Influencers segment

In the world of ads, we sell various segments to advertisers - audience, demographic, psychographic, etc. And categories - app categories, IAB categories, etc. We are now in the brave new world of social media, the market is looking for a new segment, i.e. word of mouth audience categories, or influencers.

Is this a new segment ? I don't think so. Advertisers have always looked for word of mouth marketing. Arguably the most influential form. Don't we all ask for opinions from our friends. When I bought my 65 inch TV, I looked around what my friends had bought and asked for their opinion. I actually bought a model, which was not rated very high by review sites such as CNET. Remember the Tupperware advertising model - tupperware parties, which is nothing but a glorified advertising model for word of mouth advertising.
Facebook caught on to this trend by allowing purchases to be advertised to your friend circles. A good idea but something which was revoked and reeks of privacy violation. I don't think it can be resurrected.

Influencer segment is highly viral and effective. So, how do we identify these influencers. One approach is to use the # of followers on Twitter as a measure of your "influence". The other is to identify the most subscribed person in G+ or FB. But can we do more? Can we identify individuals within your friends who can talk about a product?

And how will advertisers sell their products to these segments. i.e. how do we incentize these influencers or "publishers" to talk about product in such a way that it appears genuine? Do we give them schwags?
And who are working on these business models? Adly comes to mind.
What is the market potential of these segments? What do you think? More on this in my next post.

What are businesses and brands looking for in Facebook

I wanted to do a short write-up on what we heard and learnt from customers when we deployed Oolium apps for them. Our target customer was SME/SMB in the verticals of apparel, professional services, restaurant and food (local), niche equipment manufacturers. Though what I write is applicable to most verticals.
First of all, some facts.

• Businesses want to follow their audience. i.e. consumers are spending time on FB, businesses are following 
• Brand's web site is losing its value. Its more meaningful to get consumer's attention on FB vs. spend loads of money getting people to your site. 
• Consumer time spent has seen the highest growth on mobile (40% Y/Y growth). And if you look globally, mobile is the most important medium. 

Brands and businesses have few simple advertising goals:

1. Build or increase brand awareness
2. Get leads using various means - performance/affiliate marketing, etc 
3. Sell good and services to the leads using various techniques such as direct response, offers, etc. 

Today, facebook does a decent job at (1), however its not there from (2) or (3) perspective. 

Here are some recommendations

• Brand awareness -  Facebook must continue to act as a platform and enable third party providers and developers create rich brand awareness pages for businesses. And it needs to be supported by a full fledged developer network. Look at MSDN (from Microsoft), they do an excellent job at providing developer support. Today, Facebook policies are favoring few preferred provider and not the general developer community at large. Its in Facebook's best interest to enable creation of rich brand awareness page.
• Metrics -  have a page statistics page. I know today facebook provides some simple stats on pages - # of fans, new activity etc. But it needs to do more. Just look at Google analytics for web sites. 
• Getting leads - these are your "fans" or likes. In this FB, has done a good job. You can not only get fans from your facebook fan page but you can embed it on your web site. Very powerful - they have allowed the "like" feature to "off-network".
• Walled garden - sales fulfillment support is critical if FB wants to be the walled garden of this decade. Keep people on your site. Check out the most popular page on FB today - Lady Gaga. If you've to go to an event or purchase an item, you're taken to ladygaga.com website. 
• Sales fulfillment - provide platform support to the facebook page to enable storefronts and sales fulfillment. Few startups have started providing this but core platform support is needed. This is critically important to enable sales fulfillment.
• Mobile, the deals platform is good start. I can view what my local businesses are and what they are offering. There is check-in available as well. More needs to be done - the combination of location and mobile creates an ideal direct response and loyalty end point. i.e. random check-in are not of much value but check-in with an intention to purchase or respond to a direct response ad or offer is needed. Direct response mechanism seems to be missing in the Deal platform today. The deals platform has loyalty deal but its based on check-ins, there needs to be sales fulfillment piece to it as well. i.e consumer gets a deal only if she checks-in (& broadcasts it to her friends) and purchases. 
• Mobile - pages for local businesses. There are basics of pages built in and I'm sure FB must be working on more. We need images, videos, offers and friends likes built in as well. 

What is an effective ad campaign in Social Media?

Advertisers have been asking this question for the past few years. What is an effective ad campaign in Social Media. What they have found is CTR for display ads in any social site is lower than the already poor display ad CTR on portals like Yahoo. Well then what works? Is it search ads? But there is hardly any search traffic (how many times do you search in Facebook?). So that is not it.

Before we get into a discourse on what works and what doesn't; let's understand the end-user behavior in these sites. What is the user trying to do in any social site - they are interacting - engaging with their friends in discussions, commenting, sharing, etc. In reality social interaction is similar to what we humans have been doing since time immemorial - we interact and engage. And therein lies the answer. The effective formats in social media are the ones that engage and interact the user in some action.

Just look at display ad sold by Facebook to large brands - these incorporate polls within a display ad which can be shared with your friends (Facebook requires an annual brand commitment of $20,000 prior to using these ads). Similarly fan pages which attract an audience must have engaging applications built into it. These don't have to complex, but you need elements of polls, comments, contest, etc. Without these simply broadcasting a brand's message is not going to be effective in Social Media.

Storefront in Social Media

There are lot of companies putting out storefront on FB nowadays. That's a great idea but what about the investment that brands have done over these years in creating online storefronts. What we need is a way to tie the two experiences together - product catalog and storefronts.

Check out the new social app template from Oolium called social catalog, it does just that and more.

Or better still check it out on facebook.