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Facebook Announces New Advertising MetricsAll marketers who advertise on Facebook breathed a sigh of relief today when the social networking giant announced it has upgraded its analytics and reporting of ads on the site. To ensure you better understand how your ads are performing, Facebook announced three new Insights reports: Responder Demographics, Responder Profiles, and Advertising Performance. All three reports can be exported from Facebook into an Excel document or as Comma Separated Values.The Responder Demographics report is a very valuable tool for marketers since it allows you to analyze exactly who is interacting with your ads. If a person clicks on your ad, you will be able to track their age, gender and geographic location. This knowledge could allow you to further target your ad to specific demographic groups that tend to be more interested in your product or service. The Responder Profiles report extends the demographic analysis further by allowing marketers to gather common interests, favorite TV shows, movies, books and music of the users who clicked on their ad. This is a powerful marketing tool that will allow companies to strategically align traditional marketing efforts with consumers’ psychographic wants and needs. In the past, this information could only be obtained through surveys and/or focus groups. Now, with a single click, you will be inside the minds of your most loyal customers, at a fraction of the cost. The Advertising Performance report is similar to the report that already exists in Facebook’s platform with a few additional upgrades. Previously, marketers were able to export and view common metrics such as impressions, clicks and click-through-rates for their ads, but now you will also be able to view performance data by unique user and performance data specific to your ads that contain social actions. Hopefully news tools like this added by networking sites will ease the hesitation of companies to integrate Web 2.0 into their existing marketing campaign. Even though many companies are seeing the results gained by powerful social media campaigns, 80% of marketing executives are still behind the learning curve. Labels: Advertising, Analytics, Facebook, Social Media Look Who's TalkingI have twin one-year old nieces and over the past year, my sister has kept me up-to-date with emails, written as if my nieces actually wrote the emails. They write to me about play dates with friends, brag about how they learned to clap to people singing (and don’t mind if the person signing doesn’t have a good voice), and that they like avocados and mac and cheese. I love receiving these emails and I write back to them as if they are also reading the emails.My nieces have not started talking, but these emails are glimpses into what they may be thinking. While you will never truly know what babies are thinking, beyond what the cries and giggles tell you, parents have started to chronicle their child’s lives and thoughts through social networking site, Totspot. Totspot is the Facebook equivalent for parents to create and post information about their children and share it with friends and family. Totspot.com launched in June of this year as a place for parents with children 0-12 and expectant mothers to chronicle milestones such as a baby’s first step or first words, post pictures and daily activities. Totspot is careful to point out safety and security features available on their child’s profile. No one can access a child’s page unless the parent explicitly invites the individual to view the page. Settings also allow parents to know who has visited their child’s page and when. Parents are using Totspot to keep friends and family up-to-date on their child’s life. Young children are not able to articulate their first baseball game or Christmas, but parents are creating these profiles to start a running journal of their child’s life and in time, these children can take over their profile and start blogging themselves. Totspot.com isn’t the only baby blogging site out there. A slew of other sites are popping up, including Odadeo for fathers, video and sharing site Lil’Grams, and online baby journal Kidmondo. Labels: blog, blogging, Facebook, Social Media Overdrive Interactive Launches New Facebook PageFacebook recently got a makeover and so did our Overdrive's corporate page - check it out here and become a fan: http://www.new.facebook.com/pages/Overdrive-Interactive/11238699978. You can also search by 'Overdrive Interactive' after logging in. Make sure to click the Play button to watch our intro Flash movie and explore our service offerings.If your company wants a custom Corporate Facebook Profile or need any of our Social Media Marketing services click here and let us know! We are passionate about socializing online and that is why we are the Social Media Agency of choice for clients like Harley-Davidson, The Princeton Review, Virgin Money, Cognos, EMC and more! (See info and Harley-Davidson’s social platform examples below.) Social