The study by DDB reveals that two in five brand followers surveyed are not interested in engaging with Facebook pages after a marketing engagement ends.

The pages are Klout's way of scanning the Web looking for influential discussions and the people who are leading those discussions.

"This is a big step for us in turning Klout into more of a utility around search and discover," says CEO Joe Fernandez. "This is a really early version of where we plan to take this but it speaks to our belief that every person who creates content has influence. Our goal is just to understand what they are influential about and who they influence."

Klout uses its +K data - the measure of how influential a person is in social media - to show who in a person's audience is voting them as influential about a particular topic.

The topic pages look a lot like the Klout interface and it's really simple to just scan down a page after searching for a general topic. You can immediately find someone of influence. Then, Klout shows what content influencers on each specific topic are talking about.

Klout influence is more than just a single person's focus on a single subject. It's feasible now that someone can rank high in Klout in any manner of subjects, not just in the previous silos assigned to Klout users.

The aim is to provide more context about a topic. Klout says in a blog post today that they plan to add further analytics, trends and related content over the coming months.

We've covered some interesting ways of employing QR codes to bring the Web out into the world, like QR-enabled tourism and scavenger hunts. But comScore's new data show that, at least for now, QR codes are mostly used in more traditional marketing efforts, and they reach a specific demographic of young males in high income brackets.

By far, the March study showed that the most interesting reasons for people to use QR codes were to get a coupon, discount or deal, or to access additional information about content. And most smartphone users (72%) said they would be likely to recall an advertisement that contained QR codes. The data show that eligible consumers see QR codes as novel and interesting, but they aren't yet being used much outside of traditional marketing to a well-off demographic. In so many words, QR codes are currently being used in the easiest way, as a basic marketing tool rather than for an interactive Internet of Things.

But it is still very early in the adoption of technologies capable of reading QR codes. This June, smartphone adoption in the U.S. was up 8% over the preceding three months, but there are still 155 million American mobile phone users who don't have smartphones at all. The number of people unable to scan QR codes is more than 10 times the number of QR code users in comScore's data. It's still very early to draw conclusions about how this technology will impact the Web and its users.

Do you scan QR codes? If so, what do you use them for?

When I first started at ReadWriteWeb, the updates to Facebook were automatically posted via a Facebook application. It was an easy way to make sure our fans got to see our posts, but it didn't foster community discussions so after I got my bearings around here, I stopped the app (or at least I thought I did).

I'm a glass-is-half-full kind of gal, so rather than stress about the accident, I decided to look at this as an opportunity to compare apples-to-apples and determine which was better, auto-posted or manually posted items on Facebook.

As you'd probably guess, I found that automated posts saw significantly less views on Facebook. An auto-posted story that received x views on Facebook would receive, on average, 2.5x views on Facebook when published manually. Because more people saw the manually posted stories, their engagement was roughly doubled (likes and comments).

This does compare apples-to-apples because these were the exact same stories. The auto-posted content was posted first, within minutes of posting to our blog. To make sure that the data was representative, I went back a month and looked at average views, likes and comments and the auto-posted content's stats during this period is almost exactly in line with previous months' performance.

My assumptive explanation for this behavior is EdgeRank. EdgeRank is the algorithm that Facebook uses to determine where a post shows up in a user's stream. It seems to push content that gets reactions higher up the stream. I'm not sure if my manually posted entries got a better reaction because I worked hard to craft a pithy call-to-action on them (thereby moving them up in EdgeRank) or if some other secret sauce caused them to move up in EdgeRank, which in turn gave them more reactions.

Whatever the cause, the manually posted entries saw more than double the views and a little more than double the engagement. We did eventually get the app completely turned off and I posted the remainder of the month's stories to Facebook manually. This again showed a definite increase in traffic back to our site from Facebook (nearly double).

Manual posting is a chore. What takes the app seconds to post may take me 10 minutes. And, because I am not continually at the computer, some of our content isn't posted immediately after posting. There are definitely cons to manual posting, but the increase in engagement and page views back to our site is worth the additional labor.

Have you tested your Facebook posting methods? I'd be interested in learning if this obvious increase in performance was the same across other sectors.

It is easy to use a Facebook page or a Twitter account to expand a brand's reach. Set it up and start posting and the marketing department hits its "reach" quotient for the quarter. Yet, for business-to-business (B2B) technology suppliers get little value from their social media initiatives. Hence, Forrester recommends businesses augment their social media strategies to become more effective sources of information for making technology-purchasing decisions.

