The Reciprocal Consulting Blog

For years now Google has encouraged advertisers to spend money on Google AdWords by giving away $50 credit to new advertisers. In many cases, if you set up a new Web hosting account, you got this credit from your host. Google is still doing this.

Now, Facebook has joined the party.

Starting next year, Facebook will give away $10 million in free advertising to small business owners.

There’s more to the story than Facebook merely wanting to steal your business from Google. That would be nice for Facebook, but they really want you to start advertising on their platform – even if you continue using Google AdWords.

Most small business owners haven’t figure out how to use social media as a marketing tool. But they understand advertising. With 800 million + users, Facebook has a huge opportunity for small businesses to tap into the company’s user base and that’s why they are willing to give you $50 in free advertising to get you to at least try it.

I think the opportunity is a great opportunity for small businesses. Google AdWords has proved to be a very effective marketing channel for businesses that have tried it. Facebook’s advertising platform is a different animal, but it’s an animal worth riding nonetheless. Pay per click is no longer a search engine advertising tool; it’s gone social.

If you’ve been keeping up with the Facebook craze, then you know an overwhelming majority of Facebook users don’t like the recent changes. Well, you might be among them. Here is a funny take on the those changes (borrowed from All Facebook):

A recent poll shows that 84% of Facebook users don’t like the new changes, especially the changes in news feeds. Are you one of them?

It’s important to point out that the changes Facebook made were to make their shareholders and advertisers happy. They weren’t for the end users.

That said, if you are a Facebook user, understand that you are a free user. In order to be able to continue using Facebook for free, the company will have to make money from somewhere. Advertisers want to be able to market their products to you. Shareholders want the company to be able to make money. Facebook executives are in the awkward position of trying to balance all of these interests.

So what about the changes? Were they good? Some of them actually are.

If you took a look at Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote address at the f8 Conference recently, you’d have noticed that Facebook is introducing a concept they call Timeline. This will transform your personal profile page into a timeline of your life. You can manage it any way you want.

Even better, Zuck says when you play the social games available to you through Facebook, you won’t get those annoying pop-ups that you see continuously notifying you of your friends’ activities.

While the new Facebook changes may be annoying many people, the people who are most put off by them are getting to use the service for free. It will be the advertisers paying for the changes.

It seems that social media marketing is now a foregone conclusion. If you’re not doing it, you have no future on the Web. You can even be doing it poorly and you’ll have a better shelf life online than someone not doing it at all. Thanks a lot, Facebook.

Speaking of Facebook, they’re supposed to make a big announcement today. Are you listening?

This kind of suspense makes me wonder a few things.

• If you’re already No. 1, should you be talking about revolutions? I mean, I thought Facebook had already revolutionized social networking.
• Is Facebook, even just a little bit, somewhat concerned that they might lose a few users if they go off the deep end and change too much?
• Does competition mandate a change? (I wonder if Google+ would say “yes?”)
• Will the average user like Facebook even better after the new changes, like it less, or about the same? And will that even matter?
• Could Facebook be preparing the way for businesses to be more interactive through its social networking interface?

There are a lot of questions that can be answered about Facebook’s coming announcement. They’d all be speculative. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens. I’m a bit anxious, aren’t you?

Is there a way to fail at Facebook? All Facebook thinks so. They published an article outlining 5 ways you can fail at the largest social network online. In a nutshell:

1. Don’t understand your audience
2. Don’t be imaginative
3. Don’t track your marketing
4. Don’t build relationships with your fans
5. Don’t hire social media experts

Of course, these points could apply to any type of social media marketing. But I think they are all golden.

The first step to success at any endeavor is to understand your audience. Fail to do that and you might as well not make any products.

Secondly, in this century, marketing must be innovative and imaginative. Social media marketing in particular must rely on a trigger effect: Make it interesting, keep their attention, and drive your audience to take action.

Tracking is another important aspect to any type of marketing. Many social media marketers seem to be of the mindset that tracking and analytics in social media is impossible. It isn’t. It’s also necessary.

