Online Communities

Facebook Declares Sponsored Stories Their Primary Ad Unit

June 3, 2012 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

Traditionally, Facebook has been reluctant to fill up its social content feeds and streams with ads. However, they have rolled out Sponsored Stories for ad units. This new option will open up a viable new ad inventory that can include placements on the home page.

Facebook’s Platform for Marketers

Although Facebook is just past it’s 8 year mark since launch, it is still a rather new platform on which marketers can share their message, products or services. Until recently, the method for spreading that message was the same as usual, create your message and share it with your most targeted audience. This seems to have left the medium and the message itself, out of sync. Expected results ensued. Most folks do not sign onto Facebook to be advertised to, or to look for places to purchase items of interests. Those who used conversion tracking were given a clear picture, the standard Facebook ads did not work. Shortly afterwards, social metrics were introduced in place of conversion tracking.

Many believe that if marketers can learn how to leverage the unique opportunity offered by Sponsored Stories, that they can thrive on Facebook.

Facebook’s Social Content Streams

While Facebook has traditionally be averse to filling their social content stream with ads, they recently began offering their Sponsored Stories ad units in the fully site wide ticker that includes real-time social activities and stories. The thoughts behind the benefits are that this will open up a valuable new ad inventory that includes placements on the users home page. So while they do remain as paid ads, the Sponsored Stories actually display your ad in a friends or your page users’ “Likes” which avoids the less invasive and annoying standard ads.

There may be the unintentional side effect that some viewers and users are not expecting advertisements to escape the confines of the lowly right sidebar, but in general, so far, the ads have proven to be quite effective for social advertising. Current ad units allow brands to purchase additional exposure, however, beginning in August, Facebook began blending the Sponsored Stories in with things like the game apps friends are using, or specific content they are following using other canvas apps.

How Do I Use Sponsored Ads to My Advantage?

There are several ways that marketers can take advantage of the ad units offered in Sponsored Stories. This includes several ad types where marketers or small business owners with Facebook pages can select from the type of ad that works best for their product or services.

Marketers will now be able to customize Facebook ads to their specific needs with only a few basic restrictions. The ad content must still complete with Facebook guidelines. Any images must be properly sized and formatted, and ad text must be 90 characters or fewer.

The marketer will get to target the perimeters that will determine the overall reach of the standard ad. With zero perimeters set that would mean that all of Facebook’s almost 1 billion users could see it. However, that would also be a phenomenal waste of money when highly detained perimeters can be set to target the exact demographics that are relevant to your product. The ad can be targeted so specifically that marketers can choose settings that will enable their ad to reach anywhere from 1 user to the over 850 million now on Facebook.

The 6 Types of Facebook Sponsored Stories

There are six different types of Sponsored Story ads to choose from.

Page Like Story

Page like ads are those where a user has “Liked” your page directly from the box on your website or from Facebook.

Page Post Like Story

This is where one of your fans has “Liked” one of your post in the past seven days.

App Used and Game Played Story

This means someone has played your game or used your app at least twice for a minimum of ten minutes in the past month.

App Share Story

This means that someone has shared a story from your app in the past seven days.

Check-In Story

A check-in story is where a user checked-in or claimed a deal in the last seven days at one of the Facebook claimed places.

Domain Story

A domain story means that a user shared a piece of content from your website using the Share button, shared a piece of your content using the “Like” button, or pasted a link to your site in their status window, in the last seven days.

Author:

@BasilPuglisi is the Executive Director and Publisher for Digital Brand Marketing Education (dbmei.com). Basil C. Puglisi is also the President of Puglisi Consulting Group, Inc. A Digital Brand Marketing Consultancy that manages professional and personal branding for Fortune 500 CEOs, Hedge Fund Managers and Small Business Owners.

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Commun.it Launches Their Relationship Management Service for Twitter

May 30, 2012 by basilpuglisi@aol.com Leave a Comment

Weeks ago, Communi.it extended a few initial pre-launch accounts for some social media educational business’s, such as DBMEi, they have announced their official roll out date for their Twitter management service. On June 5th, at the BlogWorld & New Media Expo in NYC, they will officially release the tool to the public. From an initial testing phase point-of-view, the Commun.it tool is a smooth running and user-friendly option for Twitter management that can definitely help private users or marketers alike more fluidly aggregate their most highly desired content. Sharel Omar, CEO and Co-Founder of Commun.it shares that,

“Social media has become instrumental in maintaining all kinds of business relationships; with customers, prospects, partners, and more.”

Most social media marketers can attest to the validity of Omar’s statement. So what do you use to manage all of the most vital information coming in and going out of your Twitter account every day, week, month? Well, there is certainly no shortage of helpful tools, so what does Commun.it bring to the table?

Commun.it Focus

Commun.it developers wanted to focus directly on turning the stream-oriented feed of Twitter into your own personal relationship-oriented dashboard.

Commun.it can help you achieve stress-free social productivity. While many other Twitter feed tools and services provide you with an endless stream of messages, Commun.it helps to analyze your relationships with your followers and allows you to focus on the most relevant people to your interests, not their statuses.
Focus more on high value members and influencers that can help your staunchest supporters spread your message, drive awareness to top influencers, engage member, and create potential leads.
Create actionable insights to help build more meaningful relationships with your Twitter community including a full-engagement history as well as yours and your networks most used hashtags, as well as suggestions on who to follow or who to re-engage with.

