The incredible popilarity of the world’s biggest social network, Facebook, is top of the mind for small and large businesses who have been pouring increasingly large portions of their advertising budget into campaigns to engage better with their loyal customers, and to entice new ones into their stores. From competitions to product promotion pages or just an app extending their existing eCommerce site, retailers have been trying just about everything to attract  everyone they can.

I looked at 280 retailers who operate in the UK’s biggest shopping centre, Bluewater in Kent, and their Facebook presence. Apps on each page were then categorised depending on what their apps did, and the way they were aiming to get interaction with from visitors.

The result show that by far retailers are choosing to use Store Locator apps on their pages, with Welcome Page apps coming in a distant second – 27.5% of retailers are using them. Competitions, Like-gates revealing discount vouchers or codes, and on-Facebook stores are next on the list, unsurprisingly, with retailers focusing their efforts on getting customers to visit their pages in return for spending money, even if it is a little less than they might have spent otherwise.

Facebook App Types Used By Bluewater Retailers

How this changes over the coming weeks will be interesting to watch, as adoption of the Facebook Places and removal of default Welcome Pages for Timeline takes effect.

Proportion Of Apps Used By Retailers With Deprecated Apps Removed

In my opinion, using these pages effectively is important for any business to reach their existing and potential customers, from the smallest to the largest; with the right type of offline and online marketing, competitions and discount coupon apps can be used to engage with their customers, with future communications getting a bigger audience as a result. Most important, though, is good management of the brand’s Facebook presence – and that, of course, requires that the business is watching how their users are interacting with them on Facebook, and constantly looking for ways to do it better. 

PageHub is an all-in-one platform which allows brands to run smart, agile campaigns on Facebook. Real time insights give brands the opportunity to optimise and tweak their campaigns immediately, uploading new artwork and content as they need to – helping them increase user engagement, and conversions.

The app launched on Tuesday, allows users to fill out a virtual report card on the Government’s latest animal welfare policies; scores are automatically shared with a user’s friends via their timeline, encouraging others to rate policies.

James Wood, founder of PageHub said:  “We’re really excited to be helping the RSPCA pioneer in using the Social Graph to promote their work

“The RSPCA are really leading the way in integrating the social graph into their campaigning, with the launch of this new Facebook app.”

Running on the PageHub platform, the app allows users to support and promote causes with their Facebook friends in a frictionless way, and the RSPCA to manage the app using the PageHub dashboard.

Violet Donohoe, Political Campaigner for the RSPCA said that the launch of the app marked a change in the way the RSPCA campaigned:

“We recognise that people who care about animal welfare are likely to associate with people of a similar disposition. The PageHub system is a perfect fit.”

“The RSPCA have little manpower to monitor and moderate. PageHub have managed to create a user friendly platform simple to use for ‘non-techy’ types.”

“The integration of the Facebook open graph was an idea brought to us by PageHub as a means of amplifying the way participation in our campaign was communicated.”

The RSPCA have also published their ‘school report’ for the Government and have also made this available on Facebook. The app has increased engagement with the RSPCA on Facebook by an average of 300%.

James Devonport Wood, Founder & CEO of PageHub said “After many months of work we are hugely excited to announce to have been selected as a Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer for Apps, a recognition that the PageHub Platform is delivering innovative enterprise solutions on Facebook.”

PageHub is an all in one solution which allows brands to run smart, agile campaigns on Facebook, with access to instant insights on customer interactions and trends.

PageHub passed a huge milestone of 1 Million app deliveries in November 2011, and growth has been increasing significantly month on month as brands seek to collect and manage customer data more effectively from social networks.  In March this year we celebrated our first birthday and look forward to making further announcements on exciting new enterprise products built on the Facebook Open Graph API.

Customers using PageHub to manage their campaigns include Monsoon, Accessorize, T-Mobile, Lucky Voice and The Open University.

