ThoughtBuzz

E-Commerce sites work hard to drive more traffic to their websites to realize higher sales. But if no one is finding your site/ blog, it’s tough to engage with prospects and begin the process of selling them any products/ service.

Traffic is generated through established norms such as search engine optimization (SEO), email marketing campaigns, Google Adwords or even a social media marketing program on Facebook.

Why Acquire Facebook Likes?

This is good to know but what is that Fan worth in creating an increase in actual traffic to a website?

What is a Facebook Fan Worth In Hard Cash?

All good on-line retailers know their ratios and will know how many sales they will achieve  for every 100 or 1,000 visitors to the web site. From there it is easy to calculate the direct cash benefit in cold hard sales.

It will vary from store to store depending on conversion rates, average sale values and industry benchmarks. If your ratio was an average sale of $20 for every 100 visits then each new Facebook fan would be worth $4 in additional revenue per year. That starts to put some perspective on the cold hard cash you may be missing out on by not having a Facebook presence or active marketing campaign to increase your Facebook likes.

Eventbrite (an on-line ticketing company) calculated that for them a Facebook like is worth $1.34

From SMEs to MNCs to whole industries, businesses of all sizes have begun the great migration into social media. One of the newest members of this great movement is the real-estate industry, having already made noticeable strides in harnessing the power of social media. 

This trend began in the US by real estate professionals who saw moving into social media as a gateway to recovery from the housing crisis. The world has caught on since. Singapore too has seen a surge in social media usage by real estate professionals, which compliments, and will probably, soon completely replace the flyers, mailers, billboards and television commercials we are currently used to.

Ascott, CapitaLand’s wholly owned serviced residence unit, has been in the forefront of social media practice among real estate players in Singapore since 2009. Today the group has a healthy following of over 20,000 fans across different social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr.

“Fans following our Facebook page as well as our Twitter feed are privy to exclusive deals, promotions and contests that are only available through our social media platforms. Ascott has also received reservation enquires which translated into actual bookings at our serviced residencies,” said Tony Soh, Chief Corporate Officer of The Ascott Limited.

Belysa Executive Condominium recently had great success, having sold out their 315-unit apartment in just two months! Since May of this year, when they first started offering their units to buyers, their Facebook page saw quite a buzz among prospective buyers. A quick glance at the Belysa page will tell you that they’ve shared the right amount of information, carried out timely and quality engagement with their page visitors and drawn in a healthy amount of traffic into their page.

Blossom Residencies at Segar Road and RiverParc Residence at Punggol - City Development’s latest projects - hope to achieve success similar to Belysa. Their brand-new Facebook pages seem to have gotten off to a good start; it will be interesting to see how their progress unfolds.

More real estate professionals now need to go beyond building four walls and a roof and create a virtual ‘go to place’ where potential buyers and sellers can have an interactive engagement avenue. 

However, most real estate agents in Singapore still think of social media as an avenue to blast out information, not realizing that maintaining dialogue to engage customers is an important aspect of customer relations, and making conversation one-way is just not good enough to maintain a relationship with your customers.

Singaporean’s trust in consumer opinions posted online is relatively high, according to Nielsen. However, social media usage has not been fully realized in the Singapore real estate market. Individual real estate professionals have not yet discovered the full extent of the power of social media, and unless they do, they will not be exploring the full potential of their marketing efforts.

With HDB announcing 25,000 new flats for 2011 and with 10,000 new private homes expected to enter the market in the second half of 2011, real estate professionals need to reach out to Singapore’s rising housing demand - and they can do so by actively and strategically engaging in social media.

In places like the US where social media has become part and parcel of businesses, it is not surprising that 84% of real estate professionals have turned to social media to actively engage with clients, garnering considerable results with leads, sales and brand building. And with 94% of home buyers who look to the internet before making a purchase decision, real estate agents have been successful in making sure their listings, information, advice etc. reach out to the largest number of prospective buyers and sellers.

Could Singapore’s real estate market soon reach a similar figure? Perhaps they can. Judging from the recent Singapore elections and the realization of the effectiveness and reach of social media, the real estate industry in Singapore could do well by fully embracing the potential of social media.

Companies can build excellent customer relations by engaging their consumers online; they can monitor online chatter about themselves, their competitors or the industry at large. or simply build brand recognition - the possibilities are endless. 

