Eager to monetize the large followings they had built on Facebook, many large brands set up shop on the social network for the first time last year.

Now many of those Facebook stores are closing.

A Bloomberg report this weekend pointed out that Gap, J.C. Penney, Nordstrom and GameStop have all opened and closed shops on Facebook within the past year — undermining expectations that the social network will become a major revenue driver for retailers over the next decade.

“We just didn’t get the return on investment we needed from the Facebook market, so we shut it down pretty quickly,” Ashley Sheetz, VP of marketing and strategy at GameStop, told Bloomberg. “For us, it’s been a way we communicate with customers on deals, not a place to sell.”

GameStop opened a store on Facebook in April 2011, and closed it six months later.

“There was a lot of anticipation that Facebook would turn into a new destination, a store, a place where people would shop,” Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst at Forrester Research, added. “But it was like trying to sell stuff to people while they’re hanging out with their friends at the bar.”

The End of F-commerce?

Still, none of this proves that social networks don’t have potential as sales channels. It may be that retailers simply haven’t harnessed the power of these platforms in the right way.

In most cases, retailers have entered the f-commerce market by importing their online catalogs and making them available for purchase in a Facebook app. The experience is nearly identical to shopping on their websites, with two major differences: 1) Shoppers can complete their entire browsing and checkout experience without leaving facebook.com; and 2) the Facebook apps tend to work more slowly.

In other words, consumers have little to no incentive to shop via these Facebook apps.

Others simply have not dealt in enough volume — offering, say, just one item for purchase each month, or discounting one or two items for a short period.

Although these efforts have generated a fair amount of PR buzz, most of these companies are losing money on these efforts because development costs are so high, says Maureen Mullen, director of research and advisory services at luxury research and consulting firm L2.

Or the problem may be Facebook’s competition. If spending time on Facebook is akin to spending time with your friends at a bar, Pinterest is more like heading to a craft fair, Forbes‘s Jeff Bercovici points out — you’re there to browse and to shop, and brands are finding the platform worth investing in.

Facebook, at present, isn’t built for that kind of shopping experience. But it could certainly build Pinterest-like tools to make it that way.

At the very least, Facebook has become an important traffic driver to retailers’ websites. For instance, 1.9% of traffic to Burberry’s website in September 2010 came from Facebook; a year later, 29.1% of site traffic was from the social network, Mullen wrote in an email to Mashable.

“[Burberry is] using the platform to drive traffic at a fraction of the cost of what it would have to pay on Google and other search engines. In addition a significant portion of that traffic and resulting sales is likely incremental,” she added.

Mullen also pointed out that half of shoppers are logged in to Facebook while they shop on third-party ecommerce sites, which lets retailers “capture the massive amount of user data Facebook has,” she says. Brands such as Smashbox and MAC are also incorporating friend recommendations within their ecommerce pages.

In other words, it’s too soon to lament the demise of F-commerce. What we do know is that replicating retailers’ ecommerce sites is not the way to go about generating revenue via Facebook, at least for now.

http://mashable.com/2012/02/21/facebook-brands-closing-stores-fcommerce/

With 845 million users, Facebook has become an increasingly useful tool for brands, and it’s important to have a strong presence on the social network.

Whether your brand is fully established or just starting out, launching a marketing campaign can seem overwhelming. But, it doesn’t have to be a timely or expensive process. There are several small and simple things you can do for your brand on Facebook. In fact, some of these marketing tactics are used by the biggest brands in the world.

Ready for your brand to get in front of the 845 million? Majestic Media, a global Facebook marketing agency, has come up with nine time-saving tips for marketing on Facebook.

1. See if Your Vanity URL Is Available

Before you launch your brand presence on Facebook, you need to make sure that your vanity URL is available — and that it’s simple and easy to remember.

Rather than going through the time consuming process of manually figuring out what’s available and what’s not, use a simple but powerful service called Name Vine. It checks domain names, Facebook and Twitter extensions in a matter of seconds to see if your desired vanity URL is available.

2. Use a Third-Party Platform to Distribute Social Content

Copying and pasting content, logging in from one social media network and logging out from another can be a time consuming task — but it doesn’t have to be. If you’re looking to push content to Facebook and other social networks, you can benefit from using a tool like HootSuite, which allows you to publish once and distribute everywhere. You can integrate your Facebook Page, Twitter account, Google+ page, LinkedIn profile and other social networks — all within one easy-to-use interface.

3. Use an Application Publishing Platform

For small and medium-sized businesses, social media budgets are nowhere close to those of global brands, which can afford multiple custom applications and promotions on Facebook. However, large budgets aren’t required to launch a lot of the basic applications seen on Facebook.

Services such as North Social and Pagemodo provide the kinds of applications that most businesses need. Also, most of these services provide a “freemium” model that offers some applications for free. Keep in mind that you won’t get a customized app, but you can manage the content and visuals within pre-developed apps that are available. This may be a good first step into the Facebook world if your budget is a main concern.

If you do decide to launch some of these applications, you should set up the following applications/tabs:

A Welcome Page: This should be the default landing page that welcomes a user to an application. Typically, these pages are fan-gated, meaning the person is asked to “like” the page to unveil more content.
A Contact Us Page: This is a great and useful tool for converting your fans into potential sales leads.
You should set up at least one or two tab applications on your Facebook Page, so users aren’t landing on your Facebook wall, but rather a page that’s informative, engaging and able to convert those users into fans.

4. Utilize Social Plugins Wherever Possible

The most underutilized (free) tools are Facebook social plugins. A new study from Gigya shows that users who visit third-party sites through Facebook Connect spend 50% more time on those sites. Furthermore, those users view twice as many pages. The numbers speak for themselves.