And if you aren’t building relationships with your fans, then what are you doing on social media? Just saying.

Finally, let the experts do what they do best. You focus on your core business and let the social media experts focus on theirs. There’s no better way to succeed.

Did you know your tweets have a half-life of three hours? According to Bit.ly, you’ll get half the clicks on your tweets in 2.8 hours and then from there it’s all down hill. With Facebook, you have 3.2 hours.

That doesn’t mean those links are dead. It means you’ll see a gradual decline in links after that half-life has expired. The recommendation is for you to submit “second chance” links to allow other followers who didn’t see the first one an opportunity to see your links. That’s a suggestion made by Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land.

There’s another reason you want to send out these “second chance” shares as well. You want to test another teaser message.

Remember, what you say (the reason you give for your followers needing to click a link) about a link determines to a great degree whether or not a link is clicked on. With a second chance share, you can test another teaser and capture clicks from people who saw the first link but weren’t intrigued by your teaser message.

Either way you look at it, tweeting and sharing the same information more than once is becoming a common practice. I’ve seen marketers share the same message across multiple days. The reason they do so is because they get more click-throughs.

One of the most powerful competitive intelligence tools in your arsenal is Facebook. There are plenty of ways to use Facebook, but you should know that because it is the most trafficked website online nearly every business in the world is trying to get there to get their slice of the marketing pie. So there are plenty of opportunities to spy on them.

Here are three ways to make the most of your competition’s marketing efforts on Facebook:

1. Join their Facebook page – Many businesses spend all of their Facebook time managing their page and marketing through their page. If your competition has a Facebook page, join it. Check it often for updates and subscribe to their Networked blog if they have one.
2. Sign for their app – Many businesses are developing their own Facebook apps. You should use those apps because they can be a clue as to what your competition might be considering next. Many apps tools later become marketplace offerings.
3. Executive profiles – If you can get the names of your competition’s top executives, look to see if they have profiles. If so, send them a friend request. If necessary, send a friend request from a fake account or have your sister’s cousin do it instead. Be sneaky, but legal.

Competitive intelligence is alive and well, even on Facebook. Embrace it.

If you share your links on Facebook in hopes that you’ll drive more traffic to your website or blog, you might think more about StumbleUpon for that purpose. On the other hand, maybe not.

This is a rather lame analysis on the differences between Facebook and StumbleUpon, but Cynthia Boris is right on one point, at least. Facebook was not designed to be a link sharing site – StumbleUpon was. So what’s that got to do with the price of tea in China?

Look at this like this. These numbers represent an aggregate of users. StumbleUpon now drives 50% of social media traffic referral in the U.S. while Facebook dipped down below 42%. Guess what? Search engine traffic is still up around 60% of website referrals. When seen in that light, both StumbleUpon and Facebook pale in comparison.

Still, let’s get back to StumbleUpon and Facebook. SU has been a heavy driver of traffic for years. But most Internet marketers know that traffic doesn’t convert well. Facebook is better for branding. Plus, because of its social networking features, the ability to build brandable pages, and Facebook’s app development features, the largest social media website on the planet is much, much better for small business branding.

Besides that, you’ll have to do your own comparisons for your own website. Many website owners can use StumbleUpon very effectively. Others find great success with Facebook. Aggregate totals say nothing about your ability to leverage any particular social media website.

There’s nothing wrong with StumbleUpon touting its success. And there’s nothing wrong with being a little critical of it too. StumbleUpon is a good source of traffic if you keep in mind what it’s good for.

Social signals are becoming more and more important in search, and I mean beyond Google simply counting and weighing the importance, relevance, and authority of links.

For instance, if you are logged into Facebook, you can go to Bing and see what your Facebook friends like. On YouTube, or anywhere.

Google, in an attempt to face off with Bing, created its own social network called Google+. When you conduct a Google search, beside each search result you’ll see a +1 button. If you +1 an item and you set your preferences on Google+ just right, then your friends will be able to see what you plussed on your Google+ profile page, and you they.

But Google takes it another step further than that even. On the search results page, you can see what items your friends have shared on Google+ and you can see other items they have shared on any social network – including Facebook.