The new Facebook PMD initiative was announced on 19th April 2012 and PageHub are one of the first companies accepted on to the new program, you can find more information over at Facebook.

A new study which delves into the stats for these social media icons says (in the US) 1 in 3 TV viewers went on to socially interact with a brand as a result of seeing one of these ads…

The most common action for those who did interact with the brand was to Like it’s Facebook page (20%), 7% went on to search for a hashtag on Twitter and another 5% used Shazam right on their Sofa. Surprisingly 11% of the people that interacted with the brand scanned a QR code on their smartphones, a rather large number seeing as these have had far from mainstream public uptake so far.

 Now comes the negative part, people aren’t necessarily engaging with these ads as they want to be social or connect with the brand but more for access to deals and coupons. This is something that Europe seems to be slow to catch on to, meaning we very rarely see any real reason to get our iPhone (or Andriod equivalent)’s out and search for that #cornflakes tag that Kelloggs just had stuck to the bottom of their ad, not at least until we get something tangible in return.

“I’ll always feel pretty close with the culture and all my friends there, so I immediately thought ‘Man, this should be on FB’s campus,’” Putnam said. So he posted a picture of it to Facebook with the caption, “Facebook NEEDS this sign.”

Current Facebook Engineer Serkan Piantino  saw this update and took Putnam’s request super duper seriously, starting negotiations with the sign’s owner, a one Mr. Roger Hacker, in order to bring the sign to Facebook’s new Menlo Park HQ at, fittingly enough, 1 Hacker Way.

While Putnam has no idea how much money Facebook paid for the sign, he does tell me that Roger Hacker was considering getting a new sign anyways. And it shouldn’t be too hard to make a new one, as “The Hacker Company” is actually a sign manufacturer.

“This was like a seven month project,” writes Facebook Facilities Manager Scott Oligher, ”Negotiating with Mr Hack for his beloved sign, shipping this huge thing, permitting it and finally getting it installed. We have had the install scheduled 6 different times. Glad it is finally in, it will be lit up on Monday.”

While it might have the sweetest backstory, the sign isn’t the first piece of HQ hacking to come out of Facebook. Two weeks ago during a “Space Hackathon,” six engineers initiated a project that ended up in a giant QR code painted on the company’s roof. Yeah.

Image via. Story via Alexia @ TechCrunch.

The service can be used to turbo boost any kind of post, from posts made by apps to timeline milestones.  Facebook says the product has delivered up to 3x ROI and reach as high as 98 percent of fans for clients such as Ben & Jerry’s. It allows brands to leverage their existing investment in building a fan base for their Pages, but won’t address reaching new customers.

Facebook has made three core recommendations for making effective posts suitable for use with Reach Generator.

1. Post once a day to maximize reach. Posting too frequently reduces the amount of time needed to distribute each Page post to your audience.

2. Express your core message within the first 90 characters of your post to ensure your audience sees it when your Page post becomes an ad or sponsored story. Longer messages will be truncated.

3. Post at the optimal time. Only you know what’s right for your business, and you can use your Page Insights to figure out what’s working. Many restaurants find that posting between 7am and 12pm is ideal, while retailers find that posting between 8am and 2pm works best. People engage with Pages the most between 9pm and 10pm and the 18-24 age demographic is the most engaged during this time.⁵

Since Reach Generator is only offered through Facebook’s premium managed spend ad account teams, it could shift some spend away from Ads API, or just increase the size of the pie. Facebook will be able to show Reach Generator-bought ads in whatever inventory is available, allowing it to earn revenue on ad placements that didn’t sell for much or even exist before.

Reach Generator will shift the burden of ad targeting and measurement from brands to Facebook, and prevent advertisers from accidentally showing a single fan multiple ads while missing others. By allowing brands to blanket their fans with a specific message, Reach Generator could become an important component of giant nation- or worldwide ad campaigns where brands typically buy tons of TV commercials.

Via TechCrunch.