Aside from use on third-party sites, social plugins can also be utilized on Facebook apps to provide a deeper level of engagement, while driving traffic back to the application. Above, you’ll see the Facebook application Majestic Media built for Volkswagen, which invited users to participate in the next Volkswagen commercial. It was utilized to build meaningful conversations within the application, while driving new social traffic to the campaign.

It doesn’t matter how big or small your company is — leverage the social plugins on your blog, Facebook apps and on your website. They’re free to use and are a quick and easy way to market your brand or message through referral traffic.

5. Find Out When and What to Post on Facebook

If you’re looking to see what your fans engage with the most — and when to post it on Facebook — you can utilize a third-party service called Edgerank Checker.

This time-saving application grades your fan page and determines the following key factors:

Most effective day of the week to post content
Popular keywords that drive engagement
What type of media is best for your audience
How often to update

6. Use Facebook Insights

If you have to provide a report of Facebook metrics to your boss or a client — or maybe you just want to see for yourself — the best time-saving tip is to export the Facebook Insights data to an Excel spreadsheet. You can see which status updates performed best, whether your audience responds well to video and get a sense of what’s driving your Likes.

You can do this by clicking the “Export Data” button. In the pop-up that appears, select the data type and date range.

Once you’ve done this and downloaded the file, open it in Excel and apply a filter by going to the data tab and clicking on “Filter.” You have to make sure that your cursor is at the very top row. In the example, we’ve chosen the “Lifetime Post Total Reach” metric to filter by.

Once this filter is selected, you can quickly filter any key metrics in ascending or descending order, which is a very powerful trick when analyzing your Facebook marketing and engagement efforts.

7. Provide Local Content

Nobody wants to visit a Facebook Page with an enticing offer, only to learn that it’s not available in their region. Nor do they want to land on a brand page where all the content is in another language.

Here are some quick strategies for providing localized content:

Give your fans an incentive to visit your business by providing them with a recent, active “walk-in” promotion in their area.
Allow users to recognize that you are connected with their location by providing details and assets specific to where they are.
Geotarget your posts even if you don’t have multiple locations — you wouldn’t want to offer a walk-in special to your fans in New York if your business is in Los Angeles
When you have to target languages, Facebook allows you to make status updates for users with certain language settings. So, Facebook users who have French or Spanish as their default language on the site will only see your content that’s in their native tongue.

3. Once you’ve entered your specific targeting information, you can hit “Okay” and proceed with your status update, geared for that specific audience. It’s local and relevant for those language settings selected.
8. Create a QR Code for Your Facebook Fan Page

Setting up a QR code for your Facebook Page is a quick, simple and effective strategy for small or large businesses to use. QR codes can be leveraged on napkins, menus, business cards, billboards, magazines, brochures and other forms of marketing materials.
Esponce is one of the most powerful QR code platforms on the market, and it offers a free tier that’s typically geared to small businesses.

The process takes no more than a few minutes to set up and allows you to:

Create a custom QR code
Embed your logo into the QR code
Link your QR code to a dynamic URL — so you can customize and change the URL if you decide you want to later drive users to your website instead of your Facebook Page.
You’ll have the ability to view analytics so you can see how many people have scanned your code, their location and the type of smartphone that scanned the image.

9. Buy Facebook Ads

Buying Facebook ads is a wise, cost-effective solution that can help increase your brand’s visibility throughout the Facebook platform. Most people don’t realize how easy they are to set up or that you can buy in with a small ad spend. A budget of $50 per month would be sufficient for a small business to make some waves.

Facebook’s “Like” ads provide users the opportunity to “like” your fan page from any page they are on. If a user doesn’t click on the “Like” button, don’t interpret that as your campaign not working — these ads are relevant because they keep users engaged and informed with the latest in your marketing campaign. Think of them as a brand awareness play — just because they aren’t clicked, doesn’t mean they’re not acknowledged.

More recently, one of the best ways to invest in Facebook advertising is by leveraging Sponsored Stories. According to a study by TBG Digital, Facebook’s new Sponsored Stories ad units nabbed a 46% higher click-through rate, a 20% lower cost per click and an 18% lower cost per fan than Facebook’s standard ad units.

Do you have other tips for Facebook Marketing? Let us know in the comments.

http://mashable.com/2012/02/20/facebook-marketing-small-business/

When it comes to building an audience and driving traffic, bloggers are turning to social media with record results. Instead of relying on organic search or (gasp) IRL friends, successful bloggers know they have to develop a following on key social networks as a way to promote their brands and ultimately get more clicks.

Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon and now Pinterest provide the savvy blogger with plenty of opportunities to attract new readers and engage with regulars, but it can be overwhelming if you’re new to social media or if you only use it for fun.

Here are 10 tips to help bloggers navigate the increasingly complex world of social media — while still making time to write content.

1. Display your social media icons prominently toward the top of your website.

Make it as simple as possible for your blog readers to connect with you on various social media platforms. They shouldn’t have to hunt around to find your Twitter handle, but should be able to click on a button and be taken right to your profile. Bonus points if your social media icons reflect the overall design or feel of your blog.

2. Every blog should have its own Facebook Page.

Even with Facebook’s new subscription feature, there’s still merit to giving your blog its own space on Facebook. It’s nice to be able to post a link every time you publish something new, and not have to worry about annoying your friends. Plus, readers who don’t your name but know the name of your blog can search for it on Facebook. Show your fans some love on your blog by using the Facebook social plugin, which makes it easy to convert readers to fans.

3. Generate traffic with StumbleUpon.

This “recommendation engine” serves as an alternate browser where users click through pages that their SU friends and SU itself have recommended. You can submit your own blog posts into the system, but it works best if you also share them with your SU friends and accept their shares back. Like most social platforms, you need to have a strong following to get good results. While people are still trying to figure out what makes SU content go viral, many bloggers have seen terrific, albeit fleeting, traffic spikes through the service.

