Engaging Customers with Facebook Applications
With the rapid advancement in the Internet and its increasing user presence, the medium has become a preferred means of communicating directly with customers. Among the most popular activities on the Internet is the voracious usage of social networking sites.
With its open architecture and wide range of functionalities, Facebook stands as the number one social networking site. There are many reasons for this cult followership of Facebook. The ease of use and dissemination of content, tagging of friends and related users on shared items is yet another great Facebook feature. Facebook also allows creation of secured groups and publicly available fan pages regarding your own brands.
The Facebook applications are its most popular components. Facebook has an open platform for web developers and programmers to create different applications to run applications from within its framework.
What is new about Facebook applications?
Until the option of applications was incorporated, the Facebook features were more about conventional social media usage, such as adding friends and creating groups pertaining to common interests and affiliations.
Applications initiated by Facebook expanded the function of the site toward more interesting features, which included social gaming, where you could include friends and even unknown participants from around the world. The big leap happened when Facebook opened its programming platform to developers around the world, who could develop applications and submit it to Facebook. These applications are made live for public usage once they are certified by Facebook.
How do applications help brand marketing?
On an average, a user would spend no more than a few seconds on the homepage or any other text rich section of a website. Similarly, on Facebook, text-based sections have their own limitations when it comes to holding attention of the users on the same page. That is where rich content and applications come into play.
A game, such as Scrabulous or UNO, on Facebook can engage a user for hours. Social games like Farmville have brought about a new genre of Social Gaming, which is the latest buzzword in gaming circles.
For a brand, a Facebook application can serve as an effective tool to gather and engage captive audience for a longer stretch of time. Users hooked on a particular game or application on Facebook will stay with it until the completion of the game. Brands have smartly used the opportunity to insert their logos and branding very subtly in the game. Subtle messages like these are known to give more brand recall and attitude change compared to intrusive advertisements.
Much to the delight of a marketer, Facebook provides usage stats of subscribers, which gives insight into the profile of users that the brand attracts. This can be compared with the intended target audience of the brand, and campaign modifications can be done based on the findings. Unlike most surveys that are based on sample estimate, what you get to see here is a summary based on each and every user who has added the application.
Developing Applications for Your Brand
Unlike most other participative aspects of social media, developing applications for Facebook requires adequate programming knowledge. Facebook has its own set of guidelines for the creation and submission of applications. Developers working on the Facebook framework must be updated with the guidelines defined by the site for any application to run. Brand owners need to avail services of a developer who knows all the steps that go into the creation of successful Facebook applications to ensure that their brand makes its presence through one of the most engaging options available in online media.
Get more information here for the best Facebook training available: http://korebizneez.com/FacebookApplications
Official Presence on Facebook – Opportunities and Pitfalls
The Internet, as a medium, has opened the doors to a wide range of communication possibilities with customers. The interactive characteristic of the medium also makes it possible for a customer to publish his response to a vast audience. Social networking sites, particularly Facebook, which is getting increasingly popular around the world, have given customers an equal opportunity to communicate as loudly as you about your brand, in a public forum open to the whole world.
On the brighter side, there is a great opportunity to acquire direct and unadulterated feedback from customers, without the need of expensive and time-consuming surveys and research processes. Directly redressing customer queries on the medium itself can help increase brand loyalty. However, as a brand owner, you need to realize the speed and potential of the medium to do good as well as harm.
Facebook Opportunity for Your Brand
There are enough reasons for a brand to be on one of the most happening mediums. A significant amount of conversation that happens on Facebook, or for that matter on other social platforms like Twitter, carries references to brands, with customer's attitude toward these clearly seen through them.
The fact is that whether you are there on Facebook, it is very likely that someone or the other from your customer base may be making a mention about you. Your brand presence during such a situation is important to either thank the customer for any accolades or gracefully respond and address any grievances posted by the customers and win back their confidence in your brand.
On a proactive note, sustained brand presence on Facebook also helps you create your own band of customers, including those interested in you. This gives you one point access to disburse any firsthand brand information in a single click, without spending a dime more.
Today, brands – both big and small – have a presence on Facebook. Some of them use it with more innovation than the rest.
