What does our future look like?

The CEO of Cisco offered up a motivating entertaining keynote, with a focus on embracing change.  We live for change here, you cannot survive in internet marketing without embracing and learning new methods every month, so you’d think his chat would be a snore.  Still his presentation got me thinking about the assumptions we make, and how to reach beyond what we know is happening today and anticipate what is going to happen tomorrow.  He shared a fantastic interview from 1964 by the author of 2001, Arthur C. Clark, with his predictions for the future.  He said maybe the world would not exist (meaning we would live virtually.  That we would be able to work from anywhere, even Tahiti or Bali. Imagine that!   So what is our future going to look like in 20 years? Visualize it and fit your business into it .  Is video going to be huge? Yes.  Is mobile taking over? Yes.  Be ready for that.

Social Media takeaway from ITS 2011

The social media panel gave a basic overview, but some productive takeaways are about using Linked In more, especially for a B2B business. People tend to discuss social media as Twitter and Facebook, but Linked In is a tremendous resource for reaching businesses and often overlooked. It’s not as important for all business models, but spend a few minutes evaluating if this is a missed opportunity for you.

• Have all employees update their profiles.
• Set up your company page.
• Regularly update status, even just to share a new blog post.
• Join groups and PARTICIPATE in them.
• Connect Linked In with your Slideshare account if you have one.
• Participate in Linked In Answers.

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However, in today’s dynamic world, standing still and cherishing your achievements will very quickly lead to dethronement, at the very least. That’s why Baidu is looking to expand even further, especially when the number two Chinese website, Tencent, is also gaining ground, entering Alexa’s “world’s top 10″ this month, after surpassing Twitter.

Tencent is largest internet company in China, and, with Facebook being unavailable to users, it is trying to utilize the social networking niche to compete with Baidu. The “satellite” services that are being offered by Tencent are very similar to the stated above Baidu products, making the clash between the two a “hot” battle for dominance. Baidu’s response, according to Robin Li, the CEO of the company, lies within expanding its own network of users and making it more “social”. In addition of fighting Tencent, this should also serve as additional income channel for the Chinese market leader.

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Instead, they want to turn Twitter into more profitable website. And the best way to ear money for an internet website is, of course, advertising. Currently, there are three options for advertising on Twitter – Promoted Tweets (that look like normal tweets, but are said to reach not only your followers but a significantly larger crowd), Promoted Trends (advertising at the Twitter home page) and Promoted Accounts (Twitter recommends certain accounts as “worth to follow”).

The problem, however, is that every potential advertiser has to submit an advertising  request, which is then reviews by the Twitter staff and is either approved or not approved. The approval process is manual and, as a result very slow. Many small- and medium-sized businesses simply give up, unwilling to wait, and turn to other advertising options – such as Google Adwords and Facebook Ads.

Although Twitter is not going to remodel the advertising scheme completely, it is done the first step, reportedly increasing the “advertising team” to assize of 35 workers (a notable 10% of the company personnel). Their primary task will be to improve response times and also to contact potential advertisers – those who had previously expressed interest in using Twitter in their campaigns.

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Moreover, almost no users (less than 1%) use Social Media and do not use search, while the search beats the “search+social media” combination 50 to 49 percent. Only 45 percent, though, use search throughout their research with 26 percent stating that they only use search in the beginning of the process.

The study also shows that customer reviews are something customers are looking for – making the recently reported idea of “SearchReviews.com” pretty viable. 30% of the responders said reviews are the most important thing to them. Social networks were selected by 17% of the users, and video sharing finished third with 14%.

Notably, the study only researched COMPLETED buys. So, maybe social media is simply good at preventing future purchases? After all, reading a page of negative opinions about a product can drive you away from it, and sometimes the whole idea of purchasing a certain accessory can become obsolete…

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Notably, according to recent research, only 50% of the tweets are in English. It seems that Twitter decided to carry on its success in the Asian market as Japanese is the second popular tweeting language and Malay is fourth with Portuguese being third due to the tool’s extreme popularity in Brazil. However,  instead of addressing the challenging Chinese market, Twitter skippers have picked Korean as the seventh supported language (don’t confuse with the messages language, which can be almost anything, form Tamil to Hebrew and Arabic) in addition to the existing English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese.

The decision is based on the amazing growth rate of South Korean Twitter users (almost ten times in 2010) and the country being relatively advanced in technological terms. The relevant iPhone app and Twitter mobile for Android in Korean have also been launched, making tweeting easier for the South Koreans.

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Anyway, there are many others that wish to exploit this approach. The Russian “Vkontakte” (connected), Chinese-oriented “QZone”, Orkut (owned by Google and extremely popular in Brazil and India) are just a few of the social networking websites. With local social networks already present, the next step, it seems, is to create a more “targeted” communities for those who have specific common interest.

