Super Bowl is one of the biggest, if not the biggest single sports event in the world. Over 65,000 people attended the Indianapolis Lucas Oil Stadium last Sunday as two of the most legendary American football teams played the XLVI Superbowl - New England Patriots vs. New York Giants.

Super Bowl is also the most exciting advertising event of the year. Super Bowl XLVI broke yet another record with 111,3 million viewers in the US alone; and this makes the event very appealing to advertisers.

This year corporate advertisers paid on average US$3.5 million for a 30 second commercial! You can see one of them on the right, featured as our Video of the Week. And the tickets aren’t cheap either! The average price paid for one Super Bowl XLVI ticket was $3,985. What a game!

Sunday’s game was as exciting as ever, and for awhile it looked like it would go to New England Patriots. Eventually Giants turned their game around with Eli Manning’s amazing 38-yard pass to Mario Manningham with only 3:39 left on the clock.

New York Giants won the game 21 to 17 bringing them their fourth Super Bowl championship. Incidentally their previous 2008 Super Bowl victory was also against the Patriots.

Social Media Game

Ok, that was the game on the football field, but how about on the Internet? Let’s have a look how these two teams stack up on the Social Media arena.

New York Giants

Home town – East Rutherford, New Jersey
Coach - Tom Coughlin
Quarterback – Eli Manning

Facebook 1,8 million likes
Twitter 252k followers
Google+ 139k in circles

TOTAL: 1,83 million fans

New England Patriots

Home town - Foxborough, Massachusetts
Coach - Bill Belichick
Quarterback - Tom Brady

Facebook 3,1 million likes
Twitter 326k followers
Google+ 140k in circles

TOTAL: 3,5 million fans

As you can see from the figures above the winner of the Super Bowl Social Media Showdown is suprisingly not the Giants! It is the New England Patriots who dominate the social medias by a huge margin.

Patriots’ social media audience is about twice the size of the Giants. The biggest difference is on Facebook where Patriots have over 3 million Likes, whereas Giants have managed to gather ‘only’ 1,8 million. Patriots are winning across the entire social field as also their Twitter and Google+ accounts have gathered more audience than the Giants.

Tom Brady Facebook Page

When it comes to Quarterbacks it’s a win for the Patriots again! Tom Brady has 1,3 million Facebook fans, which is almost as much as the entire Giants team!

Eli Manning has to settle for 447,197 Likes. Manning’s Facebook Page is actually extremely poor, and it makes me wonder what those almost half a million fans get out of it. ‘Nothing‘ would actually be the answer here, as you can see if you clicked the link.

So, congratulations to the New England Patriots for winning the 2012 Super Bowl Social Media Showdown!

How did you like last Sunday’s game? Did you think Giants deserved to win? And how about them awesome commercials?

If you liked this article, or if you are a Patriots fan, be a good sport and click some of those Social Media sharing buttons below.

Social Media Revolver Is Coming – Aim Before You Shoot!

I’ve got some exciting news! I have finally decided to change the domain name of this blog. The old name (facebook-advertising-marketing.com) is not really reflecting the scope of this blog any more. Facebook is just one, although important section covered in this blog, but a lot of the articles are actually not Facebook related at all. It also has the name ‘facebook‘ in it which is not really a good idea if you are not, well … Facebook.

So, the new name of this blog will be: (insert drum roll here)

http://socialmediarevolver.com

Pretty cool name, eh? I got lucky with this one as it’s quite hard to get a proper domain name (without hyphens) with the words ‘Social‘ and ‘Media‘ in it. I already owned social-media-advertising.com but even though it had a Page Rank 2 and three good keywords in it it was a bit boring. I think SocialMediaRevolver packs a lot more punch, and it ‘s easier to remember and type without those pesky hyphens.

#SocialMediaRevolver tag trending in Brisbane, Australia

This new name will serve the blog a lot better as it is not all about Facebook anymore. We’ll be covering the whole exciting spectrum of the social media world from Twitter and LinkedIn to video marketing and blogging for social impact. There will be a How To -section as well; Social Media news, -tips and -tricks, …and of course the important Facebook stuff. We’ve got lots of exciting articles lined up from our awesome guest bloggers as well.

How to change the domain name of a Word Press blog?

That is a serious question!

At the moment I am right in the middle of this rather unpleasant process of moving everything over to the new domain. The main goal here is not to loose the links to URL’s of the old articles. Also we don’t want to lose any of that important SEO juice the posts have gathered over time.

Luckily I’ve had lots of valuable help from some clever social media professionals. Thanks JG, Jane and Kristi! Follow these guys, they know some serious stuff!

If you are subscribing to the RSS feed or email delivery of this blog, don’t worry FeedBurner will recognize the name change and it will be business as usual.

As soon as the migration is done and everything is up and running I will let you know how I did it and how the whole process went. Wish me luck!

Let’s get the ball (or the cylinder in this case) rolling

As some of you would know it is quite tricky to break in a new domain name, so if you want to help me out it would be great.

I have a temporary homepage set up at the new blog address, so if you could please go and click on those Twitter and Like -buttons it would be much appreciated!

Click here to see the page: http://socialmediarevolver.com

You can also click those buttons right from this post if you like:

Tweet #SocialMediaRevolver

Thank you for your support!

Cheers,
Kris, admin

PS. Let me know if you have actually pulled the same stunt, or if you are planning to do it in the future.

Facebook Pages have become an important part of your online marketing strategy. You put a lot of effort in designing and managing them, and getting all those important fans. You post four to five times a week and keep your audience happy and occupied. Everything is going as planned and future looks rosy.

…and then you lose that page!

Has this happened to you? It sure did happen to me; twice…and let me tell you it does not feel good!

The first time was in September last year when I lost my Facebook Page I had created for the readers of my blog. This one you are reading right now. I had some good interaction happening with the Page and there were hundreds of fans who had Liked the Page.

Then one rainy morning I received a blunt email from Facebook saying that they had deleted my Page. Bang! Just like that. No warning, no nothing. Just one evil click of Facebook tech’s mouse and my Page was gone forever.

Hello,

You created a Page (“Facebook Advertising | Social Media Marketing“) that violated Section 5.6 of our Statement of Rights & Responsibilities, which says:

“You will not use our copyrights or trademarks (including Facebook, the Facebook and F Logos, FB, Face, Poke, Wall and 32665), or any confusingly similar marks, without our written permission.”

