Your Apps Are Ready For Facebook Timeline (Are You?)

Facebook finalizes the transition to Timeline for brands one week from today (March 30), presenting a timely opportunity ito make your Facebook page the visual, storytelling hub of your brand. In case you missed the news, here are a collection of useful resources on Timeline:

• Courtesy Jackie Cohen at AllFacebook, an excellent Facebook-produced video on setting up and optimizing Timeline.
• Facebook’s Pages Product Guide
• A repository of videos from Facebook Marketing Conference in February…we especially recommend
• Our earlier blog post on the opportunity that Timeline presents
• A handy infographic from Edelman Canada
• And our detailed support forum post on the transition to Timeline

Many brands have already crossed over to the Timeline. Favorites to date are using the new page layout to deliver a specific and targeted brand message. Some use aspirational imagery to take Facebook users somewhere special (Starwood Preferred Guest, Pier 39, Kurumba Maldives). Some are mission-driven (TOMS Shoes, American Heart Association). Some use the larger tab/app icons to drive viewers to other social channels like YouTube (Sphero). Some illustrate their brand with adorable baby photography (Kristin Richardson Photography). Some celebrate a milestone (AutoCAD). And some expertly showcase user-generated content (Verizon Wireless).

What they are all doing is taking advantage of the greatly-expanded visual space- the new Cover image is 851px wide- for visual storytelling that simply wasn’t possible with the old Facebook page layout. And most of them take advantage of the larger Custom App Icon to draw attention to the four apps posted just below the Cover image. (You can integrate more than four apps on your Page and you can reorder which ones appear in the top row of 4).
For those of you currently running Votigo-powered apps, your promotions and tabs will transition seamlessly to the expanded app page layout (now much wider at 810px). You’ll have the opportunity to optimize your live promotions for the new Timeline layout by adding a larger image. Or you can choose to let them continue as you originally designed them- they will function seamlessly at their original size, even within the wider layout. Just make sure to log-in and optimize the order of your apps and, if possible, add Custom App Icons to draw attention to all of your apps, including Votigo-powered promotions.

And all promotions created starting March 30 will automatically be optimized for 810px- so have your new images ready to go. We will also introduce new design templates and an expanded preview so that you can experience your apps more completely before publishing them.

For a complete recap and details of Votigo’s transition to Facebook Timeline, check out this post in Votigo’s resource center.

We can’t say it enough: Timeline is a tremendous opportunity to step up your Facebook Page to tell the story of your brand and engage with users at a higher level, since they will experience your brand on Facebook just as they experience an individual friend. Get your page ready to go for March 30- and let us know if we can help.

Google Shares Tips Using Google Brand

At SXSW Google took over a couple streets near the downtown Austin Convention Center to create the Google Village, which was designed to provide an interactive "glimpse of Google’s view of the future." Among the many demos, discussions and musical performances taking place in the Village was a Google+ 'bootcamp' where product managers touted the rapid rise of Google+, showed off its full range of features and took questions from an eager audience.

Time to explore the Google Village at #sxsw twitter.com/AccessPR/statu… — AccessPR (@AccessPR) March 11, 2012

One feature that many may not be aware of is Ripples. Ripples provide insights into how links are shared across the entire Google+ network. For communications professionals, the tool could be invaluable as it provides a quick and visual way to determine who the influencers are that are talking about a particular topic. Ripples also provide data such as how many shares per hour a post received, which languages it was shared in and more. Here's an example of the Ripple caused by Whitney Houston's death.

To start exploring Ripples for yourself, go here and enter a URL. If you want to learn more, the Google+ team recently shared a complete breakdown on Ripples.

Google+ Hangouts were another hot topic of discussion. Hangouts allow users to quickly create live video conversations with other users. Within Hangouts, people can talk, share documents and videos and more. Brands looking to host a Hangout will do well to heed the Google+ team's short list of tips:

• Pick a host or moderator (and ensure that person is super engaging and energetic)
• Choose the participant selection method (how are you going to choose who to involve?)
• Outline your 'run of show' (having an outline of topics should keep things relatively on track)
• Create 'magical' moments (think about having surprise guests join after the Hangout has started. This is especially easy since the guest can be located anywhere in the world)

There you have it--how is your brand using Google+?

