The big change: Facebook Sponsored Stories will now appear in user’s newsfeeds. Facebook says this won’t be nearly as intrusive to their 800+ million members as it sounds. The ads will be marked as “sponsored”, they will be strictly regulated so that users will see no more than 1 ad in their newsfeed per day, and they will only contain content about friends or pages with which the user is already connected. This gives your ad better odds of being seen by those who would be interested in your business – the types of people you want to like your business page.

Also, Facebook users can’t opt out of sponsored stories, everyone’s getting them. They can, however, delete individual ads from their newsfeed, but that’s less likely to happen because the ads only show information about friends or pages they already interact with on Facebook.

Why this is so great for marketers: It allows you to get your content front and center on people’s newsfeeds, mixed in with all the organic content generated by people’s friends and page likes. Also, the ‘sponsored’ tag on the lower right hand side of the ad is unlikely to be noticed until after the user has processed the ad. If it’s even noticed at all. It’s a pretty small tag, as you can see from the screenshot below.

Another potential benefit for marketers is that this is another way to target Facebook’s 800m+ users, half of which return to the site daily. With sponsored ads appearing in newsfeeds and the right sidebar, as well as traditional Facebook ads, the amount of potential daily impressions for ads will skyrocket. This could go one of two ways for advertisers, 1. Ad prices will decrease because of increased supply, or 2. Ad prices could increase because the addition of sponsored stories could increase demand for Facebook ads. Time will tell which one ends up being true.

Either way, there’s bound to be the usual protests surrounding any change on Facebook, but we have a feeling that will die down pretty quick. Personally, I don’t mind seeing relevant ads on Facebook, and I don’t think it will make a big difference whether they appear on the right sidebar, or within my newsfeed. Highly targeted ads are nice because they inform me of deals or pages I might not have known about otherwise. However, Facebook will need to be careful about maintaining a good ad to organic content ratio. Sponsored ads would quickly get annoying if they began overtaking the newsfeed. I know I can’t be the only one that would think that way.

Often called social advertising, this method (based on a very old approach) takes advantage of the growing number of people using social networks (700m on Facebook, 100m+ on LinkedIn, etc) to advertise to people in a highly targeted way – usually according to their likes, geographic demographics and other defining characteristics. It can be a really useful tool to drive traffic to your website, and especially to build your connections because each follower or connection has given you their implied permission to keep in touch, and are genuinely interested in what you have to offer.

Here at Out-Smarts we always emphasize the importance of strategy when it comes to any social media or internet marketing project, and social ads are no exception. First of all, you need to consider your audience. Who are they and which networks do they use. This will help you determine whether to use Facebook, LinkedIn or another network. Next, you need to consider your goals and how you will measure success.

We were approached recently by a client of ours who had (as an experiment) run simultaneous ads on Facebook and on LinkedIn. The ads were almost identical but whilst the Facebook ad had a phenomenal click through rate, there was not a single click through on LinkedIn. They wondered why this had happened, and how the could track whether the Facebook ads converted to actual business for them.

There are two issues here, the first being the target audience. The reason they were more successful on Facebook is that their target audience is much more likely to be on Facebook, and using it on a regular basis, than LinkedIn. When you are considering which social advertising forum to use, it is always important to consider which tools your audience uses – doing so will help you cut to the chase and will make the likelihood of  success higher. If your product or service is aimed at a consumer or broader target audience, then Facebook is going to be better than LinkedIn. If your product or service is business-to-business then LinkedIn will be the way to go. If you have a large brand aimed at the mom community, Twitter might be your best bet.

The second issue is how to track the success of your ads. It is important to consider what your goals are from running the ads (do you want to build your following, drive traffic to your website, etc, and by how much?) and then put processes in place that allow you to do this effectively. If web traffic is your goal, Google Analytics allows you to track conversions from your Facebook ads (but that is a whole other blog post!). If you want to track sales, put processes in place to ask people who buy from you, or who inquire about your products or services, how they heard about you. What is important here is to set realistic goals and outline how you will track them, otherwise why bother?

Once you have determined which tools are best for your audience and how you will measure your success, the process of creating your ads is relatively simple. In the coming weeks we will be creating some how-to posts designed to help you do just that. In the meantime, if you are interested in advertising using social media but don’t have the time or wherewithal to do so, please contact us – this is what we do and we’d love to help!

