Study Finds Facebook Pages Can Increase Customer Loyalty by 36%

On March 3, 2010, In Comm, By Tac Anderson

Facebook Stormtrooper First off I have to say that I haven’t been a big fan of Alltop. I like the idea and have a ton of respect for Guy Kawasaki but I’ve just personally never found anything useful there. That is until today. Alltop released Alltop.Futurity.

How to stay on top of research from universities

Duke University, Stanford University, and the University of Rochester created a consortium of universities called Futurity. All the partners are members of the Association of American Universities (AAU) or of the Russell Group. Futurity then publishes the very best research news from these universities. We then aggregate this news into a easy-to-scan site called Futurity.Alltop.

I love university research. Probably because part of me thinks it would be cool to be a college professor that got to do research all the time. But then the rational part of my brain knows that it’s probably not all that cool and I suck at statistics.

After checking out Alltop’s Futurity site I saw this little gem. While it’s only a study of one business and it’s Facebook page I thought it was still pretty cool.

Futurity.org – Turning Facebook fans into loyal customers

The study found that compared with typical Dessert Gallery customers, the company’s Facebook fans:

* Made 36 percent more visits to DG’s stores each month.
* Spent 45 percent more of their eating-out dollars at DG.
* Spent 33 percent more at DG’s stores.
* Had 14 percent higher emotional attachment to the DG brand.
* Had 41 percent greater psychological loyalty toward DG.

While the results indicate that Facebook fan pages offer an effective and low-cost way of social-media marketing, Dholakia says, the results should be interpret the results cautiously.

“The fact that only about 5 percent of the firm’s 13,000 customers became Facebook fans within three months indicates that Facebook fan pages may work best as niche marketing programs targeted to customers who regularly use Facebook.

I didn’t read the whole research report so I have to wonder if this is really a cause and effect. Were the people who ate at DG’s more likely to join a Facebook page or were people who joined a Facebook page more likely to increase the amount of times they ate at DG’s? My experience tells me that it’s both. Your pre Facebook page fans are most likely to become Facebook fans and if you’re effectively marketing on Facebook by engaging with your fans and offering deals then you’re probably going to see an increase in return visits.

BTW did I mention the New Comm Biz Facebook Page?

I disagree with the conclusion that Facebook should only be used for niche marketing. Instead, if Facebook fans are really more likely to spend more then DG’s should look at ways to convert customers to Facebook fans. I’ve also seen Facebook pages used effectively in all verticals with big and small companies. Facebook is not niche anymore.

What do you think? Has anyone else seen customer loyalty increase with Facebook fan pages?

Join the New Comm Biz Facebook Page or follow the Twitter account.

Photo credit via Balakov

Popularity: 3% [?]

Tagged with: • • •
 
Comments Comments
Leave A Response

More Mobile Social Proof Points

On February 18, 2010, In New, By Tac Anderson
My Cyber Social Map
Image by frankdasilva via Flickr

Following yesterday’s post “Social Media and Mobile Growth are Exponentially Symbiotic” I wanted to post 2 quick links that emphasize the relationship between mobile and social.

Rohit has a good post detailing a milestone of sorts in mobile’s maturity.

Influential Marketing Blog: 5 Terms That Signify The Future Of Mobile Marketing

It’s hard to predict, but I can say that this year does represent a unique moment where all the different aspects of mobile marketing that have long been preached by believers as signifying a cultural shift that matters to marketers are coming together.

The Shortcode
LBS (Location Based Services)
APP(lications)
AR (Augmented Reality)
DMPs (Direct MobilePayments)

ReadWriteWeb reports on a recent study showing that mobile social networking is now more popular than desktop social networking.

Social Networking Now More Popular on Mobile than Desktop

During the 2.7 hours per day that people in the U.S. spending on the mobile web, 45% are posting comments on social networking sites, 43% are connecting with friends on social networking sites, 40% are sharing content with others and 38% are sharing photos. While those last two figures represent activities that can take place outside of a dedicated social networking service, like a Facebook app for example, they still are inherently social activities.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Popularity: 2% [?]

