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Understanding How and Why Facebook Users Interact with Brands

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business. While much of finding what works for your business on social media sites is a process of trial and error, recent stats from e-mail marketing firm ExactTarget (which recently acquired social CRM platform CoTweet) shed some light on how the Facebook population uses the site, and specifically, how it interacts with brands. First, the good news: Based on its study of 1,500 Facebook users, ExactTarget concluded that 38% of online U.S. consumers “Like” (formerly “Fan”) a brand on the social networking site. And the average fan Likes nine different brands, giving you plenty of opportunity to find your way into potential customers' news feeds. Fortunately, ExactTarget didn’t stop there, and did some research into what motivates users to Like companies on Facebook. More Business Resources from Mashable:

TOP 100+ Finnish Brands on Facebook « Deceptive Cadence What does facts about Facebook brand presence look like, really? With the relentless coverage in media, every man and his dog has an opinion about social media and Facebook. On the other hand, you have the social media gurus and true believers preaching about a revolution. On the other hand, you have the more traditional advertising pros who claim to understand the new more social approach to marketing, but continue doing things the old way. Luckily there’s companies like Sysomos, who give us real facts. The most interesting find based on this list is that content is king (all creative people say yeah!) Quality of execution must be crucial, since there are such huge differences in the amount of fans on a seemingly similar brands. Sysomos studied a whopping 600,000 pages and blogged the results. Sysomos report conclusions: Like this: Like Loading...

Top 10 Facebook Pages Does your business have a Facebook page? Have you ever wondered what successful Facebook page owners are doing right? Well, look no further. This article examines 10 of the top Facebook pages from brands you’ll likely recognize. Regardless of the size of your business, you’ll discover great ideas that will help you take your Facebook experience to the next level. Each of these pages has incorporated unique features that have attracted hundreds of thousands (sometimes millions!) There is no need to reinvent the wheel. #1: Red Bull The team behind the Red Bull page is extremely in tune with their target audience. Red Bull knows what their audience will respond to best and they deliver it. In addition, Red Bull created a web TV program that’s highlighted on their Facebook page. Another smart feature of Red Bull’s page is their welcome tab. Tip: One area you might want to consider spending a little money on is creative design for your page. #2: Burt’s Bees #3: Uno Chicago Grill #4: LiveScribe

Web Users Now Spend More Time on Facebook Than Google We already know that Facebook is the web's biggest time sink. If you look at the average amount of time (according to Nielsen) users spend on the social network, Facebook is a clear winner over sites such as Google or Yahoo. Now, according to comScore, Facebook is also first when it comes to the total amount of time users are spending on the site. In August, U.S. web users spent 41.1 million minutes on Facebook, which was about 9.9% of their entire web-surfing time in that month. In this same period, people spent 39.8 million minutes on all of Google's sites, and those include another huge online timesink - YouTube. comScore puts Yahoo in third place, with U.S. web users spending 37.7 million minutes on its sites, which was about 9.1% of their web surfing time in August. The numbers are even more impressive when you consider that Facebook had just overtaken Yahoo in July, and in August last year U.S. web surfers had spent less than 5% of their online time on the social networking service.

The Evolving Role Of Community And Social Media Managers Community management is not new. People have been managing communities since communities and user groups were first created. Someone has always had to make sure that the community or user group is humming along like a well-oiled machine. The fast spread of social media has changed the role of a community manager, and has created a profession of a social media manager (or social media director - I use the two interchangeably). So... what's the difference between a community and social media manager? Everyone has his / her own definition of a community manager vs. social media manager, and there are as many answers as people blogging and speaking about this (just see my recent Twitter exchange below) Here's how I see the two intersecting and diverging. A community manager is mostly concerned with building and growth of a community, he / she may or may not use social media, as the community may be on Ning, custom branded community or external outposts like Twitter and Facebook.

Measuring Social Media Performance using Google Analytics | Globalthoughtz by deep on September 17th, 2010 There are lots of challenges for businesses to keep track of their social media activities and performance. Today, there are hardly any business which doesn’t have a Twitter Id or a Facebook fan page. They might not be investing much in using the platform to increase sales or visits but they surely have their presence shown in some little way. There are many high-end web applications available in the market ranging from $10 to $250+. The market for social media performance measurement is rising with the popularity of platforms like Twitter and Facebook. So, I will show how a free and simple tool like Google Analytics can be used to measure your social media performances and gain insightful meaning out of it. They have very less idea about the Social Media Eco-system. These are some general challenges that I have noticed in the industry. How can Google Analytics Help? Google Analytics is one of the most popular tools for web analytics used in the Internet.

