I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but a new book has recently been published by a co-founder of what is today Google Affiliate Network. Jeff Molander authored “Off the Hook Marketing”, which positions itself as a book on how “to make platforms like Twitter,” Facebook, YouTube, “and blogs to produce sales.” I took the book with me on my Mexico vacation, and it actually made a very good read.

Before I get to the bullet points (outlining those of Jeff’s ideas that have really hit the nail on the head for me), let me say that I disagree with his choice of the book’s title, or rather its sub-title, which is “How to make social media sell for you.” Yes, Jeff does talk a lot about Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and how various brands are already using these to produce sales. However, the principles that he establishes and the key points that he’s making go way beyond social media platforms. In fact, the better sub-title, in my opinion would be “How to successfully sell in a social world”. However niche or local your business may be, online- or offline-oriented, it can be greatly improved by the advice this guy is giving. Here are just a few of his noteworthy ideas:

1. Shift the focus from “getting customers to bite on Facebook, Twitter, or a blog” to “earning a sale from them”. “Attracting customers is relatively easy” and “should be taking up less of your time” as opposed to “earning a sale from them.”
2. To land that sale you want to focus on “helping customers solve everyday problems.” Always think of things “in terms of a problem and solution.”
3. “Selling someone something doesn’t require engagement, conversation, and a relationship.” These three are, rather, “created by selling them something.”
4. Beyond everything, focus on “helping customers to get things done.”
5. “Be a thought provoker, not just a thought leader.”
6. Success comes when you’re (a) not losing track of the end goal, and (b) when you have a good guide.
7. When discerning your customers’ need, keep in mind that “the way they express [it] may be explicit or implicit, urgent or latent.”
8. Per Facebook’s Paul Adams “behavior is at the center of successful social strategy.”
9. A good “approach to social media application looks like this: Business problem → business strategy to solve the problem → incorporate social media into said business strategy.”
10. It is “by focusing on behavior” that “a business is much more likely to create something that people” will “value and use.”
11. Brand is behavior! Yes, “your brand is the tangible benefits actually delivered to customers: their total experience online and offline.”
12. “The truth is Twitter, Facebook, telephones, email – none of these are the secret sauce.” It is “giving customers what they’ve (rather secretly) been wanting: a better way to shop.” So, don’t try to “predict which technologies will be dominant” but focus on understanding “how these technologies will support human behavior” and how new tools and technologies can “help people do things they are struggling” with.
13. The “secret sauce” is never in the tool or “application itself,” but rather “in the design of the tools: their functional purpose and ability to provide a highly useful experience within a realm that makes sense.”
14. The two key words to keep in mind are: “relevant” and “useful”. Strive to be both – at all times!
15. “The answer to selling more with social tools is rooted in starting conversations that are worth having, conversing in ways that align the needs of buyer and seller, and designing conversations with customers in ways that generate inquiries and sales.”
16. Today’s “best social sellers are” actually great “translators of customers’ evolving needs.” So, look “for clues, listing to customers, and learning about their shopping context” to be truly relevant and helpful. If you’re following trends, re-think your approach; and start following customers instead (for example, by targeting consumers’ dislikes).
17. Every ‘next big thing’ (from electricity and automobiles to Zappos and Apple’s iPod, iPhones and iPads) has had something to do with uncovering and satisfying “preexisting, unmet demand.” Gunnar Branson calls it “latent demand” or one “that customers cannot express that competitors do not – or cannot – see.”
18. Be a “behavioral architect”, and while “creating awareness, interest, desire, and action,” remember to focus on the “action” part.
19. One of the main characteristics of social Web is the interactivity it empowers us with. Forget about “broadcasting messages at customers” (whether contests or coupons/promos), and focus on “designing interactions with them,” creating “meaningful exchanges, ‘give-and-takes’ that connect with sales.” “Monitor for signals emanating from” your (or your competitors’) customers, and “spring into action” when you hear one. Some companies are landing six-figure sales by using Twitter this way.
20. Do not be “marketing for marketing’s sake and measuring for measurement’s sake,” but attach “specific goals” to what you’re now “able to observe”. Don’t just focus on ‘likes’, clicks, followers or ReTweets, but make meaningful (and hence useful) observations. It’s that sale or lead that you’re ultimately after (or you better be), aren’t you?
21. The core idea is simple: “Tell the truth, and tell it with relevance, immediacy, and meaning.”
22. So observe, and then prompt behavior for “more outcomes, more reliably and more often”. Monitor, translate, design, and all of it with the goal (sale or lead) always in focus.

