On Thursday, Facebook announced major changes to the platform that we all know – and hardly love. Through the wonders of modern technology (thank you, C Spire), I watched the entire presentation through streaming video, from my car, while Andy drove. An hour or so later, my summary and comments went to the media in the following statement. To begin what will certainly be a lengthy discussion on this blog of the money-making possibilities for a variety of businesses with the new Facebook platform, I wanted to share this release with you.

Chapman Comments on Facebook Overhaul

September 22, 2011 – Today, changes were announced in the last few hours by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg. Below is a summary and extemporaneous comments from The Gibbes Company’s Director of New Media Marianna Chapman.

Today, Facebook announced major changes that in the words of their CEO Mark Zuckerburg will “reinvent industries.”
Among those that will be transformed by today’s announcement are music, video, media, and businesses selling lifestyle brands, products or experiences… that’s a pretty broad range of reinvention!

Facebook’s announcement today centered around two major changes and a third change that I believe is the most transformational of all for business. Today’s announcement will forever change the way that life is shared and how content spreads virally throughout the social web.

Most importantly for business, I believe, is the introduction of “verbs” to the open graph. Last year, Facebook introduced nouns to the open graph, allowing users to “like” a variety of people, places, things, experiences, etc. Many businesses have experienced the benefit of the “like” button as it has driven personal preferences for brands, products and experiences virally over the past year.

Now, verbs are added. Developers will be able to add any verb they wish to the open graph and insert those reactions into the open graph in a variety of ways. For example, the possibilities include the addition of a “want,” “ate,” “cooked,” “read,” “listened” or “watched” buttons that operate similarly to the current “like” button. For business purposes, this allows marketers to personalize more specifically how users engage with products, brands and experiences in a way that boosts social sharing – and thus the exponential power of their marketing machine when used strategically.

Beyond this development, two major interface changes were announced.

Beginning immediately for developers in beta format, and then rolling out to all users over the next few weeks, Facebook will introduce the Facebook Timeline. The Facebook Timeline will entirely replace the current personal Profile for Facebook users. Facebook calls this Profile replacement a way to present the “story of your life.” This new format looks to me a lot like a “Tumblr style” blog presentation of all the various types of experiences in your life including photos, videos, wall posts and comments, travel, and interactions with all of life among other things.

Next, canvas apps will allow for “frictionless experiences” with apps, and therefore products, brands and experiences, on Facebook. Think of it like the demise of the pop-up box and the birth of more real-time web-based social sharing… That’s a mouthful! But the interface looks fantastic, and the development options for business are mind-boggling. Facebook will immediately introduce music, video and news apps with the launch of Timeline.

These Facebook developments present a fundamental leap forward in the power of Facebook for viral marketing as well as the overall power of social sharing on the greater web.

Want to talk about this more?

Contact me directly at mchapman at gibbes dot net, or let’s chat in the comments. I welcome your thoughts and this discussion is just getting started to be sure!

It’s funny. It seems like the posts you (my readers) like the best are the ones where I give a more personal insight into the work I’m doing, or the thoughts I’m thinking as it relates to business. Not to take all the warm and fuzzies out of it, but I’ve got stats to prove this. The web analytics, Facebook insights and Twitter re-tweets – they all tell the story. My readers…my customers…they like knowing the real me and hearing that inside my brain, emotional, thoughtful type stuff.

Which got me thinking… maybe your customers would like the same thing.

Customers Are Humans, Too.

In general, humans are emotional beings, created to live in community with other humans and to interact with on a personal level. There’s way more to every business transaction than some logical need – there is an emotional connection that takes place – yes, even in the most shrewd business situations. So, how can you use this fact to connect on a deeper level (which creates immense customer loyalty, by the way) with your customers today?

Here are a few ideas I had… But I’d also love to hear your ideas, so fire away in the comments sections to help all of us do a better job at using our “humanness” as a marketing tactic to grow our businesses.

1. Use a picture of a human (you, the business owner, the manager, a key employee, an employee of the month, even a customer testimonial with photo) on your outgoing messages (that includes email, web site pages, traditional advertisements, posts on Facebook and your Twitter profile pic for your business).

2. Have all owners and employees name tags in your business, so that customers can connect with a name, not just a face.

3. Have all owners and employees introduce themselves personally and shake hands or hug customers when they enter (depending on the level of familiarity, of course). Physical contact in this professional way will deepen relationships and leave a more lasting positive impression.

