Yesterday I realized that, regardless of the fact that nearly every one of us is on Facebook, out of tens of thousands of my blog’s visitors only 299 (well, I did think the number was a bit higher, as you can see from the below screenshot) “liked” AM Navigator’s Facebook page (i.e. are following the affiliate marketing related news and thoughts I post on Facebook).

Yesterday we’ve crossed the 300 mark (and I’m certainly honored to have Bryan Eisenberg himself as a “fan” #300), but c’mon, folks! There are nearly a hundred times more readers in my blog every month. Come follow us on Facebook as well!

Yesterday, GrowMap blogged on What NOT to Tweet on Twitter, and when I first saw the post’s title (in Ann Smarty’s ReTweet) I thought the post was going to be on something else — namely, on things not to tweet for security or reputation management reasons. While I enjoyed that GrowMap’s post regardless, it also gave me an idea for this list. So here they are (in no particular order):

10 Things Not to Share on Social Media

1. Birth dates (and places) for yourself, your spouse, your children
2. Your mother’s maiden name
3. Your home address (neither entire, nor any parts of it)
4. Detailed pictures of your home
5. Details (dates/time) of your vacations or trips away from home
6. Pictures/scans of your government issued documents
7. Your home or mobile phone number(s)
8. Any information that may be used to retrieve/guess your password(s)
9. Your weaknesses, fears, insecurities, or anything that may be perceived as such
10. Work-related complaints (if you’re working for somebody)

In a nutshell, never tweet or share anything that may be used against you or your family — to compromise your identity and/or your reputation.

Have I missed something that belongs here? If you believe so, please post it through the “Comments” area.

We may argue about the effectiveness of social media presence/campaigns for business promotion and sales generation, but one thing that no one seems to doubt is that it is one of the hottest topics in present-day marketing. Whether fueled by a global hype or not, but Google Instant keeps popping suggestions on social media marketing even when I’m not looking for things related to it at all… Google prides itself with its prediction technology which helps it “predict the rest of your query (in light gray text) before you finish typing” [more here]. Well, here’s what I get:

1. When we type in “social”, “social network” is among the top 5 suggestions:

2. Type in “why marketer” and you get:

3. When you start with “how do marketer” Google Instant suggests:

4. If you type in “can you market”, the social medial outlets are even more prevalent:

5. And, finally, should you wonder about “effective marketing”, the suggestions go as follows:

Wow… You can believe in social media marketing or not, but clearly there’s no way to ignore it…

It is interesting to see where Gartner places social media developments in its annual “Hype Cycle” report of emerging technologies:

According to the above curve, out of social media technologies:

• Social analytics is on the rise. Gartner says “the value resides in applying” predictive analytics techniques “in new applications such as social analytics and sentiment analysis”.
• Microblogging (which predominantly happens on Twitter) is 2 to 5 years, and it’s on the bottom of the “Peak of Inflated Expectations”.
• Corporate blogging, social software suites, and wikis which were scored in the previous Hype Cycle report are no longer there, but should be in Gartner’s “Slope of Enlightenment” now.

I’m split on the subject of social media marketing effectiveness (I could certainly use more analytics data). I do understand how when properly handled social media efforts increase engagement with brands (personal or corporate) and facilitate loyalty growing “fans”; but I, personally, do not know of one marketer who could confidently compare the sales effect of social media efforts to, say, search engine-based paid search, SEO, or affiliate programs. But then again: shouldn’t we distinguish between the types of social media efforts? Blogging isn’t the same as microblogging (aka “tweeting”), and even within Facebook — a PPC campaign is very different from interaction with consumers via a “fan” page.

What do you think? What has been your experience? Does social media marketing work for you? The comments are all yours.

When running an affiliate program on a tight budget you inevitably face a challenging reality: good tools normally cost good money. You, on the other hand, may not necessarily have enough to invest into all of the paid tools you may need. Do not despair! There is a number of great tools out there that are available for your use at no cost. Of course, you do not want to depend only on the free ones (and have a number of robust ones that you do pay for), but it is useful to know which good ones are free.