For the time sink that social media can be, those are not great numbers for marketers looking to expand brand awareness. The top sources of influence for decision-makers were websites followed by word-of-mouth from colleagues and then in-person events like trade shows or conferences all. Part of this has to do with the nature of enterprise buying - it is a market ecosystem that does not change quickly. Buyers tend to use the sources they trust and often those sources are going to be other people they know and can physically interact with. Think of it like this: you ask your colleague how he/she solved problem "X." Colleague says they used "X" product. What do you then do? Turn to the Web and look up that companies Facebook page or go to the company's website?

For smaller consumer businesses, Facebook and Twitter can be great ways to increase engagement and hence foot traffic to brick-and-mortar locations. It is cheap and potentially viral. Enterprises are insulated from the viral nature of the social Web because the vetting process of technology decisions lasts longer than the typical Internet meme.

Forrester recommends and integrated approach. Instead of a stand-alone social marketing channel that screams into the Internet ether, tie it up with product and field marketing of the brand. It is a more cooperative and resource-intensive approach, but the results should be greater than setting up camp on Facebook with an "open for business" shingle on the door.

The blank white box, as Gross and Brier refer to the interface presented by almost all other social media publishing tools, is a path to writer's block or ineffective self-promotion for most corporate participants in online social media. These two experienced practitioners from the advertising and marketing world have now launched a much-anticipated new service called Percolate that aims to give people something to talk about. They've quickly built up a small customer base, have bootstrapped a team of 7 employees and this week they are opening the service to the world. The first 300 ReadWriteWeb readers to visit the site through this link can access Percolate right away.

Bare-knuckle RSS and blogging fans have been doing that for years, but much of the rest of the world could use some smart, attractive technology that lightens the load and makes content production even easier and more efficient.

Percolate presents something like a personalized Techmeme of topic content on the right hand side of the page (it cross-references news updates from millions of feeds with your personal network of trusted Twitter contacts and your demonstrated history of topic and source interest), and a stream of your contacts' feedback on news on the left. You're then encouraged to jump into either of those streams and offer feedback on any existing news item that's as short as a one word tag or as long as a full blog post.

"What people are really doing on Twitter is not saying I'm having lunch with my cat," says Gross.

"What they are doing is contextualizing links all day. We don't think that filtering for the best links is a product, though, we think it's a feature. The value is created when you can get users to trust your platform for both consumption and publishing. The real breakthrough over the last year was Tumblr and Twitter, the way they created the read/write interface where you created and consumed in the same environment, in that dashboard-like flow."

Gross says the first few customers who are licensing Percolate's technology as a back end and publishing to their own website front ends are aiming to have their team members post 20 to 30 short responses to links of interest each day - rather than struggling to write 1 to 3 medium to full-length blog posts each day from a cold start.

Future iterations of the publishing tool will be focused on grabbing media assets and pull-quotes from the pages that Percolate users are commenting on. That will make it all the faster and easier to create rich blog posts throughout each day.

How Well Does it Work?

I buy this idea, I really do. The service is available for free to consumers and charges for API access by brands. The interface has a couple of bugs at launch, but Gross (who worked at RWW ad network partner Federated Media previously) and co-founder Noah Brier, who has been a well-known online media consultant to leading brands around the world for many years, are very capable people and will likely iron out any kinks in the system soon.

I'm not sure how well the stories surfaced will prompt responses from users. That will be a big challenge to get right and it will require some training by users.

Users will likely find pleasing the inline publishing of responses to links as the core experience on the platform. Gross says his company watches Tumblr closely (who doesn't in the publishing world?) and I can imagine people seeing Percolate as a Tumblr for brands or for responses to out-of-network content.

What do you think, would-be bloggers? Does this seem like something that could help you publish more and better content online?

Through a mobile app running on customers' phones, marketers can offer a variety of follow-up actions to the TV viewer, including coupons, reminders, contact info and more. In total, there are 10 follow-up actions offered. And the consumer is in complete control of which ones, if any, they respond to.

The company behind WiO, WiOffer, is the creation of Andrew Pakula and Matthew Greene, both of whom have experience working in and with major media, tech and digital marketing firms, including DoubleClick, Yahoo and Ogilvy. This experience, Pakula explains, has allowed them to learn a lot about what customers respond to and how.