Are these social signals exhaustive? Not by any means. In fact, they are just the beginning.

Social search is in its infant stage. I believe social signals in search will become much more important and we are only getting started. It will be exciting to see where the search engines of the future will take us. I can hardly wait to get there.

Google+ has been getting a lot of attention lately. After breaking a growth record of 25 million visitors in its first month, some Internet marketers are speculating that it could siphon traffic away from Twitter and/or Facebook. But will it?

I suppose anything is possible. Maybe Google Plus’s privacy features will take some of Facebook’s traffic away, but I doubt that it will have a huge impact. Maybe its commenting and interactive features will lure people away from Twitter, but I doubt it will do much of that either. There are reasons to see Google+ as just another social media site to add to your current stream of meeting places.

But then you have to ask the question, How much time do I really have for social media? Can you manage a Facebook profile, several Facebook pages, a Twitter account, LinkedIn, and Goolge+? That’s a lot of media.

The best question for any social media site is “Where is my audience hanging out?” Answer that and you’ll be able to see where you should hang out too.

Google+ has a lot of value. I think its uses will grow and transform. And I think it will attract a lot of users. But I don’t think it will replace what we’ve already been using. But that’s just me.

I think it’s pretty well accepted now that it’s possible to brand yourself, and your business, through Facebook. You can use your profile, your fan pages, even ads, to achieve a branding effect with your Facebook presence, but should you?

There’s no doubt that Facebook is the most trafficked website online. But is that reason enough to use it for marketing and branding?

I think Facebook branding goes beyond mere traffic numbers. After all, you’re not going to reach every person who uses Facebook. You shouldn’t even try.

Like any marketing channel, your focus on Facebook should be in trying to reach the people who are the right target market for your product or service. If that’s a local clientele, then you should focus on local. If it’s national or international, then you should strive for that audience. Branding, after all, is only as effective as how well you identify your market.

Finding the right audience for your product or service on Facebook isn’t easy. You can’t just go up and search for people who are looking for what you have to offer. Instead, focus your efforts on building relationships with people. You are a person trying to build relationships with other people. In the process, you can identify the needs of those people and make subtle offers.

Should you use Facebook for branding? Yes. But do it smartly. Don’t be overly aggressive or obnoxious.

A new report based on a survey of social network users says that LinkedIn is the most important social network for 59% of the people who use them. That’s LinkedIn, not Facebook or Twitter. That might seem unusual considering that Facebook and Twitter get most of the hype.

But, frankly, I think it makes a lot of sense.

Facebook is still a place for personal networking for a lot of people. It’s where they go to connect with friends and family. Yes, they also can set up a page for their business and network with people to attract new business. But being that Facebook is a personal space for a lot of people, and it is the most trafficked social network in cyberspace, the threshold for a high ROI is rather low. In other words, there are challenges in turning a Facebook networking plan into a profit. But it’s not impossible.

Twitter has become much more of a micropublishing platform. And it hasn’t quite caught on with the mainstream just yet.

LinkedIn, on the other hand, is a business social networking tool. People who use it use it for business. Period. So it makes sense that it would deliver the highest ROI. What do you think?

We’ve already discussed how Facebook and Skype have integrated their services for the benefit of businesses who use both. But recently, they’ve announced that Facebook users will be able to use Skype video chat from within their browsers while logged into Facebook. I’m sure that doesn’t complete the marriage between the two services, but it comes pretty doggone close.

But what does it mean, exactly?

Currently, if you are logged into Facebook, you can click on the chat feature and chat with your friends right there inside your browser. While the particulars of the Skype video chat feature have not be disclosed, I envision is working in a similar fashion. Click “Chat” and you can engage with your Facebook friends in real time with video chat.

And now for the business application: Suppose you are using Facebook vociferously for your business. You have a page and potential customers can Like it or not. You have a habit of posting Facebook wall updates while logged in as Admin for your business page. One of your friends notices that you are running a special and up pops the Skype video chat screen on your computer. The “friend” has a question for you.