Whether you are B2C or B2B, merchant or independent marketer, e-tailer or affiliate, I believe you will benefit from reading this book. It’s abundant (I mean, abundant) in real-life case studies (of both marketing successes and failures), relevant to what you’re doing (again, regardless of your context), and, most importantly, practical and readily applicable. Pick up this book, read it, and apply its principles, before your competition does. I’ve already made the former two steps. Off to brush up my action plan to make that third one…

Yesterday morning Toys R Us announced their “Be R Fan Sweepstakes” Facebook campaign. Essentially, they’re looking to increase their Facebook fan-base (now more frequently known as “Likes”) from about 1.25 million to 1.5 million.

The company’s email read:

Like Toys”R”Us on Facebook

Enter now on Facebook for a chance to win up to $1,500!

Tell your friends… and increase the stakes!

Here’s also a screenshot of the main part of that email message:

So, Toys R Us is looking to expand their Facebook “Likes” by some 250,000. They are willing to pay $4,500 for this (i.e. two $250 gift cards, two $500 ones, and two $1,500 ones).

So: $4,500 / 250,000 = $0.018 per fan

My first reaction was: “Unbelievably cheap!” (when a fan is really worth at least $3.60 annually and that’s 200 times more than $0.018). However, it looks like it’s working for Toys R Us, regardless. They are already at some 1,313,500 “Likes” (i.e. about 63,500 up since yesterday morning), some 150 of which were added as I was writing up this post.

What do you think about it all?

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.

…and it is now available for a free download!

Scary, isn’t it? 100 million Facebook users essentially means every fifth account.

A couple hours after the publishing of this database, BBC picked up the news writing:

Ron Bowes used a piece of code to scan Facebook profiles, collecting data not hidden by the user’s privacy settings.

The list, which has been shared as a downloadable file, contains the URL of every searchable Facebook user’s profile, their name and unique ID.

Mr Bowes said he published the data to highlight privacy issues, but Facebook said it was already public information.

Two of the comments under the torrent download page (shown in the above screenshot) belong to Ron Bowes himself who wrote:

This is awesome and a little terrifying.

I hope people see this and look over their privacy settings now, still so many out there not locking down their profiles.

Another commenter pointed out:

…as a developer I already have access to what could be deemed personal and private data through the Facebook API

Facebook itself commented to BBC:

People who use Facebook own their information and have the right to share only what they want, with whom they want, and when they want.

In this case, information that people have agreed to make public was collected by a single researcher and already exists in Google, Bing, other search engines, as well as on Facebook.

No private data is available or has been compromised

What do you think? Was it the users’ responsibility to make sure they change their default settings to make their information more secure, or did Facebook have to make those default setting more secure a priori?

Earlier this Spring a study by Arbitron and Edison Research revealed that close to half of Americans (48%, to be exact) have profiles on social networks, which actually is exactly double the level from two years ago [more here].

However, a more recent research conducted and published by the same two companies has shown that when comparing consumer behavior and intentions on Twitter versus social networks, we see that over half (51%) of those on Twitter follow companies/brands, while on Social Networks this percentage is only 16%:

Moreover, a vast number of Twitter users utilize it to “learn about products/services”, “look for discounts/sales”, and “purchase products/services”:

Eye-opening, isn’t it? No wonder why LinkShare offers its affiliates a #TweetShop tool, while more and more merchants start experimenting with “Tweet this” type buttons. Are you (as an affiliate, or merchant) active on Twitter yet?

Related reading:

• Everything You Need To Know About Who’s Using Twitter [slides from above-quoted report]

Yesterday I have illustrated how popular and fruitful a marriage of social networking with comparison shopping can be. Today I’d like us to turn our eyes to some staggering stats.

We’ve heard that this decade will be the decade of the mobile Internet, which per Morgan Stanley is expected eventually grow to “at least 2x size of Desktop Internet” [more here and here].

We also know the exact demographics: 81% of adults between the ages of 18 and 29 are already actively using wireless Internet, compared to 63% of 30-49 year-olds and 34% of those 50+ years old. Additionally, it is being reported that the “adult use of social networking sites has risen significantly” since 2007, and today “47% of online adults use social networking sites, up from 37% in November 2008″ [see today's post with the detailed Pew Research Center report here].