Tagged with: • • • • • •
 
Comments Comments
Leave A Response

Corporate Social Media Backlash: The Virtual Firewall

On February 9, 2010, In Biz, By Tac Anderson

In December I predicted that over the next 5 years we would see intranets begin to integrate with social networks. I’ve seen some signs recently that this might take longer than I anticipated (but trust me it will happen).

Tora! Tora! Tora! - BREAK!The intranet is a metaphor for corporate control.

Intranets are secure networks of communication. Employees can safely share information, trusting that it won’t find its way out into untrustworthy hands. With the exception of email sent outside the network almost all communication stays behind the firewall. The firewall works both ways to keep information in and information out. Intranets are siloed and, as they exist today, make it difficult to share information across a company. Just over 10 years ago the Cluetrain Manifesto hypothesized:

the cluetrain manifesto

Corporate firewalls have kept smart employees in and smart markets out. It’s going to cause real pain to tear those walls down. But the result will be a new kind of conversation. And it will be the most exciting conversation business has ever engaged in.

Social media tools have shown an incredible ability to tear down those walls. This has caused a lot of pain and consternation among executives. My last post covered a disturbing email I received from a friend of mine in the financial sector that was being forced to delete their LinkedIn profile because it was considered an individual, professional website.

On the WE Studio D Thinkers and Doers blog I also posted about Forrester forcing all of their employees to shut down their personal blogs if they overlapped with their area of focus at Forrester and would only be allowed to blog about that topic on the forthcoming Forrester blog.

What we are witnessing is the corporate extension of the “firewall” into social media. While this is not an actual firewall it is the way companies are trying to control what would normally happen within or through their firewall.

Shel Holtz has started the Stop Blocking blog to address the problems employees face when their employers flex their firewalls to stop employees from accessing social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. With the ever increasing capabilities to access these sites via mobile phone that just seems ridiculous. You can’t stop my smart phone, even if I am at work.

All of this seems like a sad attempt to stop the inevitable. Why not work with your employees to reach a win-win instead of trying to stifle them? It just doesn’t make sense to me.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Tagged with: • • • • • • • •
 
Comments Comments
Leave A Response

Company Forces Employee to Delete LinkedIn Profile

On February 8, 2010, In Comm, By Tac Anderson

I received a disturbing email from a friend of mine. I have changed the message and obscured any personal or employer reference for obvious reasons.

Due to the recent FINRA (the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc) ruling (see below) I will have to take down my LinkedIn profile. The finance industry is so far behind the curve on social media communications it may be a while before my profile is back. In the meantime, feel free to contact me via e-mail or on Facebook (while I can still use it!).

The FINRA has released it’s first member firm communication relative to regulatory treatment of social media communications. Regulatory Notice 10-06, emphasized that all broker-dealer business communications taking place through social networking Web sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn are indeed official communications with the public and are subject to all corresponding FINRA supervisory requirements. This Regulatory Notice confirmed that a profile page on LinkedIn is considered an individual registered representative web site

The FINRA does not make the rules. They provide guidance and the individual firms have to create rules based on those recommendations. There’s a lot of room for interpretation. It turns out that while some firms allow for individual representative websites some do not. My friend’s firm obviously does not. I asked another friend in the financial industry on their thoughts (also changed and held anonymously).

My opinion is simple, if you don’t have confidence in the people you hire to deliver the message and give people appropriate information whether on or off the clock then you have hired the wrong people. Our job is rather simple, but most advisers are too lazy to stay well read because all they see is money(commissions) thus it’s easier for companies to just control what their employee’s say.

I have read through the 10-06 document and can’t find any specific recommendations for Facebook vs. LinkedIn. I can only assume that my friends firm determined that LinkedIn is a more professional network and Facebook is more personal. It will be interesting to see how they react as our personal/professional lives continue to converge.

