social networks
The Power of Social Media Illustrated Has Over 50,000 Views in 4 Days on Slideshare
Power of Social Media Illustrated – the power of consumers expressed through social media caused swift action by big companies.
March 2012 – Starbucks Frap Flap, using ground up bugs to color strawberry frappucinos
March 2012 – Kroger and Safeway pulled all “pink slime” beef products from shelves
Um, Google’s “Search, Plus Your World” Sucks So Far
Google’s “Search, Plus Your World” launched with some fanfare and with jilted partner, Twitter, crying foul. But the real proof is in the “pudding” and so far, from my own taste testing, the “puddin’s not all that good.” In fact, it’s downright spoiled.
In theory, returning results based on my own activities, photos, shares, etc. plus the social sharing activities of my circles of friends seems to make sense. After all, my friends should share similar interests, etc. However, in reality, this appears to be far from the truth.
Either my friends all suck at what they are sharing OR what I search for has very little to do with (or very little overlap with) what I and my friends are sharing. And I think the latter is more likely the case, because my friends are all awesome and I usually find what they share to be super informative and I always learn something new from them and the insightful curation they do.
So what is wrong with Google’s new personalized search, flavored with +1? And will it ever get better with time and more usage?
My current hypothesis is NO .. it won’t get better with time. Here are a few reasons why I think so:
– what I search for (what I need at this moment) is not necessarily what I share (what I think my followers would be interested in)
– news items and other cool information that is shared are things I “discover” through the curation of my circles of friends and I like to browse these things to learn; this contrasts with things that I search for at any moment in time, which could include things that I need now, gifts for other people, research for clients in other industries that I am not in. What this means is that those search terms and the sites that I visit don’t necessarily have any bearing on any future searches and what I am interested in.
– finally, among all my friends, I would probably only ask 1 or 2 of them for restaurant recommendations (in New York) because they live here and are known for their expertise in food; I would ask different friends for advice on digital cameras (@designerguy), keyword research platforms (@glenngabe), ad networks (@jonathanmendez), etc. you get the idea. So canvassing my entire social graph for keyword based ways to personalize search results is actually making the results worse (see examples below).
Search ( photos )
[Redacted] – I don’t need to see my own photos from my own Picasa, which I already know is there.
Search ( italian restaurants in New York – no quotes )
Search ( spend polarization – no quotes )
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5830229/people-look-at-google%252B-and-facebook-the-same-way
An eye tracking study of 54 users under the age of 34 shows that Facebook users and Google+ users read their homepage in the same way.
Both Facebook and Google+ users begin by examining the main column where all the content is located. They then jump around from the left, right and top columns as they scan the less important parts of the page. The amount of time spent reading each section is almost identical between the two social networks as well.
So either Google designed its homepage to match Facebook or all you geeky Google+ users are more like your Facebook friends than you think. [AllThingsD]
You can keep up with Kelly Hodgkins, the author of this post, on Twitter, Google + or Facebook.
FREE Customer Research and Why You SHOULD Run Ideas By Your Audience First
free research on twitter – twitter ROI
what CNN should have done before they launched their radical new design (which apparently they themselves thought was really cool, but their readers and others, not so much)
RT @bmorrisssey
Why your brand MUST have a presence on social networks
At first glance, I said false when I read “Brand Presence on Social Networks Trusted Almost As Much As Peer Advice” — but when I looked more closely, it read “most credible source for information about a brand.” This is significant because a “brand itself” SHOULD be the most credible source of accurate and up-to-date information. Even consumers are not always the best source or always have the latest information. And further notice that “a marketer” is next to the last on the bottom. Consumers want accurate and up to date info but they do not want to be sold to.
Consumers are good for “subjective” input on the quality and value of a brand’s products or services. A brand must be responsible for the accuracy of its own objective information. Formerly a brand’s own website was the best place to house objective information such as technical specs, nutrition information, etc. While third party sites like reviews sites are the best place to house subjective information like customer reviews, etc. Today, since most customers frequent social networks and seldom visit brand’s websites (they never did much anyway) the place to put objective information is on brand pages on social networks. Note that this does not mean a marketing page designed to “sell.” It means place “credible information about a brand.”