4. Import your RSS feed onto your LinkedIn profile using its Blog Link application.

As long as your blog somewhat pertains to your professional goals, you should be showcasing it on LinkedIn. List it as one of your three websites in your profile, where it will be labeled “Blog.” However, by using the Blog Link application, your most recent posts will display right on your profile.

5. Pinterest is the hot new frontier for bloggers.

Pinterest is the cool new kid, and all of the bloggers are scrambling to establish a presence there. Pin your best photos onto themed boards with links to a relevant blog post. Blogs with strong visual content, like fashion, food, design, crafts and travel, are a natural fit. Infographics will also do quite well. Don’t forget to add a Pinterest plugin (like the Pinterest “Pin It” Button for WordPress users) to make it easy for your readers to share your content on their Pinterest boards.

6. Use link shorteners even when you don’t have to.

Twitter will now shorten your link for you, and the length of your link doesn’t matter on Facebook and Google+. But by using a link shortener like bit.ly, you will gain access to metrics, so you’ll know how many people clicked and at what time. With this essential data, you can experiment with different ways to tease your content and different times to post it.

7. Use your blog name as your username whenever possible.

Promote your personal brand by consistently using your blog’s name for your Twitter handle, StumbleUpon name, Pinterest name and so on. Then, people don’t have to wonder about your blog’s name — it’s right there. Also, people will remember you easily across platforms, which is key as you develop up your online community.

8. Join blogger groups on Facebook.

There are some very active groups on Facebook that are terrific resources for any blogging issues you encounter. Look for groups like “Travel Bloggers” or “Global Bloggers Network.” WordPress geeks have “Advanced WordPress” and Central Florida residents have “Central Florida Bloggers.” Not only are blogger groups good for problem-solving, but it’s well-known that bloggers like to read other blogs. Do some searching and find a bloggers group that’s suited to you, or start your own!

9. Be generous with other bloggers.

Promote other bloggers’ content, and hopefully they’ll return the favor. You can’t simply blast your own content anyway — you need some variety in every social media stream. So why not check out what your fellow bloggers are posting and give them a retweet, a share or a repin whenever you can. And don’t forget to reciprocate and share content from bloggers who share yours.

10. Be on social media — even when it’s not driving traffic.

It can be frustrating when you feel that you’re doing everything right (posting good content on the appropriate platforms in the best way possible) and you’re still not getting many clicks. But console yourself by thinking about all of the links that you see throughout the day that you don’t click on. Just spending time on social media platforms is great way to forge relationships, keep up on industry news and find inspiration for that next blog post.

http://mashable.com/2012/02/17/social-media-bloggers-tips/

Facebook launched its latest wave of media apps built with Open Graph Thursday, including a Mashable app.

The media apps — joining veterans such as The Guardian‘s social news app and Washington Post Social Reader — are a platform for users to discover and share content.

Facebook writes in a blog post that its news apps have driven significant traffic, increased engagement and introduced media outlets with a new, younger demographic.

The beta round of media partners were launched at f8 in September, including Yahoo News, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Independent and The Daily. Digg also launched an app in December.

In addition to the Mashable app, the new set includes Buzzfeed, CBS Local: Los Angeles and New York, CMT, The Daily Show, The Huffington Post, GetGlue, MSNBC.com, MTV News, Pixable, Sporting News (coming in March) and TODAY Show. Among that group, GetGlue and Pixable stand out as non-news sites and we’re eager to see how those apps change the sharing experience on Timeline.

Facebook also released some numbers on the reach of its first wave of apps, since their launch at f8. Yahoo News has seen 25 million people opt into Social Bar and the app has 2 million daily users. The Guardian‘s app has been installed 5 million times, with 50% of users ages 24 and under. Digg Social Reader has driven a 35% increase in readership.

Are you using any social reader apps on Facebook? Where do you see the platform going? Let us know in the comments.

UPDATE: This post initially said The Huffington Post launched in November. It too launched Thursday.

http://mashable.com/2012/02/16/facebook-media-apps/

Sports and social media are a marriage made in heaven. News and score updates break constantly. Heated debate is a big part of the fun. And fans love any chance to interact with the athletes they idolize. But just how much do sports fans love and use social media overall?

The brand-engagement firm GMR Marketing recently conducted a study and came up with interesting results, presented in the infographic below.

According to GMR, people today are 10 times more likely to check the Internet for breaking sports news than they are to turn to sports radio. Slightly more people use Facebook and Twitter than national news websites, at 41% to 40%. By comparison, just 13% said they get their breaking sports news from TV, and 4% from radio.

And it doesn’t matter where fans are; social media lets them get their sports fix in any place, any time. Nearly three quarters of respondents said they’ve checked social media for sports news at a party, nearly 70% during a meal, and 58% said they’ve done so while in the bathroom.

Don’t just take our word for it, though. Check out this infographic and then let us know in the comments what jumped out at you:

http://mashable.com/2012/02/15/social-sports-infographic/

Marketers creating campaigns centered on hashtags need to be cautious. Hashtags can easily turn into flashing targets that scream, “Hijack this brand!” In the past few weeks, McDonald’s launched a hashtag campaign that was promptly hamburgled, and then Research In Motion’s #BeBold campaign was similarly brandjacked.

Fortunately, there’s a way to avoid these types of situations. Hashtag campaigns happen all the time without any press coverage, usually because there’s no horror story. Here are nine ways to prevent your brand from winding up in a story about social media mishaps.

1. Figure Out Why You’re Using Hashtag

Brands tend to use hashtags, predominantly on Twitter and sometimes other services like Instagram, either to create a centralized discussion around their campaign or event, or to jump into conversations that are already happening. Assess what you want to get out of the hashtag before diving in.

