All About Search for Facebook

On Facebooks 6th birthday they launched a new layout that will be available  possibly tonight for  80 million of their 400 million users.

You read that right they now have 400 million users, not bad for a 6 year old company, what is really interesting is that the company started with a focus on social networks for the college crowd and now the fastest growing group on the site is women above the age of 50, how is that for covering every market, I am lazy tonight and did not go dig up the exact age range group but it says alot for the service that it does attract all types of consumers.

And that is what it is all about, learning what consumers are talking about, buying, recommending, etc. Facebook is gathering data at a level only Google could imagine. Except, some would argue, the Facebook data could be even more valuable.

All that said, today Facebook also showed they are dead serious about search, by making the search box more visible and prominent in the layout users are more likely to search Facebook which will make the site even more sticky.

For an idea of how prominent search is now check out this posterous link.

This may seem subtle, but changes like this can make a huge difference in user behavior.

More and more this makes me realize how social and real time SEO will matter to those that focus on search marketing. Makes me glad I picked up SEORealtime.com...

Social Media + Mobile Search + Local Search = Success

If you have not read all the news about social networking sites being the future of how we access information instead of search engines then you must not be reading what is happening in the online world around you. I will help you with the relevant news articles in just a minute.

One thing I think people are missing sometimes is how the BLEND of mobile and local search along with the easy access to Facebook and Twitter on a mobile phone is making it an absolute must to have a plan on how to integrate all of these technologies together when you plan on promoting a product or service. The future is now and if you are not using all methods available then you are doing an injustice to your business promotion online.

For those that may be social media doubters and who do not realize that many people use search on their mobile phone before typing in a name (and I have not even mentioned visual search and verbal search) suddenly search is all that matters at times, be very careful basing everything you have on type-in traffic. Facebook has 350 million users and bypassed Google for traffic during the Christmas holiday, do you think Facebook is going somewhere? Yes they are, UP!

The people using Facebook (and even Twitter) are not typing in domain names, they are taking a friends recommendation without even looking at the site name. Sure the domain name is important for branding and I would never discount that, and for search an exact match name helps, but when all you are is a link hidden behind a URL shortening service that is not quite as important.

If you are still hiding in the dark and believing this change is not coming here are a few great articles to read:

Why Facebook PPC is Crucial

Why Is Google Afraid Of Facebook

How Social Media Helps Website Marketing - My own example of usage.

Social Media Impact

If the stories do not show you what is happening then I cannot help you. This does not mean that you should not have a website with a great name, but the people growing up with the Internet today do not use it like those of us who had it come to be during the midst of our lives.

If your only plan is to buy a great domain name and wait for the type-in traffic to come you may be surprised at your competitor coming up behind you and using the power of social media to drive more traffic that has been recommended by a trusted peer network that converts even better.

Use all the tools together and success can be yours, ignore the holistic marketing approach at your own peril.

2+2=5

How Social Media Helps Website Marketing

One of the things I was curious to see was how much traffic I could get to my new Hyperlocal SEO site that I launched a few days back. As with any new site getting awareness and traffic to it can be a challenge unless you are putting an advertising budget in place.

With this site though I thought it would be a valuable tool to see what having an established blog along with Twitter and Facebook could do. As someone who has seen the benefits of what it can do for a site like this one and what I have witnessed on even small business sites in rural Missouri I knew social media can have quite the impact.

In reality I was hoping for something in the range of 50 visitors or so would be a good start for the first few days then build up links from there and continue to use Twitter and Facebook to promote new posts.

Well, I was wrong, WAY wrong.

Here is the number of visits per day:

Jan 18th (launch day, partial day) - 239

Jan 19th - 246

Jan 20th (partial, data as of 6:30 or so CST) - 155

Do you think that could of happened without the power of social media, and in this case I can see that Twitter was the larger portion of that?

The answer is no, to launch a new site in such a competitive niche as local search would of been a long process. I cannot wait to see what happens as new writers come on board.  A special thanks to George Pickering again for his commitment to contributing to the site, just wait until the blog gets put into the mix at TargetAudience.com which will have real small business owners reading it daily in their feed, nice name George is working with there, cannot wait to see how that goes!

Yellow Page Decline Continues While Facebook Search Grows

During this past week a couple different things happened both worthy of their own blog post but time never really allowed me to get them done so I am getting them out together.

We all know that the Yellow Pages (and all copy cats) have had a continued decline in the usage of their print version, no secrets there. If early indications from real life examples are a sign of an accelerating move of their customers to smaller, less expensive ads then this year it could be a real scary ride for the industry.

A couple examples:

• While meeting with a large regional bank this week the marketing director indicated they cut their budget to a very small percentage for this year as compared to previous years based on the trends of people moving online. The person indicated that they previously had full page ads in their section of the Yellow Pages but had decided to move to the smallest listing available with a logo. How is that for a significant shift. When a conservative regional bank is making moves like that and starting to put more of their money into online marketing you know it is going to be a tough year.
• A fast growing local restaurant actually moved completely away from any paid listing in the Yellow Pages and moved back to the completely free listing. They thought it made more sense to focus their effort on expanding their web presence.