How the WiO-Enabled TV Commercials Work

Before a customer can use the WiO app, the commercial or TV show has to first be WiO-enabled. To do this, the advertiser sends WiOffer their asset - that is, their commercial or the portion of the show where the product placement is visible and/or mentioned by the characters within the program. Using the clip as a digital ID, the mobile WiO app running on customers' phones can then "hear" when the commercial plays and pop up a screen offering more information.

There are 10 different options a customer can choose from, some of which are subject to what the advertiser is providing. These include access to coupons, PDF brochures, app downloads, website addresses, retail locators, contact information, calendar events, reminders and even one option which will auto-dial the advertiser directly, in the case of TV commercials where a phone number is displayed. The unique thing about connecting TV to the mobile platform in this way is how many of these tasks are automated. For example, choosing the reminders, calendar event or contact info options will instantly save that information to a customer's phone, with no manual effort required on the customer's part.

In addition, when coupons are provided, the customer can save these "WiOffers" on their phone, where they will be accessible until the expiration date. To use a coupon, the customer just has to show their phone to the retailer.

Meanwhile, on the advertisers' side, metrics surrounding customer response can be tracked in real-time, allowing them to adjust their advertising and offers on the fly to boost engagement, as need be.

Competition in the New TV Landscape

WiO is not the only company with this same idea. The music identification app Shazam recently raised funds to push into television. Some TV shows and ads now tell viewers to "Shazam" them in order to receive bonus content and discounts, AllThingsD reports. Another company, IntoNow, uses audio recognition to encourage users to "check in" to what they're watching on TV. GetGlue offers something similar. Even Microsoft is getting into the action with its NUads advertising platform, which uses the voice and gesture control in its Kinect for Xbox 360 to create interactive TV ads.

But unlike with Xbox, WiO is device agnostic, Greene says. He insists that WiO is different than the so-called "social apps," too. Even though WiO allows for sharing to Facebook, Twitter, SMS and email, its goal is not to socialize the TV-watching experience. "Check-ins are a bit of distraction," says Greene, "if not an enormous distraction." And, referring to Shazam, he claims the idea of connecting a music app to actual transactions is a bit complicated. The Shazam ads point you to a mobile landing page, he notes. WiO aims to connect the brand directly to the customer so they can start talking immediately.

The WiO app will launch in a few weeks, first on iPhone. It will arrive on Android 60 days later. The company says it can't comment on its advertising partners at this time, but from what we saw, there are some well-known brands in talks with the company now.

In my experience working advising some of the world's largest brands on Facebook, I agree with the author that some of these tactics are generally not best practices, however, applying a blanket statement to anything when it comes to social media is a slippery slope.

Let's look into each of the tactics mentioned in the original post and dig a bit deeper.

Like Blocks

A "like block" or "fan gate" is akin to putting up an entry page to your Facebook Page(s) and offering up people an incentive to like the Page to enter, whether it be exclusive content, a discount on products or services, etc. The author of the post said like blocking "typically has a 50% or more drop off rate," but in our experience this often varies greatly depending on industry, the content or offer employed to incentivize the like etc. By 50% drop off rate, it is implied that half of the people who "like" a Page in response to a specific incentive will never come back.

We've seen drastically different results, where brands have increased their fan base anywhere from 2 times to 10 times (and keep them engaged) by simply using owned media like a distribution list that pushes potential fans to a fan gated Page. This is a great fan acquisition strategy.

Working with Playboy, we've been very successful utilizing like blocks, and Playboy now has more Facebook likes than actual magazine subscribers, an amazing feat for the brand. The key is making the content behind the fan gate worth it. Deep discounts, free samples and exclusive must see content can work well. Do like blocks typically have a 50% or more drop off rate? It depends. But they shouldn't if you're doing it right.

Photo and video contests

This was perhaps the most interesting example of something the author said "mostly doesn't work," especially since as we mentioned earlier, there are success stories for these kind of tactics all around the Web.

Also, as some commenters to the post pointed out, what the author suggested, running a photo or video contest outside of an app, is actually a violation of Facebook's terms of service.

We've seen varying levels of success with photo and video contests and certainly wouldn't say they "mostly don't work." One of our customers, a national toy company, increased their fan-base on Facebook by 10,000 fans per week driven by a successfully executed photo contest with no advertising spend.

