Can This ‘Bike Sherpa’ Get More PTAT on Facebook?

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Robert Reimann watched the second plane hit the South Tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001 and then observed as his office nearby destroyed as the towers fell. Then he did something few Americans considered at the time: He took a bike tour across Iran.

"I wanted to see a Muslim country and see what people in that part of the world were actually thinking vs. what the press was reporting," he says. "So I got my way into Iran and rode through there with a New York Cycle Club jersey on."

The trip had an unexpected effect on Reimann's vocation. A former banker and CEO of a mobile publishing company, Reimann moved to Germany and, in 2009, founded BikeSherpa, a company that arranges bike tours in Europe "with a special expertise in beer-based travel in Germany, the Czech Republic and Belgium." BikeSherpa has respectable 1,000 or so fans on Facebook, but Reimann says he's more interested in forging a deeper connection with his existing fans than cultivating new ones. Read more...

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Nutella Sends Cease-and-Desist Letter to Its Biggest Fan

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Nutella, the chocolate hazelnut spread brand, has soured many of its social media fans by cracking down on a superfan who has helped spread the word in social media for more than seven years.

Ferrero SpA, the Italian owner of Nutella, has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Sara Rosso, the creator of the 7-year-old World Nutella Day. On Ferrero's orders, Rosso is pulling the plug on the holiday, which had been celebrated on Feb. 5.

"The cease-and-desist letter was a bit of a surprise and a disappointment, as over the years I’ve had contact and positive experiences with several employees of Ferrero, SpA., and with their public relations and brand strategy consultants, and I’ve always tried to collaborate and work together in the spirit and goodwill of a fan-run celebration of a spread I (to this day) still eat," Rosso wrote on her blog Read more...

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8 Facebook Graph Search Pros and Cons for Marketing

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Facebook Graph Search seems to have a lot of potential. With the improved search feature, we'll finally be able to sift through all the user data on Facebook in an intelligent, intuitive way.

For businesses and startups especially, features like Graph Search and Facebook's conversion measurement tool sound promising — has Facebook finally given business owners the toolkit they need to acquire new customers, target ads on a micro level and drive measurable conversions?

The jury's still out, so we asked a panel of successful young entrepreneurs to share how they're using (or plan to use) Facebook's newer features to serve their business goals. Here's what they had to say. Read more...

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Budweiser ‘Buddy Cup’ Connects New Bar Friends to Facebook

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It's a universal ritual to clink drinking glasses together to make friends, but believe it or not, toasting is about to undergo a high-tech upgrade.

Budweiser Brazil is testing new concept called "The Buddy Cup," a beer glass integrated with Facebook. Thanks to a microchip embedded in the bottom of the glass, two people can instantly become Facebook friends when cups touch.

To get started, drinkers have to connect their cup to their Facebook profiles by snapping a picture of the chip via a smartphone app. Check out the YouTube video above to see how it works.

Read more...

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Cost Per Like: A Subjective Valuation of Your Facebook Fans

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"Cost per Like" often crops up in conversations about Facebook advertising, though it isn't a term officially sanctioned by Facebook. So what exactly does it mean?

Cost per Like refers to the cost of acquiring a new fan for a Facebook page, either through paid advertisements or, less directly, through earned media efforts.

There are three ways to "buy" Likes on Facebook. One is through "cost per thousand impressions" (CPM). Advertisers bid to target a group of desired users, and pay every time their ad is seen by a thousand of those users. A second option is "cost per click" (CPC) campaigns, wherein advertisers pay every time their ad for their Facebook Page is clicked on. Neither of these options guarantees these users will become fans, however, it simply guarantees that they'll either 1) be exposed to an ad for a Page or 2) see a Page. Read more...

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The 10 Most Engaging Facebook Cover Photos

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Ever since Facebook introduced its new cover photo design back in fall 2011, brands, celebrities and ordinary folks have been challenged on how exactly to use that prominent piece of real estate.

For those looking for some inspiration, ZoomSphere recently took stock of the most engaging cover photos on Facebook, which is defined as the photos that drew the most overall interactions. ZoomSphere culled the list from its top 1,000 Facebook pages as measured by overall fan followings. The list of cover photos shows that just having a lot of fans doesn't necessarily mean your photo will get high engagement. In fact, of the top 10 most-followed, only one — Shakira — had one of the most-engaged cover photos. (Take that, Rihanna!) Read more...

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A Facebook Fan Is Worth $174, Researcher Says

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A Facebook fan is worth $174 to a brand, up 28% since 2010, according to Syncapse, a social media marketing firm.