Ars Technica has a good post explaining more details on FINRA 10-06: Brokers must think twice before tweeting, Facebooking

The new guidelines have two broad effects on the way financial firms use social media. First, the new rules attempt to take the traditional distinction between marketing a brand and hawking specific investment products, and to enforce it in online venues that sport a constantly evolving slate of features and functionality, and where the lines between the personal and the professional—or, the personal and the promotional—aren’t always clear.

Has anyone else been effected by this new ruling? Let me know: tac [at] newcommbiz [dot] com.

I think it’s going to be really important to watch, especially as other regulated industries have yet to make up their minds. I’m afraid we’re beginning to see a general backlash against social media by companies unsure what to do with it.

Join the New Comm Biz Facebook Page or follow the Twitter account.

Popularity: 36% [?]

Tagged with: • • • •
 
Comments Comments
Leave A Response

Social Media is Just a Big Game

On February 4, 2010, In New, By Tac Anderson
Standard joystick

Play On

As a proud member of Gen X I have fond memories of my Atari 2600.If you are reading this chances are you had an Atari, Nintendo 64 or Sega Genesis and chances are even greater you have an Xbox, Wii or Sony Play Station in your home right now. In fact to carry this even further, you are also likely to have an iPod or iPhone loaded with several games.

Gaming is a huge industry. But social media can thank much of it’s growth to gaming.

I’m not just talking about all the Farmville, Mafia Wars, sheep throwing, super poking and other plagues that roam Facebook.Social networks are filled with gaming components. The most obvious is Four Square with it’s points, badges and unelected mayors.

LinkedIn was the first time I noticed it with it’s profile status bar. If you remember back to when you first signed up there was a status bar that gave you a percentage of completion and next steps to improve your level of completion.Add a photo, invite friends, fill in job history, etc. The annoying thing was that I knew I was being gamed but I did it anyway.

Games on iPhone

Image by Tac Anderson via Flickr

But there are even less obvious forms of gaming. Why do people care about their Twitter follower count? We don’t really care how many people are following us. It’s nice affirmation and all but really it taps into that deep seeded, primal urge that games satisfies for us.

We watch how many followers we have, we watch haw many RT’s we get and how many replies to questions we ask, just like we watch how many coins we collect or aliens we kill.

Business Need to Play More games

One thing that strikes me as a huge opportunity is to more overtly build gaming qualities into business software.

The biggest problem with CRM software is that sales people don’t enter the needed information in. Taking this thread to the extreme and knowing sales people and their uber competitive nature, what if each lead was a kill and all additional information under that kill determined the value of the kill. You would also need a constant leader board that sales people would check daily (I promise many of them will check it multiple times a day). You could also make a kill list out of your target customers and offer bounties for special targets.

While this is an extreme example that could potentially cause some perception problems, I promise that this would be the most successful CRM system out there.

The Future Will Be One Big Game

With the advent of Augmented Reality we will quickly move from AR games on our phones to AR glasses to everything being one big game.

[Prediction] By 2020 games will be the next social networking. Not games like we think if them today but systems that work off the same gaming theories. There will be gaming communities that dwarf Facebook and challenge Google and Microsoft for time spent, functionality, marketing dollars and developers.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Popularity: 5% [?]

Tagged with: • • • • • • • •
 
Comments Comments
Leave A Response

Facebook Takes on Google Reader: Who Said RSS is Dead?

On February 1, 2010, In New, By Tac Anderson

I’ve been playing around with Facebook. Both how to promote brands on Facebook as well as how users consume content within the walled garden (hint: there’s a direct correlation between the two).

As blogs and media networks extend their reach using Facebook Pages, I noticed something interesting:

Facebook can be used as an RSS reader.

Most people don’t use the groups feature enough but it’s just like using Twitter lists, except you can’t share them. I’ve set up one just for the blogs I follow on Facebook.