Last year, the Miss Universe Organization ran a contest where people uploaded their photos and other information to be elected as a "contestant" for the 2010 Miss USA Pageant. The contest took place over a two week period and yielded more than 300 entries and tens of thousands of votes

Certainly there is opportunity here, as eMarketer notes photo sharing is a major trend on Facebook. More than 6 billion photos are uploaded to Facebook each month.

Sweepstakes

Sweepstakes can be tricky on Facebook, but it's not fair to say they "work" or "don't work" across the board. This past fall, we launched a "fan only" sweepstakes on the Parents magazine Facebook page. More than 16,000 fans entered the sweepstakes. Meredith Corporation, the publisher of Parents magazine, has not seen a decline in engagement from these fans; in fact, they've seen increased engagement.

In another example, workwear manufacturer Carhartt recently ran a sweepstakes that saw several thousand entries over just 10 days.

Sweepstakes clearly can work, but you need to be smart about how you implement them. You also need to encourage people to share right after they've entered to increase viral lift. If you don't have this functionality, you'll be dead in the water.

Next page: Where We Agree With The Author

Where We Agree With The Author

Extended Permission: We've all had the experience. You click on a cool app or link on Facebook and are brought to a page that asks if it's ok for the app to pull some of your specific profile data. You have to really want the app or experience in order to move forward, right? The drop off data here can vary greatly, but it's definitely higher than if you build an experience that doesn't require this permission page to pop up.

Unbranded Apps: The argument from the author is that brands can't use widely available unbranded turnkey apps that don't allow them to customize the experience, because people will "judge your brand in comparison to the best they've seen," according to author.

We completely agree that people expect a lot more from brands on Facebook today, as compared to a year ago. Brands on Facebook have moved from a one-off app strategy to an always-on Page strategy. (Remember before it was possible to "like" ReadWriteWeb?)

Lots of apps on one tab: In many cases brands have seen success by pairing down the amount of content they have on a customer Facebook Page or tab to ensure that people know exactly what they can do (and how they can easily share with their friends) when they visit your Page. Facebook users don't have a lot of patience when it comes to branded experiences. They want to get back to their News Feed to see what their friends are doing. Make sure the action you want someone to take is obvious, requires little time investment, and motivates him or her to share.

If you make your fans look smart, cool, or in the know, it's a great way to motivate sharing. Remember, Facebook users don't just share what they want to share, they share what they think their friends will think makes them look smart, funny, or cool.

Now lets get back to the original story's headline, "Why Most Facebook Marketing Doesn't Work." It's almost impossible to make blanket statements about the success of social media marketing campaigns without considering business objectives, audience, execution and other factors. Hopefully you feel the same way.

First, deep campaigns don't work. Digital agencies love deep, expensive campaigns on Facebook, with tons of pages, interaction, and art. It fits in with how agencies build microsites and websites, and justifies the $100,000-plus price tag that they like to charge. Examples include lightweight games, prediction contests, treasure hunts where you include friends, and such. Unfortunately for agencies and the brands that drop a lot of cash, Facebook users decidedly don't like deep campaigns.]]> Guest author Peter Yared is the vice president and general manager of Webtrend Apps, a platform used by top brands to engage their customers on Facebook, iPhone and Android. He has has an extensive background in highly scalable Internet infrastructure and tools, and has authored patents on fundamental Internet infrastructure including federated identity and data marshaling.

They do not like to spend 20 or 30 minutes on a single brand's page, unless they are consuming innovative, funny, or exclusive content. So a travel site looking for a long time spent on a page should not put up a treasure hunt on a world map where you invite your friends and can together find great prizes after exploring cities. Sounds good in a pitch meeting, but it results in abysmally numbers of active users.

Facebook users are very sophisticated, and there is no way a single campaign is going to compete on game mechanics with CityVille. If you want to build CityVille, it might work. But, even Netflix pulled their Facebook app. You're better off putting up a bunch of funny videos from around the world and leave it at that.

Lots of Apps on One Tab Don't Work

It is easy to think of a Facebook tab like a Web page, and throw a bunch of features on it - such as a poll, gifting, and some videos - all on one tab. However, most users do not show up on a Facebook tab like they do on a Web page. They are usually coming in by clicking on a page's newsfeed posting ("What kind of traveller are you? Take the quiz!"), a friend's newsfeed posting ("I'm a cranky traveller! What kind of traveller are you? Take the quiz?"), or a Facebook ad ("Find out what kind of traveller you are!").