This Page will not be reinstated. Continued misuse of Facebook’s features could result in the permanent loss of your account.

If you have any questions or concerns, we encourage you to review our Statement by visiting http://www.facebook.com/terms.php.

The Facebook Team

The email didn’t actually reveal why my Page was deleted, but it said that you can’t use Facebook, the Facebook, F-Logos, FB, Face, Poke, Wall or 32665 with your Facebook Pages. Based on this my guess is that I lost my Page because of the name I’ve given to it. I had created the page for my blog which was, and still is, called Facebook Advertising | Social Media Marketing. Hence the logically identical name on my Facebook Page.

What the email did say clearly though was that my Facebook Page will not be reinstated! They didn’t even offer me a possibility to explain myself, fix the problem or reply to their email. I actually tried to reply but they never got back to me.

What bugs me the most was that I could have corrected the problem very easily. I had not yet applied for the custom URL so I could have just changed the name and everybody would have gone home happy. But nooo! Click, bang! You’re dead and that’s the end of it!

(Just in case you’re wondering what that cryptical 32665 is, it is the number where you can update your Facebook status by texting FBOOK 32665).

Facebook is seriously protecting their rights

Facebook is very protective of its intellectual property and it is determined to safe guard it with a vengeance. You may have heard about cases where Facebook has sued different parties for taking their name in vain. For instance they sued Teachbook.com for using the word ‘book‘ in their name. Yes, you read that right. Facebook thinks they own the copyright to every book-word on the planet!

Another example is where Facebook is suing the holders of 25 domain names referred to as typosquatters. These are websites which URL’s resemble facebook.com type wise. For example facemook.com or facefook.com. Facebook is accusing them of infringing its precious domain name. This I can understand, but if these websites have totally different agendas and don’t even resemble Facebook it’s a bit of an overkill.

Facebook expert Mari Smith took down her popular WhyFacebook.com blog in late 2010. According to Mari, Facebook was on a mission to reclaim all domain names which contain the word ‘facebook’. It looks like Facebook has actually taken possession of Mari’s domain as it now redirects to the Facebook homepage. This cause of action actually makes me worry as I too have the name ‘facebook’ in the domain name of this blog. So far they haven’t contacted me so perhaps I’m safe.

For now.

Once bitten, twice shy

The second time I lost my Facebook Page was about a week ago when Facebook took down the Page I had created to replace the one I lost earlier. This time I made sure I didn’t have anything related to the Facebook -name in the Page and so it was called “Social Media Marketing Advice”. You’d think that would have been ok? Again, here is another grim email:

Hello,

You created a Page (“Social Media Marketing Advice“) that violated Section 5.6 of our Statement of Rights & Responsibilities, which says:

“You will not use our copyrights or trademarks (including Facebook, the Facebook and F Logos, FB, Face, Poke, Wall and 32665), or any confusingly similar marks, without our written permission.”

This Page will not be reinstated. Continued misuse of Facebook’s features could result in the permanent loss of your account.

If you have any questions or concerns, we encourage you to review our Statement by visiting http://www.facebook.com/terms.php.

The Facebook Team

Ok, what is going on with me and the Facebook Team?! Are they determined to kill everything I put up there? The Page was called Social Media Marketing Advice so why on earth would that qualify for a take down?

After closely reviewing their terms of usage (again) I came to the conclusion that this time they took the Page down because I had used one of the popular F-logos in my graphics. Now come on! Everybody and their butler use them all over the web!

You can see the infamous F-tile (among other famous social media logos) at the bottom of the image I used on my custom landing page. Doesn’t this make you wonder if it really was necessary to kill my Page?

Luckily I still have my Twitter account alive and kickin’ for the service. Twitter is not nearly as picky on these infringement issues as FB.

In their terms Facebook states that if they remove your content for infringing someone else’s copyright, and you believe they’ve removed it by mistake, Facebook will provide you with an opportunity to appeal. Well that’s all great, however, they don’t provide any links to this procedure on their emails. You will have to look for it and dig it out from their legal mumbo jumbo docs.

By the way, the Facebook’s DMCA counter-notice form is here should you ever feel the need to use it. I think I will actually give it a go and see what happens. I’ll keep you posted on that.

What you need to do to keep your Facebook Pages safe

If you are managing Facebook Pages which violate Facebook’s terms and conditions I would strongly advise you to clean them up or get rid of them. Especially pay attention to trademark infringements and copyright issues. For example if you have a Facebook Page called Google AdSense Advertising chances are it will be deleted without notice sooner or later; and you will risk losing your entire Facebook account.

Here is the entire 5.6 section of Facebook’s Statement of Rights & Responsibilities. It deals with protecting other people’s rights on Facebook. If you are suspecting that you might be violating other parties’ rights read this through and fix the problems before it’s too late.

1. You will not post content or take any action on Facebook that infringes or violates someone else’s rights or otherwise violates the law.
2. We (Facebook) can remove any content or information you post on Facebook if we believe that it violates this Statement.
3. We will provide you with tools to help you protect your intellectual property rights. To learn more, visit our How to Report Claims of Intellectual Property Infringement page.
4. If we remove your content for infringing someone else’s copyright, and you believe we removed it by mistake, we will provide you with an opportunity to appeal.
5. If you repeatedly infringe other people’s intellectual property rights, we will disable your account when appropriate.
6. You will not use our copyrights or trademarks (including Facebook, the Facebook and F Logos, FB, Face, Poke, Wall and 32665), or any confusingly similar marks, without our written permission.
7. If you collect information from users, you will: obtain their consent, make it clear you (and not Facebook) are the one collecting their information, and post a privacy policy explaining what information you collect and how you will use it.
8. You will not post anyone’s identification documents or sensitive financial information on Facebook.
9. You will not tag users or send email invitations to non-users without their consent.

For the time being I’m done with creating more Facebook Pages for myself. Instead, for this blog I’m now managing a Facebook Group as well as a LinkedIn Group.

Facebook has upgraded their Groups recently and they are not that sensitive to all kinds of rules and regulations. Actually, in some cases Facebook Groups work better than Pages.

Have you had similar experiences with your Facebook Pages? Have you perhaps suffered a loss as well? Let me know and let’s frown together.