Brands Vie for Credibility on Social Networks
APRIL 2, 2010
Asked what source was most believable when it came to information found about brands on social networking sites, Internet users were most likely to favor their peers. But “the brand itself” came in a close second, far ahead of journalists, considered traditionally to be an objective source. Notably, users were much less trusting of marketers—a separate response from brands—and didn’t put much faith in a brand’s competitors either.
source: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007608
How to make a viral video – a 5-step guide
1. select a product that is a low consideration product (e.g. a song) whose primary missing link is awareness
2. create a funny and entertaining video that features that product or a key attribute of the product
3. [ contact us for the “secret sauce” of step 3 ]
4. continue to build the momentum and build further social amplification by real people (won’t happen if the content is not funny, entertaining, useful, or unexpected)
5. use analytics to determine how to further optimize the content itself to match what characteristics actually went viral (based on how people talked about it when they passed it along)
Examples of videos whose viral effects were successfully manufactured over time. Obama Girl; Lonelygirl15 Brea Olson; Notice the shape of the stats curve of the more recent lonelygirl15 video from 2008. It is much flatter, which is a characteristic of non-viral videos. This is after they revealed that the original lonelygirl15 was a fake; now they have to support the view count through traditional paid media and continuous PR to accumulate the views.
Social “media” is created – the total quantity, reach, frequency, and intensity are not pre-known
Social “media” is created – the total quantity, reach, frequency, and intensity are not pre-known. The “media” that is generated can be positive or negative or both. Extremity or “extreme-ness” is usually a necessary ingredient. Extremely positive, extremely entertaining, extremely negative, etc.
Oprah Winfrey KFC Grilled Chicken disaster, coupon debacle. Her reputation may have been permanently tarnished because she was found out to have been paid by KFC to promote the coupon tied to the launch of KFC grilled chicken.
Dominos was on the hot seat when 2 employees shot a video of them sticking mozzarella cheese up their nose and then putting it into the pizza.
Motrin offended the sensibilities of moms when they implied that a baby was a cool “accessory.” The blogosphere and twitter lit up with people taking exception to that.
Facebook advertising metrics and benchmarks
Update Jan 2014
Summary
Facebook click-through rates of 0.01 – 0.05% (Facebook CTRs)
Facebook effective CPMs turned out to be $0.01 – $0.19 (Facebook eCPMs)
Facebook average CPCs ranged from $0.05 – $0.25 (Facebook CPCs)
Other social media benchmarks from my experiments (Adwords, StumbleUpon, PayPerPost / Izea) can be found here.
Comparison of click-through rates for search ads versus display ads
As a scientist, I like to run experiments. And I like to make stuff. So my team and I made a few Facebook apps that solved needs that we had (a few samples listed below) and shared them publicly on Facebook to see if they were also useful to other people too.
I beta tested some apps with a few friends by inviting them directly. Then to get it out to a larger number of people, we decided to try Facebook advertising, the much-hyped, holy grail of display advertising on one of the largest and most active social networks.
http://apps.facebook.com/netflixr/
– visual discovery, share, and queue management interface for Netflix
http://apps.facebook.com/musicsamplr/
– visual discovery and sampling interface for music (Amazon backend)
http://apps.facebook.com/phreetings/
– create and send photo or video e-cards by drag and drop (Flickr and YouTube backend)
http://apps.facebook.com/visualfriends/
– visual display of your friends (closest ones have the most recent status updates)
http://apps.facebook.com/myfavethings/
– social commerce – I’ll buy what he bought; things I have, things I want
But what I found was eye-opening to say the least. Despite the potential of social ads where the social actions of your circle of friends could make the ads more targeted, none of the anticipated positive effects were observed. Despite the promise of mass reach, there was not the corresponding attention or clicks. And despite the use of demographics-based targeting, there was no statistically significant difference between different targets nor the control sample, running during the same time period.