SolaMaps,  launched recently by Australia-based Stewe Edwing and his fellow green energy enthusiasts is one such an example. The idea of the network is to connect solar energy users all over the world, enabling them to share tips, ideas and experience with one another. By attracting more and more users, the site founders also hope to increase the global awareness of environmental issues. “You Don’t Need A Solar System To Join the SolaMaps Action!” the website slogan states. All you need is a passion for renewable energy.

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Pope Benedictus XVI praised the prospects offered by the new technology saying that “if used wisely, they can contribute to the satisfaction of the desire for meaning, truth and unity which remain the most profound aspirations of each human being”, and emphasized that digital communication is a form of sharing.

His Holiness also warned about misleading by creating a “fake” personality in quest for “followers” and “friends” and stated that “there is the challenge to be authentic and faithful”. The Pope invited the Christians to join the global network as relationship is the fundamental need of a human being, and concluded his address with Apostolic blessing to all those that “make good use of their presence in the digital world”.

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And here is another indication of the website’s growth: unique visitors. This is a statistic that keeps track of websites (really webpages) being accessed by users based on their IP (which is very similar to physical location). Google is leading the way since very-long-time-ago, with an average of about 1 billion hits a month, and Microsoftis is second, about 100 million unique visitors behind.

According to Geek.com, Yahoo! has been pushed down to fourth place in November 2010, by (guess who?) Facebook, of course. The numbers reported (648 million for FB and just over 630 million for Yahoo!) were supplied  by comScore, providing yet another confirmation of Social Media progress towards taking over the internet.

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Those who decide to use Facebook as part of an overall marketing system should understand that this is a very personal method of presentation. Your business personality will need to be closely tied to your personal identity. The vast majority of Facebook users expect authenticity if not complete openness.

Facebook as a digital form of you! If you and the others who work with you can grasp this concept you don’t need to be an Internet expert or a technology fanatic. Consider that some of the most valuable customers and clients are using Facebook. It’s the new community and the companies that aren’t using it might not make connections with their target demographic.

Think “Social Media”

Under the social media category you will find blogs, forums, sites that share videos, podcasts and, of course, sites generated by the users themselves. Facebook is one of the most prominent social-media sites today, bypassing MySpace. But in the ever-changing Web world even Facebook is just one of the important methods for online marketing.

If you are a numbers freak, heavily on statistics, graphs and charts to provide your marketing direction, consider this: More than 200 million people manage personal profiles on social networks. Millions more read daily journals and blogs on social-media sites.

Here’s the inside info from The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web (Tamar Weinberg 2009), “Social media marketing (sometimes referred to by its acronym, SMM) connects service providers, companies and corporations with a broad audience of influencers and consumers. Using social media marketing, companies can gain traffic, followers, and brand awareness – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

One of the key words in this marketing method is trust. Social-media marketing emphasizes the community, a collection of individuals, rather than the individual. Your focus should be on providing solutions and sharing what you know, rather than on controlling the customer’s mind with a carefully crafted advertising method. This larger process is considered “viral.” A Web-site viewer finds a nugget of information and spreads it. Others trust that person’s ideas and opinions on this subject. An entire community may adopt some of the better ideas.

Ideas and Tools

Some of the best ideas and tools for marketing your company or products on Facebook are:

• Profile page – the foundation for Facebook activity
• Marketplace and messages
• Events and activities list
• Notes, photos, blogs, journals
• Shared opportunities
• Polls and surveys
• Advertising networks

If you still haven’t grasped the idea of using social media to market your efforts, don’t worry. This is a fundamental change in the way we look at marketing and at advertising. Perhaps a closer look at some of the individual tools and ideas would help.

For example, the profile page is not only a place to start, an introduction of you and your business it is also the place where you can put your message in words and images. You don’t have to carefully whittle and trim your advertising message so that it fits a particular magazine, newspaper or radio station. You still have to give careful consideration to your message of course but you can speak with some passion about your brand and your company.

Consider this: People who use social media are generally browsers. They may come across your profile page (and your marketing message) through the viral network mentioned earlier. As they move from one Facebook page to another they will develop trust for the ideas and products their friends recommend.

The Community Idea

When this sharing gets a foothold in the online community businesses may start to see the power of Facebook groups. These collections of like-minded individuals are not only customers they may also be partners and friends who use word-of-mouth tactics to spread your word. *There are some size limits for groups but this may change in the near future. But you can create new groups.

Combine the groups concept with additional pages and you are well on your way to using social media for successful marketing. With Facebook pages you can customize your message and provide the customer or client with a full experience of your brand, product or service. When you have a fan for your custom page this individual can (and will) share the page with friends. It’s an easy, free way to build viral marketing.

One of the most important questions you can ask when developing your social-media marketing plan is this: How do successful ventures spread the word about a special event or activity? Let’s look at an example. In the world of rock-and-roll music in the 1960s fans of a band told others and the audience grew quickly.