2. Be Upfront About the Risk

No matter how good your intentions are and how well you execute the campaign, hashtags can get hijacked in unexpected ways. Make sure any relevant brand managers, agency account executives, and other relevant parties are aware of what can happen, and share some real examples like those noted above. Also be clear that brands use hashtags in campaigns every day, and there are very few that generate any negative publicity.

3. Determine What Kind of Hashtag Makes Sense for Your Goals

Branded hashtags like #McDstories are very transparent and often descriptive, but they might turn off people who don’t want to include that brand in their messages. They also can give brand haters more motivation to upend the hashtag’s meaning.

Generic hashtags like RIM’s #BeBold have more creative potential both for the brand and for consumers, but the hashtags can be brand-jacked just as easily, especially if the brand isn’t perceived as a match for the tag. Either way, the hashtag should be informative and concise rather than conceptual. You only have a few characters; make them count, and don’t make consumers think too hard.

4. Be True to Your Brand

Jeff Bezos once said, “Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.” What do people really say about your brand? If you’re a fast food burger chain, having salad on the menu wouldn’t justify a #BeHealthy campaign. Airlines shouldn’t try using #ComfortingThoughts unless their coach seats are really more comfortable than a typical passenger’s living room sofa.

5. Think of the Worst-Case Hijacking Scenario

Then share it with some of your snarky and cynical colleagues. Does it hold up? Would more conservative brand managers be comfortable with it? If it’s too easy to hijack and the brand bashing is too harsh, this is a good time to come up with other ideas.

6. Avoid Piggybacking on Humorous or Risqué Hashtags

Very few brands can credibly contribute to conversations around tags like “#ThingsWomenWant” or “#WorstMondayEver.”

7. Have Your Crisis Plan Ready, With Key Members on Speed Dial

No matter how cautious you think you are, people can be pleasantly unpredictable, even if that can create the occasional unpleasant experience for brands. Make sure it’s absolutely clear what everyone’s roles are should an unfortunate event happen.

8. Monitor the Campaign Religiously

It should also be clear upfront when determining everyone’s roles and responsibilities. When creating an original hashtag that hasn’t been used before, hashtags can simplify reporting on buzz generated, as community managers and analysts can view all relevant tweets in one shot.
9. Spring Into Action

If you wind up in a snafu, be ready to do whatever you can to stop the bleeding, such as ceasing any media support, engaging consumers to steer the conversation back to the original idea, or perhaps taking it on the chin and acknowledging when consumers are right. McDonald’s realized, for instance, that by pulling its Twitter ad, negative comments using the hashtag stopped almost immediately.
Brands shouldn’t overreact to the potential downfall of using hashtags, but marketers need to accept that there will always be a risk when using them. Many more marketers will choose to accept that risk. Twitter’s only growing, and hashtags are a fundamental element of Instagram, Tumblr, and other services. Brands can learn from their peers who tried to #BeBold before them, some more successfully than others.

http://mashable.com/2012/02/14/hashtag-marketing-disaster-tips/

Nighttime talkshow host Jimmy Kimmel is the latest mainstream performer who’s found it possible to make a mint without solely relying on traditional broadcasting and promotional channels.

His solution? YouTube.

Kimmel’s channel, called JimmyKimmelLive, features clips and recaps — typically running under five minutes each — from every episode of the comedian’s popular late-night talkshow. Kimmel’s channel has more than 300,000 subscribers and many of the videos have acquired millions of views on top of his substantial broadcast television audience on ABC.

It is YouTube’s 98th-most-viewed partner channel of all-time, according to site information. YouTube’s partnership program invites creators of extremely popular videos to monetize their uploads via ad-hosting or rentals while splitting the income with YouTube.

For Kimmel, the double-dipping is paying off — his YouTube channel generates between $1 million and $2 million annually, “a person close to the show” tells The Wall Street Journal.

But Kimmel is not the only star entertainer who has found that bypassing traditional broadcast and advertising revenue streams isn’t just for viral-video maniacs who edit away in their mothers’ basements.

In December, the comedian Louis CK offered his most recent standup performance video for download from his website for just $5. He skipped the costs of distribution, marketing and advertising, and lowered the incentive for fans to illegally download the video for free. He hauled in $1 million in just 12 days.

Jimmy Kimmel and Louis CK have both managed to leverage the world-flattening power of the Internet to reach new fans and find new ways to reach old fans while still making a buck (or million). But you have to wonder whether their success — and the success of other performers who follow their paths — will undermine their ability to turn the huge profits still best-enabled by mass-market consumption.

As The Wall Street Journal asks: Can success on the web bite back?

Are these emerging means of distribution as awesome in the long term for the performers themselves as for their audiences? Or will there be negative financial consequences? Let us know in the comments.

http://mashable.com/2012/02/13/how-jimmy-kimmel-earns-nearly-2-million-annually-via-youtube/

Social media has emerged like an errant piece of debris from a tornado, and has smacked the world of business in its metaphorical face. Depending on who you talk to, this emergence of no-holds-barred communication has resulted in either the apocalypse for privacy and internal practices, or the advent of a new dawn of profitability and success. In any case, the plethora of social networking sites has led to a reevaluation of business practices. It’s no mystery that the area with the most important long-term implications for an organization is recruiting and staffing employees. One of the biggest and oldest problems for companies revolves around acquiring a talented and creative team — and digital gives the old, traditional methods a new spin.

According to a study [PDF] by the workplace psychologist group OPP, 39% of leaders said they still rely on gut instinct when making hiring decisions, and a quarter admitted that whether they liked someone personally was a major influence. These findings demonstrate that traditional hiring metrics, including quality of the cover letter and interview, compete in importance with the personal preferences of the hiring manager. Second, employers base hiring preferences on the applicant’s personality, sometimes even more than on the hard skills an applicant brings to the table.

