a thousand cuts :: adam cohen's blog

Celebrities like Ashton Kutcher, Shaquille O’Neal and Britney Spears are not taking over Twitter.  A well publicized event like Oprah tweeting on her show won’t help.  Ashton vs. Larry King, in a contest to see which account, @aplusk (“a plus k”) or @cnnbrk can reach a million followers first is a publicity event that had lots of benefits for both in terms of building large networks, but they are not taking over.  Any way you slice it, their efforts are futile. They can’t take over Twitter because of one simple fact: people choose who they follow.

Twitter is a social network that allows a member to choose who to follow, and followers choose whether they follow back.  Follow who you are interested in.  Ignore spammers or folks who don’t interest you. It’s that simple.

The major benefit of all the celebrity activity around Twitter is that more people will be drawn to use the service.  For a concept that is so simple, Twitter is not the most intuitive network to navigate.  Understanding how to start and join in a conversation online is a little outside of the comfort zone of many people.  I’ve seen many people join Twitter and 6 months later they are following 10 people, no one is following back and the only post on their account is “Joined twitter, trying to figure this out.”  Take a look for yourself.

I will still contend that Twitter is not for everybody, but as more people figure out how to build their own communities on the platform, the more valuable content and discussion will be aggregated.  I like to think of the volume of content on Twitter as an unstructured Wikipedia – it’s not precisely accurate but directionally correct, and the more sources that contribute the better it gets.

Here’s an example.  I had a conversation last night with someone who had just joined twitter and had trouble convincing a friend why it is valuable.  I asked what that friend did for a living – the friend was a user experience designer, and very skeptical about Twitter.  I pulled up search.twitter.com and searched for “UX” – and immediately found UX job listings, informative blogs of well known people in the industry and a lot of people talking about user experience design.  I clicked through to a couple of twitter profiles and quickly identified the lead of user experience of AutoTrader.com.  Within a few minutes I could identify a dozen valuable resources that would help that friend in his career.

I’ve been using Twitter for nearly two years, and the community has changed and evolved.  I still keep to the core of interacting with folks who share common interests, whether it’s the Red Sox, social media or the fun of a lazy Saturday morning with the kids at home.  I’ve come to heavily rely on Tweetdeck to manage groups of friends and contacts that I don’t want to lose in the sea of “tweets,” but I am also continuing to find value by identifying interesting people who have something valuable to share.  With valuable contributors, searching Twitter has become an increasingly relevant way to get to content.  Celebrities joining twitter can only bring more interesting people to follow right along with them.

Are you using Twitter? Do you think celebrities joining is positive or negative, and has it changed how you use Twitter?  Feel free to reach out to me @adamcohen on Twitter to discuss, I’d love to hear from you.

Photo credit: Neon23 via flickr

Alternate payment methods (APM), in eCommerce terms, are ways to complete a transaction without using the normal credit card authorization process.  For the past couple of years Rosetta has completed a quick study of a hundred leading online retailers using the big players in this space.  Paypal, BillMeLater, and Google Checkout are the ones we have measured mostly due to marketshare in the large online retailer category.  New services and startups continue to crop up, as evidenced by the buzz related to Chris Brogan’s sponsored post around the new service eBillMe.

The major play for each of these payment methods is the additional uptick in conversion – the premise that providing alternate ways to pay will reduce people from abandoning their shopping carts and more broadly appeal to those worried about giving their credit card to a website.  Our study shows that both Paypal and BillMeLater have gained retailer adoption in the last 18 months.  Google Checkout appears to have maintained ground at the same relative group.

The list of retailers surveyed is the same list from our recent study on Facebook.  While not scientific, it shows us some trends in the marketplace.  The major points of the APM study this round are that the growth rate is continuing among retailers, and Google Checkout is stagnating.  Two major questions have come up:

• Why is Google Checkout not keeping pace?
• Why are other big name retailers still sitting on the sidelines?

