Facebook to Serve Up Ads Based on Your Offline Shopping Habits

Facebook to Serve Up Ads Based on Your Offline Shopping Habits

Facebook will now be able to target some ads based on your offline shopping habits thanks to some partnerships it announced on Wednesday.
The social networking giant has inked a deal with data mining firms Datalogix, Acxiom and Epsilon that will apply their records about customers' offline purchases to Facebook's Custom Audiences product. Facebook is also working with BlueKai "as a marketing data platform to bring a brand's first party site data to use for targeting on Facebook," according to the company. Custom Audiences, which was released last August, lets advertisers identify Facebook users by their Facebook ID, phone number or email address. Now, advertisers can match that information with data from the firms, which was gleaned through shopper loyalty programs.
As Facebook explained in a blog post, the deals let advertisers target by generic product segment: "We will work with these select third parties to create pre-defined targeting categories on Facebook. Businesses of all sizes will now be able to target categories like "soda drinkers" or "auto-intenders."
According to Facebook, the change means advertisers can skip a step to identify an audience segment by its purchase intent:

For example, an auto dealer may want to customize an offer to people who are looking to buy a new car. To do this today, many businesses work with third parties to better understand how to identity and reach that audience. With today's updates businesses can now do this same thing by showing ads to people on Facebook who may be in the market for a new car.

Facebook also claims that it won't share personal data about users with marketers. As with other Facebook ad, you can also opt out at any time.

Four Smart Strategies to Help You Engage With More of The Right People on LinkedIn

Engage With More Of The Right People On LinkedIn


If you’re on LinkedIn, you’re a member of the world’s largest business networking site for professionals.
With over 200 million people using LinkedIn you need to find ways of building relationships with the right people so that you can make good use of this platform.
Of course, the first thing you need to do is to decide who you want to engage with: prospective clients, your next employer, strategic business partners, professionals in your industry etc. Once you who you want to attract you will need a plan to make sure you don’t waste your time and your efforts when you’re using LinkedIn.
Incorporate the following strategies into that plan and you’ll stand more chance of success.

# 1. Make A Good First Impression

You don’t get much time to make a first impression on LinkedIn or anywhere else. When people find your profile via a search or by accident they will look at your photograph and at your professional headline. In two to three seconds they will have decided whether or not to read further. You have one image plus 120 characters to inform the reader of:

•  Your role
• The level at which you work
• Your industry sector
• The value you deliver.

Here’s how I use my 120 characters. 

With your image and your professional headline you’re trying to show that you’re a professional person. You want to help the people viewing your profile to decide that they want to connect with you, to contact you, to read more about you and so on.
Spend time getting your message right and practise squeezing more information into your 120 characters.
You will be rewarded for your efforts.

#2. Use Relevant Key Words

Before you start writing your summary and the information about your career, your company and your work think about the key words you intend to use as you write your profile. You will use these words in the job title fields, in project headings, in your list of skills and expertise and in the text that you write – just like when you’re writing a web page.
Be specific. If I’m looking for an EU VAT Taxation Specialist on LinkedIn (and I recently sourced such a person for a client) I would not have found you, if you had just called yourself an accountant in your profile.
Likewise, if you describe yourself as an executive coach, I won’t know that you’re an expert in conflict resolution, dispute resolution and employment tribunal avoidance unless you tell me.
LinkedIn is the place to be specific with the terms you use about yourself and your abilities.
Write in the language of the people you want to find you. Explain, for example, that you help newly appointed executives to transition from management roles to board level responsibilities and include several references to what you do so that your expertise will show up in LinkedIn searches.
Use the skills and expertise area, too. Use key word terms that you hope your target audience. They will find you more easily if you work in this way. 

#3. Be Visual

LinkedIn is nudging us all to be more visual in our approach to using the platform, whether we’re producing company pages or working on individual profiles. Follow the advice.
Upload images, videos and presentations to supplement the text you write. This will help to build your credibility on LinkedIn.
You’ll demonstrate that you know what you’re talking about and that you can deliver. For example, if you’re a professional speaker, video clips of you delivering a presentation will underline your abilities.