Now, if after clicking on one of these links a user is dropped into a Facebook Page tab with eight different things on it, they are not going to see a quiz immediately and move on. There should only be one engagement feature per tab.

Sweepstakes Don't Work

After an initial onslaught of Facebook sweepstakes promotions, marketers are learning that sweepstakes have very low conversion rates and almost no viral uptake. We're also learning that they attract unengaged users who are there for the prize rather than a relationship with the brand.

Facebook users like to click around and look at stuff, and absolutely do not like filling out forms. We have run highly promoted sweeps campaigns for major artists that included things like backstage passes and a limo ride to the show that had abysmal conversion rates. There is absolutely no incentive to make sweepstakes social.

Why would you invite more people to join a sweepstakes? It reduces your own chances. Have you ever seen a "I just entered a sweepstakes and you should to" posting on someone's wall?

One attempt to increase viral spread in sweepstakes is to offer more prizes when there are more entrants, but all that does is confuse users with conflicting agendas. There is a disincentive to invite people since it reduces your chances of winning, but if enough new people join up perhaps you can win something else... "Ah, too confusing, I'm going to watch videos instead."

Photo and Video Contests Rarely Work

A lot of brands like to do photo and video contests, but unfortunately they do not have the user base that likes to submit photos and videos. Travel and photography brands? For sure. Mobile carrier? Beverage brand? Not likely. Even clothing brands can't pull this off.

Uploading a photo or video is a big investment on the part of the user, and they do not expect to do it for the vast majority of businesses. These campaigns also require the labor to moderate the submissions. If you must run a photo or video Facebook campaign, the best way to do it is actually NOT in an app.

Instead, have users upload the photos and videos to the brand's page, and moderate them there. Then have users get their friends to Like the photos or videos. This way, the campaign leverages all of Facebook's viral channels around photos - when the user uploads the photo, when they Like the photo, when their friends like or comment on their photo submission, it is all highly likely to show up in their friends' feeds, drawing traffic. The great thing about this is that it is easy to do for free, since using all of Facebook's photo and video features are free, and users get to use the known Facebook photo and video interface, which increases conversions.

Like Blocks Rarely Work

Like blocking, where a user has to "Like" a Facebook Page in order to access a feature, typically has a 50% or more drop off rate, even when there is something there that is actually worth liking the page to get, such as exclusive content or a great coupon. Putting a Like block on basic content will almost guarantee a 100% drop off rate.

Be very, very selective about Like blocks and be sure to tell the user that it is worth it to them. A Like is the mailing list opt-in of the Facebook world, so be willing to offer up some goodness and know that most will opt not to Like.

Extended Permissions Rarely Work

Asking the user for a laundry list of access to their profile usually results in a 30% or more drop off rate, and that is for well known brands that they trust. Do you really need to know their relationship status? Generally a brand already knows its demographic - does a youth-oriented clothing brand really need to validate that it is 16 to 25 year-old women that are engaging with the brand?

So while it sounds good to ask for extended permissions, do the math and monitor the drop off rate to ensure that it is worth it to you, otherwise the overall campaign ROI may not turn out the way you want, especially if the campaign is being graded on number of engagements.

Unbranded Apps Don't Work

It's got to look good, and be on brand. In the early days of Facebook, a brand could put up a basic presence with some turnkey apps, and users accepted that. Now that Facebook is all grown up, a brand presence needs to be on par with its website. Facebook users are savvy and will judge your brand in comparison to the best they've seen.

Dedicated Facebook Storefronts Kinda Work Right Now, But Soon Won't Work

Dedicated Facebook storefronts are the rage on Facebook right now, but they are unfortunately not integrated with an e-commerce site's existing payment and inventory systems, and are therefore a logistical nightmare. The best bet right now is to list featured products on a Facebook Page with click-thrus off of Facebook to the e-commerce site.

Now that Facebook is supporting iFrame tabs in pages, an existing e-commerce site can be skinned to fit in a 520-pixel-wide Facebook Fan Page, thereby integrating existing payment and inventory systems into the Facebook Page.