[skull image: Simon Howden]

There’s Nothing Trivial About Trivia

If your boss doesn’t “get” social media …

I can’t tell you how many times a CEO or some other type of corporate bigwig shot down my suggestion to use Twitter because “it’s nothing but people telling you what they had for lunch,” — and then spent the next fifteen minutes telling me where to get the best steak in town.

You see, the problem with people who trivialize social media because it is trivial is not that they don’t understand marketing. It’s not that they don’t understand social media marketing. The real problem is, they don’t understand themselves. A lot of CEOs exude charm, and those who don’t tend to be pretty good at personalizing a business relationship right from the get-go. Few of them would dream of launching into a hard-sell sales pitch before warming up the crowd with a few jokes or topical observations. Fewer still would object to five hours of irrelevant activity on the golf course with a six-figure prospect.

Social media marketing is a lot like real life — maybe too much for its own good. Selling on Twitter or Facebook is so much like selling in the real world that we fail to see the forest for the trees. Things we do absolutely unconsciously in real business — such as chatting about the weather before launching into a PowerPoint — become exceedingly conscious and calculated activities when we experience them on social platforms, and thus seem somehow awkward, unnatural.

The Business Benefits of Small Talk

OK: so much for philosophy. The point is, small talk in social media works. I’ve experienced it first-hand for years, especially at Brad Shorr on Twitter and on our agency’s Facebook page. I’ve always found it very difficult to get people Liking and retweeting business-oriented posts. And the drier the post, the harder it is to get traction. On the other hand, my most offhand, irrelevant statements frequently attract lots of attention. (I don’t think I’m alone here: what’s been your experience?) And all this attention has a lot to do with my ability to connect with more people and connect with them more deeply.

One of our clients was struggling on Facebook and Twitter. I advised them to talk less about their business and more about anything else. Over the course of a few months, we saw their communities grow and community interaction increase. Some of the conversation was relevant, some was not so relevant, but sprinkled in amidst it all were legitimate inquiries and mentions that strongly advanced the company’s brand awareness and reputation.

Social Business Is Real Business

I really do think social media has allowed us to return to a more real way of conducting business. During the reign of traditional media, conversational marketing took a back seat to a much less natural form of business we all know and love as interruption marketing. We were conditioned to think that it was natural to bludgeon someone over the head with a sales pitch the minute they walked into the room, because that’s how TV commercials work. We were conditioned to behave as passive receivers of sales pitches because that’s how billboards and direct mail work.

Corporate leaders need to accept this and adapt. They need to stop blocking employees from using social media sites during work hours. They need to recognize every employee’s social conversation, trivial or otherwise, as brand enhancers and lead generators. They need to stop viewing small talk as the enemy and start viewing it as their secret weapon. Above all they need to stop making speeches and start making conversation.

10 Tips For Effective Social Media Chit Chat

O.K., then: if you’re ready for some big time small talk, here are a few tips to help you do it the right way.

• Spare me the details. It’s OK to tell me the football-size burrito you had for dinner didn’t agree with you, but let’s leave it at that.
• Don’t be a Johnny One Note. If all you do is talk small, eventually you will be regarded at a distraction. People expect serious conversation in the mix if they are using social media for business purposes.
• React as well as initiate. People appreciate it when you jump into conversations they initiate. If you ignore other people’s small talk, they will soon ignore yours.
• Calculated small talk is NOT manipulative. It’s smart to talk about the Super Bowl in January, but in June … not so much. It’s perfectly fine to latch on to hot topics as a means of cultivating relationships. After all — in real life, isn’t this exactly what we do?
• Name names. There’s a world of difference between “Thanks for the retweet” and “Thanks for the retweet, Shelly”.
• Don’t forget your blog.Part of the attraction of reading blogs is that you can get to know the blogger. If you take the personality out of your posts, you may as well just rely on your company website.
• Be colorful. Small talk needn’t be mundane. Put some thought into it. For example, right now I’m tempted to say, “How about those (Chicago) Bears?” Perhaps “The Bears are so bad I’m starting to root for the (Green Bay) Packers” would generate a bit more interest and conversation.
• Be sincere. Talk about things that genuinely interest you. Be yourself, not the person you think others expect you to be: that formula will cause your worlds to collide.
• Be selective. Just because you can talk about anything on social media doesn’t mean you should. Just as in any other business venue, if you go out of your way to shock or offend people, you’re going to hurt your own interests.
• Drop the game face. People engage professionally in social media because they want to personalize their business relationships. If you’re too buttoned down, you may as well button up.

Two Small Small Talk Case Studies

I noticed this tweet from my Twitter friend Drew McLellan, a standout marketing and branding specialist, a true thought leader. He gives us a good example of small talk made simple and effective.

Example of Small Talk

Drew really didn’t do anything more than tweet a link on a topic sure to attract the attention of a fair number of people: beer. He also credited the source, a generous way to create a few new connections for Aden Hepburn. (And BTW, the fact Drew tweeted about beer at 7 AM tells me all I need to know about this fine fellow!)

Here is another tweet that caught my eye recently, about the weather:

How to Talk about the Weather

My friend Joanna Paterson is a writer, so not surprisingly she describes an important weather development, not just any weather development, in way that you can practically see what’s happening. And it’s really hard not to respond to this tweet.

Bottom line: Small talk can be interesting, and small talk can make you interesting. One is tempted to say, “There are no boring conversations, but only boring conversationalists.”

What Do You Think?

• What’s your take on social media small talk? Do you like it, loathe it, take it or leave it?
• Has social media small talk ever opened up a business opportunity for you?

Promoting a charity has become much easier in recent years, thanks to social media and the far reaching possibilities it has created. With just a small and cost effective campaign, awareness can be raised by more than 100%, with some non-profits seeing as much as a 600% boost in participation.

It is this potential that has led other charities to begin looking into their own social media campaigns. But before you start your own promotion, you might want to see a couple of examples of organizations that have had success in the past. These five charities have, without a doubt, gotten it right.

Breast Cancer Awareness

You might remember the infamous “bra color” status updates of two years ago, or last year’s “I like it on the (blank)” hangbag updates. This was not just a random game. It was actually part of a massive media campaign by Breast Cancer Awareness.

It works. Hundreds of thousands of people participated by putting it as their status, with many getting female friends on board. Those who played along found it fun and interactive, and it caught global media attention.

While there are some who are cynical enough not to believe it did any good, it brought a lot of awareness to the organization, and so the cause. Just the implications for sponsorship and corporate donations is huge, as a result.