4. Have your owner and employees become a source of valuable ideas instead of marketing gimmicks. For example, instead of greeting a customer with a sales gimmick when they walk in the store, have them demonstrate what to do with a certain item, how to use it, etc.

5. Place signs around the store with photos of employees or owners that provide personalized advice through signage. For example:

Mary’s Top 10 Graduation Gift Ideas Under $50

Mary’s Favorite Pair of Jeans for Summer – White Bootcut Delta Blues

Mary Recommends… Mixing your grandmother’s antique china with this Gail Pittman ivory pottery plate for a bright spring luncheon

6. Use your blog, email, Facebook and Twitter as a place to circulate more of these types of ideas, to reach out to others who are asking questions or making comments that you can engage in conversation about (i.e. be human and join conversations in a normal human way, but on behalf of your business).

7. Use your blog to explain more about the ideas you’ve shared on the signs in-store. For example, you can create a blog post “written by” the person who made the tip on the store sign, include their photo on the blog post as well, include some additional sample pictures of products (include price and official name of product in the caption), and explain in more detail what you presented on the store sign. For instance, if you were saying more about Mary’s favorite pair of summer jeans, you might show some outfit ideas, tell why they are her favorite from her perspective (does she have a certain body type that they fit well, are they lighter weight for hot Southern summers, is there an event that she looks forward to that she plans to wear the jeans to?), and even share a bit of the story behind the brand (a brand created in the South to fit Southern women, etc.). This extends the customer’s in-store experience, and it gives you a lot of content to post on social media, which will in turn also create new sales. And it’s all done from a human, personal perspective, which will lead to tighter emotional connections, higher per-ticket sales averages, and a more loyal customer base.

Trust me… we all really do like it when people are more human in how they do business. The numbers prove it.

Image by: brewbooks

Choosing one social network over another might seem like a toss-up for small business owners. What does it matter which one you use, as long as your business is online? You’re interacting, you’re building a network, so you’re accomplishing your online marketing goals, right?

Well, maybe. But with a little insight you can not only make better decisions about which social network(s) to put time and effort into, you can also learn how to use them more effectively. That means more results in less time, and that’s a good thing for anyone in the hectic world of running a small business.

What Are Your Goals?

(If you don’t know, check out this recent post on how to set your goals – and follow our series on marketing planning.)

What do you want to accomplish with your social networking? If your first answer is “to create an online presence,” well, that’s a good starting point. But what do you want to do with that online presence? Do you want to connect with customers? Get feedback? Build a mailing list? Generate leads? Sell your products and services online? Get people to your blog or website? Collect customer information? Interact with your most loyal customers? Get word-of-mouth spreading via the online networks?

Certainly it would be nice to accomplish all of those things with social networking, and over time you can get close to achieving all. In fact, most of those goals are spin-offs; achieve one, such as spreading word-of-mouth, and you’re automatically achieving another, such as generating sales leads.

But goal achieving isn’t automatic. While any online presence is better than none, a smart small business will make savvy use of the Internet and those vast resources.

Facebook vs. Twitter: A Few Surprises

Facebook is the online giant, bigger than Google now, with 78% of all social networking traffic belonging to Facebook, That’s great news for you, when you set up your Facebook Business Page. And Twitter, with only 5% of the social networking traffic, is a much, much smaller piece of the pie. But traffic isn’t the only thing that matters; you not only need people to visit you (on Facebook or Twitter) you also need them to respond, to interact, to follow through, to take you up on those great offers. And while Facebook, the social giant, gets an average of 3 clicks per link posted, Twitter users get a much higher response: an average of 19 clickthroughs for each embedded link. That’s a huge difference!

How to Be Savvy
Now before you go delete your Facebook page and focus all your time and attention on Twitter, take a moment. Facebook and Twitter are vastly different social networks, and if you’re smart, you’ll use both – in a partnership – and reap the benefits of both. Here are a few key differences:

Facebook reaches a bigger audience, but Twitter reaches a more targeted audience. So it’s going to take longer to get noticed on Facebook, but there’s huge potential once that happens. Once you do cross an attention threshold with Facebook, your audience is almost unlimited. So realize that you’ll have to invest more time into building up your Facebook page, but that the investment can pay off in big numbers.