Social Media is changing the way we do business. Scott Monty, head of social media at Ford puts it perfectly; “LinkedIn is the business meeting, Facebook is the hallway conversation and Twitter is the cocktail party.”

Facebook Video Calling was announced today with much fanfare.  The new feature allows for one-on-one video chatting within the Facebook environment.

For individual users, it means the chance to connect not just with text, but with actual face-to-face (sort of) conversations where you can hear the tone of the other person’s voice and see their every expression.

Do most users want to have full conversations?  Do they want to be seen, no matter what time of day it is or what condition they’re in?  Time will tell.  Certainly Skype, Facebook’s partner in the feature, has gained plenty of traction.  And the new Google+ social network launched with a group video chat feature, Google+ Hangouts, right out of the gate.

Our thoughts turned toward what this means, or could mean, for marketers. Of course, at this point these new features are not available to brand pages but it’s probably not far behind.

What occurred to us first and foremost is a new ability to conduct one-on-one, face-to-face customer service right on Facebook.  We’ve heard the consumer cry out into the wilderness again and again, “All I want is to talk to a real person!”  Companies who not only offer this kind of real-person interaction to solve customers’ issues but who do it within a social networking environment stand to gain more than a healthy dose of goodwill.

Tony Bates (Skype CEO) & Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook CEO) announcing the partnership

Here’s a golden opportunity to give your Fans a positive customer service experience, something many consumers have all but given up on.  Your customer service reps may soon be able to incorporate slides or some other visual to help walk the caller through the steps needed to resolve their issue.

Taking the next logical step, Facebook Video Calling could be used for sales.  Your rep could not only answer questions and discuss the features of your product, but demonstrate those features as well.  Which brings up the larger question, what role can Facebook Video Calling play in the emerging world of eCommerce?  Am I more likely to make a purchase if it requires 4 hours of online research and waiting for answers in my email inbox, or if I can talk to a sales rep on Facebook Video Calling for 10 minutes or less?

Internally, you can bet if it’s the easiest thing to use, Facebook Video Calling will be called upon to handle long-distance business meetings.  If it allows for group chat, you’ll be sitting in Facebook Video Call business conferences.  Facebook Video Calling could soon be where you give presentations or conduct webinars.

Sometimes new features arrive and marketers are slow to see or execute the potential business applications.  But be aware, Facebook Video Calling is another tool for communicating…this time built right into an environment that’s already proven successful at connecting brands to their customers and strengthening those relationships.  Why wouldn’t you jump on and take advantage of that?  Just be sure to fix your hair first.

2011 was witness to probably the most exciting General Elections since Singapore’s founding 45 years ago.
 
The proliferation of social media was probably instrumental in the amount of chatter that was tracked online. Finally people had a space from which they could speak out, and that’s precisely what they did. Social Media sites were full of comments, debates, videos and passionate opinions about the elections, the parties and their candidates.
 
It was exciting to see so many differing views and opinions being broadcast without fear or censorship. But it was not just the public who embraced this new medium. The political parties, from the current ruling party to the various opposition parties took advantage of this medium to express their views, share their thoughts and basically engage with the public.
 
Singapore is not the first country to use Social Media to get reach out to the voters. In the U.S., Barack Obama’s presidential election campaign in 2008, employed social media heavily to win votes.
 
By combining social networking applications under the banner of a movement, the Obama camp  created an unforeseen force to raise money, organize locally, fight smear campaigns and get out the vote that helped them topple all their opposition.
 
As a result, when he arrived at 1600 Pennsylvania, Mr. Obama had not just a political base, but a database of millions of names of supporters who could be engaged almost instantly.
 
CONCLUSION:
 
The power of Social Media lies in the fact that it is free, it has infinite reach and most importantly, it gives people a platform from which they can air their views, express themselves - and converse and engage with other like minded individuals.
 
This medium, still in its infancy, is still catching on in Singapore. With the current government encouraging businesses to embrace this new platform, we hope that in the near future, we will see Social Media being utilized to its maximum potential, crossing all boundaries and uniting people of similar interests together, irrespective of geographical distances.

Borders Bookstore, a 40-year-old retail chain, has filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States after a bitter financial struggle that began in late 2010.  The company, which operates over 650 stores, is now in the process of shutting down over 200 of its stores in the US.