Target

Though a multi national corporation, Target had taken part in a number of charitable events through the years. They host a great deal of these through Facebook, where they have become well known for their social media campaigning.

What they do right is the simplicity of their promotions. They give frequent updates on their wall, and otherwise have a little tab on the side that will take you to the latest event. That links to a third party off of Facebook, where you can get more details and participate.

They have that same simple format with their sweepstakes.

Greenpeace

Greenpeace set a new goal last year after Facebook announced the opening of a new super center, which they claimed would be more “energy efficient” and eco friendly. But the whole thing would be run on electricity, which burns coal in massive amounts. As coal is one of the most dangerous substances to the environment that can be used, it caused a lot of concern.

So, they put their campaign on Facebook itself, and amassed a huge amount of support. More than 100,000 users liked the page, with an overall 500,000 member participation effort on some level.

Facebook has since announced that a number of their centers will be solar powered for both electricity and heat. This has not yet expanded into their super centers, but it is a positive step forward that probably wouldn’t have happened with social media pressure.

ASPCA

This US based non-profit for the protection and kind treatment of animals has been a center point for responsible pet ownership. They have an active Facebook page that has gathered a great deal of interest over the years, which currently have over a million likes.

One of the things that they do that is so effective is provide a constant stream of pictures of dogs and cats currently up for adoption at the ASPCA centers around the country. They also have regular updates, feel good animal stories, stories of tragically abused pets that you can help and more.

It Gets Better

It Gets Better is an incredibly successful ongoing campaign, working as a positive message to LGBT teens in response to the recent surge in gay teen suicides around the world. The message is simple: however hard things seem now, they get better.

A huge number of celebrities and high profile people have taken part in this, such as Ellen Degeneres, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The Facebook page utilizes these recorded messages for easy sharing, and has over 230,000 likes.

Conclusion

When promoting a cause on Facebook, it helps to see how other charities have been able to find success doing it? These five provide fantastic examples that we can learn from, in different areas and in different ways.

Are you aware of any other examples of successful Facebook promotional campaigns? Please let us know in the comments!

[main image: photostock]

Online advertising is becoming more and more popular in modern marketing. Two of the biggest companies that provide online advertising are Google with Adwords and Facebook with their own advertising system. But which one is the better one?

I have used both and I have to say that the Google Adwords is just dreadful! It’s very unpleasant to work with and almost impossible to master. You might think differently but based on my personal experience the Facebook advertising system beats Google Adwords hands down. Let me explain.

Top 5 Reasons Why The Facebook Advertising System Is Better Than Google Adwords

There are actually several more reasons why you should use Facebook Ads instead of Adwords but here are the main ones:

1. Facebook Ads Have Better Targeting

Unlike in Google Adwords, where you can use just about any keyword (which can really get you into trouble) Facebook Advertising system allows you to use only the words which are in their database. This ensures that there is real potential behind the keywords that you can choose.

Facebook keywords are based on interests, activities, books, TV-shows, movies, job titles the 800+ million Facebook users have listed in their profiles. This ensures that your ads will always have a highly interested audience for the keywords your are using.

For example, if you own a Karate Studio in San Fransisco (like Oyama Karate here) and you want to advertise your lessons to 22-39 old men who like karate and live in San Fransisco, or within a 50 mile radius you can do that using Facebook Advertising. Try doing that on Adwords!

Google Adwords doesn’t know that much about their users or their preferences, therefore they can’t target them accurately. Facebook, on the other hand knows everything about their users! You must have heard about the privacy issues related to this. Yes, that’s right, the big brother knows…

2. Facebook Advertising Account Is Easier To Set-Up And Manage

Oh, boy, this is a no-brainer! Have you ever tried to set-up a Google Adwords account? If you have, then you’d know how difficult and awful the process is. The Adwords ad management requires a huge effort in order to use it properly. Facebook Advertising system is faster to set up and it is much more user friendly.

3. You Can Use Images On Facebook Ads

You might have heard the saying ‘A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words’. As words are in short supply on online ads this is one of the most powerful features of Facebook Ads. The ability to use images in your ads on Facebook is a huge advantage over Google Adwords. Have a look at this example here and you’ll know exactly what I mean:

Guess which one is a Facebook Ad?

4. Cost Per Click Is Much Cheaper

Over the past few years Google Adwords has become exceedingly expensive. Even the medium popularity keywords are sometimes terribly expensive. For instance “email marketing” on Adwords costs $2.63 per click whereas on Facebook the average bid is only $0.78. That’s almost 70% less! Generally you can get good results using Facebook Ads at about a quarter of the cost of Google Adwords.

Facebook Ads are much more cost effective. This is great especially for small businesses trying to do online marketing without a big budget.

5. More Freedom Setting Up Your Ads

Setting up an advertising campaign on Facebook is much less frustrating than Google Adwords. As mentioned earlier you benefit from using images in your ads, but you also have more space for your ad description.

Adwords allows you to use only 75 characters, whereas you can use a whopping 135 on Facebook! Facebook Ads also allow you to use more restricted words than Adwords in terms of possible copyright issues. You can even use the exclamation mark in your Facebook Ads. (!)

Well, there you have it folks! I’m sure there are people who still think Adwords is better than Facebook Ads, so please feel free to leave a reply below. If you have been using either of these systems let me know about your experiences.

Promo Warning: If you are interested in learning more about Facebook Advertising read the Facebook Advertising Guide.

[image: Stuart Miles]

LinkedIn is one of the leading social media platform today alongside Facebook and Twitter. LinkedIn is currently the 13th most popular website in the world above eBay, Craiglist, ESPN and the photo sharing site Flickr. LinkedIn website has a Google Page Rank of 9, Compete score of 38 and Quantcast ranking of 21 in US. [Related post: How To Research a Website].

It is a no-brainer to realize that LinkedIn should be a very important component in your business online marketing plan.

This week I’m presenting another excellent article from one of the world’s leading LinkedIn experts, Lewis Howes.

I interviewed Lewis about a year ago for my Social Media for Business Interview Series, and Lewis kindly agreed to provide me with a few good fundamental articles about LinkedIn marketing which I could syndicate for my readers.

The first one was 10 Powerful LinkedIn Tips and this second one is called the Top 10 LinkedIn Business Marketing Tips. The article is unedited with my humble comments in [ ]. I did skip the original Justin Timberlake intro though (sorry, Lewis).