Twitter is very of-the-moment, but Facebook makes browsing easier. Although the new Twitter interface makes it easier to look back at the history of a particular user, it’s a different atmosphere. Twitter users want to be in the moment, so if they miss your first link or mention, they might not go back and find it. With Facebook, however, when a user visits your page they get all your latest information right there in one spot, and responding to older posts or information is easier and more common. Use Twitter to tweet and retweet relevant news, information, links, updates, deals, and ongoing items of interest, and use Facebook to interact on a deeper level with your customers and fans.

Image by 10ch.

Sources:
Entrepreneur Magazine
SocialTwist Sharing Trends Report

The busiest time of the year for most retail businesses starts with the dawn of November. As you reflect on 2010′s holiday season, there’s never a better time to plan for next year.

Next year, when the official busy season rolls around again, you’ll be ready. There’s a lot you can do to boost your retail sales beyond playing Christmas music and hanging a few lights in the windows. While creating a festive atmosphere is always a smart move, creating holiday specials, which keep customers coming back, is an even smarter move. (For other holiday marketing ideas, check out these posts.)

Holiday specials are not a new idea. Local business owners have been creating seasonal menus, gift baskets, packages, and holding special sales and getting good results from these seasonal strategies. But incorporating a few new ideas into your holiday specials this year could help you boost your sales even in a slow economy. Remember that people are still going to be shopping for gifts; they’re just going to be a little choosier than usual with tighter budgets. That’s where your holiday specials come into the picture.

Strategy 1: Create Holiday Specials for Every Price Point

Marketing research is showing that shoppers enjoy having options. A lot of options. (Read Chris Anderson’s fascinating book at www.longtail.com, for a discussion of this research.) So give your shoppers plenty of options by creating not just one or two holiday specials or packages, but 5 or 6… or 10… or 12. If you’re a higher-end establishment, go ahead and offer a higher price point selection of holiday specials; but expand into a lower price point and offer options there as well.

Use the same principle if you tend to sell more items at a lower cost; offer several lower cost options, but offer some higher price point selections as well. Create multiple displays throughout your brick and mortar store. You want your customers to be seeing this amazing selection – and the great prices and products you’re offering – several times as they move through your retail space.

Strategy 2: Create Limited Availability Holiday Specials

Have you ever thought about why people love seasonal specials? Because they’re only here for a limited time. Think about candy corn; is it really that great? And if it were available all year ’round, would people ever get very excited about it? But people do, because it’s only around for a short time out of the year. That limited availability makes the product more desirable and more valuable.

Use that limited availability concept with your holiday specials. If you’re a retail establishment, you could create several custom, one-of-a-kind gift baskets; once each one is gone, it’s simply gone. Or offer a great deal on a special product, but only through the next week. Don’t feel like you have to extend your holiday specials all the way through the holiday season. Instead, create value by placing time limits or quantity limits on particular specials.

Strategy 3: Introduce New Specials Through the Holiday Season

This strategy works hand-in-hand with the concept of limited availability specials. As you phase out one holiday special, phase in another. Not only will the limited availability increase the perceived value of each special, but your customers will want to keep coming back to see what’s new this week. Remember: shoppers enjoy options. They also enjoy the feeling that they’re getting an “insider’s” special.

Strategy 4: Collect Customer Information with Each Holiday Sale

Let your customers be insiders by offering to keep them informed about new, exclusive holiday specials as they become available. Collect customer names and contact information with each sale, and make the offer as well to customers who aren’t yet making a purchase. They can still sign up to be on the list and find out about new specials.

If you’re planning to hold a special holiday event (such as an open house or one-day sale), then this list is your first step in the marketing for the event. Send out an exclusive invitation to those folks on your holiday list, inviting them in an hour or two before the general public. They get to enjoy a privileged shopping time, you get to interact and build relationships. It’s fun for everyone.

Strategy 5: Promote Holiday Specials via Website, Facebook, and Twitter

Whatever presence you have online should be part of your holiday marketing. Put up notices about your holiday specials, big and bold, on your website’s front page. Send out an email to all your online subscribers. Send out regular updates via your Facebook and/or Twitter accounts, letting your customers know about new holiday shipments, specials, coupons, events, deals, and so on.

Ask for feedback, too. What kind of holiday specials are your customers looking for? Ask specific questions (“What’s the best Christmas present you ever received?”) and interact with those who respond. Have an online contest or giveaway, with the prize being one of your holiday exclusive specials.

Remember that you have to give shopper a reason to choose your product, your store; over the other options they have available. Using some creativity with your holiday specials can create a powerful appeal, and offer value to both your customers and your business.

Image by Sister72.