Rolling out over the next few weeks, Interest Lists could give users enough curation ability to follow friends, brands, and thought leaders in the same interface. The release continues Facebook’s battle to usurp Twitter’s control of the interest graph. The feature combined with Subscribe could be good enough to jeopardize Twitter’s long term growth.

Accessed through the home page’s left navigation sidebar, Interest Lists can be clicked to switch to a view entirely comprised of stories from a list’s members — Pages and public updates from users with Subscribe enabled. Only the creator can edit a list, and they can select to make it private, or set it as public so it will appear in Facebook’s list recommendations to others.

When creating new lists, a wizard helps users pick from their Liked Pages, subscriptions, friends, and members of categories like Art, Entertainment, and Games. Users can also select to add a Page to an Interest List from a Page’s Timeline. This functionality actually leaked with the launch of Timeline for Pages giving us a hint that Interest Lists would launch, but Facebook quickly hid it until now.

Unfortunately, you’ll also see the most popular stories from lists you’ve subscribed to in your primary news feed, which you can click through as a portal to your lists. However, this will prevent users from adding lists they might only want to check occasionally without polluting their main news feed. The only solution is to hide posts from lists one by one when they appear in the main news feed. I find it very useful to be able subscribe to a niche Twitter list without affecting my feed, and Facebook should consider switching to this functionality or making it an option.

Many Facebook users who might have one day been convinced to join Twitter could find that Subscribe and Interest Lists are sufficient. Twitter may always be best at breaking news, but many people would probably rather not start on a new social network.

Story via TechCrunch.

We look forward to announcing more about our relationship with Clas Ohlson over the coming weeks and months.

Download Product Guide PDF

Activating Timeline

First, visit the Timeline for Pages preview manager and select to add Timeline to your Pages. You’ll then enter a curation period where only your Page’s admins can see Timeline, while everyone else including your fans will see the old design. Walk yourself through the features detailed below, and when you’re ready, click the “Publish Now” button atop your Page to start showing off Timeline to everyone. You can upgrade anytime until March 30th, 2012, at which Timeline will automatically become publicly visible for all of your Pages.

Cover

The Timeline cover displays a giant 851 x 315 pixel banner across the top of your Page.

Facebook’s Product Director of Ads Gokul Rajaram tells me its “goal is to symbolise what an organization is all about. For a restaurant it could be a popular menu item, a band could display album cover art, and a business could show a picture of their customers using their product.”

Cover images must not contain:

• Calls to action
• Reference Facebook features such as “Like this Page”
• Purchase or pricing info such as “40% off” or “Download at our website”
• Contact information
• Web addresses

Rajaram says “brands have been very positive [about the restrictions] because they don’t want to be seen as overly promotional — it’s a turnoff. Pick a visually stunning, high-resolution image that will delight or intrigue visitors and make them want to scroll down to your updates.

About Section

Below the Cover is your Page’s standard profile picture, name, and two stats: your total Likes and the number of “people talking about this”. The About section shows a description for brands or an address and contact info for local businesses. Users can click through the About link to unfold a map and view other basic info. Be sure to fill out a short, punchy description of your brand’s identity.

Page Apps

Apps have been relocated from the left navigation sidebar to the right side of the About section. While they appear with thumbnail photos instead of as text links, they’re overshadowed by the massive cover above. There are four app tiles above the fold, and the first is permanently occupied by Photos. The rest can include Likes, Videos, Events, Map and a Page’s custom apps.

Previously, Pages could set a default landing tab that all non-fans would first see instead of the wall when they visited a Page. This is no longer allowed. Instead, users always see the main Timeline view and have to actively click through to custom apps. This means custom apps for your contests, promotions, games, media, coupons, and signup widgets may receive much less engagement from users who find their way to your Page.

Pages also often used “Like-gates” on their default landing app, requiring users to Like a Page in exchange for the ability to use the app. While Like-gates are still permitted, they’re not nearly as powerful since they won’t be the first thing users see when they visit a page.