So What Does Work? Promotions and Consistent, Lightweight Engagement

Make sure your fans get something in return for liking your page with promotions likes offers for fans that they can easily redeem. The more lucrative the deals offer, the more sharing with friends will happen. Fans want things like exclusive products/services, drastically discounted prices akin to Groupon type deals, and early notification and registration for upcoming events, ideally exclusive to fans. Promotions should make the fan feel like they are a brand insider, not just a standard consumer.

A big secret of Facebook marketing is that it is easy and cheap to drive promotions using ads targeted only at your fans that link to landing tabs that deliver the offer and encourage fans to share to their newsfeed.

A brand on Facebook should be like a casual friend or neighbor and not try to suck people into heavy levels of interaction. What do you do with a friend? Comment on their photos, like their status, vote on their outfit. These types of interactions take seconds, not minutes, and definitely not hours.

A brand on Facebook should offer their users regularly updated, simple to interact with engagement features. Each of the engagement apps should be fully branded, and run in a separate tab with traffic driven from wall posts, newsfeed and Facebook ad units to increase engagement. Start with a personality quiz. Then two weeks later put up a poll. Then try a trivia app. For special events, put up a gifting app for Valentine's Day, or for the holiday season, a holiday song card.

Some brands, like media properties and well-known consumer brands, get an immediate fan base for this type of lightweight engagement. For the rest, building a fan base on Facebook is no different than building a mailing list in the previous generation of the Internet. It takes consistent engagement, and builds over time.

Methods to accelerate growth include tying Facebook ad campaigns with engagement apps and driving traffic from the homepage. The apps should still be lightweight and fun, with the conversion goal of getting the user to like the brand.

The point is to regularly put up new, fresh engagement features that are easy and fun for users to interact with, that they will want to post to their wall and share with their friends. Then users will interact with your brand just like they interact with their friends on Facebook!]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/why_most_facebook_marketing_doesnt_work.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/why_most_facebook_marketing_doesnt_work.php Marketing Thu, 17 Feb 2011 13:00:00 -0800 Guest Author Facebook is launching a new ad format called "Sponsored Stories," which allows participating advertisers to promote your Facebook activity by turning it into homepage ads seen only by your friends. This activity can include liking a Facebook page, checking in via Facebook Places or sharing content to the News Feed from a Facebook application.

These shares, which would have appeared in your friends' News Feeds anyway, are now given special promotion by way of a Facebook ad that appears on the right-hand side of the homepage. The ad will display your friend's name, photo, a picture and link to the relevant Facebook Page or application, plus any likes and comments.

Does this sort of user-generated advertising sound familiar? It should - Twitter is doing nearly the same thing.

Twitter's Promoted Tweets service was introduced last spring, offering advertisers similar options for generating ads from the social networking site's content. It was an new concept for advertising - taking content that would have appeared within the service's search results (the de facto way to see what people are saying about a given subject on Twitter) - and highlighting that content through a top-of-the-page ad showcasing the promoted tweet itself.

In November, Twitter announced it would begin rolling out the Promoted Tweets into users' timelines, too, through its partner, HootSuite, a provider of a popular Twitter client application.

But in Twitter's case, Promoted Tweets didn't come from just anyone's content - they could only be selected from the advertiser's account or those affiliated with it. A promoted tweet wouldn't be stolen content from an unsuspecting user.

Of course, that's not Facebook's way.

How Facebook's Sponsored Stories Work

With Facebook's Sponsored Stories, your activity is now up for grabs, available to the advertiser associated with the brand, business or app you interacted with.

Just checked in to a restaurant? That's an ad. Just liked a brand? That's an ad. Just shared a news story from the Web? That's an ad.

At launch, Facebook's Sponsored Stories partners are Coke, Levi's, Anheuser Busch and Playfish, plus nonprofits like Donors Choose, Girl Up!, Malaria No More, Amnesty International, Women for Women, Autism Speaks, (RED), Alzheimer's Association and UNICEF.

Oh, and there's no way to opt-out, says Facebook. "While there is no way to opt out of seeing all or being featured in any Sponsored Stories, you can remove specific stories by clicking the 'X' displayed in the upper right side of a story and choosing the appropriate option when prompted."

The stories also respect your Facebook privacy settings, so only people who can read your News Feed stories can see the Sponsored Stories.

Advertising Transparency?