Want to add a little holiday cheer to your 2010 holiday marketing? Try these 10 holiday marketing ideas to pump up the sales volume and spread a little holiday cheer all at the same time!

1. Customize your website and/or Facebook page with holiday decorations. It’s fairly easy to make (or find) a holiday graphic that you can customize for your business Facebook page or website, and it creates a festive spirit right there on the Internet, which is where more and more sales are happening (read this article to learn how long it takes for online marketing efforts to “move the needle”). So don’t save the holiday decor just for the brick-and-mortar storefront. Spread the spirit to your online space as well.

2. Have a holiday photo contest. You can theme the contest to fit in with your business, your products, and your services, or you can just keep it generic. Have people submit their photos via your Facebook page and simply “tag” your business page in the photo. You can have a contest for the “Cutest Family Christmas Picture” or “Best Santa Impersonator Photo” or anything holiday-themed. Play it up both in your store and online marketing, and provide a great prize for the winner.

3. Give holiday favors away with every purchase. Think simple and cheap here. A holiday favor can be very inexpensive, something as simple as pen with your logo on it, a holiday pin or sticker, or a individually wrapped chocolate. For the investment of a few pennies per purchase, you get to make a great impression with every customer who makes a purchase.

4. Offer holiday treats throughout the Christmas shopping season. Keep a fresh pot of coffee, a big urn of apple cider, and some holiday cookies out on a table, as a complimentary holiday treat for all your customers. It doesn’t matter if you’re a retail gift shop, an office, or a service-based business; sweet treats are welcome anytime, anywhere. And people who know they can get a cup of hot apple cider on a chilly day will return, and linger while they sip it.

5. Create a “12 Days of Your Product” package. This great marketing idea, from SmallBizTrends.com, gives you an easy, fun, and festive way to introduce customers to more of your products and services. Put together a 12-day package, starting small and building up, and sell it as a holiday special.

6. Send a special holiday e-card to your customer email list. Send it early – well before the actual holiday – and include a special coupon or discount as your way of saying thanks to your loyal customers.

7. Have a tree-trimming day in your brick-and-mortar store. Turn up the Christmas music, hang out signs, invite the public to participate, and have lots of sweet treats handy. Offer special “tree-trimming day only” sales, specials, and discounts.

8. Participate in your community’s holiday events. Is there a parade, a bazaar, a charity fundraiser, a night of carol singing and hot cocoa? Get out there and be part of it. Sponsor something, contribute something, provide some supplies and simply take part in person. Being an active part of your community is one of the best marketing moves you can make anytime of year.

9. Give away your holiday decorations (or some of them). Invest in a big, beautiful holiday wreath or centerpiece; then announce that, at the end of the season, one lucky customer will get to take it home to use in their own decor next year! Offer every customer the chance to enter to win that beautiful decoration; make it easy with slips of paper and a decorated box to put them in. All you need to collect are names and phone numbers (or email addresses). At the end of the season, have a little party, draw and announce the winner, and make even the post-holiday work a reason for celebration.

10. Simplify the holiday gift-buying process for your customers. Offer something like free gift-wrapping, free delivery, or an exceptionally lenient return policy for purchases. Anything you can do to make this time of the year simpler and less stressful for your customers will make it more likely that they spend their money in your store, and remember you when the new year rolls around.

P.S. Here is a post from 2006 on seasonal e-mail marketing ideas that I thought you’d also like.

Image by Howard Dickins.

More and more brick-and-mortar business owners are starting to see that social networking helps business: it increases your public profile, helps you create a recognizable brand, and helps you reach people you might not otherwise reach.

But what about the benefits of social networking for reaching out locally? Can you use social networking not to “expand” into a new target market but to get more business from where you already are?

In short, absolutely. Social networking can become a huge boost and help you increase local business. Here’s how to go about it:

Create a Local Presence Online
Maybe you have a website or business blog, or you’re building up your Facebook business page and learning your way around Twitter. Use your time online to create more contact with other local folks. Here are a few ways to do that:

1. Get your profile on geo-social sites like Foursquare and Facebook Places.

These social sites are places that map local areas and then allow users to interact with those local places online. Create an account, and then claim your local business on the map; you’ll go through a brief confirmation procedure, and then you can start interacting with users on the social site. (Look for more on this in an upcoming post. We’ll walk you through it step-by-step.)