You can do this with your company events or activities through Facebook. (It’s still done in the rock-and-roll world!) You can get the word out to hundreds, even thousands, of people. Facebook marketing helps you build a community around each individual event, product or service and this is just the beginning of how Facebook can be part of your social-media marketing.

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Using Facebook to market your business is one of the best ideas to come along in recent years. It shoulders some of the advertising burden and connects you with your customers. You have to have a personal Facebook account before you can set up a business account because business pages are created and maintained from within a personal account and has to be accessed via your personal login. If you try to start out setting up a business page, you’ll have to set up both at the same time, which is why it will ask for personal information.

Then, you have to become a fan of your business page before it can be seen when you search. But the actual setting up of your business page isn’t that hard. There are fields you have to fill in for the description of your business, your mission, how long you’ve been around, and stuff like that. What are the keys to having a good Facebook page that will serve your business well? Two important ones are accessibility and interaction.

The first screen shot shows part of the “Tips and Tools” page from the Facebook page of Nicorette, a company that makes nicotine gum for people who want to quit smoking. There’s an opportunity to share your story if you’re trying to quit smoking, and there’s a poll. If you were to scroll down further, you’d see that there’s a button you can click to get a coupon. So the page’s visitors have several chances to interact. The “Wall” for Nicorette has a number of sympathetic tips on how hard it is to quit smoking, etc., and visitors can comment and leave their own words of encouragement.

But not everyone has the kind of budget that Nicorette does, but you can still do a lot with a Facebook page for your business. The second screen shot shows the Facebook page of a business that sells handmade clothing and jewelry. It’s pretty simple. The Wall is used to post pictures of items for sale, and people can comment on them. The Boxes tab takes you to the page shown in the second screen shot. Again, it’s pretty simple, but as you can see there’s a link you can click to enter a contest to win a gift card. Links like that get plenty of clicks!

Facebook Apps

Once you get your business’s Facebook page up and operational, you can install various Facebook “apps” that will make it more interactive and appealing. You don’t have to have a lot of technical expertise to do this, either. They include social games and quizzes that you’ve no doubt seen if you follow friends on Facebook. While there are dozens and dozens of apps, there are a few top ones. First you need to know that FBML stands for Facebook Markup Language. You use it to add functionality to your Facebook page. The Facebook Static FBML application adds a box on your page where you can render either FBML or HTML to further customize your page.

You can use static FBML to add vertical navigation in the left hand column, which is familiar to most internet surfers. In it you can put links, promotions, and contact details. Add this app to your Fan page as a box, not as a tab. Then you add content to the box with standard HTML. In your sidebar, you might add icons or graphic buttons that link to other destinations your fans might like, such as your website, your blog, or your Twitter account. The sidebar will be visible regardless of what Fan Page tab your visitors happen to be using. When you’ve added your content and saved it, it will show up as a box on the tab marked “Boxes.” From the boxes tab, you can see if your HTML has rendered, and if it has, you can click on the pencil in the upper right hand corner and choose “Move to Wall Tab” to get your content to display in the left column navigation of your page.

People love contests, giveaways, and other promotions, and these are great ways to engage visitors and make them more familiar with your brand. The Promotions app lets you create and publish a contest on Facebook so that it is sociable and easy to share. Now, to use this app, you have to sign up for an account at wildfireapp.com. That’s because the content you create stays on the developer’s website. After you sign up and connect the app to Facebook, whatever promotions you create on wildfireapp.com will show up on the tab on your Fan page. You go through an easy step by step process to build promotions, where you’ll add dates, types of prizes, and entry fields for the entry form. You can also add stuff about rules and even add artwork to your promotions.

The thing about having your contest content housed on WildFire is that you can put it on other social networks as well, and even put it on your own website. Whatever changes you make to the promotions will update dynamically on all the locations where fans and customers interact with you. You should know in advance, however, that it isn’t free, even though setting up a WildFire account is free. A basic WildFire campaign costs $5, plus 99 cents each day the campaign is active. There are other WildFire promotion packages too, depending on your ideas an budget.

Here’s a great idea if your website includes video content. You can use the YouTube for Pages app to dedicate a tab on your Fan page to your YouTube channel. Again, this involves setting up a free account on involver.com. After it’s connected to your Fan page, you tell it the YouTube channel you want to get videos from. Your most recent upload or favorite video will be featured, and there will be thumbnails for earlier videos. The videos play directly on Facebook.

One of the best ways to get feedback on your business is with a poll. It also happens to be a great way to interact with your customers and fans. The Facebook Poll app is extremely easy to use. You don’t have to set up any type of third party account or anything. You connect it to your page and all the settings reside in your settings panel. You just set up your poll by stating the question and list multiple answers from which fans can choose. You poll can go on your Wall, on a custom tab, or in your left-column navigation. You can invite friends to answer the poll, and then they can share it. The results are right there on Facebook for everyone to see. Imagine adding a fun, interesting poll every week. You’ll give your fans a reason to check back often.

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