Will Facebook shops be a new dawn for monetising social media?

The question of how to measure & monetise social media investment has been a hot potato throughout 2009. Many brands are either embracing or interested in adding social media marketing to their mix but struggle to define how this investment can be planned, measured and analysed to ensure it 'adds value'.

Over in the US, retailer 1-800 Flowers (can you guess what they sell?!) has taken a bold and innovative step forward in the race to commercialise social media activity - they've worked with advertising network Alvenda to launch a shop within their Facebook fan page.

The big leap here is that customers can shop and buy without having to leave Facebook. Whilst the current storefront is Flash based, it is an interesting step towards evaluating the cash potential of engaging customers via social networking sites. 1-800 Flowers currently has a low fan base, 2095 fans as of July 31st @ 10am (UK time!). Imagine though the potential of selling to a niche audience as that number grows. Provided they continue to engage with customers on Facebook and provide relevant content and contribute to discussions, perhaps there is a viable commercial model in play.

Why do I think this could work? Firstly the user interface is quick and easy - you don't need to be web savvy to order. Check out the screen flow below - clear navigation, buttons & calls-to-action:

Secondly, customers demand convenience. There may be a % of your audience who only use Facebook for communication, conversation and information. If you do not have the right presence in Facebook, you might lose the opportunity to convert them into a paying customer. I'm not saying this is going to work for everyone but it is logical that this eCommerce channel has potential.

Some might throw up the criticism of cannibalising online sales and losing margin by paying fees to Alvenda and/or Facebook. However, would you rather take a sale at a lower margin than your main website to gain a new customer who can then fall into your retention cycle, or potentially lose them to a competitor? The same argument applies to marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, affiliates and price comparison sites. Having been a Head of eCommerce for a retailer using marketplace and affiliate programs, I know that without them the net sales and contribution from the online channel is lower than with them, even if your margin % point is diminuished. I guess the investment decision relies on whether commerically you target margin instead of net profit. If you have a limited stock base, this becomes a more pressing concern.

The reality is that people have wanderlust online, they are promiscuous and shopping habits change. Presence is essential, as is grabbing attention in an attention deficit world. It is feasible that Facebook shops will add another channel to the online mix and help retailers monetise part of their social media investment. What interests me is the fallout of the 1-800 Flowers PR - how many 'me too' retailers will jump into a Facebook shop and how many will sit on the fence until there is evidence of the results?

Thanks to Econsultancy's blog for a helpful write up of what 1-800 Flowers has done and the ensuing discussion.

I'd welcome comments on my blog - what do you think of this move, will is start a footrace for the next frontier of social media? Alternatively, join in the Econsultancy blog discussion - I think this is an exciting move and would welcome other people's views on it.

Smirnoff - Social in mainstream advertising

It's rare that a newspaper advert gets my attention, I'm so stauchly online that i rarely acknowledge adverts in offline publications.

However, the other day, sat in the office kitchen aimlessly scanning Metro for something engaging to read (other than more woes of shameless MPs bleeding taxpayers dry!), my eyes stumbled upon a very cool and interesting Smirnoff advert.

The advert had an impactful headline: "Create the Next Smirnoff Event!". I was intrigued to know what event. I then indulged my classic 'get to the end' impatience and checked the advert footer - I saw something even more interesting; the reply URL was a Facebook page. I was intrigued enough to go back and read the full advert. And then click through to Facebook.......

Below: Facebook landing page for the "urthenight" promotion:

I liked what Smirnoff had done. They had dreamed up a new event, staged it at the O2 in London which is perfect for their target audience - fun, funky, lively & full of alcopopped teenagers with a crazed look in their eyes.

To get people engaged they created a competition to have a personalised journey to the event by boat on the Thames. All you have to do to enter is tell Smirnoff how you would start the evening, they will then "pimp up a boat with your design for an exclusive warm-up party and transport to the venue". 

The only way you can enter is via the Facebook app. A Facebook poll on their fan page will then decide the winning idea. Great way to engage people via Facebook and then let the community decide. Smirnoff has over 48,000 fans on its Facebook fan page..... yes it's only a number but that is a large number to communicate with.

The ad copy suggests this isn't the only interative element to the night and encourages people to check every Thursday for more ways to have fun with Smirnoff. I think this is a great example of a brand using social in the offline space to engage with its target audience and give them something to influence using their social networks. 

What do you think? A clever bit of offline integration into social media planning or nothing to get excited about? Let me know your take on this.

Twitter is not the new facebook, deal with it!

We are in the midst of a new marketing obsession, people calling twitter the new facebook or holding twitter up against Google as a search tool. I've read blogs, seen tweets and found articles pitching twitter against other major online services. I don't get it. Why do we always have to evaluate one website in the context of another? This week's blog looks at why we should embrace the differences and not try to force comparisons.