Social media tools and applications can offer a glimpse into these more personal aspects of an applicant beyond traditional hiring materials. But are businesses actually using social media tools to hire?

Importance and Prevalence

The answer to this question is surprisingly murky. A survey by CareerXroads, a company that’s been tracking hiring sources for the past 10 years, found that 57.1% of respondents report that social media plays an important role in their direct sourcing program. A 2011 study undertaken by Jobvite goes further, stating that 89% of companies planned to use social media in their hiring process that year, and that 64% of companies directly used social media to hire an applicant in 2011.
On the flip side, Gerry Crispin, who co-authored the CareerXroads survey, levied some skepticism on the numbers he found for companies using social media. In an interview conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management, Crispin states, “Some of the respondents stated that social media played a part in only 2-3% of their new hires, and other respondents reported that social media sites were used in 50-60% of their hiring decisions. When you have numbers that widely divergent, I think it clearly shows that employers are struggling to understand the real impact of social media.”

Regardless of the confusion surrounding social media (which, by the way, should be expected given its rapid escalation in importance), there are proven techniques and applications in place, should a company wish to expand its hiring arsenal to the social sphere.
Passive Strategies

The truth is, even if a company doesn’t actively include social media in its hiring strategy, it still plays a role in determining the talent pool. If a company has any form of online social presence whatsoever — and who doesn’t? — the odds are that it has influenced who has applied for a position within that company, at least within recent years. Much buzz has been made about businesses screening the social profiles of prospective employees, but it goes both ways. Emily Bennington, co-author of Effective Immediately: How to Fit In, Stand Out, and Move Up at Your First Real Job, says, “Naturally, candidates can use the same tools to screen you and — just like you — if they don’t like what they see, they move on.”

Since most companies would like to have a large pool of talented applicants from which to choose, it behooves them to spend some time creating a dynamic social footprint. Alison Doyle, the job search guide for About.com, believes that some basic steps can improve the quality of applicants who find their way to a job through social media. For instance, publish engaging content focusing not only on what your company does, but how the company culture operates, to give insight into the inner working of the business. Also, create a strong employment brand on larger social sites such as Facebook.

Doyle also points out that employees who post positive things about their employer on personal social platforms make the company very attractive to prospects. For this reason, she encourages companies to allow employees to access social media during work hours, as they are more likely to post about their company then.

Active Strategies

For companies ready to dive headfirst into social hiring, there are a number of applications and tactics that make navigating the occasionally chaotic waters of Facebook, LinkedIn and their ilk more manageable. That being said, sometimes the most effective strategies occur when a company creatively uses the tools at hand. Matt Simpson, director of marketing at Bulbstorm, relates the following story:

“My company, Bulbstorm, found me by Googling ‘Phoenix Marketing Copywriter’ and landing on my freelance website. My experience with social media and blogging related to my old sports website particularly piqued their interest. When I considered turning them down to focus on my freelance business, the CEO trash-talked me on Twitter. I loved how unconventional he was. That got my attention, and I signed on.”

This story illustrates two levels of active social hiring. First, the company found an employee that matched its criteria by examining his social sites online. Then, using those social sites, it appealed to his personality. Even though he was not interested at first, its knowledge of his persona enabled the company to obtain a perfect hire.

Innovative Systems

So, harness the power of social media to reach talented people and land key hires within a company — that is the perfect scenario, right? Here are some of the most innovative tools I’ve found that can help you navigate the social hiring landscape.

CrowdHired: CrowdHired works through social crowdsourcing which, aside from being an overused buzzword, offers a dynamic approach to finding employees. The process is fairly simple: An employer selects advocates from his existing contacts and submits a bounty, or payment, that will be paid to both the advocate and the employee hired as a result of the recommendation. The advocate then recommends individuals from his network who he thinks would be a good fit. If the recommended person wants to apply for the position, he chooses whichever of his social networks he thinks will represent him best.

CrowdHired works well by eliminating the need to dredge through a large number of potentially unqualified applicants, and instead operates through the popular method of using recommendations to find the top people. The bounty simply adds an extra incentive for advocates to get on board and really recommend the best of their contacts.

HirePlug: This is an app that sits on top of your company’s existing Facebook Page. It adds a tab that says “We Are Hiring” and allows applicants to view openings and apply directly from there. HirePlug not only leverages the network of your company but also employees’ networks. A company that uses this app can encourage employees to place the “We Are Hiring” tab on their profiles as well. The app also matches the skills from listed positions to profiles of friends within the employees’ networks. Employees can then send a recommendation from Facebook and via email. It tracks referrals so employees can be rewarded if their recommendation results in a hire.

Unrabble: Unrabble attempts to alleviate the issue of applicants submitting resumes that are, shall we say, a bit fluffed up. Instead, it institutes a relatively simple system of social “bragging” that requires proof to substantiate the claim. Each time an applicant “brags” about an accomplishment (increasing sales, successfully revamping a site, etc.), they must also provide an introduction to a contact on Facebook or LinkedIn who will vouch for him. While the system isn’t foolproof, it offers a convenient alternative to wading through the piles of resumes from apparent miracle workers who single-handedly saved their company from financial bankruptcy, yet mysteriously received little enough compensation that they are now applying for another job.
Takeaways

Social media offers a whole slew of new and exciting avenues for hiring, but it will not always provide the best solution for every company. That being said, a company that integrates social hiring practices into its repertoire will undoubtedly be able to reach many applicants who might otherwise have gone unnoticed or undervalued. Plus, they will be able to claim that they are “hip” and/or “cool,” or whatever the devil the kids are saying nowadays.

http://mashable.com/2012/02/11/social-media-recruiting-tips/

Most websites fail miserably at the only thing they were ultimately designed to do: Generate sales.

Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on where your website stands, most websites fail because of one simple reason:

They were created BACKWARDS.

Let me explain what I mean with the graphic below from a leadership perspective (a graphic on the technical perspective follows later in the post):

(Note: Please feel free to use any original image in this post on your website, just link back to this post as the original source.)

You see, what often happens is that in a rush to get a website on the Internet and start branding, selling or collecting customer information, a business and the leaders responsible for that website, don’t take the time to ensure that they are creating a sustainable and highly converting Internet presence.

Let’s call this the “Ready, Fire, Aim” approach vs. “Ready, Aim, Fire” — with an extra “Fire” thrown in the mix.

Ready: We need a website… (Mild panic)
Fire: We need more traffic! (Panic level rises)
Fire Again: Wait, the traffic isn’t converting, we need more conversions! (Really panicked)
Aim: Sigh…we need to redesign our entire online presence. (Resignation)

So What Goes Wrong?

This is a classic case of basic human nature rearing its ugly head on a broad scale.

If you told you as an owner, CEO or high level leader of your company’s Internet presence — and for that matter pretty much anyone who has ever built or owned a website — “Hey, this is going to take 3-6 months because we need to make sure we get it right…” you’re going to take a deep breath, not say a word for about 30 seconds and then unleash a diatribe about launch dates, deadlines and “can’t miss” product releases all relying on a website to get the word out.

This is all very understandable – we want things done NOW and results even sooner.

The thought of taking any extra time to get your web presence done right complete with back end systems and strategy, deep analysis and research, and a sound actionable marketing plan to convert visitors into sales, just feels like too much to bear when you’ve got anxious board members, stakeholders or the CEO or business owner staring at a blank “coming soon” page.

As often happens, those who don’t truly understand Internet marketing, branding, strategy, how to increase market share, and what it takes to create a successful online presence, are more interested in expediency than they are in making sure that things are done right.

Actually, that’s not true.

They want the best of both worlds:

Great…would you also like top 10 rankings for all your keywords and an 8 PageRank home page within 3 months to go with that?
Why This Approach Fails Every Time

What most business leaders and website owners need to realize is that you’ll wind up costing yourself MORE in the long run — both time and money — working backwards trying to fix something that was terminally broken from the very start.

See if the following (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) scenario applies to your business or, ahem, someone you know:

Ready: We need a website

You quickly bought a domain name without thought to branding, ease of use, or SEO. So what if your domain name has 3 hyphens in it and is 70 characters long? Customers will easily remember it and search engines will love it.

You then hired a cheap designer, purchased a web “pro” package, or asked someone you know personally or within the company to create a website mock-up.

Next, you looked up some competitor’s websites and keywords (or skipped this step entirely), and other sites that you thought looked good and copied what they were doing.

In your infinite wisdom, you and your “team” decided that the “Buy Now” button should be purple and in 4 places on every page and that your navigational bar should contain precisely 20 drop down menus, along with other cool design features your “team” thought were vital.

Your mock up was “good enough,” approved, and was then sent to the programming “team” to code.

The site had bugs and flaws, but you had to launch.

Fire: We need more traffic

You were excited about the new launch…but then what? Oh yeah, you needed traffic!

So your business reached out to everyone you and your “team” knows in an effort to drum up buzz and go viral: friends, family, colleagues, and other websites and businesses but for some reason it didn’t work.

You then decided to try this whole “social media” thing because that was absolutely guaranteed to work. After all, your kids are on there all the time, and last you heard, Facebook had over 800 million folks using it.

Next, you threw money at the wall like spaghetti to see what would stick — PPC ads, Print, Directories, Paid Links, Content Creation, E-mail marketing, and more — oh my!

The site still wasn’t really getting the traffic you expected, but all this “hard work” started to pay off — you were now seeing incremental traffic — but it was costing you.

Fire Again: The traffic isn’t converting

Something just wasn’t right. You were spending a lot of money and time on traffic and lead generation, but what little you got didn’t pay off and certainly wasn’t returning your initial investment.

You and your “team” read some blogs about SEO, Internet marketing and sales strategies.

Your “team” then decided that the “Buy Now” button should instead be red and be included in 2 more places on every page.

You changed the images you were using on your home and product pages.

You modified your META tags and added some ALT tags to your pages.

You stepped up and hired a friend or asked someone internal to rewrite the ad copy on the site.

You added a Verisign, Authorize.net or BBB logo to your checkout page.

You lowered your prices — then raised them again.

You offered coupons, specials and other discounts.

You started sending out 3 newsletters a week instead of 1.

Unfortunately, even with all these awesome improvements, your site still wasn’t converting sales — at least not enough to justify this whole “Internet marketing” thing.

You decided to turn everything off, reevaluate the situation and devote your time and money to other initiatives.

Aim: We need to redesign our entire online presence…

After staring at the same old, tired, worn and cash-draining website, you realize you need help.

You look around for experts to help you and come to understand that you did everything backwards.

You wonder how much time and money it’s going to take to fix your online presence…

By the time a company reaches out for help (once they realize that they aren’t experts and what they did is not working) the entire strategy needs to be pretty much executed from the ground up at a huge cost to the business — which is why they so often put it off as long as humanly possible.

If you’re reading this right now, you know who you are.
How To Make Sure This Doesn’t Happen To You – Ready, Aim, Fire

Now that we understand what went wrong and why you’re not seeing the results you want, let’s now focus on developing the basic fundamentals of your Internet presence.

Without first tying your marketing efforts into a specific strategy, conversion factor or lead generation system, you’re basically throwing money at a problem (low rankings, lack of traffic, low conversions) for the wrong reason (you think you want higher rankings, more traffic) when instead the question or concern that should be addressed is this:

How do we get MORE conversions and sales once a visitor reaches our website?