The funny thing about these "personalized recommendations," as Facebook calls them, is that an ad could come from a restaurant check-in that led to the worst meal of your life or it could show up after you "liked" a retailer only because they were running an ad that said "like us on Facebook for 10% off."

Your friends would see the promoted activity - activity that may or may not tell the whole story of your interaction with that business. Unless you comment on the item to explain, all your friends would see is the activity itself.

On the flip side, that does raise an interesting question - what if you did comment on the activity? What if, say, after a check-in at a restaurant, you commented about the terrible food or service? Because Sponsored Stories display the likes and comments, your friends would now be able to see your complaint, too. But do advertisers have any way of knowing that? And can they pull a Sponsored Story if so? That's a key point, and it's unclear what level of control advertisers have here. It's important though, because real personalized recommendations work both ways - they deliver the good news and the bad. Without both sides represented, this is just a new way to spam your friends.

Future Implications

While on the one hand, the fact that my activity is now being turned into ads for my friends makes me feel a little icky inside, I don't totally hate this idea. I would like to see what new restaurants my friends are trying, what online articles they found worth sharing, where they shop, etc. That's the least offensive kind of advertising I can imagine, and arguably, the most effective, too, if done right.

What's even more interesting about this integration, however, are the future implications it brings to mind. Thanks to the Facebook/Microsoft partnership, these types of personalized recommendations could soon find their way into Microsoft's Bing search engine, for example. That could finally hit the sweet spot for personalized search.

One of the complaints about the limitations of the Facebook Like is that your friends aren't going to go around liking boring things like household appliances or other sorts of items undeserving of a Facebook share. But by including check-ins and website shares in this advertising initiative, it's easy to imagine a future where a Bing search for a refrigerator delivers a results page that tells you: "John just checked in to Sears on Monday" and commented "great appliance sale!"

That could be interesting.

Maybe a little creepy, too. But if there's one thing Facebook doesn't shy away from is toeing the creepy line, to see how much invasiveness its users will tolerate before crying out "privacy violation!"

The funniest thing about this new form of advertising is that it's actually far more intrusive than Instant Personalization, which simply shared select profile info with partner websites on an opt-out basis. Instant Personalization received federal regulator attention, while this move will likely fly under the radar, despite the fact that it co-opts your content for ads, with no opt-out option at all.

Creepy. Genius. Nice move, Facebook.

Source, Image Credits: Inside Facebook, Facebook.com

As mobile and social media functions establish themselves, they join another, more mature digital channel: email. Unlike offline or analog marketing, digital channels present marketers a lot of flexibility around the frequency and timing of campaigns and other types of communication. When you consider as well that many consumers are often opted into multiple channels, there's the possibility that messages from different channels compete with one another for attention.

It is because of this that an alternative view of multi-channel marketing is emerging quickly - cross channel marketing. Cross channel marketing - whereby marketers execute campaigns across channels in consideration of consumer preferences and permissions - is emerging as a best practice as new solutions come online designed to tackle the challenge.

Recognizing the Problem

Explained to any digital marketer, the logic of cross channel resonates yet it's also acknowledged that the current state was unavoidable. The pace of innovation in digital marketing has been such that adding capabilities trumped more time consuming integration considerations.

If you're a digital marketer, you know first-hand how this played out. A lot of brand marketers quickly jumped to the conclusion they required an iPhone app or marketing leaders prioritized building a following on Twitter or Facebook because the competition had done so first. Another marketer may have tacked a text message call to action to the end of a promotional project as an afterthought. Services companies and point products for digital marketing have done admirable jobs creating urgency to move on almost anything "mobile" lest you permanently fall behind the curve.

Before disconnected efforts become too entrenched however, marketing leaders should recognize some challenging byproducts of marketing silos. First, separate people, products, databases and processes all pointed at driving desirous consumer behavior effectively compete with one another. The inefficiencies of such an environment should be also apparent.

Second, consumers are exposed to some 3,000 marketing messages every day from various sources and different channels (per Symphony/IRI research). A "message quagmire" drags down the performance of everyone's marketing efforts.

Thirdly, consumer adoption of smartphones increases daily and the devices are used for all manner of activities, at any time or place. In fact, you could say the mobile device is becoming the primary digital interface between consumers and business on a mass scale.

Inefficiencies in digital marketing efforts beget real redundancies in consumer touches, which in turn fight for attention with marketing messages from other sources. Response rates and campaign ROI suffer over time. Given expertise in how consumers use mobile devices, mobile marketers are uniquely positioned to steer their companies to better outcomes.

