Facebook Advertising | Social Media Marketing

Facebook announced yesterday that they are the world’s largest social network on the planet. Facebook’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement claiming that Facebook has now more than 300 million users worldwide. It seems like only yesterday they had a mere 150 million users and that has now doubled in 13 months! Mr. Zuckerberg proudly underlined his social network’s steady growth and also announced that the company itself has now become self-sustaining and cash-flow positive. The top spot remains still undecided since China’s largest social network, QZone has also claimed 300 million users. As most of QZone users would be Chinese that would mean roughly every fourth person in China would be there. Personally I find that hard to believe. The third spot is certain though; it belongs to MySpace with 245 million users. If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you subscribe to my RSS Feed or ReTweet.

If you think Social Media is just another fad that will come and go, think again. Social Media Networking represents a significant shift in the way people communicate now and in the future. Facebook has added over 100 million users in just under 9 months; over 65 million of them use it via their mobile phones or Blackberries. The fastest growing demographic is 55-65 old women. If Facebook was a country it would be the fourth biggest in the world right after China, India and United States. Mark Zuckerberg is therefore one of the top 5 leaders of the free world (well…ok, that’s bit too much.). Close to 15 million pieces of information (photos, wall posts, links, news, notes etc.) are shared on Facebook. Daily. That’s over 10.000 messages in a minute. This platform is the online marketers wet dream come true. The following video by Karl Smith and Scott McLeod shows some distubing facts and figures of the power of Social Media. If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you subscribe to my RSS Feed or ReTweet.

Earlier this month, Starbucks surpassed Coca Cola becoming the most popular brand on Facebook, with close to 3.8 million fans. Coca Cola has a tad over 3.6 million fans at the moment. (Hilary Duff here isn’t doing bad either with over 570.000 fans on her official Facebook page.)

This is a direct result of Starbucks’ aggressive internet and social media strategy according to Starbucks digital strategy director, Alexandra Wheeler. Starbucks is now actively incorporating and utilising the most popular social media channels, such as Twitter and Facebook in its online marketing.

Starbuck’s Free Pastry campaign, where you received a free pastry with a beverage purchase was a huge success. Nearly 600,000 people reacted to that campaign on Facebook. Another hugely successful campaign was their Product (Red) campaign with almost a million people responding “yes” or “maybe” to the promotion last holiday season. Product (Red) contributed 5 cents for every Starbucks beverage purchased to the AIDS-fighting project. These results show the power of the Starbucks as a brand and how well it has been able to connect with their clients through these social media networks.

According to Wheeler one of the key priorities we have to think about when it comes to social media marketing is that we have to connect in ways that are relevant to those environments as well as to our consumers. One of the most powerful ways is by sharing content and participating in discussion.

Starbucks has also a big fan base on Twitter. They have over 270.000 followers and are following 85.000 of them back. Almost all of Starbucks’ posts are @ replies which means that they actually are communicating with their fans. Most of the communication on their Facebook page, however is done by the fans on the wall posts. If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you subscribe to my RSS Feed or ReTweet.

If you are still wondering what is Social Networking, Social Media, Social Media Advertising or Social Media Marketing, have a look at this excellent presentation by a Boston-based communications professional, Marta Kagan. This was done about a year ago, so some of the figures are obviously too low. For instance in November 2008 Facebook had “only” 100 million users but today it is over 250.000.000 (see post).

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Businesses are gradually realising the commercial potential of 250 million Facebook users and opening shops inside Facebook. The latest shop to open doors is 1-800-flowers.com founded by Jim McCann who started his first retail store in 1976 in New York. Now the online flower retailer has launched an e-commerce store which they claim to be the first fully functional commercial store front inside Facebook.

Registered Facebook users can now order all kinds of flower products from the online florist and gift shop without ever leaving the social network environment. The shopping itself is quite easy and straight forward. First you choose a nice bunch of flowers from their catalogue; the prices vary from $29.99 to over $100. Then you enter your US based zip code and delivery date; next your contact details and the recipient’s details and finally your credit card numbers and you’re done. So, for instance as the lovely Sandra Bullock here had her birthday 4 days ago you could have sent her some red roses straight through your Facebook account. Very handy indeed! Sandra has about 30.000 fans on Facebook by the way!

The 1-800-flowers.com Facebook Shop has been built by a relatively new network developer, Alvenda who are based in Minneapolis. Alvenda was founded just last year by Wade Gerten, Brian Howe and Lou Abramowski. So far the Facebook Flower Shop has attracted 1,905 fans, me included, but I’m sure it will gain lots more as the news start spreading. Currently 1-800-flowers accepts payment with all major credit cards, but as (if) Facebook introduces its own internal currency (see Facebook Money Is Coming) you would be able to make purchases using that as well. If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you subscribe to my RSS Feed or ReTweet.