Other posts about online advertising:

An Introduction to Internet Advertising

The Future of Digital Advertising – iAds and Promoted Tweets

How the +1 button works

When you use Google search, the +1 button will appear next to both organic and paid search results. When you mouse over the +1 button, its outline will color, and when you click the button it will shade in, as you can see in the example below.

You have the option to undo your +1 if you change your mind, or accidentally clicked the mouse on a result you didn’t want to +1.

It is important to remember that Google +1’s will be publicly visible to all people viewing the content you +1’d. If people are a part of your social connections – made up of your Google contacts, Gmail chat lists, and people you follow with Google Reader – they will be able to see that you personally +1’d something. If a person is outside of your social connections they will see an anonymous tally of total +1’s.  Remember to only +1 sites and results that you don’t mind everyone knowing you like!

Currently, the +1 button is only available in search results, but soon webmasters will be able to add the +1 widget to their websites similar to how they’ve probably already installed a Facebook ‘like’ widget.

Get started with Google +1

First of all, you will need to create a Google Profile, or upgrade your existing one. Once you have an up-to-date Google Profile, you will be able to see a listing of all your +1’s, essentially you will be able to ‘bookmark’ the page in your Google Profile for future easy access. From your Profile you will also be able to edit and delete your +1’s if you no longer want to publicly endorse that item. To see and interact with +1 in search results you will need to be logged into your Google Account while you are using Google search.

Google is currently phasing +1 into all their search platforms, starting with Google.com. If you can’t see the +1 buttons yet, and would like to, you can opt-in by going to their experimental search site and clicking ‘Join this experiment’.

The Effects for Businesses

CTR and Adwords

The +1 button is bound to affect the click through rate of both organic and paid search results. Users are much more likely to click on results that have been endorsed by someone within their community whose opinion they trust. Users will not only be able to see the total number of +1’s for that particular result but also the names of people they know that have endorsed that result. Also, Adwords users will soon be able to see +1 statistics for their ads. There will not be a way to remove the +1 button from your ads; however, Google has stated the +1 button will not affect the way they calculate an ad’s quality score.

SEO

The +1 button will have a direct impact on search results. Google has stated they are more likely to crawl, or recrawl, pages that have +1’s and store the title and content of that page. Furthermore, it is quite likely that results with +1’s will appear higher in Google search results than a similar result that hasn’t been +1’d. We all know that social media affects Google’s ranking algorithm, and +1’s are public endorsements of trusted and popular results – this is sure to affect SEO.

For more information about the +1 button, view the following video from Google:

History

Hardly a new concept is it?  Advertising has been used ever since mass production became possible well over a century ago  as a means to influence an audience with the intention of getting them to buy your product or service.  You just need to read Claude Hopkin’s 1923 book on the topic called Scientific Advertising to understand the importance advertising has had from a business perspective for the last century (and many of his points still apply today).

Recently however traditional media advertising (TV, newspaper, billboards etc) has faced a tough challenges with readership and viewer numbers plummeting, savvy audiences becoming desensitized to traditional advertising techniques and with the rise of alternative ways to influence target audiences (such as social media).

One of the saving graces for advertising is the ability to use the Internet to advertise online.  Online advertising has a few advantages over traditional advertising:

• Less Expensive
• Highly Targeted
• East To Track Effectiveness

There are a number of different forms of online advertising, each with its own pros and cons.

Search Based Ads

Usually associated with search engine  results ads like Google Adwords and one of the most commonly used forms on online advertising, search based ads are predominantly text based and appear as sponsored or paid ads when people search for a particular phrase or keyword online.With search ads you pay or bid on an ad appearing to a searcher (impressions) or when someone clicks on the ad (pay per click).    These ads are highly targeted because they appear only to the people who enter pertinent related keywords.  If you have a new website this is a great way to get noticed by the major search engines, and really useful if you are going after new audiences.  The key to being successful using these ads is to use very specific key terms that you know potential clients will use and to make the most of them in the ad text.

Banner Ads

Banner ads (or web banners), are for the most part, rectangular image ads that appear on another organisation’s website.  Pop on over the Entrepreneurial Woman’s website and you will see an example of a banner as right at the top of the page. One important consideration with banner advertising is that you should only post your ads on sites that are related to your product or service or that attract your target audience.  Banner ad costs can vary according to the traffic the site gets and can be on a pay per click basis or on a time based (i.e. monthly) fee basis.