Google Checkout recently dropped their incentive program for AdWords customers, but retailers aren’t typically quick to respond.  BillMeLater was recently acquired by eBay from Amazon, who also owns Paypal.   I wonder if the ROI is really there, despite low cost to implement these programs.

What I am more interested in is hearing from you.  Do any of the online sites you shop at regularly offer these methods?  Do you use them, or would they influence your buying decision?  Why or why not?  Our study was picked by DM News and Storefrontbacktalk.com (thanks!) but I’d love to hear what people use and why.

Photo credit:  nicmcphee via Flickr

In late October, I got a first hand glimpse into how the web is taking on traditional newspapers.  While in Dallas for Forrester’s Consumer Forum, I was grateful to be invited to drop in at the offices of the Dallas Morning News to talk about how retailers are using Facebook.

A Somber Scene

At first glance, the floor where most of the reporters sit is very much like the stereotypical movie sets.  I expected Perry White (Jackie Cooper, in my head, anyways) to come screaming out of his office at any moment.  The major differences:  PCs everywhere instead of typewriters, and most of the desks were empty.  I visited them on a Monday – the prior Friday they had been through a series of layoffs, and the mood was somber.  As the paper takes on challenges brought on by Web 2.0 and the shift of advertising online, ironically a blog solely for former employeers of the paper cropped up and has some very passionate people engaged. 

Challenges for Traditional Newspapers

Three major challenges for the paper are apparent.  First, the cost of advertising.  Simply put, ads cost a lot less and are far more measurable online.  This directly competes with ad revenue for the paper, and was a deciding factor in the recent Chapter 11 filing at the holding company that owns the Chicago Tribune and LA Times.

The second challenge is the proliferation of other media sources.  I heard the phrases “reading blogs” and “did you see the blog post” several times.  The lines between traditional media and new media are blurring and anyone who can publish a story could conceivably trump a reporter at a paper.  Clearly reporters are paying attention.  The lines are blurring between official reporters and passionate folks who like to write.

A third challenge for newspapers is really understanding the digital channel.  I’ve seen recent discussion on Twitter with Bryan Person and Aaron Strout around how newspapers don’t understand search engine optimization (SEO).  Both have pointed out examples of articles in Boston papers where the authors failed to include links in the online version of the story to either personal blogs or corporate web sites.  “Sharing the link love” is a key piece of making the digital channel successful and accessible through search. 

Understanding a Slice of New Media

The main purpose of my visit was to discuss my agency’s recent study on retailers using Facebook.  Several big name retailers, including J.C. Penney, are in the Dallas area, and the retail reporter for DMN was trying to get a better understanding of Facebook and other tools.  I spent a couple of hours with her explaining how Facebook works and gave her a demo of Twitter (thanks to many connections there for helping out).  It was clearly an eye opening experience for her, and we reviewed what several local-based retailers were doing with Facebook fan pages.  The net result, including much of her hard work looking at viral marketing, interviewing a variety of sources and adding insight to what the companies are doing, is this well-written piece published Tuesday called, “Retailers find Facebook friends in hopes of finding sales.”  No doubt the folks who are reporters are talented in their research and writing – she did an excellent job tying in the recent viral successes of J.C. Penney and Victoria Secret’s Pink brand to our discussion on retailers using Facebook pages.

Clearly the Dallas Morning News is getting the digital channel – the page where my article lives had (as of my last view) advertisements for Ford, Cars.com and Netflix.  The article also had the ability to share via social bookmarking sites and allowed comments.  Unfortunately the article had no link here or to our agency’s site, Rosetta.com.  But 2 out of 3 ain’t bad right?

In the end this was a real world microcosm example of how the old media industry needs to adapt in order to thrive.  Thanks again DMN for including me in the article and I hope we both continue to learn from the experience.