Facebook as RSS Reader

It’s like a more graphical version of Google Reader with the shared and comments view shown in the collapsed mode.From here users can like or comment on any post or click through to the expanded “notes” view.

Facebook is a growing source of news for most people. While the geeks among us may still prefer RSS or Twitter your average user will follow a fan page before they subscribe to an RSS feed.  I’ve written about a study showing that Facebook members use the social network as a growing source of tech news.

(BTW, feel free to join the New Comm Biz Facebook Page.)

Over on the Facebook blog, Malorie Lucich, has a post about how she’s seeing the rise of Facebook as a news source Creating Your Personalized News Channel.

When the earthquake hit Haiti, victims in the area, news affiliates and people around the world used Facebook to learn what was happening, connect with loved ones and quickly disseminate information. ABCNews.com and France 24 added Facebook live stream boxes to their sites to enable people to share their feelings on the disaster and relief efforts, and publish it back to their Facebook status. Meanwhile, The New York Times created a special Facebook Page dedicated to Haiti coverage, resources and updates from their reporters on the ground.

Malorie then recommends building a group of just the news sources you follow to clear the clutter. The next step in Facebook’s twitterfication will be to make these lists shareable. Facebook could also further this adoption by mimicking Twitter’s now dead, Suggested User List and have a recommended group that people could follow or even recommended groups by category. Companies would pay millions for that kind of reach.

As this kind of use on Facebook grows your Facebook fan numbers could easily eclipse your RSS subscriber numbers. This also poses an interesting challenge for publishers hiding their content behind pay wall or a unique partnership opportunity, depending on how they approach it.

Update: Marshall Kirkpatrick just posted a very similar post on ReadWriteWeb:

Facebook Could Become World’s Leading News Reader (Sorry Google)

Services like MyYahoo and iGoogle saw some traction and many readers here may have a Google Reader account, but dedicated RSS (really simple syndication) feed reading services have never lived up to their potential to become a mainstream phenomenon. These days many people say they just wait until links get shared on Twitter and they never use a feed reader at all. Late last week Facebook threw its hat in the ring and called on users to use its service as a news feed reader. There are a number of reasons why Facebook could be the strongest online subscription option yet.

Join the New Comm Biz Facebook Page or follow the Twitter account.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Tagged with: • • • • • • •
 
Comments Comments
Leave A Response

The Splinternet Fragmentation of the Inbox

On January 31, 2010, In New, By Tac Anderson

Josh Bernoff has been posting lately on the demise of the Golden Age of the Internet and rise of the Splinternet.

The Splinternet means the end of the Web’s golden age

Now with iPhones, Androids, Kindles, Tablets, and TVs connecting to the Web, that’s not true. Your site may not work right on these devices, especially if it includes flash or assumes mouse-based navigation. Apps that work on the iPhone don’t work on the Android. Widgets for FiOS TV don’t work anywhere else.

Meanwhile, more and more of the interesting stuff on the Web is hidden behind a login and password. Take Facebook for example. Not only do its applications not work anywhere else, Google can’t see most of it. And News Corp. and the New York Times are talking about putting more and more content behind a login.

Web marketing has grown since 1995, based on the idea that everything is connected. Click-throughs, ad networks, analytics, search-engine optimization — it all works because the Web is standardized. Google works because the Web is standardized.

Not any more. Each new device has its own ad networks, format, and technology. Each new social site has its login and many hide content from search engines.

Josh also has an updated post declaring proof of the Splinternet. He doesn’t so much offer proof of the Splinternet’s existence but more of a hypothetical index that allows you check your own Web stats for the fragmentation he’s mentioning.

Josh’s index is good if you’re a webmaster or Web marketer with access your analytics. But your average tech geek need to look no further that your iPhone. That very device which has fuled the rise of the Splinternet like no other.

