43% of respondents say they are fans of at least one brand on Facebook. Of those users, the following reasons were the most common given:

Looking at this information, you might – as most companies do – immediately implement one of the first three reasons. You could offer a coupon or discount, encourage people to wear your brand like a badge, or give something away.

But I think this misses the point.

It’s the next two groups you should be paying the most attention to; people who want to know about the activities of your company and to get updates on future products.

These are the people who are giving your brand permission to talk to them.

Social media marketing is not a replacement for mass media. If you want broad awareness, you’re playing in the wrong sandbox. So when you create a Facebook strategy, don’t get stuck in the mindset of “most people want this, let’s give it to them.”

Instead, think about what the right kind of people want. The true fans.

Gather those people.

Permalink: How to get Facebook fans to “like” a page

[Visa] decided they were in the business of making shopping better. Just because the “digital product” isn’t a credit card doesn’t mean it isn’t central to their business.

Pair that with the news that AT&T and Verizon are partnering – mortal enemies that they are – to replace credit cards with smart phones, and you get a better picture of what’s going on.

Visa has presumably looked to Japan, where mobile commerce has already created a “digital wallet”, as the inevitable future of mobile in the United States. According to a June 7 study by Mercatus LLC, a Boston-based consulting firm:

More than half of U.S. consumers, and almost 80 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 34, will use mobile financial services within five years.

Instead of limiting their vision to their competitors for selling credit cards, Visa is aware of their competition for being the “middleman” of shopping. The threats are not limited to their traditional competitive set.

But neither are their opportunities limited to their traditional markets. To me, understanding the implications of this digital behavior is the essence of embracing a digital strategy.

The scale of these businesses is nearly unimaginable. Ignoring the trillions of dollars collected in fees for consumer debt, interchange fees alone – the small percentage of each transaction paid to the credit card company – exceeds $40 billion a year.

To wit, Visa’s annual operating income has grown sixfold since fiscal 2005 to $3.54 billion last year. But Visa is getting ready for the future today, recent success with credit cards be damned.

Permalink: Visa’s digital strategy recognizes threat from mobile carriers

The most important takeaway? It depends what kind of website you have.

Rich gives a different list of goals for: e-commerce, publishing (content), lead generation, blogs, and communities. I think there are more (e.g. brand awareness), but the point is that you need to define measurable success for yourself.

Here’s what Rich says to look for in e-commerce:

1. High percentage of repeat visits (above 50%)
2. Low bounce rate of your homepage (below 40%)
3. Low shopping cart abandonment rate (below 20%)
4. High average order value (depending on average prices)
5. Multiple products per order (at least 2.0 per order)
6. Low average number of days until purchase (lower than 7 days)
7. High total site order conversion rate (total site visits by/of orders)
8. High usage of refer-a-friend & social tools (e.g. Facebook Like or sharing)

You should read the article.

Permalink: What to look for in web analytics

The tag line they’re using to promote their update is, “You’re not always the same person. Why should it be any different on the web?”

Orkut has brought privacy front and center, by splitting the status feed into the various segments of your life (work, school, best friends, et cetera). When you post a picture, you choose which group of your friends it goes to.

You can almost do this with Facebook, but the difference is that it requires a tremendous amount of deliberate effort to accomplish, and you still won’t perfectly duplicate this clear division. Making this feature the default – and building it into the visual interface – will dramatically change how users behave.

From a consumer standpoint, Orkut’s new featuers are a beautiful thing. I hope it scares Facebook into following suit.

But this won’t happen; it’s too powerful a thing for Facebook to give advertisers blanket access to consumer information. By letting their users draw a line in the sand, Facebook loses one of the most attractive things it has to sell: you.

Also, a correction to yesterday’s post: Orkut has passed Facebook in India, but is not even close in Brazil.

(via ReadWriteWeb)

Permalink: Orkut enhances social networking privacy with split status feeds; will Facebook follow suit? No.

Orkut is still the #1 social network in Brazil, but Techcrunch reported in July that Facebook is catching up quickly.

Permalink: Facebook catches up and passes Orkut in India

I’ve updated the look of the blog. Since I haven’t had the opportunity to test cross-browser compatibility, please let me know if you find anything out of place (particularly if you’re using a browser/operating system other than Chrome on OS X).

I’ve also added a job board for digital strategy positions (look in the navigation sidebar). Enough people have asked me to let them know about positions – and enough recruiters have asked me to recommend candidates – that I thought it would be a good resource for the community.

The board is free to use and costs $49 for companies/recruiters to add a job listing. The listings are cross posted in the widely viewed Simply Hired database, so they’ll be available on other sites like LinkedIn as well. I hope you find it useful!

Permalink: Design updates & new digital strategy job board

Three things make them special:

1. Customers purchase the deal on the website (whether it’s a a cruise or an end-table), letting businesses sell goods online they otherwise couldn’t.
2. The deal only kicks in if a threshold of purchasers is reached, so customers who really want the deal forward it to all their friends (and why shouldn’t they, it’s a great thing to share).
3. If the threshold isn’t reached, the vendor’s deal doesn’t go into effect.

All of this means that vendors can offer unbelievable discounts at volume, which is what makes discounting profitable, while minimizing risk. And customers get great deals with an easy way to pay. Everybody wins.

Up until now, this was just for local businesses. But yesterday, The Gap ran a national deal on Groupon and sold 300,000 packages ($50 of merchandise for $25) in one day.

That’s $7.5MM of instant revenue for The Gap off the bat – or a $7.5MM loss when the deal is redeemed, if that’s how you want to look at it – but no one goes to The Gap to spend just $50; the promotional effect must be tremendous.

In the words of Olivia Doyne, Director of Engagement Marketing at Gap:

“We’re always looking at new and innovative ways to connect with our customers, and we know many of them are Groupon subscribers. We thought the timing of our exclusive Groupon offer would be ideal as people begin to build their back-to-school and fall wardrobes.”

At its core, there’s nothing all that new about Groupon. But smart implementations of simple ideas can revolutionize the way we shop.

(via Mashable)

Permalink: Groupon is changing shopping; Gap successfully promotes nationwide deal

Apparently, the UBS group using the parking lot satellite images is more accurate at predicting earnings than the group using their traditional methods.

I could try to come up with something to say about how analytics previously reserved for industrial systems and websites are moving to the “real world”, but it’s easier to just say: Awwwweeeeesome.

Permalink: Walmart measures traffic with… satellites?

The Planner Survey 2010

Permalink: Planner Survey 2010: Strategist Salaries and more

“[Schmidt] predicts, apparently seriously, that every young person one day will be entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood in order to disown youthful hijinks stored on their friends’ social media sites.”

Boyd thinks this is ridiculous. Boyd’s reasoning is that online reputation is built up over time, and it’s not that easy to abandon your identity. She thinks Schmidt overestimates the impact search and social media behavior can have on an essential human characteristic.

I agree with Boyd’s conclusion but for the opposite reasoning; I think Schmidt underestimates the impact.

I believe people will start (well, continue) to act like they’re in public more of the time. I’m not saying privacy is dead, but I am saying that the nebulous quasi-public might be.

Whether we’re walking down the street or in the pub, the universality and constancy of mobile technology means that we’re always on the record.

This is something NYU’s Clay Shirky talks about a lot. I recommend checking out his work.

Permalink: Danah Boyd vs Eric Schmidt: Online Identity and the Death of Privacy