#4. Use Updates Effectively

Even if you have a great profile and a fantastic company page, you won’t engage with enough of the right people on LinkedIn, if you wait for them to find you. What you need to do is to post updates that will be of interest to your chosen target audience.
Don’t simply post a link to the latest article in a newspaper or other authoritative source. Write something about the update. Offer an opinion about why it is important. Ask a question. Explain why you’re taking the position you’re taking in your blog post. Make the news story part of your communication. Don’t just repost something you have read elsewhere.
Don’t stop there. Use the “like” function and the “comment” function to show you pay attention to the updates of people in your community. Share relevant content on your profile and in the groups to which you belong. Again, make a point with your update. Show that you are an interesting person with well-thought-out opinions that are worth listening to. Don’t just join in the conversation. Start one, and because you’re on LinkedIn, make it a meaningful conversation.
…Finally
The majority of people on LinkedIn don’t use the platform well. Their profiles are badly written and they don’t know how build, or to engage with, a professional community. If you follow any of the strategies here, you will get ahead of a lot of people on LinkedIn. You’ll also be starting to make LinkedIn work for you.
I know LinkedIn works for me and for my business. See how you can use it to help you. Which of these strategies do you think will help you to make a big impact on LinkedIn quickly? You’re welcome to share your thoughts and your plans below.

20 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Use Social Media

20 Reasons Why You Shouldn't Use Social Media

Social media marketing for business is new and not for everyone. It is being implemented by the innovators and the early adopters that love to lead the pack. It is also a very different way of communicating your brands message and with that comes challenges, opportunities and threats.
There is also the joy of learning new ways of marketing, with that there is often the accompanying pain of mistakes that comes along for the ride.
So maybe you should not use social media because it is not for you just yet!

Here are 20 reasons not to use social media

1. You are a traditionalist and value the “good old days”
2. You don’t want to be found
3. You don’t want to be heard
4. You have shares in the “Yellow Pages”
5. You like spending thousands on media you can’t measure
6. You highly value your perceived privacy
7. You don’t want to hear what your customers are saying
8. You don’t want any new customers as you are already too busy
9. You’re afraid people might say nasty things about you
10. You want to give your competition a head start
11. It’s a waste of your valuable time
12. Because its only a fad and it will go away
13. I like to keep things simple and it’s all a bit complex with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and all that stuff
14. I am a real person and I don’t believe in those fake online social networks
15. Social media sites are largely populated with people who have nothing better to do with their time
16. Social media is at an evolutionary stage I will wait until it is more mature
17. I don’t want to be overexposed
18. If I subscribe or join I will be spammed
19. There is something better around the corner, I can afford to wait
20. Social media will reduce real face to face opportunities because I would waste my time online

Are there any other reasons you shouldn’t use social media?

5 New Ways to Improve Your Facebook EdgeRank

5 New Ways to Improve Your Facebook EdgeRank

1. Post Photos

The Facebook news feed algorithm appears to be calculated both per fan and per type of post. That means a person might see Coca-Cola’s photo posts, but not the company's link posts. There are six post types: a text-only status update, a photo, a link, a video, a platform post, and a question. The first four are the most commonly used.

After some research, its clear that a Facebook page gets more fan engagement from photos than links, statuses, or videos. In fact, photos get as much as twenty times more engagement. So, even when you need to post a link to your website, you should post a photo with that link. You might also consider posting a thumbnail of your video and a link to the video, rather than featuring the video itself. To do that, enter the status update and link first, then hit the x to cancel the video preview, then click on "photo/video" and choose the image file you want to attach.
Posting everything with an image will increase the percent of fans you reach. In all these cases, your status and link will show up above the image. My experiments show that you can get a good amount of clicks on links above photos. For example, one post (also amplified by sponsored story ads) reached 114, 434 people and engaged 619 people (0.5% of reach), while the link received 311 clicks (0.27% of reach and half the engaged users).
You can get creative with your message by taking things that might have started as status updates, and adding the same message into an image. Someecards is a popular and funny e-card website, and it allows you to create your own. Just choose a background color and one of their line drawings, then add your text. You can save the image and post it on your Facebook page. Do this manually to make sure it’s a photo post-type. A great example of this comes from The American Heart Association. They used a card to humorously promote children eating vegetables.

