comScore and Buddy Media Research recently released a report on the effectiveness of social promotions during this past 2011 retail holiday season. If you haven’t seen the 17 slide presentation yet, it’s time to take a look before planning your next social media campaign.
While the report analyzes bigger brands like Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart, there are some important takeaways that you can apply to your small business. Take a look at this slide above. This is an important slide because it addresses many conceptions that business owners have about utilizing Facebook to promote their business. The immediate thought is to 1) Get Facebook Fans 2) Become successful. As we all know, success doesn’t come that easily. According to this slide, you can look at the missing process in three steps:
1) Cut-through – As your fan base grows, you’ll need to broadcast brand messages that are interesting so that they capture your customers’ attention. The importance of this step is that most Facebook users spend 27% of their time on their Newsfeed. Spread out your focus to include updates for your newsfeed, media updates (using photos and videos) as well as status updates.
2) Engagement – Your Facebook Page can’t truly gain exposure if it’s not being talked about. Comments and Likes are both very desirable forms of engagement. Don’t forget that these actions now also play a greater role in your search engine rankings! Interestingly enough, Mashable recently came out with in infographic that showed that “positive” updates are more likely to get Likes, while “negative” updates are more likely to get comments. See for yourself, here.
3) Amplification – Facebook Shares, reposts and even private messages are also intermediary ways to help reach your end goal of success. The best part about sharing on social media websites (especially on friends’ profiles) is that there is an extra component of trust and credibility when customers vouch for your product/service. These shares will come naturally and no coupon, newsletter or commercial can replace the value of word-of-mouth advertising.
Make sure to check out the report for yourself and see what other elements you can use or learn from for your next social media campaign!
Competition is always good for customers, right? Some people believe that all these new Facebook features are an aggressive response to Google +. Whether you think so or not, there’s no doubt that Facebook wants to be the star of the show in the social media world.
Will you be implementing Google’s +1 button on your site? Although there are many 
Nowadays, it’s easier than ever to fall victim to the herd mentality of 
If you use Facebook, you’ll know that there are constant updates and policy changes. For businesses, these changes can have a big impact on the way you use Facebook as a platform.
According to a survey by 