What Is Worth the Money When It Comes to Social Media?

For individuals, social media is great because it doesn’t cost anything. You can talk with your friends and spread your opinion without having to pay a dime. Unfortunately, businesses aren’t so lucky. Putting time and effort into a social media campaign can actually cost quite a bit of money when all is said and done.

Although signing up for the sites initially is free, there are many costs that catch businesses off guard. The worst part: Many businesses keep trying to work against the need to spend any money on social media. After all, social media is supposed to be free, right?

The truth is—just because something is free at first doesn’t mean it is going to stay free forever. In fact, it can sometimes be a good thing when your company becomes so successful that you have to start spending a little bit of money to keep it under control. This is an indication that your company is growing, and social media is no different. However, it can be tough to know what is worth the money, and in such a struggling economy every penny matters.

Below are some of the costs involved with social media that you may want to consider as well as some that are better left ignored:

Top 3 Social Media Costs: Are They All Worth the Money?

1. Scheduling tools such as Buffer charge for companies hoping to add multiple accounts.

No. This is probably not worth the money because there are scheduling tools, such as Timely.is, available that allow you to manage multiple accounts for free. If you are an individual, a scheduling tool like Buffer makes perfect sense because it doesn’t cost anything. However, a company’s finances are better spent on things aside from scheduling tweets and Facebook posts through a paid service. Although Buffer and Timely.is do differ in the way they schedule your messages, it is still probably best to wait until you are extremely financially secure to consider spending money on social media scheduling.

2. Hiring a social media consultant or agency to help you run your campaigns.

Yes. Unless you really know what you are doing and you have a large amount of time to work with social media, it is a good idea to hire someone with some experience. Knowing how to manage social media on a company level is different than knowing how it works on a personal level, and many business owners learn this the hard way. If you do not keep up with social media and do not have a presence on all of the major networks, this can actually hurt your company, making an expert really worth the money. Although I do not necessarily agree with hiring one person full-time to manage your social media efforts, it is a good idea to put someone such as an SEO director or content writer in charge of these efforts, or just hire someone part time.

3. Advertising on social media sites.

Yes. The major social media networks have users counting into the billions, so advertising on these sites is a great idea for any company. Social networks are also unique because you can make sure that your ad is being seen by someone within your target audience. Social networking already segments users into age groups, genders, and even religious backgrounds, so you will know exactly where to advertise. Visit Top Rank to learn more about how you can get involved with advertising on a social network.

The most important thing to remember is that social media is extremely important. If you are going to spend money on marketing campaigns, social media is something that should be put at the top of the priority list. Typically, your social media campaign will still be less expensive than your other marketing campaigns, so it’s not something to stress over.

Have you ever spent money on an aspect of social media? What was your experience?

Forget About ROI, Start Thinking About 'ROE'

Word-of-mouth is gold and social media is the vessel we use to promote it, but how exactly is it accomplished? As businesses we are always looking for ways to lower the cost of acquiring new customers. It’s simple economics, the lower the acquisition cost the more sales (and money) we make…simple right? Not exactly. As with most things it’s easier said than done, but if you make it part of your daily customer/employee interaction to give your customers something positive to talk about you go a long way to influencing a higher rate of word-of-mouth, let’s call it your ROE or "Return On Experience."

In this post I’m going to throw out some radical ideas. Radical ideas that, at first, you will discount as being just that, radical. Then these ideas will start to work on you as you mull them over in your mind, more than likely you will talk with your spouse about them or maybe a co-worker asking yourself and them what if? What if you did try what I’m about to suggest, what would happen? Would it produce rapid word-of-mouth, would it reduce your cost per customer, would it create you more sales? The answer to all of those questions, of course, is yes but I understand that there will be a certain amount of skepticism involved but as you will soon find out, the logic is iron clad.