Mobile Marketers Take the Lead

With expertise in how consumers use mobile devices, mobile marketers have a chance to lead their companies in the right direction. Soon every business will need a "conductor" to orchestrate customer relationship strategies targeting the mobilized consumer. The mobile marketer could be that person.
Cross channel marketing is neither an abstract business school concept nor a rip and replace technology solution. It simply makes sense, but getting started requires a step-wise approach that begins to unwind siloed digital marketing efforts. Fortunately, there are a number of ways mobile marketers can demonstrate the value of cross channel marketing as a step toward broader adoption.

Start and end with customer Experience: Cross channel marketing creates better experiences for consumers by recognizing everyone has channel preferences and that different channels bring strengths and weaknesses to the task. Two examples of easy-to-implement cross channel approaches include leveraging the email subscription list to build the mobile subscriber base, and taking advantage of the reach of text messaging combined with the viral qualities of social media. Although easy to execute conceptually, these efforts require specialized software optimized for mobile interactions and that have value added ties to other channels.

Leverage the email list: Most companies have long established and large lists of opted in email subscribers. These customers deserve an opportunity to opt into mobile communications, offers and other calls to action. Adding a link in an email update that takes consumers to an opt in form is often all that's necessary, along with an incentive such as registering for mobile alerts, offers or finding the nearest location to make a purchase. This form should be tied directly to the mobile marketer's system to automatically build up the mobile opt-in list.

What's in it for the email team? Email communications are challenged by competition with other messages in jammed-up email in boxes, and a tie to mobile can alert subscribers to look out for a message. Later, the email and mobile teams can work together to develop higher response marketing campaigns that take advantage of the best attributes of each channel (email as visual/explanatory, mobile and text as timely, portable and universal).

Create a mobile/social campaign: Cross channel campaign management systems optimized for mobile interactions take advantage of the massive reach afforded by text message communications and the viral qualities of social media. Sweepstakes are a popular text message campaign-type that can be deployed to Twitter followers in such a way that contest posts may be forwarded or retweeted. In the process, followers broadcast the promotion to many consumers outside the marketer's social network, who may be influenced to follow the marketer's brand and also participate in the promotion. The mobile marketer creates a higher performing promotion while the social media team grows its base of followers.

Photo by clix

Now, when a user clicks the "X" button to remove a story from their News Feed, there's an option to unlike the page, which joins other options including "mark as spam, "hide this post," or "hide all" posts from the offending page.

Unliking Gets Easier

We saw the news about this change reported on Monday as well, on unofficial Facebook news site, Inside Facebook. They noted that this was only one of many changes surrounding the "like" feature as of late. Facebook has also been prompting users with few likes to add more pages, has been showing what likes users have in common, has re-launched its "Page Browser" to encourage liking and more.

The "unlike button" change is so new, in fact, that we couldn't find any mention of it in Facebook's own help documentation. Currently, the only mention of how "unliking" pages works is this FAQ post directing users to "unlike" a page by visiting the page directly, then clicking the "unlike" link in the lower left-hand corner. That process is similar to how you would "un-friend" someone on Facebook - you have to visit their profile and then select "Remove from Friends" at the bottom left. Obviously, having to navigate directly to a page to unlike it is much more cumbersome for users than just clicking a button.

Spammy Marketers, Take Note

For marketers, this easy-access "unlike" button in the News Feed means it's even more important to dial down the frequency of updates so as not to become overly "spammy." The content of those messages should be carefully considered too. Offend a user with an off-the-cuff post and they may be gone for good. Says Clickz, users can now "simply see one brand post that turns them off and leave the company's audience...without leaving their personal wall." The only good news for marketers here is that the change doesn't seem to propagate over to the end user's Wall for their friends to see, too.

While the new "unliking" methodology is certainly easier than before, it's not a one-step process. Instead, "unliking" actually takes two steps - the first to click "unlike page" and then a pop-up box appears asking if you really want to remove your connection to the page entirely. A user has to click "Remove Post and Unlike" in order to opt out from seeing any more messages from that page going forward.

The change may help to increase the number of "likes" a user doles out in the future. Once users know that it's (almost) as easy to "unlike" something as it is to "like" it, they may be more willing to click the like button.