Here’s my alphabetical list of 10 such tools (all of which I myself use on a daily basis):

1. Facebook — if you haven’t done so already, create a fan page for your affiliate program (and use it as a part of your affiliate communication channel)

2. Forums — use affiliate marketing forums (like ABestWeb and Affiliate Summit’s forum in the US, or affiliates4u in the UK) to participate in the community and gently get the word about your affiliate program out

3. Google — yes, the search engine! you can use it to find potential affiliates (when there’s no contact info on the prospect’s site, use Who.is to pull it up)

4. Google Alerts — use it to monitor what competing affiliate programs are doing, as well as for recruitment of new affiliates

5. Google Website Optimizer — use it for testing and optimization of your affiliate landing pages

6. iTrademarkBidding — monitor affiliate violations of your paid search rules and restrictions

7. Omgili — use it to monitor what’s being said about you affiliate program, your brand(s) and your competitors in forums and other online communities

8. Quantcast — analyze the volume and type traffic your prospective affiliates get (for a better picture always use it together with Compete.com‘s data)

9. Twitter — monitor it to spot prospective affiliates (use both Twitter Search, and tools like TweetDeck for streamlining the monitoring process)

10. WordPress — if you don’t already have it, start an affiliate program support blog on it (I personally prefer the self-hosted solution; hence, the link to the .org site)

Have fun exploring these free tools, and if I haven’t mentioned a great tool that can help affiliate program managers in their day-to-day tasks of affiliate recruitment and monitoring, competitive intelligence and program optimization, please do chime in with your suggestions using the “Comments” field below. ↓

This morning was off to a rough start: with my little Princess — who was (and actually still is) meant to accompany me and my wife on our trip to Las Vegas (to Affiliate Summit West 2011) — waking up with a fever and nausea. I had to make a decision quick as we had a morning flight to catch. By now many of you already know what I decided to do (family always comes first for me) as it’s been some time since I have posted the following on my Facebook wall:

She is feeling better by now (after much sleep and a couple doses of medication), and we’re happy it isn’t a stomach flu. Her organism is obviously fighting a bug (hence the fever), but we all hope she will feel much better by tomorrow morning. I would hate to fly without her, as she’s been counting days till this trip for a few months (we have tickets for two shows in Vegas, including Cirque du Solleil’s famous “O” performance at Bellagio).

I thank everyone who treated the situation with understanding both accommodating rescheduling of meetings I’ve had planned for Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, and expressing your words of support and encouragement. Both myself and the Princess appreciate it very very much.

Have a good weekend, stay warm and healthy!

Yesterday brought an interesting news — Zibaba, a Facebook ecommerce storefront provider, is set to launch their (first one around?) Facebook-based affiliate marketing platform.

The network is scheduled to launch at the end of January 2011. Both merchants and affiliates are gonna be charged to participate (between $20 and $100 a month “depending on their number of Likes and how many products they want to sell”). InsideFacebook.com has more:

Affiliate marketers will be able to choose items from any existing Zibaba merchant, agree to a revenue sharing or CPA system, and sell these products from a storefront on their own Facebook Page.

Page storefronts help brands monetize their Likes. Directing these fans off of Facebook in order to make purchases raises a barrier to conversion…

This is where Zibaba, within its Facebook-based storefronts comes in. Now they’re taking it a step further, seeking to embed the performance marketing model into the process as well. InsideFacebook.com continues:

Similar to affiliate portals outside of Facebook such as ClickBank and ShareASale, merchants offer an incentive to affiliates such as 25% of revenue or $2.00 per lead. Affiliates then leverage their existing Facebook audience or send traffic to their branded storefront through advertising.

For consumers, the storefronts are easy to browse and search. Social features include the ability for users to Like and comment on products, and publish these actions to their stream. If users Like the Page hosting the storefront, they can receive a 10% discount on their purchases.

Here are just a few examples of Zibaba-powered storefronts (aka Z-Shops): Interflora | Deja Vu Cosmetics | Wolverhampton Wanderers FC | Shudoo. At this time Zibaba doesn’t offer a universal shopping cart which would work across different Z-Shops, but adding such a functionality is in the company’s plans.

I remember at least two affiliate marketers (Chelsea Osoling and Sharon Mostyn) predicting a closer affiliate integration with social in 2011, and this is definitely getting us a huge step closer to it. Will affiliates be happy to pay is a big question though. Will we see similar free-for-affiliates platforms/networks springing up soon thereafter? Time will show, but in the meantime we’ll be monitoring how things develop on Zibaba’s front.

In the beginning of this month Facebook rolled out a new profile page design, where (among other things) besides the profile picture your friends may now also see the last 5 pictures in which you were tagged. Yesterday night I have finally decided to switch to the new Facebook layout.

Being particularly impressed by the idea behind the trend started by Alexandre Oudin, a French artist that Mashable wrote about not too long ago, I’ve worked with one of my favorite pictures, and turned my Facebook profile from this:

…into this:

I wish I had a more suitable picture to play with — for example, one of me fishing (where the rod sticks out horizontally) or rifle gun shooting (had I known how to), or something “horizontal” — but even with this one, I think, it worked out to be pretty neat. What do you think?