Syncapse worked with research firm Hotspex on a survey based on data collected from more than 2,000 U.S. panelists in late January and early February. The study compared Facebook fans and non-fans based and their corresponding product spending, brand loyalty, propensity to recommend, media value, cost of acquisition and brand affinity to arrive at the figure

Though $174 is an average figure, the value varies from brand to brand:

The reason, says Syncapse CEO Michael Scissons, is "what a consumer would spend on Zara vs. Coke." A higher average purchase price makes a fan more valuable. Read more...

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Google’s Wildfire Social Marketing Platform Cuts Standalone Plans To Upsell To Its Full Suite

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When Google wanted to get into the game of selling social ads across all platforms, it decided to acquire Wildfire, a company that had the market on lockdown. Since the acquisition last July, little has changed as far as what Wildfire offered, how it offered it and there was little to no impact for current customers.

Today, the Wildfire team has announced that its first major shift is upon us, cutting off standalone campaigns that were a hallmark of its tiered offerings.

Here’s what the team had to say about the “new direction”:

…We’ve decided that we’ll be retiring our Basic, Standard, and Premium promotions after June 30th. We’ll continue to offer promotions as part of our Social Marketing Suite. We understand that some of you will still want to run standalone promotions, so we’re glad to know that there are other companies dedicated to helping you do this. But we’ll be sad to see you go. Of course, we’d love for you to stay in the Wildfire and Google family, so if you want to learn more about the Wildfire Suite, then please give us a call at 888-274-0929.

Basically, Google now wants you to purchase the full suite, which starts at $2,500 a month, according to a member of the Wildfire team in the comment section of its post. The suite allows you to push unlimited promotions, pages and messages. If you still want to do standalone social marketing campaigns, the company is now suggesting that you take your business elsewhere. Where else can you go? Well, Google and Wildfire aren’t endorsing any one service, but suggest that you give them a call with any questions that you might have. Which sounds like a setup for a sales call about their “Suite.”

If you’re already set up to do standalone campaigns under its Basic, Standard or Premium accounts, you can run them until June 30th. If you had planned a campaign that runs past that time, you’re out of luck and better find another service or pay up for the Suite. Luckily, all of the leads that you’ve collected using Wildfire can be exported, and if you’re running on a Basic account, they’ll upgrade you so that you have access to the export feature. That’s nice.

The post itself ends on a nice note, thanking its customers for believing in them. The last sentence, however, makes it sound like Wildfire is ready for people to exit and go elsewhere: “We hope you choose to continue to work with us in the future.” Some had feared that something like this would happen as Google rolls Wildfire’s offering into its own services, but on the bright side, it’s a huge opportunity for smaller companies. Current Wildfire clients aren’t so happy thus far, according to some of the comments:

Nice doing business with you over the past few years and congrats on becoming part of a large and successful multinational corporation. We’ll be with your competition where a-la-carte pricing is still the norm, but if you ever reverse this policy you know where to find us. Been great.

Two services, Votigo and Offerpop, have already reached out to us to claim any wayward Wildfire clients. Know of any others? Share them in the comments.


Facebook Home Ad Encourages Phone Use During Family Dinners

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Facebook Home can make spending time in your real home a little less boring — at least that's the suggestion in a new ad for the product.

Facebook's latest video for Home shows a young woman checking her friends' status updates on her phone to escape the "dull" conversation her family is having at the dinner table. Each update she sees on the phone comes to life around her — one friend pounds away at the drums in the corner of the room, another group of friends have a snowball fight around the table — drowning out the real-world conversation in the process.

The social network has used this formula in several ads now to promote Home, an Android launcher that centers the smartphone experience around friends rather than apps. In one video, an airline passenger checks Home to entertain himself while waiting for takeoff; in another video, a Facebook employee turns to Home to drown out the sound of his boss Mark Zuckerberg talking. Read more...

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Watch Facebook’s First Ad for ‘Home’

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Facebook has dropped its first ad for Home, which it is calling a "whole new experience for your phone."

The 60-second ad above takes a page from Apple's playbook and presents Home as an un-scary technology that puts people first. Voiceover: "We carry our phones wherever we go. They're with us almost every second of the day. We reach for them when we have a free moment or we're curious. More than anything we use our phones to connect to the people we care about. From the moment you turn on your phone, you see what your friends are sharing. Your latest messages, calls and updates are right upfront. And you can keep chatting from any app, so no matter what you're doing, your friends are always right there with you. Read more...

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