With Commun.it users can read over the feeds of the recent activities of top influencers and supporters and even prioritized engagements.

Commun.it provides a complete relationship context with all of your engagements with any member in one smooth thread.
Users have the chance to and the suggestions to discover new leads and quickly make them new Twitter followers. Users can see some of the top engagers of their followers list as well, allowing them to branch out a bit more than many other Twitter management programs currently provide.
Easier management via Commun.it may give some of those small business marketers some of their valuable time back with the ability to star followers for quick access, find members by names or bios, hide those you are not interested in, or even unfollow extremely inactive members.

All in all, the Commun.it tool is a well-rounded, well-oiled machine by managing and prioritizing incoming engagements, providing users with relationship context in a quick glance, and recording and archiving valuable relationship history with each and every one of your followers.

Special bonus to DBMEi Subscribers:

Although the service is launching publicly in a week, we will be metering access for the first month or so. DBMEi subscribers can get in now, however, using this unique invite link: http://commun.it/?t=2b0d35 (for the first 100 only).

The early-bird price of Commun.it Pro tier – only $4.99 a month – will continue to apply to any user who registers and upgrades to Pro before the public launch at BlogWorld & New Media Expo NYC. After the public launch, the price will go up to $9.99 a month. So DBMEi subscribers can benefit from registering early!

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A New Kraze has Arrived. Meet LifeKraze.

March 4, 2012 by basilpuglisi@aol.com 7 Comments

When Facebook and Twitter were first launched, it’s safe to say that a collective thought went through everyone’s mind: “Why didn’t I think of that?” As LifeKraze enters the realm of social media, I believe that question will be whispered once again by a majority of the population.
If you haven’t heard of LifeKraze yet, you will soon. The beta version was launched to the public in March 2011 and has since built a strong group of followers. Their current team consists of 10 employees and is based in Chattanooga, TN, surrounded by mountains and rivers, making it a perfect “active” base.
What is LifeKraze?
It begins with one simple question, “What have you done?”
I spoke with the co-founder and CTO of LifeKraze, Michael Brooks, Jr., in order to step into the mindset of LifeKraze: “If Facebook is what you are, Twitter is what you say, then LifeKraze is what you do.”
The idea is that people need motivation in order to lead an active and healthy lifestyle. “Our entire idea was based around encouraging others, because with a little motivation, and people cheering you on, you can achieve anything,” comments Brooks.
LifeKraze helps to create this motivation through a social media platform. It is a community of people that all have similar goals, whether it is losing 10 pounds or writing a chapter in that book you’ve always wanted to write, the goal of the community is also the slogan of LifeKraze, “Live like it counts”.
Not only does the community help to inspire you by giving words of encouragement and helping to hold you accountable for your goals, there are also reward points involved, which you can redeem for products. You receive 200 points daily, to be spread around to other people. For example, maybe someone posted that they helped a child in math today. If you like that action, you can reward them with some of those 200 points. In return, when you post an action that is admired by other users, they can reward you with points. Points can then be redeemed for various products from partners of LifeKraze, which so far include big names such as Reebok and PowerAde Zero.

Besides points, though, it really is the care and comments from other users that I believe is the gem of LifeKraze. The community really supports each other through comments. They really seem to care about each other. It’s what you need to keep yourself on track of your goals.
Where did the idea come from?
“Things really started to come together for us after we had our initial idea, but what drove us to really push to make this a business was providing a platform to encourage and motivate others to achieve their goals,” says Brooks. “We always had coaches and teammates to push us through our lives (through Sports) and when we graduated, we lost that.”
That is the power of LifeKraze. I asked Michael Brooks, Jr. about the response they’ve received from users since launching almost 2 years ago. One word he used to describe them was “unbelievable”. After reading them, I’d also add inspiring. One user signed up months ago and could barely make it around her neighborhood without being exhausted. She just ran her entire first half marathon. People have posted of losing 30-50 pounds since joining LifeKraze and using the platform to stay motivated. “People post about getting engaged, cleaning out their garages, and acing exams. The accomplishments are spread out from health, to fitness, to positive actions,” says Brooks.
In a world where healthy and active lifestyles are on the forefront of minds with shows like The Biggest Loser, a wide variety of health magazines, and an increasingly large amount of diet books on the shelves, LifeKraze seems to fill a gap. While we have all of the information and applications to be active, the motivational, community aspect was missing. Until LifeKraze.
“We care about what people are doing, and we want to provide a community and a platform that is always there for you, and we are always in season, encouraging and motivating you to do your best,” finishes Brooks.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypYm2HCj58E&feature=player_embedded]
Author:
Megan Campbell has a degree from Clemson University in Graphic Communications, and is currently living in Germany during a Gap Year abroad, working as an au pair and freelance writer. Her degree set her up for a great interest and knowledge of social media. You can find her on her blog, balancewithadashofcrazy, or contact her via email at meganecamp at gmail dot com.
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