Media Marketing Overdrive specialized in creating amazing social media marketing channels that make real and lasting connections with your customers and prospects. Our services include: - Blog creation and maintenance (WordPress, TypePad, Blogger, content development, compliance procedure development and more) - Blog outreach and monitoring (Getting Bloggers to talk about you! Research, segmentation, outreach, monitoring and more) - Social network profile creation, monitoring and maintenance (Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Bebo, Twitter, content and application development and more) - Content channel creation, monitoring and maintenance (YouTube, MySpace Video, Yahoo! Video, Flickr, Wikipedia and more) - Social media measurement (blog posts, blog sentiment, profile views, friend and fans, page views, video views, site traffic, ROI and more) - Friend and fan outreach (employee and customer outreach, targeted invites, specialty media buys) - Hyper-targeted Social Media Buying (Reach the right people where they like to hang out online) Case Study: Harley-Davidson Check out Harley-Davidson’s Social Platform we launched and make sure to become a friend or fan of their profiles: http://www.myspace.com/harley-davidson http://www.facebook.com/harley-davidson http://www.youtube.com/user/HarleyDavidson In just the first few weeks of the program, we signed up over 60,000 friends and fans on MySpace and Facebook who we can instantly communicate with anytime -- now that's a powerful brand connection! Labels: Facebook, Social Media The Facebook MovieComing Soon: The Facebook Movie*Yes, you read that right. There will be a movie about the history of Facebook, and it's going to be directed by Aaron Sorkin (some of his works include The West Wing, A Few Good Men, Charlie Wilson's War). And of course, there is already an official Facebook Group about it. I guess given Facebook's popularity, there will be no dearth in audiences who would want to see this movie and learn even more about Facebook. But I'm not entirely sure what's going to be featured in the movie - will it show Mark Zuckerberg (or an actor playing him) brainstorming in his Harvard dorm? Will it show the millions of people using Facebook and how obsessed we truly are? Will it show how users find out about their friends' relationship statuses and parties trough Facebook, thereby decreasing the need for email, phone calls and evites? Or how about brands and corporations creating Pages left and right? And more importantly (at least for me) will the movie show the success of (and criticisms for) the Facebook advertising platform? I myself will probably watch the Facebook Movie, and I'm actually already a member of the Group... Something to note: Aaron Sorkin admitted that he is VERY new to Facebook and doesn't know anything about it - which may explain why he created a Group, and not a Page... Well, paging Mr. Sorkin, the producers, and the marketing people for this upcoming movie - drop Overdrive a line. We offer fantastic social media services and could give you success stories, insights, and more ;) What do you think about the upcoming movie? And when will The Google Movie get produced?? See some more news and views about the Facebook Movie from MarketingVOX, Internet News, Mashable, MediaBistro. And expect more news and views all over the Net in the coming days! *Title not finalized yet. Labels: Facebook, Industry, Social Media Facebook Working to Create the Ultimate User ExperienceToday, popular social networking site Facebook.com hit the milestone of 100 million users worldwide. Over the years it has taken for the site to reach this milestone, Facebook’s creators and engineers have kept themselves busy constantly updating features and capabilities, fighting security and privacy battles, and trying above all to improve the user experience.In the face of this extreme growth and popularity, something they’re doing must be working. On one hand, there is the advertising capabilities on Facebook.com. Our CEO, Harry Gold, very nicely summarized the advertising opportunities on Facebook in his recent ClickZ article, which you can read at http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3630553?page=3630553. The newest addition to this list, according to Mark Walsh of MediaPost, is called Engagement Ads. Engagement ads, currently in testing, are focused on increasing click-throughs in the social space. Like the typical Social Ads on Facebook, Engagement Ads feature a headline, body copy and an image or video. Unlike the Social Ads, however, Engagement Ads allow people to post and read comments, see other fans of the page that is being promoted via the ad, and share virtual items (Facebook gifts) that the brand has released with friends - all within the ad unit. These ads also appear to the right of the News Feed, unlike Social Ads which actually appear in the News Feed. Currently, these ads are in Beta testing, with a select few advertisers being able to utilize them for testing. See the image below of a current Engagement Ad.
