Facebook’s Timeline design for Pages is coming very soon! As mentioned in this post, rumor has it that Facebook will be announcing Timeline for Pages at the first ever Facebook Marketing Conference on February 29th in NYC. (The conference is invite-only, but save the date as the event will be livestreamed! Details here.)

Mockup - Coca-Cola Facebook Timeline Brand Page (as featured on Mashable.com)

The buzz is building about the imminent announcement of this much-awaited feature. Well, I should say, some businesses and brands are eagerly awaiting this overhaul to fan pages! Many of us are waiting with bated breath to see how the new Timeline design will affect a) custom landing tabs, and b) apps. Not to mention the split-wall, and whether fan engagement and EdgeRank will be impacted.

I’m certain the new page design will have the attractive large cover image. And it’s likely that apps will be displayed in ‘boxes’ at the top right of the Timeline design, similar to the personal Timelines. I certainly hope that we can still drive visitors and fans to custom landing tabs/areas.

As for when the rollout will happen, my guess is that major brands and large businesses will get the new design first, and after that it could take two to three months before all pages have access to the new Timeline format. But, who knows? Facebook doesn’t seem to be revealing much yet! Given there are over 845 Million user profiles vs. 20 Million fan pages with more than 30 fans, the Timeline rollout for Pages could happen much, much quicker than it is for profiles!

Image credit: Coca-Cola Facebook Timeline Brand Page by Ryan Kennedy, as featured on Mashable.com.

Does Coca-Cola have access to its Timeline Page now?

Meanwhile, check out this cool discovery — it appears that Coca-Cola is testing its new Timeline Brand Page! As you can see from the screenshot below, discovered in the News Feed today (February 16th when this post was written) by one of my fans:

“Coca-Cola added an update to 1951 to their timeline.”

Coca-Cola Testing a Timeline for Pages Update!

1951?? Yes, as AdAge pointed out, with the new Timeline for Pages, brands will be able to go back in time to the date the company was founded to add all manner of updates. Now that’s cool! I’m personally not so keen to go back in time to add my own baby photos, first word, first kiss, first drink yada yada. Lol! All of that is just TMI, IMHO! But for business? Hmm, let’s get the creativity going!

Special thanks to my Facebook friend, Jamie Dolan for the screenshot and headsup on Coca-Cola’s Timeline test!

By the way, what’s interesting is – despite the serious amount of engagement on this post within 4 minutes – Coca-Cola deleted the post shortly after. Perhaps it wasn’t meant to go live?  The 37 shares also got nixed when Coca-Cola deleted the original post.

More at: http://www.marismith.com/coca-cola-facebook-timeline-brand-page/

The technology already exists to create highly targeted and integrated CRM strategies. But the marketers haven’t caught up with it yet, said Rich Fleck, VP-general manager of Merkle Connect, the social-CRM arm at direct-marketing agency Merkle. Part of that is because of the complications of privacy issues, including the fact that laws vary country by country. Facebook, for instance, might be loath to find out its users felt like they’re being spammed. To mitigate that, marketers have to get permission from the users to access their data through a service like Facebook Connect, which allows users to export their profiles and connections to other sites.

For example, Merkle client Levi’s asks visitors to its Friends Store on its website to connect with Facebook — a deeper connection than simply “liking” Levi’s. That not only gives marketers more access to data than a simple like would, but in theory gives users more relevant clothing suggestions based on their interests and online habits.

Twitter has a much more lax privacy policy than Facebook because Twitter is inherently an open forum. The challenge from a CRM standpoint is figuring out exactly who the users are on Twitter, as there’s often little more than a real name. While Twitter may be a good resource to monitor conversations and assess the topics on a broad scale, the challenge can be connecting Twitter users to their profiles in a marketer’s CRM database.

Another hurdle is whether marketers can make it “scalable,” or get enough users to agree to hand over more data. According to Merkle, depending on the client, upwards of 50% to 70% of Facebook users agree to the terms once they click on a “connect with Facebook” or similar button.

