade shows
– 20.5% email
– 1.5% seminars

Marketing-influenced pipeline by source:

– 75% inbound web
– 17% email
– 4% seminars
– 4% trade shows

The following image shows the growth rate of new lead generation (blue), unique web visits (red), Twitter followers (yellow), LinkedIn group members (green) and blog views (purple) through Q1, Q2 and Q3.

Using social media as a marketing strategy is obviously still very young compared to more traditional marketing concepts however, as it evolves it is becoming less and less complicated to track its affect on your brand and your bottom line.

Social media is an incredible way to create strong relationships with hard-to-find prospects, on a limited budget – but don’t be fooled, it’s not easy and it’s a major commitment. To learn more about the exact strategies the company carried out to get these results, check out the full case study on MarketingSherpa.com.

It’s a new year, a new beginning, a new leaf, which means plenty of new opportunities for your web site and online marketing program. By this time, I am sure you have made your own personal resolution list for 2010, but have you taken the time to make one for you web site? To help you get rolling, I put together a list of key strategies for you to consider.

PPC
1.    Test New Ads – Try out new ad variations, it can never hurt to test out something new and fresh.
2.    Update Landing Pages – If you don’t already have customized PPC landing pages, now is a perfect time to implement them. If you are already utilizing them, analyze your results and make modifications accordingly.

On-Site SEO
1.    Rewrite Title Tags – When was the last time you updated your title tags? My guess is that they could use a little refresh, especially if you have added new products, services, and/or offerings.
2.    Fix broken links/URLs by 301 redirecting them to relevant new pages.

Link Building – Set Monthly Goals
1.    Identify X number of link opportunities per month.
2.    Send X number of link requests per month.
3.    Create X number of new pieces of “link worthy” content a month.

Blog  – Set Weekly Goals
1.    Blog X number of times a week.
2.    Comment on X number of relevant blogs per week.

Social Media – Set Daily Goals
1.    Participate consistently, but don’t force it. Tweet & post when you have something to share, not just for the sake of getting something posted.
2.    Ensure your profile bios are optimized to their full potential.

Email Marketing– Set Monthly Goals
1.    Develop a campaign calendar for the year.
2.    Commit to sending X number of emails per month.
3.    A/B split test your campaigns and messaging.

Analytics
1.    Commit to spending X number of hours per week digging into your analytics.
2.    Analyze the bounce rate for the top 20 landing/entry pages of your web site.
3.    Identify and analyze your biggest abandonment pages and modify them for success.

Tools – Test Out New Tools
If you don’t already have a solid list of online marketing tools to help in your efforts, below are a few of my favorites free tools you can check out:

1.    SEOBook ‘s Backlink Analyzer
2.    SEOmoz’s LinkScape
3.    SpyFu
4.    Google Webmaster Tools

Set goals for your web site and online marketing program. Monitor the success of each of them and then modify the tactics based on the results you see. A resolution list is a perfect starting point. And with a little strategy and planning, your web site is bound to be a success!

Easy ways to spice up your social media efforts, with a little help from Dick and Jane.

A new year is synonymous with starts, either on new goals or on older ones that we’d like to take another crack at. Each goal represents a desire to be better than we were last year. A new year is also synonymous with new lists created to make that path toward success a little bit easier.
Whether you just got started in social media or have been playing in the space for years, there are several ways that you can add a little spice, extend your reach, and increase your impact.

1. Grab your name on every social site you can.
You can lay a foundation for continued social engagement by protecting ownership of your brand name, be it your company name or your own name. Sites that allow users to select a unique handle do so on a first come, first served basis, and while some offer restorative action where copyright or trademark infringement is involved, there’s no guarantee that you’ll recover your name in a timely fashion if some other Dick or Jane beat you to the punch bowl. KnowEm and namechk allow you to see where your username has been claimed. Neither tool contains a comprehensive list of all social sites, but they contain most of the major ones and are a great place to start. Signing up for one account is relatively quick; signing up for a dozen can take considerably more time. If you don’t have the time, KnowEm offers to do them all for you for a fee.

2. Pick one new platform to experiment with.
If you’re already participating in the social media space, you probably have an account on both Facebook and Twitter. These are among the most popular social sites, and every Jane has a profile, but Facebook and Twitter are only the tip of the iceberg. Try adding something new to your mix. You might try category platform, like LinkedIn. As the leading social business networking site, LinkedIn’s groups and answers features could be prime space to further a reputation for knowledge leadership. Or try something more niche that Dick hasn’t discovered yet, like 12seconds. Launched in 2008, the 12seconds micro-video platform is increasingly a space of expression and experimentation by creative individuals and companies.

