So while I promised myself a lazy day today I wanted to quickly note down two things. I still have to prepare for a talk at Cass next week on using MVP to help corporates build successful online communities, and I still have ot find a job/drive revenue before my severance from eBay runs out in X number of weeks. So time is short and comes with a cost attached, and before I pop into town to watch Mr Spacey in ‘Margin Call’ here’s a couple of quick creative thoughts.

Containers – in a container (paper page) – in a container (photo) – in a container (blog post) – etc

I like to try and simplify things where possible as that way you can get difficult things done more easily right? So in thinking about what works as a social business I came up with the idea of matching up ‘containers’ – that is simply a tool for mapping how a social concept might work. The example above is an attempt to show across 3 degrees of separation how in rough and ready terms a business like Airbnb  works best.

In trying to find somewhere to stay you are first going to see if any of your ‘friends’ live in the city you are visiting (the idea behind Airbnb is providing cheap places for people to stay in other people’s homes). But the chances they have a room in that city are ‘unlikely’ as your friendship network is relatively small. So you turn to ‘friends of friends,’ and they are ‘likely’ as they are my the virtue of wider geo-distribution going to have a possible place to stay. But maybe the night you want to stay they are busy? So the next container along, which for the sake of 3rd degree of separation symmetry I’ve called ‘friends of friends of friends’ is very likely to provide the room you want, and for the time/date you want. (It’s a nice fact that the average user on Facebook is connected to everyone else by 3.74 degrees of separation, so you can see why Facebook based commerce using the social graph is so potentially powerful).

As a side note I really liked the pivot by lean startup participants ‘You never know’ led by ‘Easy Ed’ (alliteration really helps remember ppl’s first names:-) who started with the idea of an app where you could get matched up with single people in your immediate social network, but found that people didn’t want to do that for themselves. But then on pivoting realised that ‘smug married’ people would happily introduce single people to other single people. Neat change of the social networking dynamic, from ‘doing it for yourself’ as a single person not working due to fear of rejection for example to someone with a networking ‘doing it for you’. So maybe that’s why blind dates work, so long as someone you know sets it up for you!

Superbowl Sunday: data crunchers vs grandmothers

While I was talking to Javi he happened to mention one of LSM London teams ‘hstream’ had a real time Twitter analytics idea. I got excited at the idea of tracking sentiment around Patriots vs Giants and even had a look at the odds at Betfair. I also tried Twitter manually, so to speak, and found and favorited one tweet which from a gambler’s perspective seemed to stand out. It turned out to be right, the 94-year-old grandmother backed the Giants, the winners of the Superbowl XLVI. Wonder what the results of hstream’s real time data analytics were?

It seems a lot of people have got it wrong about Mark Zuckerberg.They scoff at his suggestion that with the impending $5bn Facebook IPO that he’s not in it for the money:

“We don’t build services in order to make money, we make money in order to build better services. Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission–to make the world open and more connected.”

But as the recent BBC documentary ‘Mark Zuckerberg: Inside Facebook’ got right (and the film ‘The Social Network’ got wrong – cute screen-grab above) a billion dollars ain’t cool, turning down $1bn is cool. Which is what Mr Zuckerberg did when Yahoo made an offer of close to $1bn for the global social networking site (Facebook record 11 companies with 14 offers in total) in 2006.

Logically then if he was ‘in it for the money’ wouldn’t he have cashed in his ‘cash cow’ there and then? So now he’s both cool and soon-to-be-be very, very rich. What’s not to be jealous of?

Check out this event at the journo-driven Frontline Club on the 1st of Feb:

“Named one of Time magazine’s top 100 most influential people, Wael Ghonim, is credited with having sparked Egypt’s revolution with a Facebook page he dedicated to a victim of the regime’s violence.

“The ‘We are all Khaled Said’ Facebook page that he created after the young man’s brutal murder and torture by police in Alexandria became such a focal point of the uprising that Ghonim was imprisoned for 11 days. The former Google executive will be talking to Ben Hammersley, Wired UK’s, editor at large about the revolution and the role of technology in mobilising people to take to the streets.

“He will also be bringing us up to date with what’s been happening since the jubilant celebrations a year ago and his work since he left Google in April this year. Wael Ghonim’s new book Revolution 2.0 is published by Fourth Estate on 17 January.”

As side note I saw someone tweet that the 2011 crop of revolutions were not especially significant, or words to that effect. However, political changes in the Middle East over the ages can be disproportionately influential, imho.

“How brick and mortar stores are going to be able to personalize and make the in-store shopping experience unique is through data, in my opinion. It’s no longer about creating a mobile web site or offering coupons; the experience centralizes around making customers feel as if they are being treated like a VIP just by walking into a store. And how brick and mortar stores are going to do that is the same way Amazon was able to create a business out of personalized e-commerce.

