The F-commerce formula doesnt work

Why The F-commerce Formula Does Not Work

If you have millions of Facebook fans and high levels of engagement then it makes sense to give that community an opportunity to buy your products from within the platform. Or so you would think. It wasn’t so long ago that even ASOS admitted that sales from their social networks were not as good as expected, a statement that was publicly retracted, probably after a few embarrassing months later.

You have to be naive in thinking F-commerce will generate immediate sales as millions of fans does not mean millions of existing and new customers ready to buy. If the adage that brand conversations on Facebook should be the same as you would “talk to you friends down the pub” then it’s no wonder they don’t want to buy anything directly. The likelihood is, if you have the correct tracking in place, that they will Like you on Facebook but go to your website to browse your products. For my Walks And Walking website the top 4 referrers, in order, are StumbleUpon, Twitter, Ping.fm and Facebook but that’s not to say I should be looking into S-commerce, T-commerce P-commerce and F-commerce!

Top 4 Referring Websites To Walks And Walking

Facebook is the most visited website in the world, it’s where people are hanging out to chat. My highest levels of engagement aren’t reached from posting work related content on my personal page, it’s when I post a new photo of my 16 month old son. When I Like a brand on Facebook, enter a competition or interact with a Facebook page in any way I usually get a stony silence from my friends. When I post a family photo or a light-hearted joke I get loads of friends Liking, sharing and commenting.

I personally don’t believe social media should be managed by the e-commerce team anyway. If it sits in PR then that’s the best place to start but ideally you need a social media group within the business with champions from customer services, product, marketing and sales and remember social media is not just another channel. Facebook is a channel, Twitter is a channel, YouTube is a channel and each one needs its own social media strategy, publishing process, rules of engagement and content plan.

Click here to read the Bloomberg Report on failing Facebook Stores that have recently closed.

If anyone has simplified and nailed down exactly how you should use social media then it is Nick Stamoulis at Brick Marketing.

Read it, print it off and stick it all over your marketing department’s walls!

4 Social SEO Mistakes to Avoid | Search Engine People | Toronto.

There is no doubt that Facebook is changing the shape of the way consumers use the internet but I think most brands do not use the channel in the correct way. What really makes me cringe is when marketers say the words “Facebook” and “ROI” in the same sentence. Facebook attracts huge amounts of visitors but that does not mean they go there to buy products or services, they go there to chat to their friends and make new friends.

The top-level mantra strategy for Facebook should be “talk to your customers like they are your friends”. I’m guessing the reason why brands don’t do that is because they haven’t really got any friends so don’t know how to do it. When I talk to my friends they don’t try to sell me stuff and if they did I would probably say “What on earth are you doing?!”

I often track how brands use Facebook, most are using it to broadcast product messages, some use it to broadcast their great PR content and the “clever” ones mix in general chat with the occasional product message when their engagement levels peak each month. Getting those marketing messages out when the audience is feeling really positive about your brand is a very successful technique for the experienced Facebook marketer.

For the majority of Social Media Managers, of which 60% receive no formal social media training or governance models, according to a recent eConsultancy report, they just do what they’re told – pushing out products to an empty room or a bunch of Likes they collected when they were promoting a competition or giving something away for free.

So it’s no surprise that a recent study from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute only 1% of Facebook users actually engage with the brands they “Like”. As a very quick straw poll of my Walks And Walking website, the engagement is less than 0.5% but a few very rough equivalent calculations (and I mean very rough) I worked out that the engagement on my personal Facebook page for David Knockton is just over 4%.

Only 1.3% of fans actually engage with brands within Facebook.  The metric used for the study is the “People Talking About This” metric, a number generated from users taking actions on Facebook.

The research looked at the top 200 brands over a six-week period in October breaking down the overall fans to the “People Talking About This” (PTAT) number.  Karen Nelson-Field, senior research associate for Ehrenberg-Bass, stated:

“People need to understand what it can do for a brand and what it can’t do. Facebook doesn’t really differ from mass media. It’s great to get decent reach, but to change the way people interact with a brand overnight is just unrealistic.”

You can read the full report from Marketing Land here: Facebook Study

Here is the most thorough article I have found to date that tells you everything you need to know about Google Plus For SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).

My advice on G+ (Google Plus) so far has been to set up a placeholder and give people somewhere nice to go if they are looking for you. Other than that G+ hasn’t really had much of an impact on SEO with quite a lot of people saying they don’t want to have other peoples feeds cluttering up their own Google searche results. The overly social elements of G+ can also provide irrelevant search results; as with Twitter you get all sorts of people following you from all over the world. The more the merrier I say but if I search for a “chinese restaurant” on Google then I’m very likely to get someone else in my network that likes chinese restaurants…. and probably in Lagos and not London!