Photo via IMDB.com

In the last year I’ve immersed myself in social media, Chris Brogan has been a continual source of inspiration and guidance. His blog, chrisbrogan.com, is a virtual treasure trove of nuggets for social media junkies and new folks alike. Chris recently published an eBook called: Fishing Where The Fish Are: Mapping Social Media to the Buying Cycle. Today I was in a discussion with some colleagues about a client who is interested in “getting into social media.” While reading Chris’s eBook, I was inspired to jot down some very quick tactical tips and suggestions. I spun this toward retailers since it’s the space I work in but it really could apply to any company or industry. Thanks to Chris for the inspiration, who likely has written a similar list already for getting folks “plugged in.”  

10 Quick Tips for Retailers to Start Engaging in Social Media Right Now

1. Do a Google Blog search on your company’s brand, category and industry. Start doing this on a regular basis and read through the content. Start to get a pulse, subscribe to some Google Alerts on the topics.

2. Do the same search using search.twitter.com. There are lots of resources and guides on using Twitter and other microblogging platforms – but creating an account and getting acclimated is a longer term investment of time. I would start with looking for mentions and understanding what is being talked about. For that matter, Marc Meyer has a great post on many ways to listen to many sources in social media.

3. Join Facebook. Connect with friends, colleagues, get to know and understand how it works. Look for colleagues from your company and see how they are representing themselves. Are there Facebook groups mentioning your company? Does your company have a page? What about your competitors?

4. Join LinkedIn and set up your profile. Also connect with friends and colleagues. Get to know how the social network works. Understanding social networking will be important – as will the ability for customers and business partners to know you exist.  Learn about who you should connect to and who you should avoid on each network.  Here’s my view of how I scrutinize connections, but many people use social networks differently.

5. Ask around your company and find out who blogs, who is on Facebook, who is on Twitter or who is using other social media tools. You can learn a lot about social media by observing what they see and do in this space. I think you’d be surprised at how many folks in the organization already have a blog, even if it’s a personal one.

6. Start using a RSS reader like Google Reader. Search for reviews of your products or services. Find 5 sites where people are talking about them, in forums/discussions, blogs, or other sites. Subscribe to feeds from those sites to start listening.

7. Start using a bookmarking site like Delicious or StumbleUpon. Create a category or tag for blog and press mentions, and start to save/accumulate links about your company and industry.  Connect to colleagues with similar interests and see what they find.

8. Find 5 blogs in a related industry by searching in Technorati, Delicious or another bookmarking service. Read through posts, and comment on them. Be sure to disclose which company you are with if you are promoting or voicing an opinion on a product or service, including a competitor’s.

9. Go talk to Legal. Is there a corporate policy on social media? Does your industry have specific concerns about participating representing the company? Understand the guidelines and policies if they exist.  Scott Monty has talked about how this step was crucial when he joined the team at Ford as to lead their social media effort.

10. Go talk to PR. Chances are they are wrestling with understanding blogs and the importance of reacting timely to concerns. Let them know you are interested to and willing to share a voice.

a bonus tip:

11. Understand this is a journey, not a flash in the pan. Social media requires commitment and a lot of listening well before you will be in a position to come up with a case study in the space.  Just executing against this list will require some time investment.

What did I miss?  Was this helpful?  What has helped you ramp up in social media?

Photo credit: StephanGeyer via Flickr

In May of this year, Rosetta, the agency I am working for, published a study showing that 30% of 100 of the top online retailers had a Facebook page set up.  In the last five months since the original survey, there has been a substantial uptick to 59% – including pages added by Best Buy, Kohl’s and Toys ‘R Us.  This should not be a surprise and should continue to serve as a wake-up call.  Facebook has reached over 150 million users world wide, and Facebook fan pages are quite frankly, an easy way to set up a presence on the platform.

Use Caution, Plan Carefully

I have to caution retailers who just jump in by setting up a page.  Facebook is only one sliver of the overall social media space, and it’s very important to have an online strategy that embraces social media as another marketing channel. Here’s a quote from yours truly in our release on the study:

“It’s important that retailers don’t just slap up a page because everyone is talking about Facebook. An effective presence requires that you carefully consider what your customers are looking for, what you would like to communicate, and what role a fan page should play in your overall online strategy.”