But here’s the part that I find to be most fascinating: close to two-thirds of all mobile pageviews are to social networking websites! This data was published by GroundTruth, a mobile analytics startup with offices in Seattle and New York. Here are the exact numbers:

Apparently the marriage of Mobile with Social is another area that marketers cannot afford to overlook. eMarketer wrote back in November 2008 that “the number of mobile users accessing social networks from their mobile devices will reach 607.5 million worldwide by 2013, representing 43% of global mobile Internet users” [source]. Wow… There are definitely some great affiliate marketing opportunities in there too.

In the course of the past week I have come across a Pew Research Center study that examined the current decade in light of people’s opinion on various subjects, technological advances and new Internet and mobile developments included.

Speaking of “the major technological and communications advances” Pew stressed that the overwhelming number of their respondents view these in a “positive light”. More concretely:

Clear majorities see cell phones, the internet and e-mail as changes for the better, and most also view specific changes such as handheld internet devices and online shopping as beneficial trends. There is greater division of opinion, however, over whether social networking sites or internet blogs have been changes for the better or changes for the worse.

Speaking even more concretely, here’s an interesting summarizing graph (highlighting mine):

You may find the full report at People-Press.org. There’s a lot of useful information we as marketers should take note of.

Search Engine Strategies Chicago 2009 keynote speaker, Dan Siroker, a lead analyst for the 2008 Obama presidential campaign, has announced a product the essence of which is based on the lessons learned from the use of Social Media for that presidential campaign. Siroker explains:

The product is called Spreadly… and the product is the way of doing something called Social Affiliate Marketing, which is the word I use to describe the marriage of Social Media Marketing, which is getting Facebook and Twitter and using those as ways to fuel viral growth of your business, and Affiliate Marketing, which is trying to give people incentives to talk about you, and to share links to your site. I’ve tried to marry these two things in a concept called Social Affiliate Marketing.

The idea of turning satisfied consumers into evangelists isn’t new. Merchants have been contacting their existing customers to turn them into affiliates for years. What’s new is not even the presence of the “affiliate marketing” component in the mix, but the interweaving of the cause marketing idea with Social Media and making it easy for the customer to tweet or post for the cause right away. Going to the product’s website we read:

Here I get confused. In affiliate marketing it is the referrer who gets a payout (and then decides what to do with it). In case with Spreadly, the payout goes directly to a cause. While it is the referrer that decides which cause the donation will go to, he/she has no direct monetary interest in spreading the word. Why the name Social AffiliateMarketing then? It seems that Social Cause Marketing would’ve been a more appropriate way to christen it (unless, of course, there is a monetary incentive for the customer to use the widget).

Other than the terminology, excellent idea Dan!

Interesting survey data has been published by eMarketer.com with a reference to an August research conducted jointly by Internet Retailer and Vovici Corp.:

As look through the above statistics, the two things that I see in it are:

1. Social Media Channels Are Top Priority

While I am not entirely sure why “Blogs” and “Consumer ratings” have been mentioned separately from “Social Marketing” (I would argue that these two represent a Social Medium each; see my Types of Social Media to Use in Marketing post), it appears that the exploration of Social Media is currently the top priority for US online retailers.

2. Affiliate Marketing Includes Most of These

While it is unlikely that any affiliate will happily engage in “Live chat” with customers, and/or do the merchant’s work of “Product personalization”, the top four “applications” on the list are right up the affiliate marketing alley. In addition to a decision to explore these channels on their one, online retailers should realize (but will they if no one explains it to them?!) that affiliates can also effectively promote them through Social Media, distribute their videos, give them excellent exposure in their niche/product-specific blogs, and even help obtain additional ratings and reviews (some put such tools together by themselves, while others could definitely use advertisers’ help with this). With proper attention to the affiliate marketing channel, the employment of the top “applications” can be considerably more efficient, and happen on a much wider scale.

Interesting statistics has been announced by the Pew Internet & American Life Project today. Out of the 2,253 online Americans they have surveyed (via phone interviews), 19% say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves, or to see updates about others”.

As expected, “mobile users are more likely to tweet” and are easier to stay in touch with.

The reported age distribution (where December 2008 data is compared to the September 2009 data) supports the premise that Social Media is more popular among younger population:

The median age reported for the most popular channels of Social Media is:

• Twitter – 31
• MySpace – 26
• LinkedIn – 39
• Facebook – 33

The full 14-pages report is available in PDF here. See also Pew’s “Portrait of a Twitter User” post for some detailed demographics data.