So, without further ado, here we go with the second LinkedIn article:

Why LinkedIn Is #1

With the average household income per user hitting $109,000, which is much higher than Twitter, Facebook, and the other social networking power houses, you know you are dealing with people who mean business.

Being that it is the largest business networking site in the world, there is a mindset shift when users log on to LinkedIn compared to logging on their cousin sites, Twitter or Facebook.

The mood changes, the messages are more professional. Conversations are geared toward partnerships and transactions, as opposed to how funny you looked in your birthday pictures, and everything is centered around advancing careers or building businesses.

[Sometimes LinkedIn is referred to as 'Facebook for the Business People'. This is actually quite descriptive.]

LinkedIn Means Business

Everyone talks about the power of Facebook ads (I’m not discounting how dynamic they can be; in fact, I’ve had great success using them myself), but the LinkedIn ad platform is even more powerful considering the demographic is made up of decision makers.

My point being, if you aren’t using this powerful site to market your business yet, then it’s time to start taking it more seriously and step your game up.

There are a number of ways to market yourself and your business online, but here are 10 LinkedIn tips that will drastically increase your marketing potential:

1.  Complete Your Profile

Your profile is the heart and soul of your online business brand.  It usually ranks in the top 5 of Google search results for “Your First and Last Name”.  When others do a search for your name to learn about your product, service, company, or previous work experience, then you’d better have a rock solid profile or that first impression could drastically tarnish your value.  Make sure you fill out your profile 100% for starters, then go on from there to make it sexier.

2.  Connect With Everyone

A number of LinkedIn newbies or purists will say, “You should only connect with those you already know and trust, so you can make recommendations to others when they want an introduction.”  Believe me, I understand where these users are coming from, but how do you expect to expand your opportunities and options when you shut off communication to the rest of the 120 million plus members on LinkedIn?

Think about it, you already know all of the opportunities that your closest connections can share since you talk to them more frequently.  It’s time to use LinkedIn like a live networking event and introduce yourself to others, make new friends, and start helping more people connect.  Also, start accepting invitations to others who add you, as the more connections you have, the larger your expanded network grows which helps create more opportunities in the long run.  Here are six other reasons you should connect with everyone on LinkedIn.

[I totally agree with Lewis here, however, I would leave out people who have not bothered to write a proper LinkedIn profile (see point No. 1) and/or have only a few connections.

I would also be suspicious with people who don't have a profile picture. LinkedIn is a network for personal professional connections and your mug shot is an integral part of you persona. I suppose social scientists would say that if you don't show your face, you must be hiding something]

3.  Customize Your Websites

This is a basic thing that everyone should do.  It’s simple.  Creating a call to action attracts more attention then having a generic link that says “My website”.  Make it look and sound sexier so when people come to your profile they feel inspired to click on your links and go back to your website.

4.  Be Compelling

I have a huge knot on my forehead from falling asleep on my desk in mid-browse when looking at LinkedIn profiles.  Most of them are extremely boring and showcase zero personality or compelling attributes.  Add an interesting story in your summary, have a video recommendation pop up in the first few seconds, or at the least tell people who you are, who you help, and how you help them so there is some direction for people when they land on your profile.  Whatever you do, liven it up a little so the bump on my forehead can go away

5.  Recommend Others

I’m a firm believer in giving and helping others succeed as much as you possibly can.  The more you give, the more you will receive.  Recommending others without them asking you to is a great way to help increase the social proof on their profile, which could be the difference between an OK year, and a great year for them.

6.  Join Targeted Groups

LinkedIn groups, LinkedIn groups, LinkedIn groups!  It doesn’t matter what industry or business you are in, this the part of LinkedIn you should be focusing the most.  There are benefits to both joining and being a part of niche-related groups, and also being the owner of them.

I feel blessed to be the owner of many powerful groups.  Many have over 10,000 members, and one more than 32,000 members.  Think of them as independent social networks where you can spread your message, connect with key partners, and take your business to another level.  Want more? Here are my top 10 reasons to start a LinkedIn group.

[LinkedIn Groups are really a fantastic way to connect with likeminded people on the network. You can join up to 50 groups and I'd suggest you use the whole quota. My first LinkedIn Group, Facebook Advertising & Marketing Group  just recently reached 100+ members. Feel free to join up!]  

7.  Connect With Twitter

I sometimes find that I get more comments and interaction on LinkedIn from the same update I published on Twitter.  The updates (even when synced from Twitter) seem to “stay on top” longer than they would in your Twitter stream.  The more interaction you get, the more others see it as well (it’s similar to Facebook in this regard).

Make sure to connect your Twitter account to LinkedIn.  Others talk about why this is bad because a lot of your messaging won’t be targeted for your LinkedIn audience (especially when you use “@” symbols and hashtags), but for the most part, my message is staying at the top of mind for my connections on LinkedIn and for me that’s a powerful thing.  Want to clean things up?  Just use the #in with a Twitter update and it will sync to your LinkedIn account when there is a specific message you want members to see.

[I can see where the Twitter connection could become a problem. For instance if you are a member of Triberr, as I am you re-tweet a lot of messages from your Tribes, and these might not always gel with your LinkedIn audience. See related post about Triberr and Klout]

8.  Add Your Company Profile

LinkedIn is constantly enhancing its platform and one of the things that has been lagging, until recently, was the company page section.  Now, it allows you to add a video, share more information about your products and services, and give more insights about your company and the people working there.

[You can search and add your own company here.]

9.  Optimize Your Search Ranking

People are constantly searching for others on LinkedIn.  They are looking for employee candidates, freelancers, industry experts, and so on.  Why not optimize your profile to help you be found and contacted by more people looking for what you specialize in?  Wouldn’t it be nice to get a flood of people emailing or calling you to sign up for your services or products?  Make sure you increase your ranking on LinkedIn by following these 5 steps.

10.  Add Advanced Applications

I love the fact that LinkedIn has rolled out a number of applications to help you promote your business or your personal work better.  It doesn’t matter what industry you are in, there is an application for everyone that can help you get your message across better, and improve the overall experience of your LinkedIn profile.  Go to the applications section on your profile to see which ones you could start using today, and make the most out of the new ones that come out in the future.