Brand Pitfalls on Facebook
Traditional marketers are used to broadcast, which is an extremely formal means of communication, where customers voices are barely heard back. Coming from this background, many a time, marketers find it difficult to adjust and converse in the language demanded by social networking sites, which are much informal in nature.
There have been instances where brand owners trying to enforce rules and guidelines of discussion on Facebook fan pages have faced the immediate wrath of users, which had an adverse impact on the brand.
The lesson from this is very clear, the brand must try to avoid any pitfalls on Facebook; marketers must know the responsiveness and energy levels of the users and be one among them, rather than one above.
Word of Caution – World of opportunity in Facebook
For every scary story of a brand goof up on Facebook, there are many cases of success, where even small household brands have grown in popularity through effective use of the medium.
Two golden rules to be followed while using Facebook, which can yield good results in the long run, are as follows:
Do not be a big brother – be a cheerful friend to your customers. The big brother attitude, which worked fine in traditional media, can kill your brand on Facebook. Any showdown of brand arrogance or one-upmanship is given a bitter response by its customers in the same medium. For a brand to succeed, it has to be a friend, who is fun to speak with.
Do not advertise, converse – Blatant advertising, or use of social networks for incessant spamming with interruptive advertising, is a sure recipe for disaster. You will find your brand page getting isolated on Facebook.
There are many ethics to be followed on Facebook and social media, which can be easily grasped through active participation in the medium itself. A company must ensure that its trained representatives have marked presence on Facebook and social networking avenues as true online custodians for the brand. For many companies, it also makes sense to engage an agency that is experienced in handling brand reputations on Facebook and online avenues.
Get more information here for the best Facebook training available: http://tinyurl.com/FacebookMarketingReveals
Face Your Customers with Facebook
Communicating effectively with customers and delivering the right message to the right people has been one of the major challenges for any marketer since day one. Since early days of marketing, various forms of communication medium have been evolving with developments in technology as well as its consumers.
For a long time in the history of marketing communication, media remained the stronghold of newsmakers and advertisers and communication was mostly one way from the marketer to the reader. However, the trend of this inequality of voice was broken with the advent of the Internet and further developments within that medium itself.
Internet and Quantum Change in Media
The Internet brought about a sea change in the science and practice of mass communication and hence the process of marketing itself. But much before common users could take control of the content on the World Wide Web, the way we see it today, there was a time when content creation was the forte of those well-versed in HTML programming and web scripting languages. However, with the advent of services, such as blogs and social networking sites, the power of mass communication moved to the common user on the Internet.
Facebook – Front-Runner in Social Media Phenomenon
With 500 million users worldwide, and the numbers growing steeply, Facebook is emerging as one of the strongest mediums, with users getting totally involved in creating more and more content on the website. At any given point in time, millions of conversations take place, with precious customer-related information seeping through each of these, in the most natural way.
Customer Insight… Really
Even before the first television spot or a newspaper advertisement goes live, any company serious about its brand spends a great deal of effort and money on gathering information and insight into what their customers really want and how they seek to accomplish those needs. A lot of money is spent on brand research that delves into the awareness levels of the brand vis-a-vis competition.
This information can be readily accessed freely floating on a social networking platform, such as Facebook. All the answers that a brand may want to seek are hidden in the conversations happening through wall comments, photographs, tags, fan pages, and many such avenues through the same platform of Facebook.
All of this information is first hand, with honest responses.
Coming Face to Face With Customers
Users on Facebook form fan pages and groups pertaining to their interests and form conversations around topics and brands of their interests. Here are some tips with how a new age brand manager can keep a tab and also build his brand on Facebook.
Do a Brand search on Facebook – Conducting a search on Facebook with the terms related to your brand or that of your competition throws up results that include customers associating with the brand and various discussions, fan pages, where the brand features. Going through these conversations can reveal the opinion of the customers about your brand.
Creating a Fan page: If you are confident that your brand has the capability of attracting positive response and drawing fans, it is time you create a fan page for your brand and watch users “liking” the page and enroll for the same. The fan page can serve as an excellent platform to directly engage with customers and create a strong bond.
Create branded applications: Applications can range from entertaining games with your brand to useful tools related to your product.