What we saw were click-through rates of 0.01 – 0.05% — and the 0.01% often seemed like rounding because they did not report more than 2 decimal places. As a result of these click rates the effective CPMs turned out to be $0.01 – $0.19 and average CPCs ranged from $0.05 – $0.25. I’ve been running these Facebook ads for more than 12 months; and millions of impresisons later, there is no observable improvements to CTRs and thus CPMs and CPCs. But since I set up the campaigns to only pay when there is a click (CPC basis), I can let these run indefinitely because I am getting so few clicks, it’s not even making a dent on my credit card (which I use to pay for the ads).
detail of low click through rates of facebook display ads
Ideas for Facebook
In the spirit of openness, as an advertiser who wants to continue using Facebook advertising, perhaps there are a few things they can do to improve the effectiveness of Facebook display ads.
1. reduce the number of ads per page to 1 — displaying multiple ads artificially depresses click-through rates because users can only click on 1 thing at a time, even if they liked more than one of them. Displaying 3 on a page simply increases the denominator while the numerator does not increase — in the click-through rate equation: clicks / impressions.
2. make ads sharable – in the rare instance a user views an ad, it may or may not be relevant to her, but she may know that it is relevant and timely for a friend. By making ads sharable, she can click and send to a friend, who is very likely to find it useful and valuable, especially having been sent by a friend.
3. let users opt-in to ads in specific topic categories – when users are in the market for specific things, they are more likely to subscribe to pertinent news feeds, offers, etc. related to that topic or category. By giving users more power over what they want to see, it will also give advertisers more targeted and engaged prospects to target.
4. expand search-based advertising – when users search they are looking for something and are open to discovering something they didn’t know to ask for. So ads served up in response to a search is usually a lot more effective than ads served up simply when a page is loaded (display advertising). Facebook can serve display ads based on pertinent search queries.
Earth to Facebook… anyone listening?
By Dr. Augustine Fou. Dr. Fou is Group Chief Digital Officer at Healthcare Consultancy Group a group of agencies within the Omnicom family specializing in pharma and healthcare. He helps clients develop digital marketing programs or improve the efficiency and cost-effectiveness existing campaigns via advanced analytics, social marketing, and digital strategy. You can read more of his writing on digital marketing on this blog and follow him on twitter @acfou.
Revision 6/30/2009: Facebook Click Fraud
Excerpt from TechCrunch: “Click fraud is serious business on the big search engine advertising networks because the bad guys can make serious money. Sign up for an Adsense account and put those ads on parked domain names or wherever. Then all you have to do is start clicking those ads like crazy, using bots or cheap labor.” On Facebook, “advertisers are clicking on competitor ads to drive up their costs and drive down their ROI.”
“So the bad guys just create thousands of fake Facebook accounts with a wide variety of demographic information. This sounds like a lot of work, but it’s highly automated. the going rate was just $10 per 100 accounts if you supply the unique email accounts. Once the accounts are created, they use software to fill out the varied demographic information, and that software also manages all these accounts. The fraudster then logs in to Facebook via these accounts and views the ads that are displayed. The right competitive ads come up and Bingo, the software then clicks them. Facebook rules allow an account to click any advertisement up to six times in a 24 hour period, and all those clicks are charged. All you need is a few accounts to view the ads and then click to the max.”
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/26/facebook-click-fraud-101/
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/21/facebook-admit-click-fraud-problem-says-fix-coming-today/
Despite click fraud, the click through rates are still incredibly low. So if you subtract all the click fraud, is ANY advertiser making ANY money from facebook advertising?
Others have found similarly dismal click through rates from Facebook advertising
Source: http://www.friendswithbenefitsbook.com/2008/04/07/facebook-ad-click-through-rates-are-really-pitiful/
Facebook Ad Click-Through Rates Are Really Pitiful
April 7, 2008 – 5:03 pm
Quite by coincidence, I’ve encountered a few statistics on Facebook’s advertising platform. I thought I’d post links to the results I’ve uncovered, in case anybody is wondering about average CTR rates for Facebook.