I had an opportunity to talk further about this with Albert Maruggi on his Marketing Edge podcast yesterday going into further examples on how retailers can be using the Facebook page as a way to “start small” in social media and adjust to grow.  Here is the podcast – take a listen and let us know what you think.  Thanks Albert – you make this type of work a lot of fun.

Hot Topic

Facebook is a hot topic to cover right now.  Here are some other examples of where our study has been picked up – I’ll try to keep this post up to date with helpful links.  If you are interested in a direct copy of the study please don’t hesitate to contact me via the channels on my blog or comment.

Press and blog coverage for the Rosetta October 2008 Facebook Study – thanks to all for including our study:

• eMarketer: October 29, 2008
• Mitch Joel’s Six Pixels of Separation Blog, President of Twist Image: October 29, 2008
• Stores Magazine, the official magazine of the NRF: September, 2008 (cover story)
• Marketing Edge Podcastwith Albert Maruggi of Provident Partners, October 29, 2008
• Webpronews: October 29, 2008
• Marketing Pilgrim: October 29, 2008
• SmallBusinessNewz: October 30, 2008
• SFN blog – Shaping the Future of the Newspaper: October 30, 2008
• Home ATM Pin Debit Blog: October 30, 2008
• Technology in Marketing – Mark Taylor’s Blog (colleague from Rosetta): October 30, 2008

Facebook pages are just one indicator of retailers looking to embrace social media to engage customers.  Do you think they will be successful?  Have a favorite fan page to highlight?  If your company has a page on Facebook I’d love to hear your story – I’d also love suggestions on how to improve the study for the next round.

Universal McCann has done it again and assembled a very informative presentation on how strangers are influencing brand buying decisions.  This presentation is definitely worth the read.  Some key takeaways, looking through the eyes of retailers trying to figure out how to leverage social media for connecting with broader communities:

• Overall participation rates for sharing product opinions is very high.  All brands need to react by becoming more transparent and active in social and conversational media.
• Even low interest categories (insurance, finance, real estate) have high participation rates, although music, movies and technology lead the pack in discussion.  Travel is one of the most sought after categories for information.
• “Super influencers” – bloggers, video sharers, photo uploaders – are very real and have a definitive impact.
• Don’t be afraid to advertise in new social media platforms – it’s where consumers and influencers “live.”  But in concert with that, brands need to have a presence and “exist” in the social media services that consumers contribute to.

There are some great examples as well.  What do you think?  Coming soon in a future post: some “quick hits” ideas on how retailers can get quickly engaged in social media.

Roll over, hit the snooze button if you like, but opportunities are there, waiting.  It's inevitable – someone in your marketing department is going to ask you how you are including social networks in your plans for the next year, maybe even for the holidays. 

Alarm Goes Off

Recently, Gartner says that social networks have too much traffic to ignore.  (Thanks to Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester for highlighting the release – gotta love analyst firms giving each other props).

Some highlights from the Gartner article:

• "Social networks are rich in Word-of-Mouth discussions about Retailers and Products." 
  Over 100 million people are on Facebook, so chances are retailer brands are being talked about there.  There are many networks and platforms for consumers to interact.  Brands are definitely being discussed, now it's up to retailers to choose (and very importantly, to choose how) to engage in those conversations.
• "Gartner says that retailers must first understand how each of the major social networks will allow them to leverage their [social] graphs. then decide what to do with that access."
  Deciding what to do can be challenging – it takes a deep understanding of social networks and a creative digital approach.  It also takes a clear understanding of objectives before starting.
• "Social Networks Are Merging Into the Real-Time World — Coming to Your Mobile Phone."
  The emerging practice of leveraging the combination of social networks and location based targeting is new but growing rapidly, especially with the adoption of the iPhone and its capabilities.

The article is worth the read for anyone exploring how to leverage social networks in a business context.