The possibilities provided by Facebook to reach out to customers are endless, and all of this can be done at minimal cost with maximum impact. But while doing all of this as a marketer, you need to remember that the customer and you are on a level playing field, with both having equal opportunity to express. The customer is free to share his positive as well as negative experiences with your brand, which can influence other customers watching your brand carefully.
This is where you need dedicated efforts of professionals who understand the dynamics of the medium, which is very different from what conventional media marketers are generally used to. Facebook can hence help you come face to face with your customers. It becomes extremely important for you to know how this medium and conversations should be managed.
Get more information here for the best Facebook training available: http://korebizneez.com/FacebookApplications
Facebook and Consumer Learning Process
A great deal of successful marketing today depends on closely understanding consumer behavior. As a marketer, you may always be curious to understand what excites or motivates your customers into buying either your products or those of your competitor. Depending on the buying and consumption cycle of your product, there can be several factors that will determine the sales conversion ratio for your product.
Toward Right Learning
A successful sale happens when your customer understands his need and is convinced that your product can satisfy that need in a reliable way. Both these steps happen through a process, which is known as learning. Hence as a marketer, your job begins by ensuring that the customer perceives his need and, more importantly, finds the solution in your product
Right Learning and Right Conversations
At this very moment, you may be reading this article on your laptop or desktop. Remember the day when you had decided to buy your first computer. You must have considered many factors before finalizing which computer to purchase. One of the important decision points for a buyer is his circle of reference. It is natural for you, as a buyer, to discuss with your informed friends about the best brand. Positive references from friends and acquaintances help one make a decision.
How has Facebook changed all of this?
Research has shown that buyers do a great deal of product research on the Internet and most of the time choose to purchase the product either online or offline. The power of the Internet as a research and information resource has been realized to a great extent by customers worldwide.
The basics of consumer behavior, learning, reference groups, and buying decisions have remained exactly the same. But what has changed significantly is the speed with which everything happens. Technology has brought down the barriers in global communication. Social networking sites, and more importantly the rising popularity of Facebook, bears a strong testimony to the growing power of the Internet as a mode of communication and a source of information.
Before and After Facebook
Like we discussed, most of the learning before the proliferation of Facebook and social media happened through advertisements on television. During the days of conventional media dominance, marketing was driven by the power to broadcast. Marketing communication was primarily unidirectional through blaring advertisements and press releases.
Word of mouth happened on a one-on-one basis, where the conversation would begin and end around a small group of people.
Today, a search on your favorite brand on Facebook may reveal many conversations about the brand, which may depict user’s positive or negative experiences with the brand. Unlike the clandestine brand gossip of earlier days, the Facebook era ensures that conversations are documented and made easily available through social networking sites.
Brands trying to ignore this new medium find themselves in a state similar to an ostrich, with its head buried in sand, thinking the world cannot see it. The real image of the brand in people’s minds shows up aloud these days through conversations on Facebook.
Facebook and Online Reputation
The power of Facebook, as discussed, has extended the scope of Word of Mouth beyond the good old conversation between friends. Today, each and every Facebook user is free to publish his views on your brand. The true effect of this happens whenever these conversations appear in searches and influence people’s opinion about the brand image.
This is where online reputation, primarily on a widely accepted medium like Facebook, matters.
In a nutshell..
Managing a positive image of your brand requires you to expand your reach, more than what you would do in case of conventional media. The conversational nature of social networking sites, such as Facebook, demands a different approach. Unlike one-time broadcast by the conventional medium, Facebook stores each and every conversation and makes it available through the search option for anyone who is curious to know more about your brand.
That is the reason why it is a critical part of any brand plan to feature positively on social networking sites, such as Facebook. Engaging consultants who have experience in managing brands through the new era of social networks is a growing practice that can help brands manage the new wave.
Get more information here for the best Facebook training available: www.FaCeBookSiPHoN.com
Facebook and Social Media - The Next Marketing Opportunity
Marketing as an activity is all about reaching the right customers with the right products, and the result sought is delighted customers who are more than willing to open their purses wide enough to boost your revenues. For many years, marketers stalked their target customers through various means and by trying to get their message across to spread awareness about their wares.