But most marketers haven’t taken that next step and analyzed social data with their CRM data. In Levi’s case, for instance, to achieve a “grand vision” of social CRM, the marketer would want a combined database, with access to all data so it could, say, send a targeted email based on a person’s “likes,” or send a more personalized message with relevant products in a customer’s news feed.

Assuming marketers tackle the operations and privacy issues, the question will then be how to enact it. Even if there is one database for a marketer, how do you use it — and can you get rid of the organizational silos that inhibit its use? “If you reach scale, how do you begin to act on that — use those new insights to drive a better marketing program? Where we see marketers trip-up is that they still behave in silos,” said Mr. Fleck, viewing search, email, and social as separate disciplines.

More at: http://adage.com/article/digital/marketers-struggle-marry-social-media-crm/232660/

Facebook appears ready to launch a new set of premium ad units, and, based on a review of documents which purport to describe them, the social network would seem to be doubling down on two core principles that mark fundamental departures from traditional advertising.

First, Facebook is making the new ads social by default, meaning they will automatically show users when their friends have already Liked the advertiser. And the new formats will draw their content exclusively from posts to brands’ Facebook Pages, rather from advertising copy written independently.

Combined, these features make two statements about where Facebook believes the future of online advertising lies—at least in its particular universe. It is saying that ads based on content, rather than messaging, have a better chance of hitting home, and that ads involving tacit endorsements from the people you know have a better chance of capturing your attention.

“When people hear about you from friends, they listen,” the Facebook materials say. “We’ll expand your ad with stories from friends who have already connected.” (“Stories” is Facebook’s shorthand for a wide varitey of interactions on the site. In the case of ads, it seems to refer to the fact that the ads will display which of a viewer’s friends have Liked the brand.)

Facebook has not commented publicly on the new ads (presumably they will discuss them at a marketing launch event in New York next week). But the materials describing the new units were posted to Scribd earlier this week. The news was first reported on GigaOm. The documents are below.

More at: http://www.fastcompany.com/1818952/facebooks-new-ad-units-reveal-a-future-that-is-social-by-default

More at: http://blogs.webtrends.com/2011/06/facebook-marketing-even-more-takeaway-tips/

 

As the number of Facebook commerce apps grows, choosing the right one to partner with is now an important decision to get right. One of the leading app developers is Ecwid. To illustrate how their platform can deliver real-world revenue gains, the company analysed 2,000 of its user accounts and found that an increase of 15% was enjoyed when using the app. Ecwid itself now has over 10 million ‘likes’ and has reported that total revenue via its Facebook stores jumped by 40% last year.

“Ecwid 10.2 makes it as easy as possible for website owners, of varying level levels of technical expertise, to start monetising their sites,” said Ruslan Fazlyev, founder and CEO of Ecwid. “Traditionally, users would be required to build and maintain a separate e-commerce site; pay for a hosted e-commerce solution; or add additional code to add individual ‘Buy Now’ buttons to their site, all of which can be a time consuming and costly exercise. Ecwid 10.2 not only makes it easy to set up an online store, but it also now offers store owners greater levels of customisation than ever before.”

Ecwid is the first and only store builder created entirely in AJAX. This means website owners can be confident that buyers are able to use the shopping cart regardless of device or browser type and without the need to install a Flash plug-in. Ecwid 10.2 is available in 40 languages and integrates seamlessly with major CMS and site builder platforms such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Parallels Web Presence Builder and now also any site created using Microsoft Office 365, providing them with e-commerce functionality.

Reality appears to have finally arrived at Procter & Gamble, the world’s largest marketer, whose $10 billion annual ad budget has hurt the company’s margins.

P&G said it would lay off 1,600 staffers, including marketers, as part of a cost-cutting exercise. More interestingly, CEO Robert McDonald finally seems to have woken up to the fact that he cannot keep increasing P&G’s ad budget forever, regardless of what happens to its sales.