If you do something cool with your pages too, please let me know. I’d be happy to blog about them.

Two months ago “at an event at its Palo Alto, Calif. headquarters” Mark Zuckerberg announced the launch of new Facebeook Groups. GigaOM wrote:

CEO Mark Zuckerberg called groups “a fundamental building block” and the biggest problem in social networking,” and said after considering the issue for a long time, Facebook has determined the best solution is a social one, where users organically create and participate in groups with each other as a fundamental part of their Facebook experience.

We were told that the process is now as simple as:

1. Create a group, 2. Add friends, 3. Start sharing.

Note that Step #2 (underlined by me).

Almost immediately some started applauding the idea writing:

Face­book recently relaunch Groups.  What’s the best part of Face­book Groups?

You can auto­mat­i­cally add any of your friends with­out the has­sle of wait­ing for their decision.

Isn’t that bril­liant? Now the deci­sion to add your friends solely belong to you only.

You really think this is “brilliant”?!

Earlier this week I was added to a group by a friend of mine. It was a good group — so I had no issues with the group itself — but I certainly have a problem with the concept, and, apparently, I’m alone in my concerns:

Jason Calacanis of Mahalo, Anil Dash of Expert Labs, Laura Fitton of OneForty.com, and others have had problems with the Groups’ auto-add function practically since day 1 [more here].

Facebook Groups product manager Justin Shaffer said that “it’s one click to leave” the group you were joined into and once you’ve left a group “you can’t be re-added to it without your permission” [source], but why not make the joining of the group permission-based right from the outset? Maybe I’m looking in the wrong places, but I cannot find a way to set this up unless I turn the groups off altogether.

Either Facebook has to change the way this works, or the end users will have to choose their friends more wisely cautiously.

A fellow affiliate marketer, Tim Jones, has just tweeted:

Yes, earlier today Mark Zuckerberg has been named the TIME‘s 2010 Person of the Year. The wording goes as follows:

For connecting more than half a billion people and mapping the social relations among them; for creating a new system of exchanging information; and for changing how we all live our lives. [source]

I think Tim Jones’ proposal is well in place now.

Just a couple of days ago I was discussing the problem of Facebook friend limit with Mitch Joel who is obviously not happy about the situation either:

Dear Facebook, any chance the friend limit can be removed, or at least increased, for those who really need it? Even if it entails a process similar to Twitter’s “verified accounts” (to prevent abuse of the system), I am sure people will be fine with this too. It’s just not convenient for people.

Google Insights for Search is revealing an interesting pattern about people’s searches for “Black Friday” and related key phrases. From 2008 to 2010, the consumer interest in Black Friday deals has been moving to earlier dates every year (happening a month earlier every year).

Here’s what Google has registered between 2007 and 2010:

• in 2007 – searches started raising the week of September 9-15
• in 2008 – it was the week of September 7-13
• in 2009 – they moved a month earlier to the week of August 2-8
• in 2010 – consumers started expressing increased interest as early as the week of July 18-20

The market followed the consumers’ interest (at least, to some degree) and retailers started offering both deal previews and deals themselves earlier than ever as well. Three days ago the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) President and CEO Matthew Shay has pointed out:

The rules for Black Friday have changed significantly. Instead of waiting until Thanksgiving Day to announce their promotions, many retailers are getting shoppers excited about Black Friday by offering sneak peeks of deals in advance, using social media to create buzz, or teasing upcoming deals on their websites.

In late October 2010 Brandweek spoke to the same tendency writing:

Retailers usually begin launching teasers for such deals in early November. But this year, the marketing has kicked off much earlier. Before Halloween, in fact.

Lowe’s is currently accepting RSVPs for a “Black Friday Sneak Peek Party,” taking place Nov. 5- 7, on its Facebook page.

Other marketers are stretching their promos beyond the typical Black Friday.

Kmart, for instance, is reprising a strategy it used last year. Called “Better Than Black Friday,” this year’s promotion extends the Black Friday shopping window from two to three days.

…The retailer, a division of Sears Holdings Corp., is getting the word out through Facebook, Twitter and Kmart2go, its mobile app.

Lowes and Sears aren’t the only merchants actively using their social media presence to get the word out. A preliminary Black Friday shopping survey conducted by BIGresearch for the NRF revealed that “nearly four out of 10 (39.2%) will use their Facebook page to reach out to shoppers” and over one-fifth (21.6%) will use Twitter “to announce and promote Black Friday deals” this year.

Have you jumped on the “Black Friday” bandwagon yet? It’s high time already, and you better be taking advantage of the consumer interest!