Traditional Means of Communication
Traditionally, marketing communications were conducted via print, broadcast and such traditional media through disruptive advertising, where advertisements appear in between the content of interest for the customer.
Traditional media does give a large reach to a marketer with its programming of mass appeal. However, the wastage is equally high, since a large portion of the audience would belong to a different segment than the one that is to be targeted by the marketer.
Enter Social Media and the Internet
The revolution stirred by the internet as a medium took place because of the fact that it is highly personalized and provides more content on-demand than any other available medium. Social sites proliferated far and wide in their usage for a few simple reasons:
The power to create and distribute content is equally available to every user, irrespective of him/her being a customer or a marketer. In the earlier forms of media, that power rested with the editorial staff of the channel or the advertiser, but hardly ever with the user.
The medium is completely personalized, and a user can create or join groups and further create content based on what he/she likes.
Opinions are free and fair. This is one reason why social media is of utmost concern to marketers, since buying decisions are no more influenced as much by advertisements. The traditional word-of-mouth marketing approach has grown leaps and bounds on social networks.
Facebook – At the Center of Social Media
With 500 million (and growing) unique users worldwide, Facebook is the number one social networking site in terms of activity and subscriptions. What started as a garage initiative by Mark Zuckerberg has now become the biggest phenomenon on the internet.
A user interface that allows for quick communication and the ability to create fan pages and groups at the click of a mouse button are what make Facebook extremely popular. Another important reason for its immense popularity is the wide variety of social applications that have been developed and made available within the Facebook environment.
These applications can allow users and friends to do joint activities like playing games that run endlessly, sharing photos, videos, and web links, and many more.
How does this help a marketer?
Traditionally, media plans were drawn to include television channels, publications, or any other media that can grab maximum eyeballs and effectively reach a selected target audience. The science of segmentation and targeting has become only more accurate in the case of social media.
Facebook provides a wide variety of avenues to communicate with the audience, which opens up an entirely different world of possibilities to have a fruitful dialogue with customers. Some of these methods used popularly by marketers are:
Advertising: The first opportunity, which is the most obvious one, is advertising on Facebook. The difference, however, is the fact that you can create your own advertisement in a matter of minutes and also specify the details of your target group in terms of demographics and types of discussions where you want your advertisement to appear.
Fan Pages: Facebook allows every brand, as well as individual users, to create fan pages for their favorite celebrities and their own homegrown businesses. Large brands have also created their official pages on Facebook that have a huge, immediate fan following around the world. The fan page has immense utility to convey first hand information about the brand and also to collect immediate and frank feedback from your customers.
Branded applications: One of the most effective ways to engage a user toward your brand is by creating an application; this could be a game or a contest, with your branding coming across subtly through it.
What makes Facebook even more exciting is the way it allows you to target your communication sharply just to the customer segment you want to attract. It also provides analytics and page insights that give good feedback and measurement on the activity done.
The options provided by Facebook can be creatively explored and used judiciously for bringing about maximum benefits to any brand.
However, while doing all this, you need to be aware of the fact that customers have an equal say and have the ability to respond immediately to any of your actions with a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Availing the service of a social media consultant to work out a social media strategy may be required so that your efforts will not be in vain.
Get more information here for the best Facebook training available: www.hyperfbtraffic.com
As affiliate marketers, we're fortunate in that we don't have as many 'Achilles heels' as the merchants who own and deliver the products we promote for them. Both our investments and our risks tend to be lower.
However, we do have one significant 'weak' spot, and that's in how far we can go in improving 'the offer'. There are certain things we simply can't do. For example, we don't have the authority to offer discounts or deliver upgrades.
But, this 'weakness' doesn't mean we're stuck with 'weak offers'! In fact, I can think of at least 5 ways to improve any offer, and really send our sales soaring:
1. Increase The PERCEPTION of Value -
The real value of any product is always in the customer's mind, and you can increase that perception in dozens of ways. For example, you guide the customer through a comparison of similar products, while pointing out why the one you're promoting is really the best deal for the money.
2. Demonstrate the Immediate Benefits -
Show the customer how they can put the product to use from the moment they buy it. You should already own your own copy of most of the products you promote. So, create a tutorial or some way of showcasing the results you've gotten from the product.