Email Ads

Not to be overlooked, more people use email on a regular basis than use any other online tools.  Having a regular opt-in marketing newsletter should be part of every company’s online advertising strategy to promote its products or services.  Email advertising can also include buying placements in the newsletters of related companies.

Network Advertising

Advertising networks companies make it easier for organisations  to advertise on related sites.  Google Adwords  is an example of a tool that facilitate network advertising  and this is a growing area with companies like Tribal Fusion acting as facilitators between publishers of high trafficked content and organisations looking to advertise to their large audiences.

Pop Up Ads

Those annoying ads that pop up on your screen unexpectedly and won’t go away.  Spare your audience and don’t use them.

Online Classifieds

Just like traditional classifieds, online ads on classifieds sites are used for the most part by the general public to buy or sell and by companies that target consumers.  Craigslist and Kijiji are just 2 examples of online classifieds – they are easy to set up and free to use but before you do consider if this is appropriate to your brand.

Social Network Advertising

Many of the major social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter allow you to advertise and these social ads are the fastest growing form of online advertising.  The biggest benefit of advertising using social networks is that your ads can be aimed at a very highly targeted audience and you can get started with just a few dollars per day to test the waters.

Online advertising tools make it easy for companies to use adverts to reach their audience online and can be a huge driver of targeted traffic to your website.   If you are considering your online advertising strategy and would like more information about our services please contact us.

Related posts:

The Future of Digital Advertising, iAds and Promoted Tweets

The Future of Advertising

Have you ever tried to find a retail store that you havent been to before? You know roughly where it is but you dont know exactly which block or street its on. Off course you have, this happens all the time. The first thing you do is to try to find it using your phone but what if you cant find the store online? The answer is that you get put off and go elsewhere instead, to return (maybe) at a later date.

This blog post gives 6 tips that will help people who use the Internet to find your store but these rules can (and should) be applied to any business with a physical location.

1. Website – makes sure the address, phone number and opening hours are front and centre on your website so that visitors can find your location easily. Consider adding a page that is dedicated to helping customers find your store giving directions, maps and transit tips. The pages that contain your address should include appropriate META and keywords that people are likely to use when trying to find your store.

2. Directories – If you dont have a website yet, dont despair – you dont have to have a website to use Internet technologies to help customers find your shop (although it does help!). Instead make sure your business is listed on a few of the search directories with the biggest clout such as Yellow Pages and Yahoo Directory. Both of these are paid directories but they are worth investing in especially if you dont have a website and you want to help people find your location online. You should also consider listing your location on hyper local directories in your community – many of these are free.

3. Google Places – one of the best ways to help people find your location is to make sure it is listed in Google Places. Not only does it allow you to list your business, it also shows your business on Google Maps. Our next blog post will be all about setting up Google Places as it is without a doubt one of the most beneficial tactics you can use.

4. If you have a Facebook Page, be sure to add your location details, hours of opening and phone number to the information section of your Page so that Facebook followers can find you when they need to.

5. Make sure your business is listed on the location based social networking tools that allow clients to share when they are at their favourite outlets. By listing your business in these forums you will assist those who use these tools (and their numbers are increasing rapidly) to find you online and thus find your real world presence. Read more about location based networking in our blog post).

6. More people access the Internet these days by phone than by PC and people on street are sure to use their phone if they are trying to find your location. Consider adding a .mobi site for your website making it easier to view page contents (including location and directions) by phone.

By applying tips outlined here you can make sure that potential customers locate the address of your physical location using the Internet and thus find your store more easily: enabling the feet on the street find their way through your door.

Twitter Promoted Tweets

According to the Twitter blog, promoted Tweets are ordinary Tweets that businesses and organizations want to highlight to a wider group of users. Twitter will begin to roll out the Promoted Tweets platform in partnership with some of its big advertising partners like Starbucks.