Anyway, chinese food aside, this article is extremely thorough and offers good advice on what you can do next with your G+ page. If you haven’t got round to designing one then it will certainly encourage you to create one for you or your brand. It is almost a step by step guide on how to game G+ and shows examples of who else is doing it. The very nature of G+ means that everything you read in this article is highly likely to evolve over a very short period of time.The author of this article will be updating the article frequently so please bookmark his website to keep up to date with any future changes.

To read the full article please click here: Everything You Need To Know About Google Plus For SEO

“If you build it, they will come” is a phrase that no longer works in the eyes of the social consumer, you need a much wider web presence to gain the attention of this new wave of net savvy customer. A beautiful website, a supporting blog, a well designed Facebook page, a few videos on your YouTube channel, an active twitter account and a LinkedIn profile is not going to drive traffic to your new website.

In the eyes of Google, and the other major search engines, you are just another number, no different to all the other new websites that are launched every day of the week. In fact, the only way you will be found by Google is if you are popular. By popular, I mean you are a credible source of information in your particular industry and have enough content to prove it for each keyword that you want to be on page 1 of the Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

It’s not so much what your budget is for your website but what is your budget for each keyword you want on page 1. The competition for each keyword is widely varied and mainly based on how much traffic you are likely to get from being on page 1. The more competitive, the more you have to invest to get that coveted page 1 placement and, better still, be the very first listing on page 1.

So, what is the best, quickest and easiest way to do this?

If you have a new website then you probably had someone build it for you, and they probably said they will build it to be “search engine friendly” with on-page search engine optimisation techniques (URL structure, META data, social media integration etc) but is that going to be enough to get you on page 1?

With more and more people using the internet and social media now being here to stay you’ve got no chance!

So here are a few tips on what you need to do to get on page 1 of the SERPs:

Backlinks

One of the biggest factors that has almost always been a big indication to search engines that your site is credible is having a different sites linking back to yours. You can think of these links as votes for your site from other people and other sites. If other people think that your site, your business and your information is good and are linking to it, then the search engines are more likely to think so too. That’s why it’s important to try to 1.) Create amazing content that people will want to link to 2.) Try to build some of these backlinks yourself. How do you do that? Here’s one of the best ways to do so:

Network with others in your industry and get involve on their sites or blogs by leaving comments and interacting. Once you’ve developed a relationship with them you can reach out to them and offer to write a helpful or interesting article for their readers. This has become known as guest posts and can give tremendous credibility, as well as drive traffic to your site over the long run.

Outgoing Links

Outgoing links are the links on your site where you link to other sites. First thing you want to do is make sure that you don’t have broken links. Secondly, try to link to helpful sites that are related to what your site is about. Links to things that your readers will appreciate. Thirdly, link to authority sites within your industry.

Sitemaps

Sitemaps are very important to any site. Just like you need to have a site that’s designed to be user-friendly so users will stick around, you need to be using valid sitemaps to help search engines navigate your site. You should have an XML sitemap for the search engines, but if you have videos on your site you really need to make sure you also have video sitemaps specifically for the videos.

Social Proof and Attracting Social Consumers

Social media has become more than just a fun way to connect and get information on the go. It’s become a staple for how search engines, particularly Google, views your site. The more times your site is mentioned in social media from different users, the more ‘social proof’ there is that your site is credible. If your site offers walking routes and there are people all across the country tweeting about the awesome route they found, don’t you think that makes your site more credible? The trick here is to get people who are ‘power’ users of social media to share your site. The more influential they are in the industry, the more powerful their social mention will be for your site.

UK Walking is a directory of free UK walking routes covering Berkshire, Cornwall, Devon, Essex, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Kent, Somerset, Suffolk and Wales with more areas being added throughout the year.

Each walking route is completely free to download or print and with no subscription or registration fees required.

Each post aims to contain a walking route, or a link to the full walking route, with information about the walk, the walking route itself, a route planner and how to get there directions. A little history of the area and walk is also included in many of the articles with photographs and videos of the walking routes where possible.

What to wear walking tips and advice should help you to be prepared for each walking route with recommendations for walking boots, walking clothes, walking accessories and general outdoor gear.