This new ad unit is further propagating the feeling that Facebook is genuinely concerned with social networking at its core. With the rollout of Engagement Ads, Facebook users will not only be able to engage in the social conversation with one another, but they will also be able to more easily engage in this conversation with brands and marketers. With the sense that this is “opt-in”, since a user can choose whether or not to engage with the ad, this new form of social advertising represents a significant opportunity for marketers interested in engaging their brand with users in the social space. For example, Facebook Exporter for iPhoto allows seamless integration between iPhoto, where a user likely stores all of his/her photo content, to Facebook, where this user can share his/her photos with friends and other users. This and other applications like it are one way of Facebook internally promoting itself, by developing external applications to drive users to use the site often. Also, this functionality opens the door to marketers being able not only to create a Widget for Facebook, but this same Widget could be applied to a user’s desktop, and to multitudes of other locations, putting the brand right out there and accessible to users wherever they prefer. Labels: Facebook, Social Media Good News for Facebook AdvertisersAccording to a quick poll by Mashable, readers think that Facebook is the social network that delivers the best ads. "Best" is described as "“most accurate, interesting and engaging.” Facebook ads seem to be considered the most relevant, which is no surprise with its unique advertising platform that lets advertisers target users not just based on the usual demographic data but also based on specific terms found in the user's profiles (interests, hobbies, favorites, jobs, etc.)This is definitely good news for us online marketers who advertise on Facebook, but what about our ads on the other social networks like MySpace, LinkedIn, Friendster, and so on? My opinion is that we should not be discouraged, and instead work even harder on making sure that our ads are relevant, engaging and reach the correct target audience. We can rely on technologies such as MySpace's hypertargeting, or try out ad networks that focus solely on Social Media such as Lotame. However, whether we are advertising on Facebook or Google or any other property, we want to make sure that our online ads get clicks, and these clicks convert into actions. Because ultimately, our role is to encourage desired behavior - and great ads are always part of our strategy. Labels: Facebook, POV, Social Media Facebook is Changing!If you're reading this blog, you're either a) an Overdrive employee, b) an Overdrive client, c) interested in working for Overdrive/used to work for Overdrive, d) a smart person with great taste in choosing blogs, or e) a competitor who spies on our brilliant ideas. In any case, by now you are most probably already immersed in (or at least part of!) some kind of social media marketing. If you have a constantly updated profile on Facebook or MySpace, if you tweet and follow Twitter, if you've ever shared anything using one of those convenient chicklets, then I bet you're more than comfortable navigating around the social media web.Well, here's another thing to look forward to: next month, Facebook is launching a redesigned Profiles page. For the last few weeks, Facebook has been actively getting feedback from users regarding the new Profiles redesign via the Facebook Profiles Preview Page. Right now, the plan is to launch the new profile page interface with separate tabs for the Feed, Info, Photos, and Applications:  According to the Facebook Profiles Preview Page, "while some upcoming changes may take getting used to, ultimately they will lead to a better, faster, more useful Facebook." Personally, I'm glad that there is now a way to separate and organize the different sections of each profile. Professionally, I'm excited that this opens up a whole lot of opportunities for online marketers. For instance, the user will also have the option to add more tabs for specific applications. This could be very beneficial to social marketers and application developers, because a tab dedicated to your brand's application equals valuable real estate on the user's profile. Imagine what a useful, engaging, and entertaining application could do: spread virally and manually, contribute greatly to the user experience, and ultimately build stronger brand affinity. The publisher box within the Wall tab also makes life easier for all Facebook users to add and share all kinds of content. It is basically a feature that allows users to directly post items on their feeds as well as their friends' feeds. This streamlines the sharing and interaction process, and makes it easier to communicate with users. It is definitely an exciting time to be part of the social media landscape, with all these updates and changes and redesigns. If you want to read more Facebook news, check out Inside Facebook. Also try Mashable - it's great resources for social media news. Labels: Facebook, Social Media Facebook Actions on External WebsitesMost Facebook users are already familiar with the Facebook Social Ads (sponsored ads that pop up on your News Feed), but few know about Facebook's partnership with other external websites, particularly Yelp and Blockbuster. If you're like me, and you're constantly on Facebook (and really, who else is still not on Facebook?) AND you're a member of Yelp and Blockbuster, then you would know by now that every review on Yelp, and every addition to your movie queue on Blockbuster, also gets featured on your News Feed (if you allow it) and in your Profile - see screen grabs below: (Blockbuster Feed on my News Feed) (Yelp Feed on my Profile)These are obviously great ways to incorporate actual user-generated actions into your brand or website. After all, aren't these just ways to build a stronger, more recognizable brand? As online marketers, we're all rooting for the power of social media. And as consumers, we're all participating in and growing this phenomenon. However, I'm wondering: just how much will these feeds affect my Facebook life? When my friends see that I added a movie like "Live Free or Die Hard" onto my Blockbuster queue, will I be judged? When they see that I posted a bad review for their favorite restuarant on Yelp, will I be stoned? And this is where the fun begins. The genius of Facebook is that this is yet another avenue that opens up a new window for conversations. Go ahead and discuss the movies that your friends rented. Or go ahead and put your two cents worth about the latest restaurant reviews. This is where the socializing happens. Kudos to Facebook for ultimately letting the user decide what gets published or not (tip: it's somewhere in your Privacy settings). In the end, we all need to realize that we're all part of this big interconnected social media community, where we share (almost) everything with our friends, fans, peers, and communities. Enjoy! Labels: Facebook, Social Media |
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