It’s not the funniest image you’ve ever seen, but many big organizations can’t be as edgy as others. It’s better than no humor at all. As you can see, it got a good amount of shares. You can also use memegenerator.net to glom onto some of the latest and more edgy memes, or even use Photoshop to make it yourself.

2. Create Photo Albums

The World Health Organization’s Women Create Life program aims to improve women’s rights internationally. One way they do this is by creating great photo posts or great photo albums like the one below.
In the last month, out of 11 posts the organization created, three of the top four most-viewed posts were photo albums. Photo albums show one big photo and several smaller ones. They look different from other posts in people’s news feeds, so they get attention. People click in to see all the photos. This gives you an advantage over all the other people and pages you’re competing with for your fans’ attention. Also, although Facebook hasn’t confirmed this, clicks on links or into photo albums probably impact EdgeRank to some degree.

3. Write More Text

Women Create Life takes a magazine approach to its posts. The organization doesn’t use a separate website. Instead, they put all their text into the posts. Sometimes that's as much as 800 words (the current limit is 5,000 characters).
As a result, there is always a “see more” link to click to read the rest of the text. Women Create Life also added a Spanish translation at the end of each post. According to Facebook, clicks on “see more” are counted as a consumption under the “other consumptions” category.
Again, this may feed into EdgeRank, although Facebook has not confirmed it. Either way, this approach also helps followers to see you've put significant time into your posts, which can lead to more shares.

4. Push Your Network to New Posts

Can you front-load engagement to convince the news feed algorithm to show the post to a larger audience? It's hard to say how much impact doing this would have, but here’s how you do it:

• 1. Go to the photos section of your Facebook page and upload an image.
• 2. There is a "post" button at the bottom, but you can change the album name and just exit the tab once it has uploaded the image.
• 3. Go back to photos, you'll see the image there.
• 4. Copy the photo URL, or look for the URL they give you on the album page.
• 5. Promote the album and/or photo via Twitter, email, LinkedIn, and any other distribution networks you have in place.
• 6. Take this even further by spending some money on the post. Either promote the post directly, or create a sponsored story in your Facebook ads to increase visibility and likes early on. After you have some likes and comments, post it out to your news feed, too. To do that just go to the album and upload a new image, and it will prompt you to post out.
  If you keep adding a new image, it lets you publish each time. So seed the album with two photos, promote, then add more, then publish. Because you start off with extra engagement, it spikes the post. If you leverage your entire distribution network, this may increase your reach. The more people interact with a post, the more of your fans Facebook shows it to. Every post has a lifespan, and you have more posts you want to get out, so getting more engagement early is key.
  

  5. Use Post Targeting

  The new post-targeting feature, still being rolled out to all Facebook pages, allows you to segment your fans by criteria previously only available to advertisers. This includes age, gender, interested in (likes), relationship status, all education information, workplace, plus the old options like language, country, state, and city.
  You can use post-targeting to your advantage in a couple of ways. First, you can target a post to the segments of your fans most likely to interact with it. The more tarted you get, the fewer people you'll reach, but a higher percentage of the people you do reach will engage. If there’s someone who wasn’t that into your page, but really likes the topic you posted on, and ten of their friends comment on a particular post that hits that interest or demographic, then EdgeRank shows your page to that person. It’s like a snowball that picks up momentum and just keeps rolling because it’s so concentrated.
  Second, you can divide your audience up and release multiple posts at one time. This content customization increases your chance of getting more people in each fan subgroup to see and engage with your posts.
  

How To Make The Most Of Mobile Local Search

Brands have a lot to gain by embracing geolocation based mobile strategies — and you don't have to be a big box retailer to benefit from doing so.
Companies are still trying to figure out how to best approach mobile local search by connecting online consumers to nearby businesses and boosting traffic to the physical store.
Geolocation is nothing new, but as mobile wallet and payment options hit the mainstream, business will try to gain recognition in local searches more than ever before.
"The companies that might target mobile-local searchers are not necessarily companies that are doing a great job being found on traditional web," says Cindy Krum, CEO and founder of marketing and SEO firm Mobile Moxie. "Since mobile-local search is much more about driving foot traffic into a physical location, it is often the smaller, more independent locations that have a lot to gain by being found in mobile-local search."
Krum spoke with Mashable about the geo-search space for mobile, detailing what we might expect from the trend in the future and how companies can cash in.