Right now these promoted Tweets are limited to specific searches, for example if you search for “Starbucks” on Twitter today you will see the following:

Reaction to the announcement has been mixed, many recognized that Twitter had to do something like this in order to grow revenues others resent the move seeing it as invasive.

iAd Mobile Advertising

Apple’s hugely successful iPhone is becoming more open from a developers perspective making it easier for third parties and app developers to make money. A component of iPhone OS4 released last week, iAd is Apple’s mobile advertising platform. It will feature rich media ads which, according to Apple, are aimed at stimulating emotion and interaction. For advertisers, iAd gives them a new way to reach consumers a highly targeted fashion. Mobile advertising is nothing new but it is the first time Apple has openly embraced the model.

Google owns the digital advertising market and only time will tell whether Twitter or Apple will make a significant impact with their new offerings. From a marketing perspective these innovations give us new ways to reach our audiences in a highly targeted way which can only be a good thing.

Related Articles:

The Future of Advertising

Why free press release sites may be all you need

Online press releases are perfect for an SEO tactic called “link building.” Link building is the process of creating inbound links to your site from other sites. The more inbound links your site has pointing to it, the more popular your site is perceived to be by the engines. And that bodes well for your rankings.

An online press release will offer readers a story that is newsworthy and have – at the very least – your sites URL in it. Because your press release stays on the web for extended periods of time, that link is always working for you.

Readers of this blog know why I like PR Web for online press releases. I have also used www.marketwire.com and www.newswire.ca for releases that are geographically targeted with good results. But these are all paid services and for many small business owners, their rates can be a little out of reach. Plus, for best SEO results, online press releases should be issued on a regular basis – once a month or more frequently, which can really drive your costs up.

Start out free, and see what happens

If youre just trying online PR for the first time or you have a tight budget, you can still get solid results by using free services. To find a good one, look for these characteristics:

• Free to use – or low cost for additional features
• Releases show up in Google and sometimes on Google News (Pick any release on the site, type the headline in the Google search bar, and see if it comes up.)
• The releases posted on the site are newsworthy, not sales focused. This is an indication that the site has editors who care about which releases they accept
• They allow at least one direct link to your site

There are gazillions of free press release distribution sites, (A Google search of “Free Press Release Sites” shows 70,900,000 results), but you can save yourself tons of time and still build inbound links with just three or four services, like these:

• www.prlog.org
• www.24-7pressrelease.com
• www.free-press-release-center.info
• www.onlineprnews.com

• For $12US, www.onlineprnews.com lets you add an image (could be your logo) and three anchor text links, gives you listing above the free releases, tweets the headline and guarantees inclusion in Google News. Not a bad deal.

Did it work?

While free services wont provide a results report, its easy enough to see how successful your release was with these tricks:

• “Google it” – A day or two after your release, simply “Google” (or Yahoo) your company name, your targeted keyphrases, or even the entire headline of your release. Google will let you know which services, blogs, and industry publications picked it up.
• Google Alerts – Google Alerts is a time-saving feature that delivers results right to your inbox. Heres how to set up Google Alerts.
• Google Analytics – Google Analytics are free, and easily added to your site. Your analytics will tell you where traffic came from and even which keyphrases were used to point them to your site.

If youve got news to share on the web, but you are avoiding press releases because of cost, give the free services a go. Online press releases just may be the extra boost you need to improve your rankings.

Thanks again Louise for letting me post this for my community too!

2010 Predictions

I thought this would be a good opportunity to review our social media predictions for 2009 (to see how on the ball I was) and to make some new ones for 2010. (Clips in red are from last year’s predictions).

Social Media

2009 was the year when social media really took off, Oprah helped take Twitter to the masses and everyone and their dog started using social media tools. However, there is some disillusionment now as folks realize, after spinning their wheels for a while that, to be effective using social media, you have to have a strategy. 2010 will be the year that social media becomes an integral part of organisations’ marketing and business development strategies and not simply a stand alone tool.

According to Compete.com visitor counts to both Twitter and Friendfeed peaked in late summer (Friendfeed seing a rather drastic decline after announcing their acquisition by Facebook in August interestingly enough). I hope that 2010 brings added functionality to Twitter (that top layer I have been dreaming about that puts all that great content to better use and makes it more accessible). Brightkite never really reached the heights I predicted but competitor Foursquare did (arriving in Vancouver in the summer).

Geo Based Networks

In 2010 geo based social networks like Foursquare will continue to grow in popularity but more importantly, these offerings will become more sophisticated allowing both business and users to benefit more from their use.