What I find particularly interesting is that the bank, who sets a yearly marketing budget and starts implementing it as soon as 2010 starts, has made such a strong move away from such a long running tradition as full page ads in their regional Yellow Page edition. This tells  me that last year was horrible for the Yellow Pages but now even the most rural and conservative of businesses are pulling out, in other words, even the strongholds in the rural regions are starting to move away.

Now on to Facebook, over the past month and a half I have seen a STRONG, and I should emphasize STRONG move upward in the amount of traffic I am receiving from Facebook search. I had read quite a bit about Facebook and the work they were putting into their search functions and had paid quite a bit of attention to that and had actually tested some things around that to see how it affected traffic to various sites.

Well the verdict is in and the Facebook dream scenario is happening more and more, Facebook would love for people not to go to Google to search (which is one of Googles biggest fears obviously), and with the amount of traffic I am seeing from Facebook search for quite a few different keyword terms it tells me that people are starting to be even more sticky to Facebook. Hopefully I can test a few scenarios with this soon and report back with some real numbers, but I can say that for certain terms that I rank well for in Google that I am getting just as much traffic from Facebook from them. A little side note, Facebook web search is powered by Bing....

FB.me Launched By Facebook And Puts A dotME In Front Of Millions

Well Tweetmeme.com used a .ME as a URL shortener (Retwt.me) and as a dotME fan I was obviously pleased since it put dotME domains in front of the millions of visitors to Tweetmeme.com.

Then shortly thereafter WP.me launched as the Wordpress shortening service, that put .ME in front of million so of more users.

Well, it just got better for dotME fans, Facebook (with over 350 million users) has now launched their URL shortener on a dotME, FB.me was announced today. One thing to note is that two letter .ME domains are only available to those that present a plan to the registry, at this point they have not been made available through landrush auctions or general registration.

Obviously a company like Facebook, with their very large user base, using .ME helps with the acceptance of the extension and helps with user awareness. So far the reports are that it is starting to show up more frequently in Twitter links and other social media services. But with the user base of Facebook once they fully launch the penetration their URL shortening service gets will be huge.

Right now it seems that Facebook is using the FB.me service extensively for mobile applications and it also works for Facebook usernames and pages as reported at Mashable.com.

Thanks to Facebook for helping along the .ME extension. I have never had any issues with customers accepting the extension but when a brand like Facebook starts using it for a service that really helps awareness along.

Facebook Fan Page Vs Facebook Group

With more people using Facebook Fan Pages lately I also have heard people talking about Facebook Groups and how they relate to Facebook Fan Pages. For the most part people are looking for the difference between the two and when they should use one versus the other. This is a quick post just to outline some of the key points to be aware of when thinking about creating one or the other:

• Facebook Fan Page updates show in the fan news feeds which is very powerful, it takes advantage of the true value of the social network. If your fan likes it that goes along way with their friends, then their friend, etc, etc. This does not happen with Facebook Groups. This makes Facebook Fan Pages much more useful for a business to use for social marketing.
• Facebook Fan Pages are visible to users not registered with Facebook, this means that you have a chance to get your message to people that may not be Facebook users. This is important since Google indexes Facebook Fan Pages.
• Facebook Groups allow for bulk invites, one of my biggest frustrations with Facebook Fan Pages is having to manually do invites once the page is created. With a group you can do a bulk invite and so can the people that join the group. As other have pointed out, this makes them very powerful for viral networking of the group.
• Facebook Fan Pages allow for custom Facebook usernames which makes it easier to promote your page in text and offline places.

In my opinion a Facebook page is preferable for marketing messages and business promotion, a Facebook group is more for active discussions. To me the real value is the fact the Facebook page updates show in the fans news feed which is really a downfall for Groups since the group member has to proactively go to the group to see the updates, etc.

Small Business Facebook And Twitter Use Growing Fast!

Received a tidbit from a friend of mine citing a Merchant Circle survey showing some amazing numbers and something I have hit on with a few posts lately. More and more businesses are starting to understand the use of social media for use in directly connecting with their customers, here are a couple direct quotes from the survey results:

The online survey of 2,403 of MerchantCircle’s small-business members, conducted in September, found that 45% also have a presence on Facebook and Twitter with the express intent of promoting their businesses.

45 percent is a pretty amazing number in my mind, although it is pretty common for large corporations to start to take advantage of new technology (although not always in the most effective manner) it is very uncommon for smaller businesses to take advantage of it. What becomes very important to them is how they integrate this into their larger web presence, i.e. tying their website into their social media presence.

And another quote:

Internet2Go and MerchantCircle attributed this to the ease and low cost of participating in social media. Of the small businesses polled in the survey, 79% reported annual marketing budgets of less than $5,000 per year, with 44% spending less than $1,000 annually.

Now, this was a really interesting piece, the ease of use statement is interesting simply because most small businesses consider the Internet a very technical experience and that turns them away from using various marketing methods associated with it.

On another note, if you are investing in domain names in many cases they would likely look at anything web related as a marketing expense, if you think you are selling a domain name to a small business (which are the majority of potential customers) at large sums then you may want to think about their budgets a bit.