Another Wake Up Call

This September, STORES magazine – the official publication of the National Retail Federation (NRF) – decided the growing trend of retailers leveraging and exploring Facebook was worth a cover story.  I was honored and delighted to be interviewed by Executive Editor Susan Reda, based upon our study from May of 100 of the top online retailers and their use of fan pages.  Susan did a great job outlining the different points of view about Facebook – with over 100 million users now (the article mentions 90 million but was authored a month or so ago), it's hard to ignore the level of reach and access.  In the article, I recommend exploring Facebook and learning about it – but in the context of a broader list of objectives for engaging in social media and not for the sake of jumping in.  I also caution about interaction with customers – social networks are about connecting and sharing content with friends, not about selling and users can be resistant to "forced messaging." 

What Do You Think?

Is Facebook the right forum for retailers?  What retailers do you think are leveraging Facebook well?  Are you concerned about the invasiveness of advertising?  I'd love to hear what you think and your reactions to the two articles above.

photo credit: mcgraths via flickr

Do big, well-known brands have it easier or harder than start-ups trying to make an impact and leveraging social media?  Jeremiah Owyang, the well known social media analyst from Forrester Research, recently wrote a very thoughtful post on the current challenges in social media.  I also recently attended Social Media Camp Boston, which had a number of enterpreneurs presenting on tactics they take to leverage social media platforms.  This got me thinking – what types of companies lend themselves to social media?  I see three major factors that can help to answer this question, among others:

1.  "Traditional" Marketing and PR
2.  Budget for Social Media Efforts
3.  Community Leverage

Traditional Marketing and PR

Many large companies and established brands have yet to embrace and understand some of the tenets of social media.  They are unwilling to relinquish control of the message.  They struggle with fears of engaging customers directly and giving them a voice – looking to avoid negative PR instead of embracing customers and engaging customers.  They term "audience" is still used prevalently because of the one-way communication mindset, where "community," "listening" and "conversation" are not words some of these companies would associate with marketing. 

In some ways, this parallels a presentation I attended at Forrester's Marketing Forum called "The Interactive Marketing Maturity Model."  Shar Van Boskirk did an excellent job capturing four levels of maturity in embracing interactive marketing, which I believe also applies to leveraging social media:

• "Skeptics," characterized by little or no interactive experience and assessing if interactive has value for them
• "Mavericks," organizations that have a few isolated team members that appreciate interactive and run stand-alone programs but lack support to improve current efforts
• "Practitioners," companies who have several years of experience and are piloting emerging media, and
• "Optimizers," who have company-wide support for interactive efforts and are working to optimize multi-channel (including offline) efforts.¹

With very few "optimizers" out there in the big corporations, it can be difficult for those companies to bridge the gap and trully leverage social media.  They need to retain talent in the industry, like Ford's recent hire of Scott Monty and Nationwide's recent hiring of Shawn Morton.

On the flip side, smaller startup organizations can be more nimble and have few constraints around controlling the brand message.  A great example of this is Freshbooks, led by chief "magic maker" Saul Colt.  Their entire marketing approach is to build a community of passionate users and embrace their customers with open and earnestly helpful dialog.

Budget for Social Media Efforts

More traditional organizations will ask the ROI question.  As Jeremiah points out, it's difficult to measure ROI on "engagement" and no industry standard exists.  Larger established brands may be less willing to take risks – where startups practically need to take a risk to differentiate themselves.  An untapped, unproven landscape in social media is ripe for startups (even though they may be spending funding rather than profits).  Albert Maruggi of the Marketing Edge, thinks companies need to get past the ROI question, using magazines' spending $14 million to buy a baby picture of Brangelina's kids as an example.

I think it should be easier for larger companies to allocate budget (including resources) to focus on social media due to their scale and the relatively low barrier to entry of leveraging many of these tools.  Sometimes process and a lack of executive sponsorship get in the way.

Community Leverage

Another factor in determining whether big brands have it easier is whether they already have a community to tap into.  Nike's Jordan division is a well known and loved brand – leveraging social media platforms and tools should be easy since there are passionate fans out there who would willingly participate.  For crying out loud, people fight and even risk lives in getting a hold of the latest shoe design. 