Behold the Splinternet in the wild:

The Splinternet

The Splinternet

News allerts, missed calls, email, And this is just my iPhone 3GS. On my Windows Mobile, HTC Touch Pro2 I have my work email, other voice messages, missed calls and text messages. On my HTC, MyTouch 3G with Google other apps that need updating, the same Twitter, Facebook and Brightkite  messages as well as GTalk IM messages waiting for me.

Each one of those messages sends alerts, notifications to multiple “inboxes” but all of them can only be managed in their proprietary walled garden.

Have you spotted the Splinternet in the wild?

Join the New Comm Biz Facebook Page or follow the Twitter account.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Tagged with: • • • • • • • •
 
Comments Comments
Leave A Response

Social Media is not a Telephone or Pants

On January 27, 2010, In Biz, By Tac Anderson

You’ve all the heard the arguments about measuring social media:

How do you measure the ROI of your telephone?

Or my other favorite:

What’s the ROI of putting on your pants in the morning?

Seriously?

Man, this ain’t my social media, this is a cell phone. Duh!

The ROI of putting your pants on:

In all seriousness, having a phone at work and putting on your pants is a cost of business. At one time having phones at everyone’s desk was something that had to be justified. Now having a phone is a cost and managed accordingly. Do you really want social media to be managed by cost and not by return? Guess which gets more budgets?

BTW: Unless you work from home the ROI of putting on your pants should never have been a question.

The greater risk here is that the people who are resistance to measuring social media are well intentioned and for the most part “get” social media. While we’re sitting around debating the merits of measuring social media, marketers and advertisers are calculating the ROI of Facebook fans and followers.

Facebook Develops Conversion Tracking Tool: What’s A Fan Worth?

Boland also served up advice on how to calculate a cost-per-fan metric to determine the campaigns return on investment (ROI). Not only the cost to acquire a fan, but the fan’s worth.

If you walk into a meeting preaching that social media shouldn’t be measured because you decided to put on pants and the other group walks into the meeting showing the ROI of individual Facebook fans and the cost per acquisition, take a wild guess who’s going to get the budget and guess who’s going to loose their pants?

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Tagged with: • • • •
 
Comments Comments
Leave A Response

Facebook is the Mashup of My Life

On January 18, 2010, In Comm, By Tac Anderson

This post was cross posted from my hyperbored blog but I thought it was applicable here too.

As Facebook has grown to become the dominant social network a strange thing has happened: My World’s are colliding.

Some people are uncomfortable with the mix of personal and work life that Facebook has come to represent. That isn’t a problem for me. I am who I am and I have nothing to hide. But as someone who has reinvented himself every 5 years or so, leaving one “world” to create another for myself I never expected any of those worlds to meet. I sometimes worry that matter and anti matter will touch and I’ll cease to exist.

Here are the many different worlds which not only collide in my account but sometimes even within the comments of my status updates.

My Family

This consists of three very distinct factions

My Mom’s Side:

This is my mom’s side of the family. They are matriarchal (because all the men seem to die, doesn’t bode well for me), extremely ADD (13 grandsons and everyone of us has pretty major ADHD) and I love them for all of their quirks. It’s because of my mom and her family that I am the person I am today. I love them dearly.

My Wife’s Side:

My wife’s family is about as normal a family you can get. They’re loving, never fight, kind and caring (at least that what I’m told normal families are supposed to be like).

My Dad’s Side:

I never knew my dad’s side of the family. They were the water to my mom’s oil family. Which is probably part of the reason my parents eventually divorced. Quirky to be sure but a bit of an unknown quantity. There’s also my father’s newest franchise, my step siblings. They’re considerably younger than I am (his youngest daughter is the same age as my oldest daughter) and just now starting to join Facebook. It’s a little awkward.

My Career Lives

I say lives because I’ve had multiple career’s and they are starting to collide.