Borders began in 1971 as a used bookstore in Michigan.  When the 1990s hit, the company quickly expanded into a chain superstore, out-competing smaller independent bookstores, which were shutting down en masse.

But the advent and surge in popularity of the internet and e-readers soon saw Borders and other major players in the industry, getting a taste of their own medicine…

It was during this time that the now- struggling book industry should have started preparing themselves for what was to inevitably happen — technology takeover.

Borders’ closest competitor, Barnes & Noble, joined cyberspace with its e-reader, the Nook. Barnes & Noble now accounts for 25 percent of the U.S. ebook market and the company is selling twice as many ebooks as printed books in its online store.

Borders took notice of Barnes & Noble’s success and began carrying devices like the Kobo, the Sony Pocket Edition and the Velocity Micro Cruz tablet.  However, when compared to the Nook and Amazon’s Kindle e-reader, none of Borders’ devices saw significant success.

With profits nose-diving and a mounting accumulation of missed payments to Publishers, Borders finally filed for bankruptcy at the United States Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan.  Borders listed $1.27 billion in assets and $1.29 billion in debt.  The company currently owes $272 million to its largest unsecured creditors, and it has had to retrench over 15,000 of its employees.

But could this situation have been avoided? 

Industry players have been of the opinion that Borders has simply been ‘behind-the-times’ and too slow to catch on to changing trends – especially with regard to customer experience and expectation.

Instead of competing with the internet, Borders should have used it as a tool to understand how to better engage their current and potential customers. If you type in “what is wrong with borders.com” Google returns over 20 million results…

Many believe that Borders could even have simply better utilized its Facebook page as a sounding board, paying attention to its members’ feedback rather than just using the page as a big advertorial for the franchise.

Borders also had plenty of time to invest in some social media monitoring tools and learn from the market how the company is seen from the outside: Too expensive, lack of selection, poor service, etc.

The main criticism though is Borders’ failure to adequately address the internet sales channel and the subsequent ebook market – specifically, the decision to outsource Borders.com to Amazon.com. Borders.com was costing the company millions of dollars in losses each year, and therefore the outsourcing solution was originally justified as a case of letting the most efficient ‘etailing’ organization (Amazon.com) handle the job and turn a big negative into a profitable business. 

In the short-term, this saved a lot of money. In the long run, however, the internet is too important to outsource in this manner and Borders’ branding and customer base suffered immeasurably. 

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Its the time for ThoughtBuzz updates again. We have worked hard and listened to you guys and made the dashboard into a much more powerful tool for monitoring which now includes Facebook Fan Pages as well! Access Facebook Fan page analytics right from the ThoughtBuzz dashboard. Some key highlights are

1. Facebook Insights - Your Dashboard now has a new tab named ‘Manage’ which would allow you to manage and check out insights on your brand’s Facebook page! 

You can see details such as:

 - Monthly summary of Total page fans, page views, new fans and new likes

 - Bar charted age group and gender classification

 - 3 line graphs categorized into groups : users, content and interaction

Thats not all ! Our newly enhanced graphical charts provide you an enhanced level of interaction with  

            a. Zoom Mode - Now you can simply click and drag any section of the graph to zoom and focus on the segment you want

             b. Pin Mode - Comparing 2 time periods has never been easier with Pin Mode. A period of interest can be selected and dragged to compare with another time window by simply clicking and dragging.

             c. Export Options - You own the data and you need to be able to export any analysis associated with it. The graphs come with an advanced export option which gives you the choice to save into various formats.

             d. Selective Toggle - Want to see only selected data series from the graph? No hassles, just select the ones that you really  need from the interactive legend to hide/ show any series.

2. Regional Twitter Search - One of the challenges of segregating data on a regional/ country level from twitter has now been eliminated! You now have access to tweets from a specific geography that you choose to look at.

3. Enhanced Facebook Search - You can now read Facebook wall posts, status updates directly under the Facebook tab in your dashboard ensuring you get INSTANT access to all relevant Facebook posts.

4. Compatibility - Our charts are now 100% iPhone/ iPad compatible ! This means that even if your mobile device doesn’t support Adobe Flash, you will still be able to access all charts.

And there’s more on the way! To know more check out the slideshow below

Facebook Fan Page Analytics View more presentations from thoughtbuzz.