Smaller startups need to build communities, one person at a time.  Melanie Notkin has done a terrific job at building a community over months leading up to the launch of SavvyAuntie.com, using her blog, Facebook, and Twitter.  It can be arguably harder to build a community than to engage one that exists, but I'd be interested to hear from folks who have more expertise on each before I decide on that one.

So which is it?

Do big brands have it easier or harder leveraging social media?  Are there other factors to consider?  Please take the poll and let me know what you think.

¹ Source: The Interactive Marketing Maturity Model, Shar Van Boskirk, Forrester Research, April 9, 2008.
Photo credit: mrwilleeumm via Flickr

Several weeks ago, Coca-Cola launched an application in Facebook which is a “personal, customizable widget for individuals, bands, bloggers, artists, and companies to share links to content they want to promote and drive traffic to anywhere on the Web.”  I spent some time playing around with the app (which is still in beta) after I was contacted by Advance Guard and the Coca Cola company asking for an honest review.  I had also spotted it on C.C. Chapman’s blog. 

There are two areas around this widget I am going to review – First, the application itself, and Second, the approach to distribute, launch and promote it.

Simple Application, But Will It Take Off?

The application right now is still in beta and only available on Facebook.  The application let’s you build a slick looking tag, change it’s skin (including a design that promotes Coke’s we8 program uniting Chinese design firms and progressive western artists) and customize links to share, and anyone who sees it on your profile will be able to click through links.I added the tag to my Facebook profile in under a minute – it was easy to set up, put in some things about me and be done.  Ease of use for a widget is important and Coke nails it for the casual, generic user.

There are two differentiators for CokeTags that may contribute to its success.  First is the slick interface.  For a novice techie, the Web 2.0-like view is fun and different.  I am not sure I would put it on my blog (when available) since a) the style options are not consistent with the look and feel of my page, and b) I’m not sure why I would want to endorse Coca-Cola.  But to a casual user, this might spice up a web page, blog or Facebook profile enough to be different.  The interface does promote Coke, but it’s emphasis is on sharing content unrelated to the beverage.  Chris Abraham was spot on when describing that the widget ”isn’t nefarious.“  Still, they have some kinks to work out.  After repeated attempts to edit and republish links, the widget looked fine previewing in the application (above) but the style sheet on my profile page still looked funky. 

The second differentiator is the ability for the CokeTag creator to go to one place, maintain content/links, and push out to all the sites/profiles/pages that have the widget.  For a mini version of a web content management system, that is empowering to a user.  The app also provides a mini version of web analytics, showing which users in Facebook have expanded your CokeTag and which links have been clicked on.  That’s a good amount of functionality built in to a simple widget.

A Challenge: Engaging the User

The challenge I have to Coke is to make this widget more compelling to use.  There are tons of tools out there to share links and fill in information about oneself.  I already have the ability to put this same information in my Facebook profile, so to me the information the widget provides could be a bit redundant.  The categories of links are customizable, but simply sharing links that I put in doesn’t make it very “sticky” for me.  Bands or artists looking to disseminate information and links can do this easily directly in the content on their Fan Pages or Myspace pages, even though this tool provides a way to maintain/publish the links in one place. 

Christopher Penn suggested to blend this widget with Coke rewards points, which would be great.  While admittedly I may be asking for too much, my suggestion would be to add a level of interaction within the widget itself – perhaps personalized recommendations, suggestions of related content, or allowing people to comment on what’s in there like the comment system in FriendFeed.  For example, if I was a band and posted a link to “Concert Saturday Night” with a click through link, it would be great to allow users to comment right in the widget – “I’ll be there!” or “Is it standing room only?” or “Hey, when are you coming to my city?”  I realize Coke needed to start somewhere, and what they have is great for the basics.

One minor question for the Coke team – I am curious when the widget is release through OpenSocial and other platforms for blogs if the links are exposed for SEO purposes.  That would make it at least as beneficial for promotion as putting links directly in content on pages.