He told Wall Street analysts that he would have to “moderate” his ad budget because Facebook and Google can be “more efficient” than the traditional media that usually eats the lion’s share of P&G’s ad budget.

More at: http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-01-30/news/31004736_1_advertising-saatchi-saatchi-media#ixzz1l1hknbr4

Facebook is investing further in its outreach programme to retailers to bring clarity to the term “social commerce” and promote social integration on their websites.  

Gavin Sathianathan, Facebook’s strategic partner manager, is leading the social network’s bid to promote social commerce in the UK and said that agreed definitions are a key building block in its evolution. “It’s really important we nail what we mean by ‘social commerce’,” he said. “At Facebook, we do not equate ‘social commerce’ with opening a store within the network.”

The comments follow a story last week in which retail brands including John Lewis and Reiss told new media age that selling items via social networks, such as a Facebook Store, was not on their 2012 agenda, favouring to hone their m-commerce strategies instead (nma.co.uk 19 January 2012).

Defining social commerce, or “f-commerce”, simply as a transactional store on Facebook is a restrictive way of thinking, according to Sathianathan. “From a defininiton perspactive, it’s important we’re all clear on that,” he saidd. “When I talk to retailers about this, I try to make it clear that it’s about how we can bring social media to bear on the purchase process, be that in a Facebook store or not.”

Most of the discussions taking place between Facebook and retailers centre on integrating Facebook functionality, such as a Like or Shar’ buttons, into their own websites, according to Sathianathan.

Top of Facebook’s priority list are supermarket and FMCG brands, while those that have experienced notable success in their f-commerce strategy stem from the fashion and ticketing vertials, according to the social network. 

“We talk a lot to FMCGs and grocers [whose goods or services are not necessarily social] and talk to them about the social aspects of their products,” said Sathianathan. “For instance, a can of baked beans may not be social but the meal you have them with could.”

Earlier this week, Unilever used its Facebook storefront to help debut its Lynx Attract for Her brand – the first time it has attempted to appeal to female audiences with the brand (nma.co.uk 23 January 2012).

The FMCG giant sold all 100 cans it was offering via the platform, retailing for £3.25 each, within two hours of launch in a campaign that met most of its initial performance metrics.

More at: http://www.nma.co.uk/news/facebook-urges-clearer-understanding-of-social-commerce/3033576.article

There are a lot of articles circulating about the benefits of mobile advertising. In fact, many companies and brands are embracing mobile advertising and seeing impressive results. However, the mobile advertising market hasn’t been cornered by one particular vendor and some are wondering if Facebook is going to join the mobile scene.

Facebook is recognized as one of the top social media sites. Plus, numerous businesses appreciate the advance targeting features that are available in Facebook such as demographics, interests, connections, etc.

Some would like to use these advanced settings to reach the mobile market. This means businesses would already be prepared to pay Facebook to reach their respective audience.

Another plus is that people use their cell phones to check on their Facebook accounts already, so it’s not like Facebook would have to entice anyone to go on their site via a mobile device. They also, have loads of mobile user data at their fingertips.

According to an article on CNET, “Facebook already has access to data of a large mobile user base”… Facebook says nearly half of its nearly 800 million users already log in via mobile devices, giving the network momentum in a market estimated to be worth $630 million.”

More at: http://socialmediatoday.com/dleitchmorevisibilitycom/432670/rumors-about-facebook-mobile

helloyoucreatives:

Top Gear are getting ready to blow something up http://www.facebook.com/topgear

“The average Post Lifetime for a Facebook Brand Page Update is 3 hours and 7 minutes”

This nugget is baed on considering that each individual Post has a “lifetime”. A Post is considered dead when the growth in engagement is less than 10% of the largest growth of engagement between hourly snapshots.

This data was sampled for EdgeRankChecker customers for the month of December, 2011 across 500+ Pages and over 30,000 individual Posts. The average Page size was approximately 140,000. Page size was not found to effect this.

More at: http://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/facebook-marketing/how-long-does-a-facebook-post-live/