“Some retailers are attempting to use video and heatmaps to try to see how people shop, what they are buying and more. But this data is limiting because while stores can figure out what is working when it comes to placement, advertising, and marketing of products in-store, retailers still don’t know who is buying and how to get them to return.

“Personalization really gets interesting with transaction data. Shopkick recently teamed up with Visa to allow consumers a way to receive rewards points for retailers at the point of sale when they use their Visa credit cards. This is part of closing the redemption loop...Thus far start-ups, tech companies and credit card companies have started to use transaction data as a way to close the redemption loop and drive future purchases but this is relatively new to brick and mortar retailers.”

And of course Bay’s PayPal are getting in on the act by teaming up with high street retailers “to create a suite of tools and technologies that help use technologies to level the playing field when it comes to data” according to PayPal’s Anuj Nayar.

So much for the TechCrunch view of the subject. To add value to their answer I asked the question ‘Is the threat from mobile price comparison apps over-hyped?’ on the G+ community. Here are a few edited responses to date that have come in which underline that this trend is certainly something to watch out for in 2012, hyped or not:

• “In my opinion there is more a trend than a threat, the search for better pricing and offers for all kind of items either by the web or any other means.” Daniel Suzuki, Consultor, Bufete Tecnologico Latinoamericano, S. C.
• “Retailers also need to understand what other value streams the act of ‘scanning’ has within a retail environment. If 500 products are all tagged appropriately, retailers can gain insight to what was scanned, when, and where (sometimes even by who.)” Barry Hurd, Managing Director, 123 Social Media
• “For all high ticket items, anything over $100, consumers already do price comparisons on the internet before they even go to a retail store. So, if they are in the store, looking at a product they have a high interest factor and their mobile app will only make them a more educated consumer.  They can then use this knowledge to ensure they are getting a good/fair deal from the Main Street retailer.  It is up to the retailer to ensure that they don’t lose a willing and able consumer.” David Lieber, Staff Product Manager, Qualcomm
• “..the better question is how does the high street respond to a marketplace with reduced overheads, reduced staffing costs and easy access for a significant proportion of the populace FRONTED by comparison sites that direct the consumer to the best place to get the cheapest deal.” Michael Strefford, Director, JoinedUp Consultancy
• “Mobile based purchasing more than doubled this holiday and was over 10% of the online purchase on several days, so the question of impact is not over hyped as this is now ongoing..this is part of the broader effect of easy access to price and product information. We have now seen the effect in the strong pricing stance of retailers such as Walmart and Best Buy who both went out of their way to ensure that their offline pricing was “in the top box” when compared online, or else fled to exclusive and therefore non-comparable sale items.” Robert Heiblim, Co-Founder & Principal,  BlueSalve Professional Consulting

1. Be interactive, fun and helpful. When people reach your Facebook page, they are looking for some kind of interaction. Don‟t disappoint them. As an example, a hardware company offered their Facebook fans links, applications, and engaging information, and within a short time, they added 26,000 fans! <And the more interaction, the higher you score on the ‘EdgeRank’ algorithm, which means more of your content is featured in your fans’ newsfeeds.

2. Embed videos on your Facebook page. There is no reason why you should send people to YouTube to watch your videos. Keep ‘em right on your page with embedded videos! <good idea, and you can create a tab for YouTube videos within your FB Page too.

3. Create a connection between Facebook and the outside world. I recently read a case study about how sales reps worked with local retailers to promote their events through Facebook updates and photos. Consider something similar. <what’s worked for you?

4. Create contests on Facebook. Contests are a fun and engaging way to encourage participation from fans and even generate new fans. For example, in order to enter a contest, one company asked people to comment on a thread announcing a giveaway in Facebook. <See the success with the Shopping.com iPhone giveaway which took place alongside lots of ongoing comps – see Slideshare of the campaign

5. Integrate traditional advertising with Facebook. The Facebook icon/logo is well known. Add it to your print ads to promote your Facebook presence. Another great idea is to use traditional ads to promote contests that encourage people to sign up on your fan page. <and the granular targeting helps to keep costs down and engagement up

6. Use Facebook to grow your email list, and vice versa. Use your email newsletter to boost awareness of your Facebook page. In addition, promote your email newsletter to your existing Facebook fans. The end result will be growth in your email list and your Facebook fan base. <that’s a simple but great way to add ROI from Facebook growth..