Using Social Media to Promote Social Media

Using a Social Media Release, Coke and Advance Guard do a great job of announcing the widget, sharing what it is about and seeking feedback from the community.  I know C.C. Chapman worked on the project and has direct access to the interactive team at Coca-Cola, but it is still great to see Mike Donnelly, Director for Coca-Cola’s Worldwide Interactive Marketing team, respond within minutes to the first comment on C.C.’s blog post about the project – especially starting his comment with “Yup, we are listening…”  Coke is clearly committed to starting something innovative and different and learning from the experience.  I’d be interested if they are banking on ROI from the widget or have executive buy-in that this is an experiment that requires some investment in dollars, time and faith.  The way the promotion is being handled gives them a terrific shot at making the widget a successful campaign.

Thanks to Advance Guard and Coca-Cola for inviting me to review.  Would you add it to your profile?  Have you tried out CokeTag? 

Brulant, my employer, recently completed a study of 100 of the top online retailers to see which ones have a “fan page,” a feature that Facebook launched in November 2007.  Only 30% of the retailers surveyed had a page out there.  Yep, only 30%, despite lots of hype about the platform.  That’s it?  I believe retailers are missing out.  According to the study, some of the leading brands currently leveraging fan pages on Facebook include Bath & Body Works, Linens-N-Things and Victoria’s Secret. Among those that do not have a fan page presence are Bed Bath & Beyond, Circuit City, and J. Crew. 

Let’s take a step back for a minute.  I have been using Facebook for several months.  Like many, I went through the Facebook cycle of addiction:

1. Shock (from my younger-recent-college-grad-cousins finding me online),
2. Elation (reconnecting with summer camp, high school and college friends),
3. Saturation (deluge of work and professional colleagues’ connection requests) and
4. Annoyance (no, I don’t want to be “bitten,” “poked,” or compared to a celebrity, but thanks for asking repeatedly).

During this time I have learned much about viral marketing, useful and useless applications, and even met with a Facebook rep to learn about the advertising platform (see Top 10 Things You May Not Know About Facebook…For Marketers).  Facebook is a marketer’s dream - the platform has an average of 200 data points on each user.  As more compelling applications are developed, and Facebook explores new ways to achieve better usability, the potential for “stickiness” is improving.  People are spending more time on Facebook (despite recent declines in unique user growth), the company is expanding it’s presence globally, and users have more and more platforms to express what they like and dislike.  Online retailers should be looking at this as unchartered opportunity.  So why are so many retailers holding out? 

A ’fan page’ is a free profile that a company can set up and maintain, allowing users to declare they like a brand.  If consumers like a brand, they can “fan” the page.  If they don’t like the brand, they simply ignore the page.  Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester wrote a thoughful post about “fansumers” explaining the implications to Facebook, in November 2007.  The Facebook Page is a surefire way to connect with passionate fans of a brand.  There is no requirement to buy advertising on Facebook (although once a company has a page it’s easy to do).  The “Facebook Pages Insider’s Guide,” available to anyone who sets up a fan page, describes the opportunity:

Facebook Pages give business the opportunity to build a consumer base, sell products, run  promotions, schedule appointments or reservations, share information, and interact with customers…Pages enable customers to interact, learn, purchase, and spread the word about your business to their friends. [emphasis added]

Retailers that are not at least considering whether their customers are on Facebook are missing out on an opportunity.  With little to no investment, minimal PR risk, and big upside potential, a page can be set up and become a natural extension of their online presence.  There is no need to “push” your page – if a company already has a loyal consumer base the word of mouth proposition will be a good start.  With some experimentation and a willingness to interact with “fans” retailers can improve their customer engagement, build brand awareness and take advantage of word of mouth marketing.  What is holding these companies back?

Please reach out to me, on Facebook if you like, if you would be interested in a copy of the survey or would like to talk more about Facebook Pages.

UPDATE: Day after this was posted, TechCrunch published metrics on Facebook overtaking MySpace as the #1 social network.  Opportunity knocks…

Photo credit:  Iain Alexander via Flickr