To edit which apps you display, click the drop-down icon to the right of the tiles, click the ‘+’ button to import your custom apps, and then hover over them and click the pencil to swap them around. I recommend putting the native or custom apps most crucial to your business above the fold, so coupons for ecommerce brands, contests for consumer packaged good companies, events for promoters, etc. Only display the Likes panel if you have a lot of them and want to peer pressure new visitors into Liking your Page.

Messages

By default, Page Timelines allow users to send direct, private messages to your Page. This creates a new customer service channel where you can address users’ concerns without having to discuss issues publicly on your Page’s wall / Timeline. Pages cannot proactively send messages, you can only respond to users that have already contacted you.

Since asynchronous customer service through messages is much cheaper than fielding live voice calls, Page messages could create additional ROI if you convince users to message instead of calling. If you find users complaining publicly on your wall, kindly ask them to message you instead and say you’ll resolve their problems there. You’ll need to consistently monitor and respond to messages though, or you’ll risk being perceived as ignoring your fans.

Highlights Feed

When users visit your Page, they’ll see a mix of stories published by your Page itself, by their friends, and stories from other users that have received a lot of Likes, comments, and shares. This is much different than the dedicated Page-only and other users-only feeds from before Timeline. Users can opt to visit those dedicated feeds, though. A Timeline navigation bar on the left lets users jump to different years in a brand’s history.

Since random user posts that aren’t necessarily positive could appear on Timeline, the Highlights feed presents branding risks. Thankfully, you can disable the ability for random users to post directly to your Page, and prevent their Timeline from displaying mentions of your Page. However, posts to or mentioning your Page by a visitor’s friends are always visible. If you see negative posts, hover over them and select to hide them, or delete them if they’re especially inflammatory or blatant trolling.

Pinned Posts

You can select to pin one of your best new or old posts to the top left spot of the Timeline feed for seven days at a time. Pinning can be used to direct users to an important promotional app, show off a special photo, or display a timely status update. The feature gives you significant control what visitors to a Page see first. Be sure to at least keep a link to your website pinned at all times, and rotate it with links to your apps and whatever else you want to drive the most traffic to or impressions of.

Beyond pinning posts, you can select to Highlight important posts throughout their Timeline to make them appear the full width of the Page. Ideally before you publish Timeline, or at least at some point you should crawl through your entire Timeline and Highlight all your best photos and links that are still relevant, and hide or delete posts that seem dumb or embarrassing in retrospect, have broken links, or were timely when published but no longer make sense. You should also Highlight user posts that especially positive, while hiding negative ones.

Friend Activity

In the top right of a Page’s Timeline’s feed, visitors see the count and faces of friends who Like your Page, followed by one update from a friend mentioning the Page that Facebook’s algorithms deem especially engaging. You have little control over this section. Keep it from amplifying negative mentions of your Page by hiding or deleting those posts when first published.

Composer

In addition to traditional status, photo, video, and question updates, you can select to publish special Milestone stories, such as your founding date, and other big accomplishments like acquisitions or hitting a notable number of customers. These updates are likely favored by the EdgeRank news feed visibility algorithm, and may receive more impressions in the news feed and more prominence on Timeline than standard posts. Milestones appear full-width on your Page with a special flag icon on top. Don’t be afraid to use them whenever somewhat appropriate. Users also see the standard composer, sans Milestones, and can use it to publish feedback publicly to your Page.

Admin Panel

Rather than sending admins to a separate interface, the new Admin Panel drops down and appears overlaid over Timeline when clicked. It displays notifications of recent activity such as posts to your Timeline by fans, a list of your most recent Page Message conversations, new Likes, and a snapshot of your Insights data including the volume of your own posts, total reach, and the number of “people talking about this”. Each section can be drilled into for a more detailed look. A “Manage” button on the Admin Panel reveals the “Edit Page” option where you can configure all your Page’s settings including whether fans can post to your Timeline and who can see those posts.