3. Encourage social inside the company.
If you condemn participation in social networks as a distraction from the work at hand, you undervalue the contribution your employees can be making toward your business’ social efforts on the same networks. Social media is a word of mouth tool, and that word can start to spread from within your office. Embrace social as a way of doing business and allow employees to engage social media to connect with friends and each other, you’ll find in between posting pictures of their weekend hike or scheduling a lunch date with Dick, you’ll get featured. They will comment on how much they love the people they work with, retweet that job posting, and take notice when a Jane, a recent connection they may have yet to met in person, mentions she needs to launch an ecommerce site, which just so happens to be something your company rocks at.

4. Take your online social activities offline.
Your online social presence should augment and enhance in-person interactions. Give people a chance to deepen their relationship with you by interacting with you socially even while offline. Invite Jane and others to join you for happy hour or coffee at a locally-owned business. Open up your office space to Dick’s Historical Autobiography Book Club for their monthly gathering, attend the meetup and get to know the club members and what fascinates them.

5. Find at least one way to engage that has absolutely nothing to do with your core business.
All work and no play makes Dick a dull boy. All work and no play makes your company just another dull company. Nerf wars may spring up in the office during the day when you need a break, but if nobody knows, you’re missing an opportunity to showcase a bit of personality. Why not make the last Friday of each month a themed dress-up (or dress-down) day, post the best photos on Facebook and invite friends and fans to write the captions? Or why not take the engagement offline (tip 4) and organize a weekly meetup at your local dog-park for people who have dogs, as well as those who want dogs?

6. Share media and content that inspires your thinking.
The products and/or services you offer are your output, but what are the inputs that shape how you design and deliver these things? Books, blog posts, TED talks, even outside hobbies – the things you read, see and do have the power to influence how you do business. Share the very best of these via your social profiles. At the very least, you’ll give friends, fans and followers greater insight into the philosophies and values that guide you. At best, you’ll develop deeper relationships with customers, prospects and peers as you engage in idea-driven conversations. And if you’re really lucky, you’ll inspire both Dick and Jane along the way.

½. Be helpful.
We aren’t the first to say this, and we won’t be the last, but some tips are just so important that they are worth repeating… Be helpful. If Dick has a question and you know the answer, or can point him in the direction of a useful resource, do it. If it’s not about your company, product, service or industry, still do it. Never pass up an opportunity to demonstrate to your customers, friends and fans that meeting their needs is important to you.

Let these tips be a starting point to get you headed to more social 2010. As you put each of them in play, please share your ideas, questions and successes. Share your failures too, and the lessons that result, so that we can learn from each other and help each other make this year a rockin’ year.

Originally posted to the Phoenix Business Journal

Terralever has become one of slightly more than two dozen companies to be recognized as a preferred developer by Facebook.

The Tempe-based interactive marketing agency is one of 14 companies in the Facebook preferred developer consultant program, which can build programs for the massive social networking platform.

Terralever has been involved with Facebook applications since 2007 and has built programs for companies ranging from Apple and BMW to Red Bull and the University of Phoenix.

“Clearly, Facebook is one of the most innovative companies in the world. In the last five years they have strategically found ways to capture the attention of users everywhere, attracting more then 350 million active users worldwide,” said Chris Johnson, Terralever CEO. “We are honored and excited to be a part of this new program and to have the opportunity to continue to develop new experiences on Facebook Platform.”

A Brief Recap and Additional Q & A from our Recent Social Media Webinar

First, a big thank you to everyone who joined me on Tuesday for our webinar, Social Media – What’s the Point? Time is incredibly valuable these days, and it means a lot that you chose to spend it here.

In the presentation, I focused on three key points.
•    All relevant media is becoming increasingly more social.
•    Integrate social media into your total marketing strategy.
•    Move beyond Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace.
Additional points that seemed to resonate with participants are:
•    Companies and brands can participate in social media, and do it right.
•    Social media marketing is more effective at growing brand affinity than generating leads and sales.
•    Listen to your friends, fans, and followers to discover, and then engage with them on the topics that are interesting to them.
At the end of the presentation, there were several questions that arose which I was unable to address due to time. I’d like to respond to a few of them here.

If you are new to social media for your brand, what are your suggestions for starting out?

Just as one size does not really fit all, neither does one social media platform fit every business. Start by getting a personal recommendation from someone who is both active in social media, and who knows you and your business well. They can suggest the platform that might feel most natural for you.

Twitter can be a counter-intuitive for the first-time user, but it’s great for listening for mentions of your brand or business. Follow colleagues or industry knowledge leaders to get information that is relevant to your work. Follow customers who are already using Twitter. Reach out to both for feedback on how you’re doing. Use Twitter Search to find mentions of your brand, and set up TweetBeep and Google Alerts to receive email notifications.