5 New Ways to Market Your Brand on Facebook With 500 million members and growing, Facebook offers brands and marketers direct contact to the largest pool of online users on the web. After all, social media is fast becoming more popular than e-mail on mobile devices and more convenient for news consumption than the daily paper. In recent weeks and months, Facebook has introduced and improved a number of on-site tools that sage brands and businesses can use to better market themselves. New as these conveniences may be, they're still rich with opportunity. 1. Facebook Photos are likely a much overlooked brand utility. Especially of note is the ability to upload hi-res photos up to 2048 pixels wide or high. For marketers and brands, these upgrades offer huge opportunity; you can now use Facebook's magnified photo product to better engage brand fans. "Thoughtful and engaging photos are a critical component to our Facebook Page," says Joel Frey, Travelocity’s senior public relations manager. 2. Here's a few that come to mind: 3. 4. 5.

The 25 Largest Brand Facebook Pages With Most Likes Facebook just keeps growing as one of the most important platforms on the web for brands to engage with and with that in mind we thought we would share the 25 biggest Facebook pages belonging to brands. The list includes brands only and doesn’t include pages belonging to applications or celebrities. You’ll recognize the biggest brands on the list and to a large extent you would expect that most of their numbers are coming through pure advertising although there are some that don’t even seem to be actively pushing their pages and the growth has been largely pushed by fans (lucky them!). Starbucks (16,032,409) Always a high profile brand on the world stage Starbucks were never slow to embrace this medium and have excelled on Facebook with innovative campaigns and a large amount of engagement with their loyal customers. Coca Cola (15,095,389) Oreo (12,085,126) Skittles (11,508,441) Red Bull (10,198,875) Victoria’s Secret (8,429,334) Disney (8,394,141) Converse All Star (7,366,892) Zara (6,063,583)

Classement des FanPages d’Aout 27 août 2010 dans Réseaux sociaux Les vacances n’y feront rien ! Les fanpages ont la cote pour ce mois d’Aout, avec un nouvel arrivant de la classement, Starbucks qui passe la barre des 12 millions de fans, Youtube qui marque la plus grosse augmentation avec plus de 2,7 millions de nouveaux fans ! Voici le récapitulatif en image : # Mouvement du mois Par rapport au mois dernier, le seul changement est l’arrivé de la marque Monster Energy dans ce Top 20 des marques. # Courbe d’évolution Pour les plus curieux, une courbe d’évolution des 21 marques qui se partagent le classement entre Juillet et Aout 2010. 2 779 802 !! # Focus on : Starbucks Starbucks règne toujours en roi incontesté sur Facebook, avec le cap des 12 millions de fans franchis !

How to tell if your Company is Advanced: 10 Criteria Of Social Business Maturity Excited about your new Facebook page but don’t know what’s next? What does a truly advanced company look like in social business? They can say yes to seven or more of these ten criteria. We’ve been interviewing the most sophisticated brands in the world when it comes to social business for our upcoming report on “Enterprise Social Strategists Role”. How to tell if your Company is Advanced: 10 Criteria Of Social Business MaturityCorporations that have these and other following elements in place, may truly be sophisticated when it comes to social business: Clear understanding of customers’ socialgraphics. We’ve done research on the roadmap for companies to reach these 10 levels of nirvana, but have found few companies that have done a few, or even a majority of them.

How to Use Facebook and Twitter to Drive Traffic to Your Retail Shop I’m always surprised at how few retail spaces take advantage of Twitter and Facebook (yes, there are exceptions). The costs are low, the risks are manageable and your customers are already using the platforms. By engaging customers “where they live,” you can increase the foot traffic to your shop and grow your business. Here are 5 steps to grow your retail business using Facebook and Twitter. #1: Set Up Shop “80 percent of success is just showing up.” – Woody Allen This may sound obvious, but if you want to engage your customers and prospects on Twitter and Facebook, you have to be there. On Twitter, this means creating an account for your business, but it also may mean creating an account for you or other people in your company. Twitter is a place for people, but it's also a place for businesses. On Facebook, setting up shop means creating a business page and claiming your Facebook Place (more on that later). Facebook business pages are great places to engage with your audience.

HOW TO: Help New Users Stay Engaged on Twitter This Twitter Trends Series is supported by Bing.™ Check out the Bing Local Twitter Trends Map on Mashable. One of Twitter's most disappointing trends is its lack of solid user retention. If you're a Twitter evangelist, the scenario is probably familiar. You explain to friends and family how much value and fun can be had in 140 characters. They sign up, test the waters for a few days, derive no use value, and promptly abandon their accounts. To remedy this, we've outlined the common missteps of new users and some ways you can help prevent them from becoming part of the Twitter quitter trend. They Only Follow People They Know This is probably the most common reason why new users lose interest, and it stems from a division in social web culture. At this moment, the standard bearer for social networking is Facebook, and it's generally a culture of in-person acquaintances: Classmates, personal friends, family, co-workers, and the like. They Only Follow Brands and Celebrities They're Not Mobile

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