7. Introduce new products on Facebook first. People who sign up to be fans of your Facebook page are likely your most loyal evangelists and customers. Reward them by giving them information about a new product/service/feature before everyone else. If you do it right, they will help you promote it to others. <exclusivity rules OK

8. Welcome new page visitors. When thinking about Facebook, a new metric comes to mind: visitor-to-like. As a B2B company, you ultimately want to maximize the percentage of people who visit your Facebook Page and click the “Like” button. One important way to achieve this goal and establish expectations with new fans is to implement a ‘welcome’ landing page that invites new visitors to Like your Page. Technically, there are many ways to execute this. HubSpot customers, for example, can install the free Facebook Welcome Application. <and you can use the Welcome Page to run comps too

9. Integrate social content on your Facebook Page. Facebook is the gateway to the internet for many people. They use it as a home base. In fact, one in eight minutes on the internet is spent on Facebook. Because Facebook has become such an online home for people, it is important to incorporate content from other social channels like YouTube and SlideShare to extend the life and reach of that content. <and not forgetting Twitter!

10. ‘Like’ other businesses’ Facebook Pages. Remember that social media is, well, social. By Liking the Pages of business partners, valued vendors, and customers, Facebook will notify the administrators of those Pages. In return, some of them may also decide to Like your Page, which will also expose it to the individual fans of their Pages. Think of this as leveraging Facebook for co-marketing efforts. <network with other potential partners via Facebook!

1.
That’s an interesting question which one rarely gets chance to reflect upon, as usually that set up is already in place. Taking advantage of the ability to plan the team structure I would cross-check your strategy by looking at how you meet your aggressive targets by looking at it from the end customer point of view. For example take an example like Zappos where the customer care people have a dual role of dealing with direct customer issues by phone but also reflecting on activity through their social media activity as a way of reaching out to existing and potential customers. If I was a customer of your new community therefore I wouldn’t care if I spoke to the engagement person or the acquisition person I just want to know that I am valued and for that to be evidence in my online relationships within the community – for example when I feedback a suggestion about a possible improvement to the community that it is publicly reflected upon by the community staff and acted upon if it meets your cost/benefit objectives.

2.
Some years ago I managed the department handling community and customer facing roles for a company with a rapidly expanding website and customer / reader base and few budget constraints.
We adopted a strategy of aiming to avoid having conflicting demands on each member of the department. We divided the department into teams based on the source of pressure. So we had:
- a team who responded to customer email their targets included real-time response to customer email where possible
- a team dealing with discussion moderation who responded to reports and requests from discussion board users, their targets included real-time response to discussion board problems
- a team who seeded content between discussion boards and editorial content, their targets incorporated rolling editorial deadlines through-out the day

It worked very well.

3.
Community first. Commerce second. Good conversations create transactions.
Oh. And re-read www.cluetrain.com

4.
Hmmm – The terms being used sound very process/tech focused rather than community member-focused.
I’d suggest having a team with a “infrastructure” component (that focuses on platform, channels, process mgt) and a “segment/subcommunity” component (that focuses on serving particular groups of members).

But there are many ways of doing things.

5.
Also – goals. I’d like to submit that you can’t really move forward on any online community campaign without recognizing the goals and reasons behind
your campaign. Is it to drive sales? Drive traffic? Raise awareness?
Knowing your goals helps to put the right people in place.

[Social media growth infographic]

thanks:-)

It’s great to come across a slide-share on the valuable topic of generating SEO revenue from your user generated content, as that’s certainly a topic I worked on at Shopping.com post-Google Panda to try and raise our ranking. What has used to be called social media optimization (SMO) has now migrated to the more specific term ‘social SEO’ in an era when reviews and guides are increasingly core to e-commerce success, and when getting full SEO value from them post-Panda can make a measurable dollar difference.

A top 40 comparison HD TV product guide enabled for SEO purposes on Shopping.com UK

There my approach was to research four or five keywords, based on a combination of share of voice (SOV) and keyword competition, using Google Adwords tool as the now defunct Google Wonder Wheel tool. I then employed Gemma and Tim at The Copywriting People to write guide text for a trial 40 comparison product guides using those chosen keywords, taking the choice of products from our most popular products for the month of May. What I have heard since then (thanks to this webinar with the founder of Trackur, from Hubspot: 23:00 mins) as a tactic to improve backlinks from top blogs is to use a social tracking tool based on keywords you are focusing on, and spotting when top bloggers are writing on a relevant subject. Then reaching out to them to see if they’d review your product, or leave a comment on that blog piece with a link back to your content without making the content too ‘spammy’. You can try this out with Alterian’s free SM2 tool for example.

To measure the effect I recorded the ranking of the products on Shopping.com UK and DealTime UK at the outset. Then with the aim of returning 6 weeks later to record the results. Want to know what happened? Me too!

For comparison check out the slideshare in question below from PowerReviews, which details how to self-assess your own ugc value for SEO – based on the estimate that 60% of US e-commerce sites which carry reviews don’t get full SEO value from them.

It may also worth checking out the Smart SEO tool launch by Bazaarvoice earlier this year. Clearly there’s a real demand for such a product/service in the marketplace, the trick as always is to match a method which fits your budget and delivers to your ‘social commerce‘ objectives.