Facebook fan pages work well for personal community interaction and engagement. Leverage the information tab to talk about who you are and what you do in a casual voice. Post updates about things that are happening in your company, both public-facing activities, and occasional behind-the-scenes operations. Respond when fans comment on your posts or write their own posts on your wall. Use the photos and the events features when you have something cool going on that you want to share.
If you’re a local food, travel, or entertainment business, consider starting with Yelp. Search for your company and read what Yelpers are saying. Claim your business and email your reviewers. Thank those who wrote a positive review for visiting your establishment and sharing their experience with others. Reach out to those who wrote a negative review to address points of pain to ask for ideas on how to improve service.

Wherever you begin, keep it simple. Choose one platform and focus on it for one month. Learn its features. Build new relationships. And don’t be afraid to experiment a bit to find what forms of engagement work best. You can always branch out as you get more comfortable.

What are your thoughts on agencies tweeting on behalf of clients?

Authenticity and transparency are key to a successful social media presence. There is nothing transparent about ghost-tweeting. No one knows your business as well as you do, and while an agency may be on point with your brand messaging, unique aspects of personality get lost when posting happens by proxy. After all, there are certain things that can only be captured when you are in-house, like the sudden invasion of beloved four-legged friends on ‘take your dog to work’ day.

Another challenge is timeliness.  Whether it’s sharing breaking news in your industry, or responding to a mention of your brand, few clients are willing to give an agency the autonomy to tweet without some sort of approval process. Publishing schedules are common, but from preparation to approval to posting, your breaking article might have broken over a week ago. Customer service responses that have to go from agency to client back to agency for posting can often result in a delay of several hours, a full business day, or more.

That’s not to say that an agency can’t ever post on a client’s behalf. Where we have found success is providing content support when a client has a busy season that prevents them from maintaining a regular posting schedule. In those cases, we have tweeted, posted Facebook updates, and written blog posts in the voice of the brand to supplement content authored by the client.
Where an agency provides the most value is in navigating the social media landscape and identifying opportunities. We can be a virtual knowledge rolodex of social platforms, a guide during set-up and implementation, a resource for ongoing questions, and an idea hub for new opportunities.

Do you use a particular CRM to save all social media discussions or customer information?

There are several social monitoring tools that have been designed to help companies track mentions and follow customer interactions. Two of the most widely used are Radian 6 and CoTweet. Social media is an evolving space, and there is not yet a single software suite that will meet your every monitoring need. Remember, social media is about being social; software cannot substitute for human engagement. You will have to invest time and energy in mining and interpreting the data, whether it is collected by technology, or your own manual search efforts.

We have posted the presentation deck on Slideshare, and a recording of the webinar on Blip.TV. Download and view to your heart’s content. If we can help in any way, please let us know.

As many of you know, Terralever recently suffered a great loss with the passing of Andy Richter, managing partner, colleague, friend, and mentor. We have mourned and we have laughed as we continue to remember great times spent with a man whose passion for living was infectious.

Shortly before we learned of Andy’s passing, I discovered that my friend and his wife were expecting a baby via a biweekly web comic. Life cycled within mere hours. As the day continued, and news of Andy’s passing spread, the outpouring of support, expressed through Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and personal emails, was overwhelming. The loss was not just our own, Andy’s family or those closest to him, but one felt throughout Phoenix and the greater entrepreneurial and internet marketing communities. Each post brought home with new meaning that which I already believed, that social media, however digital it may be, is still human.

Sons and daughters are born, cancerous diseases are fought, promotions are celebrated, wedding vows are exchanged, and losses are mourned. Life is shared as it happens.

News channels will continue to publish the latest headlines, brands to focus on building communities of impassioned evangelists, and retailers to announce their hot new sale. Indeed, our role as an interactive marketing agency is to help our clients navigate opportunities to best leverage their online activities. It is my hope that as we do so, we always remember that social media is where humans connect with one another in meaningful ways.

We cherish the knowledge, guidance and passion that Andy brought to us each day. We are thankful for the gracious support of the community since his passing. Both are inspiration for us as we move forward together.

It’s all around us and it’s here to stay. Businesses and brands on our favorite social media platforms hoping to be friended, followed and faned by existing and potential customers who will then go and share branded content with their own friends, followers and fans. Social media networks make this sharing easy. Comment, like, retweet, favorite, or star something, and others will see it. It’s that word of mouse marketing.

The good news for businesses and brands is that over half of participants in social media networks are currently connected with a brand and 46% have spoken positively about a brand.
The question for companies, then, is how are you influencing these mentions? Are they unsolicited references to your product or service? Or are they the effect of others sharing the content you’ve published online? Consider the most mentioned brands on Twitter are Starbucks, Google, BBC, Apple and AIG. All are big name brands, but only the first three have a Twitter presence. Apple and AIG do not, and in the case of AIG, mentions were more often criticisms of company operations as they came to light during the financial crises than any sort of messaging initiated by or on behalf of the company.