Here’s a simple 3-step process that we use with clients every day at Biquitous based on our proprietary 3-Phase Internet Marketing Execution Framework, that will help you avoid the “Ready, Fire, Aim” problem, and ensure you build your website and Internet presence right the first time.

Phase 1: Strategy
==> Ready – Plan BEFORE Taking Action

Phase 1: Plan Before Taking ActionTake a 30,000 Foot View: What is the objective of your entire Internet presence and online marketing strategy?

Nothing happens until you understand the exact purpose of your online marketing as it relates to your current corporate strategy and future business objectives. How will your online presence be a conduit towards the one goal that you REALLY care about: increasing sales, and with it, cash flow?

Evaluate Your Online Presence: With the clarity of your company, business and online marketing strategy in place, you then need to look at your current website and online presence in order to fix what’s broken or ensure that it is built properly the first time.

This means taking a deep look at things like:

Accurately depicting the value and services that you offer potential customers
Colors, branding and message
Infrastructure and level of sophistication needed to serve your company objectives: i.e. is the website for customers, vendors, employees, or a combination of all three?
And finally, usability for both existing and potential customers, AND your internal staff and vendors

Analyze Your Competition, Marketplace and Target Audience: Your business doesn’t operate in a vacuum and neither will your website.

You’ll want to gain a full understanding of:

Your top 5 competitors (believe me, there are ALWAYS competitors!)
The marketplace where you will be doing business – both online and offline
Your target client/customer avatar (full demographics, frustrations, etc.)

Understand Potential Customer Behavior: Now you’ll want to specifically delve into how potential clients and customers will use or are using the Internet to find and interact with your company.

Specifically you’ll want to know:

Do your current and potential customers use search engines, social media — or both — to find your website?
What keywords are they using to find your website? What keywords convert the best? What keywords can you easily rank for and which will take longer to rank for?
What call-to-action, value statements and content are needed to get them excited about your website or click the “Add To Cart” button?
What types of colors, website design, user interface and other criteria does your website need in order to keep visitors on your site longer and ultimately convert them into leads and sales?

Zero In On Your Highest Priority Outcomes: Most business leaders don’t know the purpose of their website, social media and online presence.

Is it to entertain, get new leads, close sales, inform, generate buzz, help your vendors or sales team, customer service or outreach, a combination of all of these, or something else entirely?

Before you can even think of executing an online marketing strategy, you need to know the top 1-3 outcomes you’ll want to achieve from the traffic that lands on your website.
Result of Phase 1 – Ready:

By the end of Phase 1 (Ready), you’re not only going to create a cohesive picture of your ideal customer and how they’re using the Internet to find and interact with your company, but more importantly, you’re going to align your company’s business objectives and sales goals with your online presence to create a bold, powerful and strategic Internet marketing action plan.

With a deep understanding of your business and your strengths — as well as your weaknesses — you can now deploy a comprehensive online marketing action plan and begin implementation in Phase 2 – Execution (AKA: Aim).

Phase 2: Execution
==> Aim – Execute To Perfection

Phase 2: Executing To PerfectionFine-Tune Your Online Branding and Corporate Identity: Your company needs to make sure that your branding and corporate identity speak to your target audience.

Specific attention needs to be paid to the use of color, graphics, artwork, images and design, to ensure that from your business cards and letterhead, all the way through to your website, everything matches and presents a cohesive, polished and appealing corporate identity that builds off of your entire online marketing strategy to increase credibility with your current and future customers.

Create an Engaging, Professional and Highly Targeted Website, or Modify Existing Site: Now it’s time for the real “AIM” portion of this process, or the one that most leaders skip entirely the first time around.

From fun and frivolous to professional and streamlined, the final design of your website should have the desired effect of being engaging while also encouraging your potential clients and customers to utilize your online presence for its intended purpose – whether that’s to inform, entertain, generate buzz, attract leads or convert sales.

Incorporate Best Practices and Functionality: I tell our clients all the time that a visually appealing website is great – but a visually appealing website that converts visitors into sales is the ultimate objective. Your website now needs to be fine-tuned for Search Engine Optimization (SEO), e-Commerce, increased conversion rates and brand affinity.

This means making sure that:

Your site navigation is clean and easy to use
Your website architecture is properly integrated for SEO
Keywords are being incorporated into your website’s META tags and ad copy
The specific actions and conversion factors that you want visitors to take are front and center
And finally, that your entire website and online presence are fully optimized and revolve around your most desired outcomes

Integrate Social Media and Web 2.0 Interaction: Putting the finishing touches on your website development means customizing your own Web 2.0 and social media strategy to align with your overall company objectives.

This also means your site must be completely user-friendly and interactive through opt-in forms, newsletters, video and other interactive elements like reviews and site comments, that will allow you to stay front and center with your target audience, and more importantly, make them feel that they have a direct line of communication with your company.

Some of the social media and Web 2.0 strategies that might be right for your company include:

Blogging
Video
Autoresponders/E-mail sign up forms
Newsletters
Social media integration (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, etc.)
Reviews
Comments
Forums
Q and A
And other social interaction strategies

If a specific medium is not right for you, don’t use it just because it’s popular or your competitors are using it!

Result of Phase 2 – Aim:

Put it all together and what you get is a beautiful and functional piece of art that not only looks great, but ultimately increases your bottom line and expands your company’s brand affinity and loyalty, and is something you can proudly share with your customers and vendors.

Through this systematic website design and development process, your business will now be in possession of a polished, refined and amazing end-to-end online presence that will be ready to deliver customers 24 hours a day. Now it’s time to deliver traffic in Phase 3 – Results (AKA: Fire).