Boise’s Social Media Pioneer:

Besides being a partner at a small DOA marketing agency, attempting a few startups, and being the EIR at Highway 12 Ventures, I was “that guy” in Boise. I was the first one to really start evangelizing social media (then called new media). There were a handful of us doing it and a few more who “got it” and were using it, but I think it’s safe to say that I was the one screaming the loudest from the tallest soap box. I started and helped start many tech/social groups in Boise like The WaterCooler (an incubator/cowork space), TechBoise (a blog and monthly events), IgniteBoise and other things. Leaving Boise was hard but I knew I would keep my connections. In fact this is probably still the largest group of Facebook friends.

Social Media Professional:

All of the above Boise activity was counter pointed by being one of the few dedicated social media people at HP. There are even more now but at the time there were only a few of us. This is where I really started to gain traction on the larger social media stage. I was gaining real enterprise/brand experience and getting recognized for my work. Most of my friends from this space aren’t actually HP employees, they are the people I met during this time and still interact with mostly on Twitter and at conferences. Most of these people duplicate their Facebook and Twitter updates so my Facebook interactions are pretty limited.

Seattle Social Media:

The last group really bleeds over into this next group. While the last group is more industry wide the Seattle group is it’s own distinct flavor. As an active participant in the Social Media Club (when I’m in town) and a board member of Seattle’s Social Media Breakfast this group is growing as I become more integrated into Seattle.

Skateshop Owner:

This is by far the most interesting group of Facebook friends. Many of you know that I used to own a skateboard shop in Las Vegas. This was ~6-7 years ago. The best marketing tool I had was a MySpace page. It worked beautifully. Every skater in Las Vegas was on MySpace, I really didn’t need anything else. When I sold the shop and moved back to Boise and got back in to marketing/communications I started blogging and then using Twitter a lot more and started using MySpace only for finding new bands. I left that life behind and all of those friends with it. But as Facebook grows and MySpace dies these fringe early adopters have been making their way over to Facebook where I’ve slowly been reforming friendships.

While it’s a little weird at times it’s also why I love social media so much. It’s turned my life into one big mashup.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Popularity: 2% [?]

Tagged with: • • •
 
Comments Comments
Leave A Response

You Need Your Own Disclosures Page. Here’s How.

On January 14, 2010, In Comm, By Tac Anderson
DVD cover for Full Disclosure - Copyright 1989...

Full Disclosure

If you publish content (whatever that may be) about the industry you work in, I think you have an ethical obligation to disclose any potential conflicts.

It is not practical to disclose conflicts of interest in every tweet, blog post, location check in and Facebook status update. You’re going to miss something sometime. So I highly recommend that you build a disclosures page.

With the FTC rules  yet to be clarified it’s better to be safe that sorry. The FTC guidelines will require case law to determine what they actually mean and trust me you don’t want to be the case.

This is a really simple fix:

  1. Create one about page for all your disclosures. It doesn’t have to just be disclosures, it can be one all inclusive “about” page.
  2. Link to that page from all of your accounts.

Because I have so many places I publish to I wrote a post on my Posterous site www.tacanderson.com/tac-anderson. On this page I link to all my blogs, my employer and a separate more detailed disclosures page. I now link to this page from all of my profile pages (I’m sure there are a few I’ve missed but as I find them I’ll change them).

This is something that most reporters, especially in the business sector, do.  Kara Swisher has an Ethics Statement on her WSJ blog

Kara Swisher | BoomTown | AllThingsD

Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.

From there she links to a page which lists EVERYTHING. She was right that it lists more than you want to know.

What if you don’t have a blog? You could use LinkedIn this way. You could also use a Google Profile page or even a single post to a blog site like Posterous Tumblr or WordPress.

Am I just being paranoid? How are you handling this? Do you have your disclosures posted somewhere? Leave me a link, I’d love to see your approach.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Popularity: 3% [?]

Tagged with: • • • • • • • •
 
Comments Comments
Leave A Response
« Previous Entries
Go To Top »

Bad Behavior has blocked 5864 access attempts in the last 7 days.