SEE ALSO: Facebook Embraces Local Search Via 'Nearby' Updates for Mobile

Q&A With Cindy Krum, CEO, Mobile Moxie

How has mobile geo-search evolved in the past few years?
Mobile search, as a whole has grown, and so has location-based searching. Location has always been a very important part of mobile search, but as technology improves, the location layer of the search becomes much more of an assumption. That said, geo-search still has significant hurdles that are more related to hardware than anything — GPS and assisted GPS still run down the battery, and can be very difficult to use, if you are deep within a city, surrounded by buildings that block the signal.
What are the biggest trends you are seeing in the space?
Some of the things marketers tried in the early days of geo-mobile marketing did not work out, such as bluecasting mobile messages. The replacement people are talking about is called geo-fencing, which is similar but avoids some of the technical difficulties and the need for recipients to have their bluetooth turned on.
The problems with using geo-fencing for marketing are unfortunately similar — it generally requires an app to already be installed on the phone and for the location services to be turned on, which many people avoid to save battery life. There is also a good chance that marketers will initially take this kind of communication too far, with un-compelling, un-targeted, bland marketing messages that are more of an annoyance than a benefit.
How are brands using this to reach their audience?
Big brands with smart marketing teams are using Google's tools to ensure that all their locations are listed with the correct addresses and phone numbers, and sometimes even a picture of the location. At the next level are the brands that are using Facebook to target fans by their geography with news about specific locations, such as grand openings or special events. Brands can set up forms that allow people to sign up for email or text message reminders about the events, and then the brand is building out their communication lists for future marketing initiatives.
Why is this of interest to consumers?
Consumers care about geo-search because it generally answers an immediate need, rather than an ongoing, passive research process. When people are using their phone to find a physical location, it's because they are on their way there. Generally, people are planning on spending money whenever they get to their location, whether it's a store, restaurant, theater or somewhere else.

Reaching people with geo-search data is great if you want to find potential customers when they are ready to buy

Reaching people with geo-search data is great if you want to find potential customers when they are ready to buy.
What is the health of the mobile geo-search space? Is it growing quickly?
Geo-mobile interaction seems steady in some ways, and flukey in others. The fact that people care about the things around them keeps the need for local search steady, but how they approach it seems much more given to trend.
There have been a lot of location-based mobile fads that have been hit hard and then faded out, such as Groupon, Amazon Local or Gowalla. These things were not directly "search," but they did help people find things they were looking for, and drive foot traffic to specific locations. Even services such as Urbanspoon and Yelp seem to have gone out of fashion, mostly because they didn't add that much value to what someone could have gotten directly from Google.
Facebook made a local play that didn't work out well for them, but expect them to do something else with local soon. Since they are one of the most popular mobile apps and sites around the world, they are well-positioned to make it work.
What might we see from companies using mobile geo-search in the future?
As mobile wallets and mobile payments start to become more mainstream, we will see a resurgence in marketers trying ardently to gain geo-mobile recognition in search. These things just seem to go hand-in-hand, and they make the marketing dollars and attribution much easier to pinpoint.
Are there certain companies that might experiment with this more than others?
The companies that would target mobile-local searchers are not necessarily companies that are doing a great job being found on traditional web. Since mobile-local search is much more about driving foot traffic into a physical location, it is often the smaller, more independent locations that have a lot to gain by being found in mobile-local search.
Since the conversions happen in the store, rather than online, marketers will have to get more adept at tracking this kind of behavior with mobile coupons or other systems that encourage customers to communicate that they found the location because of a geo-search.

Use Of Social Media For Businesses On The Decline?

Let's face it email marketing is still the most effective with measurable results.
Direct mail is even more effective if done well, and that is mainly because you are engaging with people who already know, like and trust you and that is why they gave you their email or postal address.

Marketing and Measuring- May I note though that social media marketing will only work for your business if you do have a plan and a systemised way to do it, using split testing, proper structure for your offers and proper measuring. In that sense Social media is no different from any of the other, more traditional marketing strategies that are available to businesses.