[Great tips for all business owners out there how you can use LinkedIn in your marketing. Here is one more tip I have found very useful:]

11. Use the LinkedIn Share Button

Connect your business website or blog to LinkedIn. LinkedIn Share -button lets users share your website with their LinkedIn connections. This will in turn drives traffic back to your site. Get your own LinkedIn Share Button here. A version of this button can be seen just below this article. Why don’t you give it a go?

What is the one tip you received from this post that you think will impact your business the most?  Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.  Also, there are many more business marketing tips out there, and I’d love your input below as to what YOUR most powerful LinkedIn tip is.

[Image: LinkedIn Headquarters in Mountain View, California. Image source: Google Maps, street view]

Websites have become an important marketing platform for modern marketers and online advertising is becoming increasingly popular for companies. You might be a marketing manager looking for websites where to place your banner ads, or an SEO expert looking for blogs and forums where to write comments with your inbound links. Or, you might be a blogger trying to figure out if it’s worth your time to write a guest post on a certain blog.

As a marketer you don’t really want to pay for banner ads on a website that has no traffic or reach. Sometimes website owners give you traffic data from their Google Analytics, but there is no way you can be certain that those facts reflect the truth.

- You are better off doing the research yourself.

Luckily you don’t have to be Einstein to do that; but those guys who developed these methods sure came close! Especially Larry Page who calculated the formula for the Google Page Rank algorithm.

How do you find out which website is better than the other?

As there are millions and millions of websites not all of them were created equal. Some are more useful for marketing purposes than the others. Some have thousands of daily visitors, and some have just a few. Luckily there are a few clever tools we can use to separate the good from the ‘notsogood’.

How To Evaluate A Website For Marketing Purposes

Several companies gather information about websites and publish them freely. Companies such as Alexa, Quantcast, Compete and Google collect vast amounts of information we can use for evaluating websites for marketing and PR initiatives. I will cover these in more detail:

Alexa – The Web Information Company

Alexa has been around since 1996 providing us free, global web metrics data. Alexa was founded by Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat in San Francisco and later acquired by Amazon for $250 million in 1999. The company’s somewhat strange name was actually chosen after the Library of Alexandria in ancient Egypt.

Alexa is mainly used for evaluating global traffic on websites and blogs. You can search the Alexa database by keywords, categories or countries. Alexa puts the websites in order of relative importance by their one month Alexa Traffic Rank. This monthly rank is calculated using a combination of average daily visitors and page views over the past month. The site with the highest combination of visitors and page views wins and gets ranked at No. 1.

Alexa website lists the Top 500 Websites in the world at any given time. Most often Google is No. 1 and Facebook No. 2 but sometimes they swop places. See a related post of the Top 20 Most Popular Websites In The World.

Alexa provides competitive analysis, benchmarking and market research. Alexa also gives you a handy option to compare up to 5 websites in relation to their traffic data.

Below is a comparative chart of Google, Facebook and Twitter according to their Alexa Traffic Rank:

Google, Facebook and Twitter Alexa Ranking

When you evaluate a website according to their Alexa score you can forget all websites that have more than 1 million Alexa Traffic Rank. They simply don’t have enough traffic to make your efforts worth while.

It is recommended to concentrate on websites and blogs which have better than 300,000 Alexa Traffic Rank. The lower the number the better the website is – Twitter is No. 9 for instance. If a website is in the top 100K you can be sure it has plenty of traffic and it would be well suitable for any marketing efforts you might have in mind.

You can also register your own websites or blogs with Alexa. As a registered user you can control the information about your sites as well as get additional info. Basic registration is free.

Google Page Rank

Google Page Rank is a link analysis algorithm used by the Google search engine. The name ‘Page Rank’ does not actually indicate ranking of a web ‘page’ but rather the name of its inventor Larry Page (co-founder of Google with Sergey Brin). Page Rank is a trademark of Google Inc. but the Page Rank -process itself has been patented to Stanford University. Google has exclusive license rights on the patent from the university. Stanford received 1.8 million Google shares in exchange for the use of the patent and later sold them for $336 million. Nice…

Google Page Rank

Page Rank algorithm assigns a numerical weight (0-10) to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents (website) with the purpose of measuring its relative importance. The rank value indicates an importance of a particular web page. The higher the value the better.

A hyper link to a web page counts as a ‘vote’ of support. The Page Rank of a page is defined recursively and depends on the number of all other web pages linking to it. These are called inbound, or incoming links. A page that is linked to by many other pages with high Google Page Rank receives a high rank itself. [deciphered from Wikipedia tech jargon]

Ok, enough of that scientific stuff.

In short, Google Page Rank is a simple figure to determine the importance of a website. Zero is bad, ten is unbelievable good and almost unattainable by normal websites. Even Facebook and Twitter have only 9 Page Rank!

From the marketing point of view you should ignore all websites with a Google Page Rank of 0, 1 and 2. Starting from 3 they are usually good enough for spending some quality time with. In some occasions you can still go with a Page Rank 2 website provided that it has a good Alexa (or some other) traffic rank.

Here is a nifty little tool to check out the Google Page Rank of any website or blog: http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php

Quantcast

Quantcast was founded in 2006 by Konrad Feldman and Paul Sutter in California. Quantcast collects real time information about websites and their visitors to marketers. Quantcast measures over 25 million web audiences around the world and more than 300 billion Internet media consumption events each month. Quantcast keeps a list of Top 1,000.000 Websites ranking them by their traffic.

Quantcast provides a free audience measurement service with detailed visitor information and audience insights. The data includes measured and estimated website traffic, demographic and geographic information, business activity, site affinity and audience likes and interests.

Quantcast gives you nice visual reports; for instance this Quantcast data report shows a range of 7.000 to 12.000 monthly page views for this blog you are reading right now.

Quantcast Page View Metrics For Facebook Advertising | Social Media Marketing Blog

(I must remember update that figure to the ‘Advertise Here‘ section.)

From my Quantcast report I can also see that 59% of my readers are male, 62% have no kids and 70% went to college or grad. school. Also my visitors are interested in science, nature, technology, politics and photo/video sharing among other things. Very interesting and important information, won’t you say?

Not all websites are measured by Quantcast. You will have to apply to get measured. This is why Quantcast is a good metric as a web master must create an account with Quantcast and insert their special code onto their site. You just wouldn’t do that if your website performance was crap, would you?

Quantcast measurements are calculated per target country so they are all different depending on where the audience lives. As a rough guide for US you might be happy with a website that is in the top 1 million but for UK it should be in the top 10,000 to make an impact.