First up, Rod Boothby got a click-through rate of 0.01%:
This week, I ran $105 worth of Facebook Fliers. That bought me 52,500 impressions. It looks like the flier bought me about an extra 500 site visits. That’s about $0.21 per hit.
Michael Ferguson ran a bunch of Facebook ads for Kinzin:
Click-through rates are abysmal. I was running the identical ad in about 15 different regions (you need to run them as separate ads to get the stats broken out), getting just over 10M views. Our average clickthrough rate was 0.06% (that’s 1 in 1513, for those counting at home). The best we did anywhere was 0.14%.
He later reports that the conversion rate was “at a pretty reasonable clip” at about 5%. By ‘conversion’, I think he’s meaning people who actually signed up for Kinzin’s free service. All of this stuff is contextual, but if visitors had to lay down money, the conversion rate would be considerably lower.
The folks at Valleywag report similarly dismal numbers:
Media buyers — the agency people who book campaigns — report that the college social network is a truly terrible target. They’re mainly students, with low disposable income, of course; but, beyond that, the users appear to be too busy leaving messages for eachother to show much interest in advertising. Facebook’s members appear indifferent even to movie advertising aimed at their demographic. Clickthrough rates, the percentage of time users click on an ad, average 0.04% — just 400 clicks in every 1m views — according to one report seen by Valleywag.
From AllFacebook:
Fred Wilson has been updating the world about his venture in Facebook advertising over the past week. Today, Fred posted and updated screenshot of his ad campaign’s performance and it doesn’t appear to be too stellar. For one of his campaigns, out of 10,080 impressions there were only 8 clicks. The average cost-per-click for Fred was $0.08 and the average CPM was $0.06. This is a less than stellar performance. This is nothing new though.
And lastly, from a digital student marketing blog in the UK. This would seem like a natural fit for Facebook’s audience:
Our most recent campaign saw 1.4 million page impressions delivered at specific universities – and only a 0.04% clickthrough rate. Ouch.
Click-through rates seem to sit around 0.04%, which is profoundly lame if you ask me. I’m no online advertising expert–it’s not really our thing–but I’ve run a bunch of Google AdWords and other contextual advertising campaigns. We regularly get click-through rates of 3%, and I gather that’s nothing special.
Here’s my theory on Facebook: it’s a silo. People visit the Fun House of Facebook, and conceptually treat it slightly different than the rest of the web. They’re in Facebook, interacting with friends, playing games, sending messages and now chatting on IM. As such, they’re really unmotivated to leave. Who wants to leave the Fun House?
We’ve seen similar results across Facebook. It’s really difficult to drive visitors out of the app and to your own website.
Digital Consigliere
Dr. Augustine Fou is Digital Consigliere to marketing executives, advising them on digital strategy and Unified Marketing(tm). Dr Fou has over 17 years of in-the-trenches, hands-on experience, which enables him to provide objective, in-depth assessments of their current marketing programs and recommendations for improving business impact and ROI using digital insights.
http://twitter.com/acfou
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Fbishing is the new phishing
In case snooping wasn’t enough, the U.S. government is also neck-deep in creeptastic digital impersonation schemes. The Justice Department has agreed to pay a woman $134,000 for stealing her personal information to set up a fake Facebook profile in her name so that DEA agents could catfish drug dealers
– they have no friends
– they have no posts, photos or other activity
– their favorites, music, etc. look like a promotional page for a company’s product or services,
– it is in a foreign language,
– the photo is of a hot girl (or guy) in a bikini
– the face in the photo is not showing,
– they have no friends in common with you
– they have hundreds of friends in common with you, but you dont know any of those either
– the only activity in their stream is friending other people
– they have fake names like “dokter nikki”
– they have thousands of friends
– the profile photo is NSFW
– their photo looks like a prison mug shot
– they use a picture of Garfield for their profile, have no picture, or a cartoonified photo
Once they are your friend, even your tight Facebook privacy settings like “friends only” wont stop them from seeing your entire list of friends (who become the next round of fbishing attempts).
Consider yourself warned. No more casual “friend accepting” and always practice safe facebooking.
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