With the Skype video chat feature, you can field customer service questions and make sales calls while logged into Facebook. I think that’s pretty awesome.

Skype and Facebook are becoming more and more intimate every day. If you use both, or one or the other, then you should consider incorporating their integration into your business model. There are some very powerful ways to use them for your business.

First, the integration: Late last year, Skype announced that it would add Facebook’s news feed into Skype as well as include all of your Facebook friends’ into your Skype phonebook. Recently, however, Skype announced that you do not have to log in to Facebook separately to use certain features. You can interact with your Facebook friends through instant messaging with Skype, Like their comments, and comment on status updates – all through Skype.

If you can do all of that through Skype, then you can interact with customers, perform customer service functions, and even sell to your Facebook friends through Skype. It won’t be long before you’ll be able to make phone calls and hold video conferences on Facebook through Skype.

Here’s a tip: Add a Skype call button feature to your website. When you get questions for customer service, or questions about your product, from your Facebook friends, invite them to your website to call you through Skype where you’ll answer their questions directly in real time using voice and video. From there, it’s one small step to closing a sale.

In social media terms, your signal-to-noise ratio is the amount of valuable content that you provide versus how much idle chatter you engage in. Is your noise level too high? If so, then you can increase your social reputation by lowering the noise and improving your signal-to-noise ratio.

The question for anyone interested in improving their signal-to-noise ratio is, How? How do you go about this?

It might seem like a no-brainer, but there are two ways to improve your signal-to-noise ratio. You can increase the amount of social media content you produce focusing on value; or you can focus your efforts instead on reducing the noise. But to do either, you must first be able to measure your signal to noise. How do you do that?

Panorama has a list of 100 social media monitoring tools, but most of them have to do with measuring what other people are saying about you. What you need is some measure of what you are saying through social media and how much of it is valuable. This will tell you whether your signal-to-noise ratio is high or low.

Klout is one social media monitoring service that measures your influence across Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, the three largest social networks. But it does have its limitations. The first limitation is that your influence is measured on the basis of your interaction with your friends on those networks, but if your friends aren’t using Klout, then it won’t be accurate. You can invite your friends to join the service, which is free, and I recommend that you do.

But to truly measure your signal-to-noise ratio, look at how much influence you have on the social networks and compare it to the number of your followers who interact with you. Do you have 1,000 Twitter followers with only 15 of them who retweet your messages or respond to them? If so, it could be because the bulk of your followers don’t see value in your messages. What can you do to change that?

However you measure your signal-to-noise ratio, the important thing is that you increase your signal and decrease the noise. Are you doing that? How?

A hyperlocal news site decided to kill its website and focus only on its Facebook page. The owner/publisher shares his lessons learned.

What I find really interesting about what Brad Rourke had to say about his Facebook venture is in the very last paragraph. Specifically:

In closing, Sonderman asked Rourke how he would handle Facebook strategy if he worked for a mainstream news organization, and he replied, “I would look at it as a place rather than a source of eyeballs. I would have a Facebook bureau.”

In other words, just as a news agency would have a separate bureau for its satellite editions, it should consider a separate bureau for its Facebook edition. For instance, a Miami newspaper that also prints a great deal of news about Jacksonville might have a Jacksonville bureau, complete with its own editorial staff, graphic department, and ad sales team. Rourke is suggesting that news agencies adapt the same strategy to Facebook.

I think it’s a good idea, not only for news organizations but for businesses as well. What can you do to make your Facebook page stand out? How can you attract new business through your Facebook page? By making it an entity all its own.

This is a novel idea and one worth considering. Businesses should count the cost in terms of human capital and resources. If they can justify the expense, rather than try to drive traffic from Facebook to their website, maybe they should try to capitalize on the traffic they get in their Facebook bureau.

One kernel of truth that every Internet marketer must keep in mind is that everything changes. E-commerce, in particular, is in a constant state of change. And according to WebProNews, Facebook is going to be a big part of the future of e-commerce. But how, exactly?

Well, author Chris Crum offers several ways that Facebook could lead us into the future of e-commerce.