Here is a nice video about Quantcast features:

[Video by Lisa La France]

Compete

Compete.com is a Boston based web traffic analysis service launched in 2000 by Bill Gross. Compete publishes website profiles, search and referral analytics as well as the approximate number of visitors to the top 1 million websites in the world.

The Compete scores are computed from different sources such as internet service providers, opt-in panels, application providers and users of the Compete toolbar. The data comes from clickstream behaviours and opt-in survey responses of 2 million consumers across the United States.

Compete counts visitors only once, no matter how many times they visit a site in a month; these are defined as ‘Unique Visitors’ as seen in the sample report below. Repeat visits and other metrics can be seen if you subscribe to a Pro account, starting from $199/month.

Below is a sample report of the famous Swedish Vodka brand Absolut. Well, it is not actually Swedish anymore as it has been owned by the French firm Pernod Ricard since 2008.

Compete Score Absolut Vodka

In the Compete report we can see the amount of monthly unique visitors to the Absolut website. We can also see a ranking measure reflecting the popularity of this site based on how many visitors came to the site in a month. As Compete data represent traffic from the United States it is useful only if you are targeting a US based audience in your marketing.

Probably the best feature here is the Competitive Rank which shows related and/or competitor’s scores to the website being evaluated. Competitive Rank shows four related websites; in this case it showed Absolut Drinks (their own), Stolichnaya, Skyy Vodka and Grey Goose Vodka. For some reason it failed to recognize Smirnoff, which is probably the biggest competitor to Absolut; Smirnoff has 13,334 monthly visitors which is almost as much as Absolut’s 17,104. Compete produces this info through a partnership with SimilarSites.com.

If you click the View Similar Sites -button at the bottom of the screen you can see a total of 25 related websites.Very useful to comparative research but not much else due to the fact that it is US based only.

Website Quick Analysis

If you are short on time or just don’t feel like doing in depth research, here is a quick method to see whether a website is worth your marketing attention – or not.

Page Rank 6 Alexa Traffic Rank 152,982 - RollingStones.com

Use A Combination Of The Google Page Rank And The Alexa Traffic Rank

The rule of thumb for this method is that a website you are researching for marketing purposes should have a Google Page Rank of 3 or more, AND it should be ranked in the top 300,000 on the Alexa. You could call this the 3/300 rule of website research.

These two metrics (Alexa being the more important one) can quickly tell you if a website is worth considering as a marketing vehicle for you.

Using this method for instance The Rolling Stones website that Albert was studying in the title image has a Google Page Rank of 6 and Alexa Traffic Rank of 152,982. This would qualify for a website that has enough action from the marketing point of view. Further research confirms this as the site gets reasonably good scores on Quantcast (62,430 US) as well as on Compete (57,653).

Here are some other famous websites with their respective Google Page Rank and Alexa Traffic Rank scores:

Mashable.com Page Rank 8 | Alexa 182

Laughing Squid Page Rank 7 | Alexa 6,794

Keith Richards Page Rank 5 | Alexa 628,247

Elvis Page Rank 5 | Alexa 104,587

Copyblogger Page Rank 6 | Alexa 2,897

DIYblogger Page Rank 3 | Alexa 151,939

Huffington Post Page Rank n/a (This is odd?) | Alexa 88

BarackObama.com Page Rank 7 | Alexa 5,715

HillaryClinton.com Page Rank 5 | Alexa 891,643

James Bond Page Rank 6 | Alexa 480,169

Based on these Quick Analysis figures I would not advertise guitar strings on Keith Richard‘s website, I would post comments on Mashable and I would write a guest post on DIYblogger; which I have done actually. You can read the article here if you’re interested. It is a true story about the World’s First Dream Commercial.

How to make the website research really easy for you

Let’s face it, research is a bore. If you have lots of websites you need to evaluate it’s even a bigger bore. To help the situation you can use some clever browser plug-ins so that you can do the Quick Analysis effortlessly while you are browsing.

Using a plug-in or add-on with your browser you can check these quick metrics as well as other important data for any website in no time. There are plenty of good ones available but here are the ones that I use and recommend. They are free to install and use.

Firefox Addon

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/webrank-toolbar-pagerank-alexa/

Google Chrome Extension

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mkhilblbmkdnapffblmecglknalglfji

Both of these fine plug-ins are produced by WebRankStats. What about a plug-in for the Internet Explorer then? I’m sure there are similar extensions available, but Internet Explorer itself is not really a worthy browser for research… or anything for that matter. If you are still using it, do yourself a favour and upgrade to Firefox or Google Chrome.

Let me know if you have been using any these research methods or if you have a trick of your own that you would like to share.

This week our guest blogger Jessy Troy shows that you too can be a winner on Facebook giveaways and sweepstakes.

Plenty of people really love giveaways. I have known a few people who will spend an hour or more a day applying for contests, and they make a pretty good bit of loot from it. Not just cheap little prizes either; some of my friends have won things such as iPhones, Wii consoles and cash in the thousands. A coworker’s cousin even won a new car once!

Facebook is a great platform for these contests, because so many are updated on a regular basis. If you put your name on enough forms, you are bound to win something. Sometimes it is as easy as just pressing ‘Like‘ on the right page. You will be surprised by the success you can find in this simple way.

But you might be wondering how it is you go about finding, watching and then winning these amazing contests. After all, there is no such thing as a free lunch, right? Wrong! I have won quite a few of those myself.

Just follow these simple tips and you will be on your way to joining the ranks of Facebook sweepstakes winners.

Finding The Contests

The most simple way is by doing a basic Google search. “Facebook”, “giveaway”, “contest” and “sweepstakes” are all good keywords. The only downside is that there is no way to control how recent the top results will be, and so you might have to do a little bit of digging to find what you are looking for.

Facebook itself has a page that you can use to find popular contests currently being held all over the site. This is the Facebook Sweepstakes App, which separates the different promotions into categories. It is a fast way to navigate, but it usually only has larger company sweeps, rather than those for smaller sites, blogs or local stores.

About.com has a page of contests on Facebook listed that they update regularly. You can usually find anywhere up to 100 listed at any time, but some will inevitably have passed before you get to them. Especially since these contest types have a tendency to  be short, which increases your chance of winning by reducing the number of entries.