There is an excellent thread started by Patricio Robles on Econsultancy.com (Fail Whale: Twitter as a search engine) debating whether twitter will ever replace Google as a search tool. The general concensus is that it won't, even can't. However, there are some really good arguments about how the two tools can work in unison to deliver a more sophisticated search program.

The point that got my attention was how twitter supports search in a brand monitoring way better than Google can. Take the example of Dell, who do a lot of direct selling & engagement work via there multiple twitter accounts. Dell uses twitter search tools to monitor brand conversation, such that it can respond to comments made about Dell, in real time. This is not the traditional search of Google but it enables a holistic view of brand communication.  

Tools such as Twitterfall facilitate search monitoring. I use Twitterfall to monitor talk about my twitter profile, my name and the company I work for, e-inbusiness. Through this I've picked up on people commenting about my blog and responded. I've seen people retweet content relating to e-inbusiness. I've been able to engage with individuals more closely than I ever could using Google search. 

And that is the point - the two are different. I love Google, the behemoth; Google set out its stall to dominate search and provides the best customer tool out there. If I want to research information and find websites, I will use Google 100% of the time. I can't remember the last time I looked at Yahoo or MSN. Yet Google does not enable me to nurture a personal social network and monitor my brand traffic as effectively as twitter. I can't use Google to send an important article link to my band of merry followers. However, I can use my knowledge of SEO to make sure the article I posted on the e-inbusiness website is accessible to millions of people via natural search. If I use the two in tandem, I get a powerful search & communication program.

And what about facebook, wonderful facebook, digital media's darling? facebook is definitely not the same as twitter. Again, there are similarities - facebook also enables networking and sharing of content. However, it is more commercial. facebook encourages content to be shared on profile pages, twitter via 140 character updates. facebook is a strongly visual tool where photos, videos, widgets, apps etc are prominent. Twitter uses apps to faciliate individual users but not to populate profiles. You would not use facebook to monitor who is talking about you but you would use it to share conversation across groups of friends. facebook is what Friends Reunited never became, a global platform for friends & colleagues to connect, catch up and then move on. facebook also has its advertising platform; it is likely that twitter will follow suit to monetise its audience, I hope not.

As a brand, would I benefit from one or the other, or both? Only your customers know the answer. The right question is who in my target audience uses these social networking tools and how can I use them to increase my engagement? If 2% of your audience is on twitter and 5% on facebook, wouldn't you like to have great engagement with 7% of your customer base and get them to spread the word virally? You have to use them differently.

My view is that facebook, Google & twitter are different tools, part of the overall communication mix and whilst there maybe some similarities, they serve different purposes. Don't have a face off, determine how you can use all of them to benefit both your website and your customers, then put the effort into making them work. 

What do you think? Do you agree or do you think i'm wide of the mark. Join the debate, social media debating is the new black.......

Another week, another interesting indulgence in the world of social. There has been a lot of chatter about Obama’s impact on the world and the inauguration of the first ever black President of the United States. Quite an emotional and awe inspiring scene from the US and a genuine sense of optimism. I have followed with interest the role of the Internet and specifically social media in Obama’s rise and rise to office.

From the outset of the election trail and lengthy primaries, Team Obama has used persuasive engagement online to encourage more and more voters to engage with politics and embrace the Democratic candidate. The website also helped raise a record breaking amount to fund the election campaign and the financial impact of the online marketing was incredible.

What struck me was the engagement techniques that the Obama team used. If you check the official website you can see a link to the blog in the top nav bar. As well as regular updates, video has been embedded on this page and the ability to login in to the MyObama.com community site where you can interact with other voters to get active in the campaign trail. The MyObama.com page is personalised and acts like a social network. Here you can contact other voters, attend or organise local events, send and receive messages and link through to your Facebook account. Everywhere you go in the site, there are clear links to donate or buy Obama merchandise. The marketing and merchandising is effective but not intrusive.

Another neat touch is the “Obama Everywhere” panel that appears throughout the site. From here you can link direct into Obama’s profiles on the usual suspects, from Facebook (557,923 posts and over 4 million supporters) to Linked In, embracing the corporate and business market. There is a real intelligence to the targeting and relevance of all the profile links and the content you can find on each. Brilliant.

There is much more to this site in relation to use of social media, such as the links to the Barack Obama channel on YouTube (1,827 videos and 155,750 subscribers). Take a look around. I’m not saying it is the only way to do social media but the success of this engagement approach is proven and now much spoken of. The blogging world has embraced this event and there is a wealth of personal opinion being churned out. Despite my cynical view of politics, I genuinely enjoyed seeing Team Obama embrace online as a key channel to engage with and influence millions of voters. They are more in tune with the world and the younger generations than the Republicans. The rest is most definitely history.