Activity Log

Here you can see every post your Page has ever published, as well as all those by users mentioning them. You can highlight posts to expand them to the full width of you Page, allow them to appear if Facebook deems them relevant, or hide them from view. Posts written directly on your Page’s Timeline may also be deleted. Activity Log makes it easy for you to curate your Timeline and make sure you’re putting your best foot forward.

In summary, here’s a checklist of the most important things to do with your Timeline

• Choose a beautiful cover
• Provide a punchy description
• Feature your most important apps
• Pin the post you want to drive the most traffic to
• Highlight great historical posts by you and your fans
• Hide or delete embarrassing, out of date, or negative posts by you and your fans

Story originally by Techcrunch.

When we started the company none of us could have imagined we would have achieved so much in only a year, passing a million app deliveries in September and delivering campaigns for some of the worlds leading brands.

2012 was also a year that saw us make the finals of the global IBM Smartcamp startup competition, one of our best memories for the year.

We are all hugely excited about 2012 and look forward to helping more of the worlds leading brands connect with customers on Facebook in new and exciting ways.

To celebrate our first birthday we have also decided to spruce up our front end website with a totally over hauled version, we will be making more changes and updates to it over the next few weeks (we have some big announcements lined up!) so be sure to bookmark us or follow us on Twitter to keep up to date with all the news.

You can listen to the same song, at the exact same time—so when your favorite vocal part comes in you can experience it together, just like when you’re jamming out at a performance or dance club.

How It Works

 Look for the music note in the chat sidebar to see which of your friends are listening to music. To listen with a friend, hover over their name, and click the Listen With button. The music will play through the service your friend is using.

When a new song plays, you’ll come along for the ride, discovering new music while your friend DJs for you.

News via Facebook Blog.

To get started with Facebook Timeline press the button below and then choose the ‘Get Timeline’ button on the bottom right!

Timeline gives you an easy way to rediscover the things you shared, and collect your most important moments. It also lets you share new experiences, like the music you listen to or the miles you run.

7-day review period

When you upgrade to timeline, you’ll have seven days to review everything that appears on your timeline before anyone else can see it. You can also choose to publish your timeline at any time during the review period. If you decide to wait, your timeline will go live automatically after seven days. Your new timeline will replace your profile, but all your stories and photos will still be there.

If you want to see how your timeline appears to other people, click the gear menu at the top of your timeline, and select “View As.” You can choose to see how your timeline appears to a specific friend or the public.

One major change for brands, however, is new brand pages. Not everyone can see what these look like yet, so here are some screenshots here from @AmericanExpress,@generalelectric, @JetBlue, and @McDonalds. The two big changes are a new banner just below the profile information that stretches across the page and the ability to pin a tweet at the top of each brand’s stream. This will give brands a more distinctive presence on Twitter, and should roll out more widely in the first quarter of 2012.

The pinned tweet is particularly effective for tweets with images or video. With the new design, videos and images can be seen inline within your stream (just click “Open” on the top right for tweets with images or videos). On brand pages, these video or photo tweets can be set to be open, adding another visually engaging element to the page.

Post via TechCrunch.

Facebook first unveiled Timeline in early September, and quickly provided the means for developers and curious users to enable the feature. A more general release was planned for later that month, but it never came, ostensibly to address technical issues and privacy concerns having to do with the software.

Timeline, you may recall, is a way to illustrate your entire life — not just the part you’ve been living on Facebook since you joined — in a graphical way. One of the common criticisms of Facebook is that it’s almost entirely concerned with the here and now, no matter how mundane. Major life events, though chronicled, are quickly pushed to the bottom of an individual’s feed and forgotten.

Timeline brings those events back, mapping them on a graphic that tells the story of a user’s life, from birth to present day. Although the idea was praised widely, new privacy concerns were raised with the feature, one of them being that it was visible from the Timeline when you “unfriended” certain people (Facebook has said this was a glitch that’s been corrected).