Another great site that lists more selective (but higher winning) contests is Sweetie’s Secrets. It is maintained with next to constant updates, and most members have found a great deal of success with full time sweeping using this program. However, it does cost $25 per year to join.

What Contests Are Worth It

Technically, anything is worth entering, especially with how easy it is to put in a bit of information. Your browser will even keep a lot of it cached, so you can just select the proper info and submit that. I wouldn’t say anything is actually not worth trying out, just in case.

But some will have better odds than others. The best way to calculate your odds of winning is by checking to see how many people have liked the contest.

Since you have to select ‘Like’ on the page of most to be eligible, it gives you an exact count of how many names you are up against. For example, a recent promotion for Explore Sedona had only 720 likes. Only one will be given, and so you will have a one in 720 chance.

If you want to increase you chances of winning, try and get to the contest near the end. This will let you see how many have entered, and what your odds happen to be. The only exception is if you are allowed to enter multiple times, in which case starting early and keeping at it is your best bet.

Conclusion

You can really win a lot using Facebook sweepstakes. All you have to do is find them and enter, which is as simple as typing a few lines of text. So get started now, and see what you end up with!

Let us know if you have entered any Facebook sweepstakes recently and if you had any success.

(A Case Study) K-citymarket is one of the biggest store chains in Finland with over 72 hypermarkets all over the Finland. Retail & grocery chains have been basically totally absent from the social media in Finland and quite inactive in digital channels in general.

Our agency (N2 Marketing) got invited in pitch to rethink K-citymarket digital marketing. During the process we found mutual understanding of the right digital strategy and got chosen as the K-citymarket digital partner. The first manifestation of this collaboration was to launch the social media presence (namely Facebook page) to K-citymarket. Actually, the first Facebook page for a hypermarket in Finland, to be exact.

The Challenge

The marketing for the K-citymarket has been typically traditional over the years with heavy emphasis on print. The effectiveness of print advertising has been on the decline lately and people are starting to use more digital channels. How to be relevant in the digital sphere as a hypermarket?

Hypermarkets as such are not the most attractive Facebook pages to like. You might want to show that you are liking Louis Vuitton or your favorite band, but not necessarily flaunting your love of the place you are buying your toilet paper from. How do we get people to like something which is part of their everyday life?

Seldom you really have a brand, which has a target group of basically the whole nation. K-citymarket is one of those brands. How to make campaign which appeals to both young and old, women and men and big cities and rural areas? How do we make a campaign that appeals to the whole of Finland?

Because the scope and reach of K-citymarket is so huge, we needed to execute the launch properly and in a big way. Couple of thousands fans would not be enough, we had to attract tens of thousands fans to make it a worthwhile channel for our client. How do you make a Facebook campaign which gathers critical mass fast?

The Insight

We found that K-citymarket had huge advantages to which build the Facebook. First, the stores are really important media channels as themselves, second there are lots of interesting angles to communicate about the K-citymarket brand in Facebook. For example it is the biggest shoe store in Finland.

Due to the recent economic turmoil, people are increasingly more price-aware. Discounts interest huge amount of people nevertheless their background. When going gets tough, it is more and more important how much do you spend on your children diapers monthly.

People are also starting to get picky in social media. Basically to like a brand you want to have promotions or discounts (as can be seen on the above perception gap picture from IBM, read the entire white paper here). So it seemed as the right decision to concentrate on the discounts with the initial launch of K-citymarket Facebook-page. But just revealing discounts seemed quite dull and obvious idea, but what if you could have an impact in social media to the discounts in the physical stores?

The Solution

We decided to launch Facebook-site at the same time when the legendary sales week of K-citymarket “Mammuttimarkkinat (Mammoth Sales)” was held. The launch campaign was based on the three fundamentals build upon discounts:

1. Reason to like:
“Like & reveal the discounts”

Before the initial campaign launch we aimed to attract the real K-citymarket fans who were waiting for the start of the annual discount weeks. We informed K-citymarket newsletter subscribers about the opportunity to unleash discounts before the print advertisement.

This attracted 9.000 fans even before the initial campaign launch.

2. Reason to share:
“Duel of the discounts”

People could actually have an impact of what products there are in discount in the physical stores. Utilizing Facebook-likes you could vote the product of your fancy to be in discounts.

The winner of that battle would be in discount in the very next day. Very seldom you see such a rapid response in social media and retail space.

Duel of the discounts was a huge success. Together with the client we had chosen products which sparked emotions and polarized opinions. One of the most successful duels was the battle between wine glasses and beer jugs.

Wine afficiandos won that battle which invoked bitter comments from beer fans. It was the traditional discount marketing turned upside down: people were spreading the word to their tribes about the discounts.

3. Reason to go to the store & return back to Facebook: “Receipt lottery”

Receipts are a huge own media for retail chains. In every receipt there was a coupon code which forwarded you to Facebook.

When you entered the code you took a part in the competition for a trip to the place where mammoths were living (namely South-Africa).

Nowadays these fundamentals serve as the framework for the campaigns for K-citymarket in Facebook). Every campaign has to have these three reasons to pass the planning phase.

Also the facebook.com/citymarket address was included in all the integrated marketing activities for the discount weeks to raise awareness about the new page in Facebook.

The Results

Amount of Facebook fans:
42.120 (Starting from the scratch and in under two weeks. Basically got over 2% of Facebook users in Finland to like K-citymarket during the campaign)

Amount of impressions:
Over 1 M impressions for the status updates from K-citymarket Facebook-page.

Amount of votes in Duel of the discounts:
Over 15K

Amount of receipt lottery participants:
Over 10K

Sales:
Mammuttimarkkinat in fall 2011 was the most succesful Mammuttimarkkinat ever.

“This is only the beginning for the digital. Facebook is a really important part of our digital ecosystem and will be developed to become more interactive in the near future. Campaigns play crucial role in hypermarket business, but Facebook gives us also opportunity to deepen the relationship with our customers and enhance the dialogue and customer service”, says Pia Laaksonen, Digital Marketing Manager of K-citymarket.

This has been one of the groundbreaking cases I have been working on. The reaction response and the positive attitude to this whole project from the K-citymarket organization has been a great asset and without it the launch would have not gone so well. Combining the fast-paced retail industry with fast-paced social media marketing has been a good combination thus far. And we have just begun.

I know that we have just scratched the surface of the potential opportunities, but the initial results for this project have been really promising.

How do you see the future of social media & retail?