Make Money on Facebook

Social networking has become a common way to socialize with people from everywhere. And while there have always been numerous opportunities for connecting via the Internet, contemporary social networking has proved a powerful took to link people with the online world and connect with new people. One social network that has taken the World Wide Web by storm is Facebook. You might as well not exist online if you don’t have a Facebook at this point.

Every day, people use their Facebook profiles to network with other people that have the same interests, play games together, and communicate on an unparalleled level. This must obviously sound like a proverbial gold mine for you to find new customers in. It sure is! Due to the realization that Facebook can help businesses advertise their products, more and more firms are attempting to use it. And since Facebook has millions of users with a huge range of interests, it’s a virtual goldmine for online marketing. This article will be talking about how Facebook can help you promote your business in the best possible way.

Once Facebook reached a couple million users, they began to monetize their service. Social Ads was launched, which allowed businesses to put ads on Facebook to promote their service or product. It isn’t complicated at all; what’s more, this is easier than most popular PPC services out there like Google’s Adwords. These ads can get a good response because you have an option to target them to users according to their age group, interest, gender, etc. People randomly clicking on your ads, when they are not really interested in your products, can be a problem with these type of ads. But with such heavy-duty targeting, your ad will only be displayed to the right demographic. This means your ad will get a higher click-through-rate, which in turn means more traffic for you. It’s also possible to put a picture on your ad that’s thought provoking and interesting to your prospect. Having a picture along with your ad will make your ad look more trustable, noticeable and highly responsive.

You can also get a group or page of your own to begin marketing if you cannot afford the ads. You can have any type of interest group or page you want on Facebook; they are very open. This is the no cost way to reach your market. All you need to do is create a group or if you want a page talking about your business. Then you need to find people to join your group or become a fan of your page, it couldn’t get much easier. One alternative is to send invitations to individuals, asking them to join your group, and then rely on them to tell others that they know, about your group. But if you create a page, you’ll have to do your own marketing to get the word out about it. Whether you choose to go for a group or just create your own page, eventually, you’ll see a huge response to your business with the aid of Facebook.

Facebook can be a social network achieving an objective for you as a marketer. You can effectively promote your products or services on Facebook, thereby bringing prospective buyers to your site and increasing your sales. Just keep experimenting and testing various options so you can find the Facebook success formula that works best for you.

New FTC Mandated Disclosure Rules

This past Monday, the Federal Trade Commission made some big changes to its rules on endorsements and testimonials in advertising. It’s the 1st time in 29 years that the FTC has changed them, but it’s a project they’ve been cooking up for a while now. The reason? The Social Media landscape. The agency, charged with protecting consumer interests, has decided to update its policy on endorsements because the Internet has become a compelling medium in shaping consumer decisions. “In 1980 most of all advertising was disseminated by the advertisers themselves; today a good part of that advertising is being disseminated by users,” said Richard Cleland, assistant director- division of advertising practices at the FTC.

The main takeaway is that commercial relationships need to be disclosed, although they did not say how. For bloggers who review products, this means that the days of free-flow giveaways may be over. Gadget bloggers and reviewers on Amazon and such now must disclose freebies and financial interests or face fines up to $11,000 per incident.

What does this mean for affiliates? Affiliate-created blogs, review sites and other pages have proliferated, filled with claims that drive traffic to merchants. However, when this content contains exaggerated claims or fails to disclose connections with sellers, there may be liability for deceptive advertising.

Still, the new rules are fairly ambiguous, but what’s exciting about this is that the social media marketing company I work for (full disclosure, I am not being compensated for this post ) IZEA Inc., has been advocating disclosure for years, and to quote Ted Murphy, CEO of IZEA, the company has “spent thousands of man-hours and millions of dollars building the marketplaces and tools to make social media marketing easy, effective and FTC compliant.”

Go us!!!

SEO vs. SMO

My main forte at work is SEO. Clients come to me asking for assistance in generating more organic, relevant search traffic which, hopefully, converts. But my company’s main offering is social media optimization. But does social media create conversions? What’s the difference between SEO and SMO?

I read in interesting article recently by Jeff Casmer, an IMer and consultant. Here are a few takeaways:

Humans, for the most part, have a need to feel connected, to relate and interact with others. Social media optimization thrives on that need. Social media is all about communication. Its about sharing opinions, and experiences with others via blogs, wikis, message boards (forums), and videos.

While SEO is still an effective means to gain traffic, the web is no longer two dimensional. It has evolved. It’s become increasingly interactive, taken on a three dimensional shape. One that caters to our visual and audio senses, and allows web browsers to have more control over what they see, hear, and, what is now.

Social media optimization, according to Wikipedia, is a way to optimize web sites so they would be more easily connected or interlaced with online communities and community websites, also called social media sites. Methods of SMO include adding RSS feeds, adding a DiggThis button, and incorporating third party community functionalities like Flicker photo slides and galleries or YouTube videos.

The four characteristics of Social Media Optimization are:

Participation- Consumers are not afraid to participate in communities by generating content and engaging in conversations about topics that interest them. Web masters who know this are constantly encouraging user participation on their own sites and blogs.

Conversation- Consumers today do not want to be marketed to. Blatant advertisements are not as effective as they used to be. Instead, consumers wish to be communicated with through conversation that is being stirred up on blogs, wikis and forums. Consumers now have methods to express their thoughts, recommendations and complaints and they are doing so. Webmasters can now communicate with their target audience in real time, and can take these concerns, recommendations to better serve their audience.

Openess- To build trust with their target audience in order facilitate conversation, webmasters must first be open with them. They need to let them know who they are right off the bat. Pretending to be someone your not is the surest way to lose trust. And because any good business is first built on trust its crucial to be open and honest with your market.

Community- Social media conversation is not pulled out of thin air. Every form of social media is based on the fact that we all want to belong to something; they all have a community component to them. Social media sites are micro-communities that allow people with similar interest to share insight, advice, and recommendations about products and services. Before a webmaster can begin to monetize they must first become an accepted member of the community. This is why the first two characteristics are so important.

Many web sites are still static, meaning they are rarely updated and are used as a storefront. Setting up a blog or adding unique, interactive pieces to sites like Digg is a great way to increase linkage to your website. Site owners can encourage visitor participation by facilitating the conversation that is happening virtually everywhere. Consumers are already talking about products and services and buying them; brands need to help them get their attention on theirs. By not joining in, brands are silencing themselves. And that is pretty un-social…

Kmart and Social Media Exposure

So if you haven’t heard, my team at the illustrious co. I work for, IZEA, launched a blog outreach/social media campaign for Kmart a few weeks ago with enormous success. (You haven’t heard? WHERE have YOU been?). The campaign had some compelling elements: A few influential bloggers were given a $500 gift card to Kmart and they chart their buying experience at the store and create sponsored blog posts about it. They then hold a contest to give away another $500 gift card to one of their readers, who is chosen at random from either a comment left at the post or from retweets done on twitter, mentioning the item they wold buy at Kmart if they won and linking back to the post.

Thousands of tweets were done, pushing the brand Kmart into the dynamic realm we call social media. A huge amount of buzz was generated for Kmart, encouraging consumers to give Kmart a shot for their business this holiday season. Take a look at the graph that displays Kmart’s SMI (Social Media Index). SMI is a tool which provides a snapshot in realtime that helps measure conversations about a brand. Notice the huge jump after we launched the campaign.

So why does this work? At IZEA, we strive to drive deeper and more connected relationships between Brands and consumers. This in turn builds brand and product advocacy resulting in what really matters – growth, competitive differentiation and affinity. In this economic climate, it’s something ALL brands need.