Also on the mobile front, watch out for more digital advertising. In November I blogged about The Future Of Advertising, introducing offerings like ScanLife and Kooaba. In 2010 we will see these being put to use more and the promotions will become more interactive.

Whilst smart phone sales continued to grow in 2009, I expect that the iPhone will be less dominant as the Android really takes off in 2010. I got one last month (HTC) and LOVE it!

Apps

For 2009, I didn’t predict the growth of the smart phone app: the number of iPhone apps doubled in the first six months of the year. With Android’s growth and open nature, this phenomenon will continue in 2010 and beyond. So start thinking about using apps that can help you in business, or developing apps that can help you reach your audience.

Newsletter Renaissance

In 2010 I predict we will see a newsletter renaissance as marketers realize that: a) email is still one of the best ways to reach their audience (you have their permission after all) and b) blogs don’t replace e-newsletters and are often aimed at completely different audiences. I also think that we will continue to see blogs being used in ways other than for posting articles i.e. blog outreach, blog comments and community building.

Be More Social and Less “Me” Centric

Which leads me to one wish I have for 2010 with regard to social media. So many companies and entrepreneurs are still using social media to push out information that is completely me centric ( i.e. links to their own websites and not others). Wake up and smell the roses peeps! This is not the 20th century when pushing out information was all you could do. It is time for you to realise that the key to social media is in the name itself – being social.

In 2010 please interact with others more, build networks and relationships, reach out to new peeps, but most important of all, rather than taking a me centric view, change your focus to hone in on those you want to do business with: interact with these people, find ways to connect, to answer their questions and add value. Then you will see the true benefit of using social media as part of your marketing or business development strategy.

Here’s to growth, prosperity and being social in 2010. All the very best.

If you subscribe to Wired Magazine you may have noticed what they are hailing as the future of advertising – and they could be right (again). A number of adverts contained in the publication are smart phone enabled using an application called Kooaba. Once you’ve installed the Kooaba application on your smart phone you can take a photo of the ad, launch the app and it takes you to a specific landing page online.

The app is quick and easy to install but I did have to take 2 photos before the image was recognised. I scanned the Glenfiddich ad and was taken to their landing page. I had expected to be taken to a Wired specific landing page rather than the main page but with the approach still in its infancy and I guess that specific landing pages are yet to be built in.

Another example of smart advertising in use is at Metro News, the free newspaper, where 2D bar codes appear on the print version of the paper allowing readers to scan using their smart phone and be taken to a mobile specific version of the article. To do this you have to go to their mobile site text GETMETRO or download the app and you are off to the races.

Here at Out-Smarts we are always keen to try out new technology so above you will find a 2D bar code allowing you to access this article on your phone. To scan it, download the Scanlife app for your phone, and scan using your smart phone to be taken to this blog on your phone. Neat huh? And it took only a few minutes to set up.

It can be a bit convoluted from the end user perspective but change is coming soon with the advent of NFC (near field communication) technology which promises to allow you to interact with print and TV ads in a highly streamlined way.

Making the user experience interactive and richer may be what will save traditional media, especially since they rely so heavily on advertising revenues.

Related articles:

NFC Enabled TV and Radio

Our number one reason to be cheerful is that amid all this turmoil and recession we know that Internet and Social media marketing will prevail. Why? Because its more effective, less expensive and easier to track than traditional marketing efforts.

Now to our new media reasons of the month:

Caught the Twitter bug? Then you’ll be interested in your Twitter statistics perhaps. TweetStats reveals your Twitter habits. I’ve been on Twitter (@outsmarts) since March 2007 and it interesting to see how my interest waned then waxed.

Another great tool discovered this month is Ping.fm. Ping lets you post once to any number of social networking tools (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn and the list goes on). Very handy if you are trying to be everywhere at once.

Another most excellent discovery this month is the social advertising community AdHack – this is people powered advertising at its best.

Another great resource is HARO – Help A Reporter Out. Its a service that connects reporters with people who have content to share. Its a great way to share your material but watch out for email overload.

GivenGain is another site we came across this month. They facilitate giving. If you are a charity looking to set up a donations stream or if you are looking to give then check this out.

Lastly, WigglyWigglers - a fantastic example of how one company harnessed social media to the max.

Until next time – stay cheerful!