Phase 3: Results
==> Fire – Drive Traffic

With everything set up and in place, NOW is the time to drive traffic to your website, experiment with various visitor and lead generating services, and closely monitor your conversion rates in order to adjust accordingly.

Some of this will be done through “free” traffic and lead generation (sometimes known in the industry as “Inbound Marketing”) with the rest coming through paid sources.

Of course, if you have a staff or hire a team to do any work for you, and even if you are slaving away doing it yourself, there is no such thing as “free” traffic because everything has a cost whether that be time or money.

Here is a rundown of some of the ways you can and should increase traffic to your website depending on your needs, goals, target market and budget:

Inbound Marketing Graphic

(Click image to enlarge)

The above graphic was inspired by a post by Rand Fishkin from SEOMoz about inbound marketing.

Phase 3: Drive TrafficHere’s a brief rundown of each form of traffic generation — this was not designed to be a comprehensive list:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Pay-Per-Click (PPC/CPC)
Display Advertising
Blogging
Social Media
Webinars
Teleseminars
Retargeting
Branding
Podcasting
Infographics
Video
Content Marketing
Link Building
E-mail
Press Releases
Affiliates/JV’s
White Papers
Document/Presentation Sharing
Forums
Q & A Sites
Direct/Referral Traffic
Social Bookmarking
Comments/Discussions
Content Curation/Aggregation
Applications/Widgets

My advice, and what we do at Biquitous, is to focus on the top 3-5 of these mediums/sources of traffic that will yield the highest return on your investment in both time and money.

For example, if you are just starting out, simple execution of an SEO/inbound link strategy will yield incredible results for a limited budget for low/medium competition keywords.

On the flip side, if your business is more seasoned and already ranks relatively well, executing a strategy that revolves around content marketing, PPC/CPC and display advertising could be the best way to take advantage of your well known brand that wasn’t converting previously, but because of the work you did in Phase 1 and 2, now will convert a higher percentage of visitors from those sources.

Ongoing Collaboration and Execution: This includes campaign management and monitoring of your current initiatives: i.e. creating new marketing initiatives, testing and refinement of current initiatives, continuous expansion and implementation of your initial action plan, and new strategies and campaigns when appropriate.

Result of Phase 3 – Fire:

What good is a website if nobody finds it or interacts with it?

You’re now ready to start generating and driving traffic to your higher converting website, monitoring how that traffic converts and making adjustments as necessary.

Be forewarned that this entire process is an iterative one.

Therefore, you are never “finished” per se, but rather always monitoring, adjusting and creating new ways to deliver not only traffic to your website, but more importantly, ensuring that the traffic you do receive converts at a high level.
Bottom Line:

There’s a saying that I think is apropos for when you’ve already done things backwards:

No matter how far you’ve traveled down the wrong path, turn around.

Most websites fail because they were created BACKWARDS.

Once you realize why your online presence is struggling and not yielding the results you intended, it’s important that you fix what’s wrong rather than simply giving up entirely and allocating your budget to other initiatives because you are too frustrated or don’t know how to address your current problems.

By utilizing the 3-Phase Internet Marketing Execution Framework that we use at Biquitous, you can take the action necessary to create an online presence that works from the ground up the right way.

Then you can focus on the important stuff — generating traffic, leads, and ultimately, sales.

At the end of the day, you don’t care about complex strategies, processes and to-do lists.

As a business leader, you need real world results, and beyond that, a clear path to achieving those results, with a rational and strategic way of measuring them.

Your online presence should be an asset to your company and continuously generate measurable and repeatable cash flow.

You and your team will never achieve your desired outcomes if you work backwards and merely focus on traffic to the detriment of conversions.

Instead you must build a sound Internet marketing and website design strategy that was well thought out, researched, tested and implemented to perfection.

<a href=”http://www.biquitous.com/why-most-websites-fail-what-to-do-about-it” target=”blank”>http://www.biquitous.com/why-most-websites-fail-what-to-do-about-it</a>

Twitter has announced a new partnership with major satellite providers to give their subscribers access to Twitter SMS, the original text-based Twitter service.

According to a statement released Thursday, the company has partnered with Iridium and Thuraya, the world’s two largest satellite providers, to increase the number of people that can use Twitter SMS worldwide. The company said the new partnership will help guarantee greater global access to the microblogging network.

“Now, even if phone lines and the Internet are inaccessible — for example, in a war zone or after a natural disaster — people will be able to share news and stay informed via Twitter,” reads the statement.

Where cell towers are susceptible to being knocked offline by weather, earthquakes or military attack, satellite networks are often more stable.

The partnership keeps the company close to its original roots in SMS, which is the standardized text messaging feature found in cellphones and other mobile devices. When Twitter began in 2006, it was designed to utilize SMS to easily send a short message to a group of people. As the service grew, it launched its own platform aside from SMS.

However, tweets can still be sent via SMS, and it’s that feature which has made Twitter popular in parts of the world with scarce mobile broadband connectivity. Users who are on a mobile carrier that offers Twitter SMS support can make use of two-way “short codes.”

One roadblock: some cell carriers don’t support Twitter SMS. But Twitter has a solution for users on those carriers.

The company has set up a number of “long codes,” which people can use to send tweets. After setting up a Twitter account for long code use, a user can put such a code in the “recipient” field of a text, and Twitter will automatically pick up their text and tweet it from their account. That can be helpful in low or no-bandwidth situations such as political upheavals or regional emergencies.

So far, Twitter has set up long codes for users in the UK, Germany and Finland. Long codes are limited to outgoing tweets only.

What do you think of Twitter’s efforts to increase Twitter SMS’s availability worldwide? Let us know in the comments below.

http://mashable.com/2012/02/09/twitter-satellite/