On July 22nd, social media channels were abuzz with the announcement that Amazon bought Zappos. News of the announcement was quickly followed by links to a letter from Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh to employees explaining foreseeable affects of acquisition, and to a video of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos talking about both companies and his views on entrepreneurship. Amazon and Zappos are both incredibly active in social media; Amazon is the sixth most mentioned brand on Twitter. That engagement from both companies helped shape conversation about the acquisition. The video received over 35,000 views from site embeds occurring on that same day. The letter inspired hundreds of blogs and reblogs, and thousands of tweets.

When the information you’ve created is what’s being shared, then you have more opportunity to have your voice reflected the stories others tell about you.

Originally posted to Online Marketing Performance by Scott McAndrew on June 25, 2009

There’s a recent study that came out regarding Millennials and social meda that is causing a considerable amount of speculation and interpretation.  The study, released by the Participatory Marketing Network, shows that while Millennials are active participants in social media in general, what they aren’t is all that interested in media darling Twitter.

The study, which questioned 200 panel members between the ages of 18 and 24, reported that while 99 percent of respondents have a profile on a social networking site that only 22 percent of the group say they use Twitter.

While there’s a barrage of articles speculating on why, I personally don’t find this to be all that surprising.  Considering the nature of the networks, and the Millennials themselves, Facebook makes sense.  Twitter does not.

High on the list of Millennials core values are authenticity and transparency.  And, what do Millennials utilize social networks for?  To build and nurture relationships.  Stopping right there the preference toward Facebook over Twitter seems obvious.

On Twitter, you can hide behind a profile and be anyone you want to be.  Don’t want people to know who you really are?  Open a GMail account and sign up.  Create your fake bio and go for it.  Parade around as whomever you want and say whatever you want.  If things don’t work out, start over.

Facebook couldn’t be more different. Facebook is decidedly focused on creating a network of people, not profiles.  While it is possible to make it through the registration process with a made up name and empty bio, what’s next? Its akin to showing up at a black-tie party in a bozo the clown suit.  You’ll definitely find yourself short on friends let alone interaction.

In terms of servicing their users, Facebook also aligns more closely with Millennials needs than Twitter does.  Twitter is a simple messaging platform that allows the broadcast and receipt of 140 character messages.  Yes, Twitter has utility.  One utility.  It does one thing, and not especially well.

Facebook’s offering provides a far richer set of tools, allowing members to interact in a far more dimensional context.  Twitter is a simple messaging system, and not one that Millennials have much of a need for in its current form.

Originally published April 5th, 2009 to www.onlinemarketingperformance.com

Both Venture Beat and Mashable had coverage last week of a Facebook feature currently being tested called “credits.”  I thought “credits” was a April Fool’s Day joke that just wasn’t all that amusing.  Apparently, it wasn’t.

Here’s an excerpt from the Venture Beat coverage that explains how it works:

When you leave a comment on an item, you’ll see a field where you can enter the number of credits you want to give the person who created the item. You’ll also see the number of credits you have available to give — you can choose to give up to the number of credits you possess. You can only get credits by buying them in Facebook’s virtual gifts store — $1 for 100 credits — or by receiving them (or by getting some free when you start using credits, although Facebook is testing how many to make available that way).

Once you’ve left a comment with credits, you’ll see the credits appear next to the comment, following the feature’s green plus symbol icon. There’s no other way to create credits at this time. This means people need to think twice before giving their credits away.

“No brainer” or “no brain”?
For Facebook, it’s a no-brainer.  Getting users to exchange real cash for virtual compliments doesn’t have a downside.  And, they’re the coolest social networking site on the block.  They’ve proven that they are adept at rolling out ideas then, if they tank (or worse, aggravate people), they can backpedal without too much damage.

For Facebook users?  My guess is that the average Facebook user’s response is “thanks, but no thanks.”  The idea is, well, clunky.  While there’s likely far more behind this than what’s being exposed at this point, in response to one’s status giving someone a quick text retort or clicking a ‘like’ link feels natural. Giving them ‘money’ they can spend on tchotchke or re-credit to someone else’s clever status does not.

What do you think?  How will Facebook users respond?

A business blog is a powerful and popular way to communicate with existing and potential customers, sharing knowledge and expertise while building more web site traffic, conversions, and links.

Use your company blog to
•    Introduce new products, specials, and discounts
•    Share information about products or services
•    Manage your online reputation

A blog has to be fed on a regular basis, and providing unique content two or three times a week can become unworkable unless you have a procedure in place for sourcing content within your organization. Some business owners prefer to hire outside copywriters, guiding them in their choice of topics and reviewing the articles prior to publication.

Whatever choice you make for providing blog content, the objective is to encourage a dialogue with your customers. This means responding to their comments and questions, steering the conversation toward mutual understanding and a positive experience.

By doing so, not only can issues be resolved with current customers, but prospective buyers will see that your company is committed to great customer service and satisfaction.