250 million people seem to love Facebook. Here’s a different, humorous view by Julian Smith and his friends…

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As advertisers are increasingly interested in Facebook advertising, ad revenues are not the only source of revenue for Facebook. Facebook started testing virtual currency just a few months ago so the company could also be profiting from the sale of virtual goods. With these “virtual money credits” Facebook users could carry out transactions in certain sub networks. Websites view alternative payment methods as a way to accelerate the sales of the virtual goods that can be an important source of revenue. On Facebook there is the potential for a currency exchange market similar to the hugely popular virtual world, Second Life. Second Life users have been using their Linden Dollars for quite some time now and they seem to be working fine in that particular environment. Linden Dollar rates fluctuate based on supply and demand, but over the last few years they have remained fairly stable. For 1 Us Dollar (US$) you can get about 260 Linden Dollars (L$). While Second Life’s currency is used to purchase virtual items (obviously), Facebook’s currency could be used to purchase real-world items as well; here is a huge potential for the recently updated Facebook Marketplace as well as Facebook Auctions and similar services.

Second Life has almost 15 million registered users from over 100 countries and a fully functioning economy with more than $300 million Linden Dollars transacted annually. As they have successfully implemented the use of virtual money in their environment, you might even speculate with the possibility of using Linden Dollars successfully on Facebook. This would create the biggest online marketplace in the world that would have it’s own currency. Science fiction? I don’t think so.

Michael Jackson died last Thursday in his home in Los Angeles 25th June 2009. The 50-year-old musical genius was preparing for what would have been a series of 50 mega concerts starting July 13 in London. He was the most talented and the most kind musician that ever lived. We will miss him dearly. Michael Jackson will live forever in his music.
…and apparently on Facebook as well. There are 495 personal Michael Jackson accounts on Facebook. Most of them are named Michael Jackson or Mike Jackson. None of these are the most famous Michael Jackson though. The King of Pop is represented by over 540 Fan Pages and 548 Groups containing millions of people. There are also 323 Michael Jackson applications and over 500 Michael Jackson-events. The five biggest Michael Jackson Fan Pages have over 7.5 million fans and the six biggest Michael Jackson Groups have about 400,000 members. Judging by these figures there is no doubt that Michael Jackson will become immortal and take his place alongside Elvis and Marilyn Monroe who have over 600 Fan Pages and over 1000 Groups (combined) on Facebook. Long live the King and the King of Pop!

The number of customers using Facebook’s online-advertising system has more than tripled in the past 12 months. This means that more and more small- and medium- sized businesses are now using Facebook as part of their online marketing strategy. Lots of local businesses are now finding success in this advertising model. Facebook launched its advertising program in 2007.

The ads, which appear on users’ Facebook profile pages (wall, info, photos etc.) allow 25 characters in the title and as many as 135 characters in the body of the text plus an optional photo. The targeting behind the ads is driven by the personal profiles of Facebook users. If you list Simpsons as your favourite TV-show, you will probably see an ad from Foxtel sooner or later.

Wired’s Fred Vogelstein thinks that Facebook is poised to take over display advertising the way that Google has dominated search advertising. Internet users behave differently on Facebook than anywhere else online. Most of them use their real names, connect with their real friends, share their real thoughts, tastes and news. This is what makes Facebook audience so appealing to advertisers. You have real people with personal qualities who can be divided into exact consumer categories. Google, Yahoo and other search engines, on the other hand know little about of its users other than their search histories and some browsing activity.

Doubling its membership in March, Twitter is growing even faster than Facebook. As you might remember, at the end of last year, Facebook tried to buy Twitter for $500M but failed miserably. If Facebook had secured Twitter’s huge stake on the real time user generated information, they could have secured the dominant position in user generated live content. More and more Internet users are transferring their social habits to Twitter and Facebook from sites like Friendster and MySpace. In May this year, Facebook surpassed MySpace in the US, which was the last strong hold for the News Corp owned site. According Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg Facebook’s revenue may climb 70 percent this year. Also last month, Russia’s Digital Sky Technologies paid $200 million for less than 2 percent of Facebook, valuing the company at $10 billion. Earlier Microsoft had secured a 1.6% stake for $240 million.

Facebook is based in Palo Alto, California. It was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004. Wired is a monthly magazine published since March 1993. Wired reports on how technology affects culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast Publications, it is published in San Francisco, California.

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Last Saturday at 1 minute past midnight Facebook launched the long awaited Facebook usernames to the general public. So far only famous people and celebrities, like good old  Britney Spears here have been able to enjoy their personalised Facebook names. The public interest was huge, so there were worries how the Facebook servers could cope with the high demand. Everything went smoothly though, which is a huge bonus to the Facebook back end guys.

Here are some signicant figures from the launch day. In the first three minutes over 200,000 usernames were registered. That is an amazing 1000+ per second during the first minutes of the release. After fifteen minutes, users had secured about half a million vanity URL’s. Within one hour, over 1 million Facebook usernames had been claimed. That’s an average of 279 usernames per minute. So far over 4 million usernames have been taken.

Did I get mine? Well, of course I did and I hope you secured your’s as well. I think www.facebook.com/krisolin is far better than the old and  cumbersome www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=697888240. Please leave us a comment and let us know what name you got registered.