The main purpose of this website is to encourage people to get outside and walk. It will also inspire and encourage people to walk a good 5, 10 or 15 miles to really feel the benefit of the walk and explore our beautiful UK countryside.

It’s a nice clean, crisp easy to use resource for walks and walking routes in the UK and I look forward to seeing how it developes over the coming months as we upload more content and walking routes for everyone to enjoy.

I help companies to sell their products using search engine optimised social media marketing services.

This service is for companies that manufacture or retail products relating to the outdoors, camping, hiking, walking, rambling, mountaineering or orienteering  as well as selling maps, books or downloadable/printable walking routes for the UK.

Essentially, I review your product on my Walks And Walking website and then use my established social media network of different blog sites, over 20 social media bookmarking sites, You Tube, Flickr, Photobucket, Facebook and Twitter accounts to help you sell your product.

All activity will be manually submitted and fully optimised for the search engines so that the product review will be indexed on all of the major search engines to drive traffic and/or sales to your website or your wholesaler sites.

This is not a corporate or glossy product review but real people using your products in the correct way for the optimum viral marketing effect.

Services include:

1. I will post your product content/press release on walksandwalking.com (title, description, body text, 3 keywords and an image).

2. I will write a 250 word minimum positive product review and take a photograph of the product in action and in a suitable environment.

3. I will take 4 further photographs of your product in action and publish on my website with links to Flickr and Photobucket.

4. I will take a minimum 2 minute video of your product in action and publish on my website and linked to You Tube.

5. I will post the article on my Walks And Walking Facebook Page and my Walks And Walking Twitter and personal Rasculous Twitter  accounts.

7. I will manually submit the article to 60 social bookmarking website accounts including StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit, Delicious, Tumblr, Technorati etc.

Total cost per article: £75.00

Here is an example of my work for LitteLife Child Carriers:

1. Blog article 1: Child Carrier

2. Blog article 2: Child Carrier Review

3. Flickr images: Child Carrier Photographs

4. You Tube video: Child Carrier Video

For more information and a case study please email dknockton@gmail.com or call David Knockton 07912 664473.

I would say that now is the time to make hay whilst the sun shines in the UK as social media will become more expensive as the results generated improve. Improved to the point that, as with the new comScore report, nearly a third of all ads served in Q1 were on facebook.

1.1 trillion ads were served in the US in Q1 with 346 billion of those being on that facebook with no other online companies coming anywhere near to close. Yahoo held 10%, Microsoft 5% and Google on 2.5% of Q1’s online ads.

Facebook’s staggering market share has been gained by getting marketers to focus on CTR (Click-Through rate), leads and conversions and away from the traditional impressions model. The huge volume of impressions has caused CTRs to decrease with facebook at only 0.5% but the CPC (Cost-Per Click) has increased year on year, from $0.27 in 2009 to $0.49 in 2010 and with more marketers buying media on facebook this trend will probably continue to rise.

Read more: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/13175/One-Third-of-U-S-Online-Ads-Now-Served-By-Facebook.aspx#ixzz1LU61ejsu     

————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Posted by David Knockton

Head of Digital Sales and Strategy

Internet Search Management Ltd

Social Media, Organic and Paid Search Agency

For a Free Social Media Audit of your business please contact: d.knockton@isearchm.com

What are the early trends and where are the social conversations happening?

A report released today from The Pearlfinders Index summarises the key findings for digital in Q1 2011. They speak to over 5,000 marketers each year spanning all industry sectors regarding all marketing disciplines. This data is then collected and processed to establish and monitor trending of the marketing services sector.

Digital Conversations in Q1 2011

The facebook spike in Q1 was due to the surge in conversations about Places Deals and the way they are changing the marketing landscape with a fast moving shift towards location based marketing.

Twitter is rolling out a dashboard that lets social media teams access more data, albeit not enough to really plough budget in to. As in my previous article about social media marketing it’s still all very “R & D” at the moment so whilst patience is a virtue most in-house marketing teams haven’t experienced enough pain for them to start getting expert agency support involved.

In summary, FMCG brands are the ones leading the pack on social with Retail a very close second with nearly a third of all marketing budget holders evaluating digital or social media support, an increase of 6% compared to last year’s average. Mobile is also on the increase with 35%, +12% on last year’s average, speaking about it in their future plans. Overall, 55% of marketers interviewed planned to invest specifically in digital for new product launches.

Posted by David Knockton

Head of Digital Sales and Strategy

Internet Search Management Ltd

Social Media, Organic and Paid Search Agency

For a Free Social Media Audit of your business please contact: d.knockton@isearchm.com