Customer Experience

I’ve brought this up before but I thought it important enough to bring it up here again and that is: it’s the difference between what people expect and the actual level of customer service received that will dictate whether or not a person will talk about how their business with you went. Of course it goes without saying that if you fail to meet those expectations the word-of-mouth will be negative but if you exceed them, well …all sorts of magical things start to happen, such as repeat and referral business!

The idea is to go so above and beyond what the customer expects that you earn massive amounts of exposure on the level of Return on Experience (ROE) you receive from shocking your customers with your level of customer service. In fact, I don’t want you to think about it as “customer service” at all, instead think of it as:

Customer Enchantment

It might just be me but when I think of the term customer service I think about doing all the things that I’m supposed to do such as be helpful and friendly but when I think in terms of customer enchantment I think on a much, MUCH grander scale. In other words I don’t want you to think about how you can give good customer service, I want you to think in terms of “how can I enchant my customers?”

Enchantment: (en·chant·ment ) Captivation: a feeling of great liking for something wonderful and unusual.

Before I get into some ideas of what I mean I feel it’s important to remind you about the story of the boy and the starfish. You know the one, the one where there are thousands of starfish beached upon the sands where a little boy, one-by-one, is throwing the starfish back into the water. When asked why he’s even bothering when there are too many to make a difference, the little boy replied after throwing a starfish back in the water, “It mattered to that one.”

I bring up that story because I understand that what I’m about to propose would be impossible to do with every customer, of course you wouldn’t want to do what I’m about to propose with every customer anyway because then it would become expected and the whole idea is to go beyond what is expected. Another thing to keep in mind is that you are trying to work your way into your customers social graph (both online and off), or at least become a conversation within it. By influencing your customers to say positive things about you, you in effect create customer that create other customers, thus reducing your customer acquisition cost theoretically in half.

Scenario #1 Let’s say you have a customer come in to your dealership to purchase a vehicle for his daughters 16th birthday. He of course is excited but you decide to take things to the next level by getting the car wrapped for him, complete with a big bow on top. But you don’t stop there because you really want to enchant your customer so you then give to his daughter a year’s worth of free oil changes, 5 complete details and a $150 gas card.

Scenario #2 A customer drops off her car for an oil change and you learn that she is due to give birth to a baby boy in two weeks so you decide to go shopping for her. You buy her some baby related items, maybe a diaper bag and diapers, maybe some baby clothes or baby blankets. While talking with her you learn that she is in need of a car seat or maybe even a stroller so you picked one of those up for her as well and put them in her car for when she comes back to pick it up.

Scenario #3 You learn that one of your customers has had a death in the family so you send a big bunch of flowers to their house, along with a gift certificate for a free house cleaning and yard maintenance with a hand written card that says, “It’s always tough losing a loved one and we understand that there are always too many things to worry about during times like these. Attached you will find a gift certificate for free house cleaning and yard maintenance, two less things that you have to worry about. We truly are sorry for your loss.”

Do you get what I mean when I say customer enchantment? I sure hope so because by doing things such as the three scenarios above you go a long way to influencing word-of-mouth. Think about what will happen once the word gets out about the things you are doing for your customers and it will get out. In fact your customers will find a way to bring up the amazing things you did both in person and all over Facebook (and Twitter, MySpace, and others) any and every chance they get. They will happily do this because you made a difference in their lives and did something they would NEVER have expected. You now have a customer and a word-of-mouth generating machine for life.

Another Crazy idea

What if you empowered your employees to do this sort of thing. Maybe create an enchantment budget, think of it as advertisement if you have to but by allowing your employees to get creative with customer enchantment and then giving them the means by which to do so you are creating an environment that creates rampant word-of-mouth.

What ideas do you have when it comes to creating customer enchantment, how can you increase your ROE?