Category Facebook

Less Than Half of Marketers “Like” Facebook’s ROI

By Tom Polanski, EVP, eBrand Media and eBrand Interactive

Despite all of the talk about audience engagement, most advertisers, marketers, algorithms, and bots, miss one overarching factor, the human psychology.  The mind of a person, colored by moods, remembrances of events past, and fear of potentialities yet to be lived, can’t be predicted or relied upon. 

One person’s floor is another person’s ceiling.  One end-user’s idea of a compelling ad is another end users idea of garbage.  We are seldom a consensus. 

I believe search will always be king because it makes us feel empowered.  We are taking actions that we have decided to take to find something.  And that is a different psychology from the person who goes to Facebook to read their feed, and to update their status. 

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Facebook to Sell YOUR Posts to Advertisers

By Tom Polanski, EVP, eBrand Media and eBrand Interactive

“Hey Tom,
 
Look what I found! Didn’t you just say this would happen?
 
Regards, 
April”

Yes, I did years ago. I’ve written a few articles about this. Most people can’t begin to concieve of the different ways that Facebook can parse, package, and sell their seemingly innocuous walls scribbles. This is why I think Facebook is undervalued at fifty billion. The information that people willingly offer up is data stored on Facebook servers to be used now and later.  They’re still discovering how to monetize your data. Still to be developed technologies will offer new ways to for Facebook and advertisers to make money effeciently.

After all peopleare teaching advertisers how to sell us with each post, each alteration to the information page, each click, and each “like”. I predict that Facebook will prove someday to be the most valuable and powerful company in the world. It knows far more about you than Google or Apple ever will. There’s value in that. 

Click here to read the full article that April is referring to.

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Zuckerberg’s Facebook Hacked

Facebook said today that it had upped its security levels after company founder Mark Zuckerberg’s page was hacked into the previous day.

The high-profile breach occurred Tuesday when a message was posted on Zuckerberg’s page, CNN.com reported.

“Let the hacking begin: If Facebook needs money, instead of going to the banks, why doesn’t Facebook let its users invest in Facebook in a social way? Why not transform Facebook into a ‘social business’ the way Nobel Price winner Muhammad Yunus described it? http://bit.ly/fs6rT3 What do you think? #hackercup2011″

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Relationship Management – How To Build A Community That Will Spread Your Brand’s Word

Forbes CMO Network

Douglas Atkin, who wrote The Culting Of Brands: How To Turn Customers Into True Believers, observes that brand communities have mushroomed since he published his book six years ago, and social tools like Facebook and Twitter have exploded. But, he says, most brand stewards are confused about what “community” means.

“Being a fan or follower is not the same as being a member of a community,” he writes. “Membership delivers a whole higher degree of commitment. It also demands a whole other level of engagement from participants and, consequently, a deeper appreciation by the community leader of their responsibilities.”

Atkin then offers five different strategies for building a community along with examples of marketers who have done so. But the golden rule in the brand-community business, he says, is “BE USEFUL.” If you prove that you genuinely care about the people who are giving you their hard-earned dollars, “the social networks will enable people to tell others. If you don’t, they’ll also enable people to tell others.” – Read the whole story…

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Your Facebook profile: An open invite to crime?

We have been warning our friends, fans, and followers for a long time about the information they post on Facebook and Twitter.  Facebook was created a way for Harvard students to communicate, socialize, and track each other (my 94 year old Uncle has a Facebook page. Yikes!). Twitter was created as a way to send text messages to groups of people. People still use these networks as intended but now the reach is in the billions (factoring in that search engines spider and list your Facebook page and Tweets).  And along the way very smart people have figured out, and are working on figuring out, new ways to make money from all of the great, personalized content that you freely give them. The money isn’t in the ads Facebook runs by you, it’s in the content you give them, which they can, and will sell, to among others, the medical and insurance industries. 

Real Age is a great example of what Facebook could do. Real Age takes the user through a form of health and lifestyle questions and at the end gives that person their “real age” as opposed to their “biological age”. The user feels they’ve benefited from their participation. And Real Age has a form of medical information that they sell to the medical community at about $50 a pop. However, participation in the Real Age process is anonymous. The information you offer up is not. 

Below is a link to an article written by Helen A.S. Popkin that we thought would be of interest to you, Your Facebook profile: An open invite to crime?

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