Facebook Page URL Instead Of Domains For Honda and Cranium

In a recent post concerning Facebook being used to promote offline businesses I mentioned that this will have some impact on domaining even if it is just small. Meaning, that the more people put their Facebook page URL, or Twitter URL on their business card or billboards the more it will have at least some bit of an impact.

Well, as I am sure all of you have witnessed, more and more we see large companies using their Facebook fan page URL in commercials or other advertisements instead of their website. I understand a bit of what they are trying to accomplish here, I would say we all agree having the direct interaction with customers on social networks is a great thing and a huge benefit to companies but too see it be the only URL used in a commercial is something that I am not sure I would do. I would think the smarter move would be to use your primary web presence to drive traffic to your social media pages and then once the person is a fan or follower use it in the other direction, use it to drive people to promotions, etc that may be on your primary web presence.

Now, all that said, I can see where maybe by using the Facebook page as the primary URL in their ad is being used to get them to be a "fan" so they can get continued traffic to their main site once links are posted, etc but I am still not sold that I would only promote with my Facebook URL. I am a big believer in making sure all the pieces work together and to me that starts at the website.

An example of this happening more and more is what brought this post on, last night while watching some post Trick or Treating Halloween shows I noticed two commercials in a row with Facebook URLs instead of website URLs. The first was for the game Cranium, Facebook.com/cranium and the next commercial was for Honda, and it ended with the URL Facebook.com/honda.

Now, lets be clear, neither one of these is the typical Facebook fan page we see created, these are business pages with much customization and actually pretty neat concepts but all in all it still is not their primary corporate presence. I actually find it very interesting and refreshing to see companies use social media like this but still find it a but interesting they would not direct people there from their main presence.

I think it is more than a little over the top to say that Facebook is creating a new Internet (if you understand the definition of what the Internet is you would know it just does not work that way) but I have read more than one story in the past few months that had stated just that, Facebook is creating its own web. Well, the more companies promote like this the more that maybe I still think it is way over the top but maybe just a little less so.

Example Business Uses Of Facebook

Recently I did a series of posts on how to setup a Facebook fan page as well as a few other Facebook fan page how to examples. After doing those I thought it may be good to list a few examples of various types of businesses taking advantage of the promotion that Facebook allows.

Here are a few to show the varied ways businesses are using Facebook pages:

Auto Spa Car Wash - I posted about this the other day and thought this was a good example of how a business, in the case a car wash, uses Facebook to promote their events, specials, and other offerings. This just shows with a bit of creativity almost any kind of business can take advantage of the social network effect.

Eagle Valley Golf Course - Someone the other day gave me some great examples of how they had seen golf courses using Twitter and Facebook. Here is a solid example of a course with  good group of friends. Perfect example of promoting events and special discounts online through their Facebook page to get people booking tee times.

Car Dealership -  Here is a dealership posting customer reviews as well as video reviews of various cars. Once again directly connecting with their fans and keeping a positive message out there. There were many bad car dealership examples, people with one post or 2 fans. Seems like alot of them jumped on the bandwagon but never had anyone help them take advantage of the initial motivation.

Ford Fusion - On a much larger scale here is an example of a company like Ford, who I continue to see using social media in various ways (they use Twitter quite a bit too but that is another post).  In this case they are promoting their go green and hybrid initiatives while promoting their Ford Fusion Hybrid. I think much of the value here is customers posting actual comments on the page. Nice job by an old school company.

LIFT Coffee Shop - This is a business that gets it, great use, using it to promote their menu items, specials. They post constantly keeping their hundreds of followers connected. Local coffee shops are places that people tend to connect with and hang out in, they get attached. This is a way to keep that going even outside of the shop.

As businesses start to use more than just advertising and their websites to promote their business I think it is very important to stay in touch with how they are using it. It is easy for those of us that have lived in an online word to just say, yeah everyone uses it, it is the next great thing. But I find it even more important to actually step back and take a look at how, and why it works for some and not others.

Facebook Being Used To Promote The Most Offline Business

I had to go no further than 1 mile from my house to find an example of an offline business starting to take advantage of social networking, in this case Facebook, to promote it's business. I was heading to dinner last night when I happened to see a sign at the car wash sign (see pictures to left, ignore spelling error) asking people to become of a fan of their Facebook page.

As a big proponent of using all the various tools a business has online to create a holistic marketing solution it was nice to see a business that is about as offline as you can get using social networking to promote themselves. I will become a fan because I think it will be a nice case study in an offline business using social networking.

As a domain investor it causes me slight concern, more and more I am seeing businesses promote themselves only with their Facebook page. We can all stand up and say no way can this effect us, but it does at some level, maybe not in a major way but in some minor way the more people start putting their Facebook or Twitter URLs on signs instead of their domain names in some minor little way it has an effect, there is no way to deny this if you are thinking rationally. I do not like it but it is what it is.

All that said, kudos to this small business owner in rural Missouri using all avenues to promote his business and offerings. On a side note, Nov 12th we are doing a seminar talking about just this topic to the local Chamber of Commerce member and surrounding town businesses. Seems like their may be a sympathetic ear or two in the audience...

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