Timeline is one of Facebook’s most exciting new features, and we’re sure users will flock to it as it’s rolled out officially.

Check out the official Timeline launch video from Facebook below.

Via Mashable.

The company pointed out in the infographic below that despite the huge gains in Facebook membership — VisibleGains pegged the social network’s roll at 750 million, but 800 million-plus is the accepted figure — that number is still dwarfed by the total of 2.9 billion email users.

Post via AllFacebook.

The study used the webcams of participants to record their eye movements as they were shown profiles at 10-second intervals.

What participants looked at on each page and in what order is recorded in the images below.

Story via Mashable.

Interestingly the new app won’t just point you to pages on Walmart.com for its gift recommendations. It also recommends products from nearly two dozen other retailers, including Barnes & Noble, ThinkGeek, RedEnvelope, NBC Universal, Hot Topic and more. (Just not, of course, Amazon).

The technology behind Walmart’s gift recommendations grew out of Kosmix’s Social Genome, a semantic technology platform that was originally used to power social media discovery services built primarily on top of Twitter. Now that Kosmix’s platform is a part of Walmart, those same algorithms are used to analyse people’s interests based on their Facebook posts, profile updates and “likes.”

Retailers are becoming increasingly savvy with their social operations, creating more and more

applications to help their customers connect more easily with products they love.

Story via TechCrunch.

A custom operating system could attract users with even deeper software integrations, and let Facebook monetize in-app payments. The company hopes that despite a lack of proof that users want such a thing, its phone will sell well, and allow it more determination over the future of its mobile apps and platform.

With Amazon also rumoured to be working on a forked version of Android for a subsidised Kindle Phone, the Android ecosystem is becoming ever more fragmented and hard for users to use.  With a simplified, web based phone Facebook could present a clean and easy way to keep connected with friends and apps from the phone.

By customising Android, the Facebook phone might not be able to include some Google-developed apps like Gmail, Maps, or possibly even the Android Market. Instead, it could replace the Android Market with its recently launched HTML5 platform, and provide single sign-on where users could instantly access any these Facebook apps without having to reenter their credentials.

We have seen Facebook’s commitment to developing a HTML5 based app eco system over the past few months, and the development of a custom Android build to further this vision seems increasingly probable.  The project, codenamed ‘Buffy’ has reportedly just signed a deal with HTC to produce the hardware, so we are not likly to see any products on shelves within the next year at least.

Via TechCrunch.

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed that ecommerce sites are increasingly adding social features. She shared with us a new statistic: 88% of Internet Retailer Top 200 retail sites are integrated with Facebook.

Sociable Labs’ founder and CEO Nisan Gabbay explained that the target age market for an ecommerce site has surprisingly little influence on the percentage of visitors that were logged in to Facebook. Those aimed at college students were closer to 60%, but even those with middle aged saw at least 40% of visitors logged in.

The data was collected using the FB.getLoginStatus() API call from sites of Sociable Labs’ analytics and ecommerce integration customers. Gabbay tells me that while some of the studied sites attract early adopters, he has discussed the data with Facebook and the company validated it. Also, despite the fact that his company could benefit from more sites adopting social, the sample size is large enough to decrease the likelihood of bias.

“People look at Facebook’s active user count but don’t quite get how pervasive the service is in people’s lives. It’s there all the time in any activity they do online”, Gabbay says. The stats indicate that there may be less risk of sites offending non-Facebook users by adding social functionality than one might expect, because there just aren’t that many hold-outs any more. There’s also technical ways to detect if a user is logged in, and hide those big blue social plugins if they’re not.

As we enter the holiday season, there will be a critical mass of shoppers taking actions on ecommerce sites. Those willing to develop or license Facebook integrations can use social data to point visitors to the products most relevant to them. This can produce a lot more sales than leaving visitors them to browse aimlessly.

Story via TechCrunch and Sociable Labs.