Like other means, Social Media needs strategy- My experience of working alongside SME owners is that without support they seldom have any structure or marketing plan, and even less of them have a precise ROI measurement system in place, even when they do traditional marketing. Social media being new on the block, not to mention quite technology and time intensive, it will be the first one readily dumped by SME owners, straight into the "too hard basket".

The Fastest way to grow your following -The fact is, the potential rewards are very high thanks to the viral aspects of Social Media Marketing, and it's regrettable to see Business Owners missing out. But I also believe too much emphasis has been put on the "FREE" ways to do Social Media. Facebook advertising for example is still a relatively non competitive means of advertising, plus incredibly cost effective and well targeted if you know what you are doing. This is also the most effective way to grow your email database, and then use your email strategies to sell.

Don't chase social media sales, grow your list:  I keep saying it in my social media workshops: Stop wanting to sell through social media, use it to grow your email database, and you will get your rewards. To do so, use cost effective social media advertising to grow your list FAST.

Stats for social media marketing are very easy to collect and that in turn allows you to tweak your campaigns until you get the desired results. So if you want to have a go at selling  directly through social media and if your business and products are the right type, like retail, restaurants, beaut therapy etc..., you CAN get sales. I have done it with certain type of clients

Simplifying Your Social Media Strategy

5 Ways To Grow Your Business With Social Media, But Without The Time Management Nightmare.

I hear you! Anyone with in business at the moment is looking for results first. In other words, anything that is mainly about hype and no positive track records will be considered with a serious grain of salt. The Same applies to the marketing darling of the times: Social Media Marketing.

It takes time to wade through all the literature on how to make Facebook and your other social media platforms work for you...For FREE. As you will know though, unless you have someone doing it full time, and very well, your efforts to get more fans may be only rewarded by minimal momentum gain! So is FREE really FREE? Ask those who have outsourced their social media presence and have nothing to show for it.
So once again why not go back to a few basics?

Here are my 5 tips for today:

1. Building your social media Audience When FREE doesn't truly mean FREE, look at the real costs of social advertising. Facebook advertising is a good example. Just try it. You will soon notice that  most social media advertising for local businesses is dirt cheap and provides much better results, if not in sales, at least in interaction and positive engagement. Let's face it, even if they are not going to become customers right away, it's much better to have someone click "like" through your ad than trying to get the same result through posting 3 times a day on various fan pages and groups, running the ongoing risk of being tarred as a spamer. So don't waste too much time trying to build an illusive audience, get them to come to you...
2. Targeting and Analysing When you do facebook advertising, try "split testing". Facebook advertising has such a variety of ways you can target your audience and gives you such good ad statistics that you can use it as a testing ground and market survey even before you even tackle other forms of [more expensive] advertising. Once you know what has worked for you, repeat it on a larger scale and again measure your results.
3. When The Social Media Conversation Becomes Worthwhile. Don' t get me wrong, once you have built a good audience through  your effective advertising, including catchy headlines, relevant calls to action and intriguing ways to divert your prospects' attention, you are now in a position where it is crucial to give you fans good reasons for visiting your page again. This is where all the tricks you have been taught on facebook interaction become relevant...quizzes, good pictures, talking about today in history, posting videos etc...Now you can build the all important "Know, Like, Trust" that forms the basis of all business relationships.
4. How Does It Compare With Traditional Advertising? Once you have tried a few Facebook ads you will know exactly what I am referring to. A quick calculation willl show you very quickly that the results and the market research you can achieve through Facebook advertising would cost you thousands of dollars on traditional  media like newspapers and radio. But again the traditional ways are not dead, you can use them to reinforce what you are doing in social media.
5. Use Apps For Viral Effect. It is well known now that Facebook is very powerful in the way it can spread the word virally. The concept is that when someonce clicks on your event, your ad,  or puts a like on your page, their best friends will see that on their newsfeed, hence the word is spreading! However there are ways you can use that viral spread in an even more powerful manner. A way that has seen  this local page in a small New Zealand Town gain 200 likes in 10 days, and lots of sales!                      

 If you would like to find out more on how this lucky business owner created such a buzz on his page in no time, with genuine, well targeted fans, email us at eric@breakthroughbusiness.co.nz
All for now...