2009 will see social media hit the mainstream for UK retail

If 2008 saw the UK tentatively engage with social media tools, 2009 will see us embrace with open arms. The early adopters have ducked in, experimented and put in place creative, compelling social media strategies that have engaged their customers and created a lot of noise in the online maelstrom. There have been a few learning curves to boot and the occasional backlash. Social media is not a passing fad, the concept of enabling your customers to engage with your brand on their terms is one way to start building an online buzz. Some individual tools may be short lived but the concept is not. The experience online is becoming increasingly important and as the world descends into discount fever, those brands that compete on more than just price will benefit.

Take a look at what the more enlightened companies are doing in the social media space. Firstly, let’s look at Facebook. Very much maligned yet undeniably has had a huge impact on how people interact. There are 8.4m UK users alone and 67m active users worldwide. Wiggly Wigglers has taken the ethos of Facebook to heart and developed a branded page that offers excellent content and value to members, interacting with them at both the personal and company level. What it has done well is to post regular content that informs customers as well as posts that are light hearted, humorous and engaging. This has resulted in 1,063 members of the group who are all sharing information with each other, much of which is related back to Wiggly Wigglers products and service. The company has recently won the Global Dell Small Business Excellence Award. An interesting move saw Amazon acquire Shelfari (a network site dedicated to book lovers) in October 2008. This was a commercially cute way of developing its social media presence whilst giving direct access to a highly targeted audience who can buy books direct from Amazon.

You Tube is another interesting prospect for customer engagement. Hitwise data shows that UK traffic to online video websites has roughly tripled in the last year and You Tube accounts for 70% of that traffic. The number of branded video channels is increasing, with major retailers like Diesel embracing this channel for brand engagement. Diesel has 516 subscribers and 17,968 channel views (as of November 24^th). If creating a channel is not your bag, then it is easy to load videos to the site to showcase your company. Acquired by Google, You Tube also displays Google Adwords adverts on search results…. A nice way for them to get more click revenue!

One of the more intriguing sites is Twitter. This dispenses with the bells and whistles and simply enables you to give a status update (max 140 characters, aka microblogging) and to follow other members and be followed too. You have a basic update list to tell you what you and your followers are up to. Many companies are now monitoring the twittersphere [go with it….]for reference of their brand and then engaging with the twitterati where relevant. JetBlue in the US is a great example and their actions have spawned blogs on the subject. At the same time, these companies are tweeting [Twitterspeak for posting updates] to their heart’s content. Even the UK Government has muscled in with the kids, creating a twitter feed for No.10 Downing Street with 6,056 followers. If you’re feeling voyeuristic, check out twittervision where you can view the latest tweets on a global map! I really should get out more….

Similar to tweeting is the global phenomenon of blogging. In the blogosphere [detect a theme?] content is being generated rapidly by both individuals and companies. In the last 3 years, UK traffic to blogs has increased by 208%. With pingback and trackback functionality, blogging is increasingly linking people together and having a significant SEO effect. Is this relevant to your brand? Definitely. Take a look at what Ikea is embracing with the Ikea Fans site. I’m also a fan of the Topshop style blog; simple and effective and you can also sign-up to the RSS feed. The secret to a successful blog is….. well, I’m not going to give that away for free am I!

I’ve saved the peak of my enthusiasm for the subject of Customer Reviews. There has been increased uptake of the major UK providers Feefo, Bazaarvoice and Reevo and some retailers are also implementing bespoke solutions on-site. A good example of how to do reviews is Boden. If you really aren’t convinced about the power of reviews, take a peek at some of the stats. People inherently trust independent feedback more than your own product information. Providing customer reviews not only adds validity (and SEO friendly content) but has also been proven to increase order values and conversion. I don’t think customer reviews is a competitive advantage so much as a necessity.

So, social is the new black. I’ve not even touched on the more gimmicky but nevertheless popular aspects such as widgets, wikis and applications. For examples of e-inbusiness Clients going forth into social waters, take a look at New Look’s My Look community forum, and the Facebook presence of both New Look and Radley.

The eCommerce industry is itself using blogs, forums and reviews daily on sites like Chinwag and eConsultancy, so why have so few committed to social media for their customers?

I think we will see more exciting uses of social media in 2009 and we hope to help you become one of the converted! I’d be interested to hear your thoughts, so to embrace the social media theme I’ve started this blog which is also linked to Technorati. The blog starts with this article, so please tell me what you think. Are you excited by the social media potential for your brand? Do you have a SMO strategy? Or are you finding it hard to work out how your brand can be relevant in social spheres? Or can you share new information to increase my socialsphere? All comments will be welcome. 

Thanks

James