2. Find local groups and local business pages on Facebook and get involved with them.

Use Facebook’s search tool to find groups and pages from your area, then join the groups and become a fan of the pages. Interact; respond to posts, ask questions, answer questions, be friendly, and contribute. All you’re doing is expanding your local presence from the street front and physical community to the virtual street front and online community.

3. Connect with local news and review sites.

There are some national websites, such as Examiner.com, Citysearch.com, and Yelp.com, which have local branches. Browse through these and you’ll find reviews of area restaurants, articles on local events, and more. Get in touch with the news writers and offer an interview or story idea relating to your business; most of the time these folks are looking for good material, so they’ll jump on your offer. For the review sites, make sure your business is on the site, then respond to good reviews with thank you and any negative comments with an offer to help and resolve the problem. No feedback from you will come across as negative, so be proactive here.

Promote Your Social Networking Offline
Once you’ve got a Facebook page, website, blog, or other networking method in place, start telling people about it! Put a link on your business cards. Create and print a simple flyer telling people to find you on Facebook or follow you on Twitter. Put a sign in the window, a sign on your bulletin board, a link on your email signature, and a reference on any other material that goes out of your business.Local folks will not just automatically find you online; you have to tell them. And sometimes you have to tell them a few times so, repeat, repeat, repeat.

Use Social Networking to Promote Your Local Community
Now that you’ve established a local presence online and started getting local people to connect with you online, it’s time to leverage all that work into more local business. Do this by using your social network and online storefront to promote local events and provide special locally based offers. Sponsor the next charity 5K run and talk about it online. Put a local community calendar on your website. Put an events tab on your Facebook page and highlight local events as well as events as your own business.

What you’re doing is becoming a local resource, both online and offline. Expand your local value by offering special discounts, deals, and coupons to local folks but do it online. Send a special message to your Facebook followers, an email to your subscribers, or tweet out a message offering 1/2 off an item for the next 24 hours. Make your discounts significant and time-limited and offer them frequently; this motivates your local fans to follow you online so they don’t miss a special deal, and it also motivates them to share your great deal with other local folks.

The key in this strategy is to keep the focus on the local folks. What gets them excited and makes them want to come back? Figure out what that is, translate it into something you can offer or talk about online, and you’ve found the key to leverage social networking for more local business.

Photo Credit: philcampbell

Introducing my very old fashioned (using e-mail technology) “thank & recommend” strategy for building customer loyalty, customer visit frequency and improving retail or restaurant sales.

This system will help you lock in customers for life and earn business in the short term.

Before we get much further, please know that I get that life is busy and that there are lots of technical system (called trigger e-mail marketing) that do this in a more systematic way. But I want to encourage you that if things are at all sluggish in your business that you dedicate to working this system until things get better. Then, once they are better, set the calendar on autopilot naming days or weeks on a regular basis when you do it again for a short period to keep things flowing and extend your attitude of gratitude back to your customers (for example, once things are great again, pick the slowest night of the week for your restaurant or retail store – or choose to do this on the 2nd week of every month for five days, etc.). Customer loyalty, visit frequency and sales volume will improve.

Here’s the three step “thank and recommend” customer loyalty builder system:

1. Post lots of current products or menu items in an online photo album that is public. Post them on blog posts on your blog, Facebook photo albums, Flickr, or even Picasa.

2. Dedicate that every day for one week employees are required to take note (either using the technology tools of the point of sale system or old fashioned note-taking) of each customers e-mail address and what they bought.

3. At the end of each day, you, your employee or wait staff, should pen a short customized e-mail based on a standard system that will make it quick and easy… Here’s a template that you can follow to make the e-mails quick and easy to write.

Dear (insert first name of customer or Mr/Mrs/Ms Last name) -

I wanted to personally thank you for visiting us today at (insert name of business). Your support of our locally owned business really means a lot to us.

As I recall, you (choose purchased/enjoyed/ordered/took home) the (insert name of what they purchased).

Since you left, I’ve been thinking that you might also really like (insert name of three other potential products that are linked to their photo online). I included links to them here, but you can also check them out the next time you come in – which I hope is soon!

If you see something you’d like immediately, just hit reply, and I can answer any questions you might have or take care of your order over the phone tomorrow.

But don’t be a stranger – we always enjoy seeing you!

Thanks again for your business,

(insert your name)

P.S. In case you haven’t already, you can connect with us on Facebook at (insert direct link) and follow us on Twitter (insert direct link) for more ideas just like these. Thanks again!

Now – go get some sales and share your feedback in our comments below!

Photo Credit: a.drian