3. Give More of Yourself On a Personal Level --
Similar to Step 2 – There's always added value in social proof. Discuss your own experience surrounding the questions, problems and ultimate solutions in regards to the product at hand. Empathize with the customer's position and point out the things you share in common.
4. Put Them At Ease --
Your relationship to the merchant should enable you to give the customer a sense of security in making the purchase. Let them know about the product's guarantee and/or refund policy. Let them know the transaction is secure. You want to remove as much of the risk as possible from the purchase.
5. Provide Additional Incentives --
Check with the merchant first to make sure you're allowed to do this. Its usually no problem when you're promoting things like e-books, membership sites, etc.. You can really sweeten up an offer when you add your own products to the mix. E.g., “order this e-book, and I'll throw in a free copy of this other product over here..”
So, you see, all it takes is a little creativity to add value to any affiliate offer. Use the 5 steps and you may even blow the merchant's offer clear out of the water!
Now it's time for you to step on the next level. This will gives you more flexibility and persistence to reach the top of your game. I want you to check this out..
Every day there's at least one person who discovers 'affiliate marketing' for the first time. And, every day, there's at least one person, maybe that person is you, who goes back to the drawing board trying to figure out why they haven't yet succeeded as wildly as they'd hoped.
No matter which category you fall into, I'd like to share some concepts with you that might make all the difference in the world to your future success. In fact, you just might learn from this article the one thing that helps you start earning real money.
It really all comes down these two mistakes that beginner's make:
1. Promoting to many products at once (lack of focus), and..
2. Giving up too soon.
These two mistakes are related, and are actually self-reinforcing. It sounds obvious enough, but let me explain exactly how this scenario plays out.
Lack of Focus:
Experienced affiliate marketers do have the ability to promote several products, sometimes far afield from each other, at the same time. The reason they can do this is because they'd already learned and applied certain fundamental skills, and have developed a system for themselves which works to bring in sales consistently.
As a beginner, however, you're still learning what works and what doesn't. For that reason alone, you need a clearly defined testing ground – and this means limiting your promotion to just one product when you first start out.
Just imagine for a moment if you were in a laboratory. You're working with a new chemical and need to determine its boiling point, solubility, molecular weight and so on.
Would it be quicker and easier for you to accomplish this by working with just that one chemical, or by juggling multiple, other chemicals all at the same time...starting one experiment and then rushing over to another one midway through?
Obviously, it would be easier to work with just the one chemical, right?
Well, the same is true for marketing. Just like the variables in your lab experiment, you've also got variables in every product promotion you undertake. The variables include things like traffic generation, conversion rates, advertising response rates and so on.
So, how much data do you want to juggle? Do you want to keep track of, say, Google Adwords performance for ONE e-book...or for a dozen of them spread across more than one niche?
This is where a lot beginners get themselves into a rut. They try to juggle all of this information at once, get overwhelmed by it and simply give up.
Giving Up Too Soon:
Ok, so, information overload hits, and you throw your hands in the air in surrender.
There's no need to despair!
You can turn the situation around completely if you'll just make a commitment to do the following three things:
1. Pick ONE niche market
2. Pick ONE product from that market
3. Use just that one niche product as your testing ground, in order to solidify your skills as an affiliate marketer.
You see, its a lot like learning to ride a bicycle as a kid. You start off with a tricycle, then move up to regular bike with training wheels and from there onto riding any bike you choose.
The same is true for learning how to promote products as an affiliate.
*Learn how to generate traffic on just one product
*Learn how to capture subscribers to your opt-in list for just one product
*Learn how to write advertisements and promotional copy for just one product
*Learn how to track your advertising links and conversion rates for just that one product....
....and THEN, you'll be able to turn around and apply that knowledge to additional products, in different niches.
The key is to get some real results established in one place, and only then start building on that incrementally.
If you'll follow even just this one simple rule, I promise you'll see an increase in your commissions – and you can drop that 'newbie' label for the title of: Successful Affiliate Marketer!
Do you want to know more all about this? Please subscribe to my mailing list so you can receive reports to give you more benefits to move on.
or you can check this site: http://www.affiliateofthemonth.com
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Check this out, but don't rub your eyes:
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