I really like what he says about offline currency. He predicts that Facebook credits will become a kind of offline currency where purchasers will be able to use a credit card or a plastic pay scanner like a credit card to pay for purchases with their Facebook credits. That’s pretty nifty.

Another possibility, and a variation of this, is that mobile phone users will be able to sync up a Facebook payment app with an in-store app that allows them to pay electronically simply by transferring their Facebook payment data digitally through infrared, or possibly through a QR code-type of symbol.

There are all sorts of possibilities with this. E-commerce is definitely changing, and Internet marketers who are serious about doing business online will have to keep their eyes on their innovations that occur and take advantage of the most promising new methods of doing business in the cyber world. Are you there yet?

First, there was Groupon. Then LivingSocial. And several other online coupon shops – some of them like Jetsetter and Ideeli focusing on narrow niches – popped up. Recently, Google and Facebook announced they were getting in on the action. Now, Amazon has entered the online coupon competition as well. Is that too many?

I don’t think so, especially since some of the older ones are niche sites. And Google, Facebook, and Amazon are all rolling out their offerings one market at a time. Slowly.

Facebook opened up in five markets last month: Atlanta, Dallas, Austin, San Diego, and San Francisco. Google Offers opened in Portland, Oregon and will soon hit New York City with local offers. AmazonLocal is starting in Boise, Idaho.

Technically, these three aren’t competing – yet. But you can bet that there will be a ramp up that will lead to all three – three of the largest Web enterprises – hitting the daily local deals category of online marketing very hard. I think they all have the potential to give Groupon, which recently introduced an IPO, a run for its money.

If you are a local small business owner looking to increase your customer base, or offer your current customers a discount to get them back in your store, then online coupons is one of the best opportunities you’ll find. And right now you’ll find them all over the place.

Facebook marketers, don’t despair. You can be effective in marketing your website through Facebook. Here are 8 ways you can be more effective using Facebook for your public relations efforts (courtesy All Facebook).

1. Post your content on Thursday.
2. Release your news releases early in the morning. If you wait until between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m., you’ll likely fall below the shuffle.
3. Instead of short URLs, post your content using the full link.
4. Place a Like button and a Send button on your website.
5. Get familiar with Edge Rank. This is Facebook’s algorithm, which is based on certain key words such as “today” and “limited time only.”
6. Facebook is one of the leading sources of traffic for 21 popular news sites. Be diligent in sharing your content.
7. Words like “most” and “best” are the most shareable words on Facebook. Also, words that explain such as “why” and “how” are shareable as well.
8. Facebook is the best platform for making a video go viral.

Keep these tips in mind when sharing your content on Facebook. Social media is becoming more and more important and Facebook is the leading social media site for PR pros. Let your marketing shine with Facebook.

Yahoo!, more than any other company, built the online display advertising market. While it was still considered a directory, Yahoo! started offering online display advertising and did quite well with it because, after all, it was the most trafficked website online for the longest time. Then, PPC advertising took off – primarily because Google was the first company to build a scalable model that addressed the needs of advertisers.

For the longest time, these two companies grew their respective advertising channels. Yahoo! focused on large corporations with big budgets who were used to advertising on television. Google focused on the small business and the entrepreneur who wanted to pay based on results.

Once PPC advertising caught on, smaller companies who were advertising with display ads online made the switch. PPC grew, online display advertising declined. Now, display ads are making a comeback.

And guess who’s leading the charge? That’s right, Google.

In fact, Google is now the leading online display advertising provider. Yahoo! is No. 2. And in a very close third is Facebook.

As AdAge points out, online display advertising revenues grew 23% in the first quarter of 2011, which means it grew faster than search. I think, very soon, we’re going to see a two horse race in the online display advertising channel with Facebook and Google competing head to head for the same customers. Yahoo! will fall to third and hold onto its share of the corporate advertiser – those companies who seem to be late in adopting the most innovative advertising models.

Who do you think will win this race? Will it be Facebook, the most trafficked online property today, or Google, with its lead in diverse channels and a proven scalable system?