Sugarrae » Social Media

Commercial Twitter Case Study Revisited

Rae Hoffman — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:59:12 +0000

About a year ago I did a case study on the use of Twitter by BBGeeks.com – a site I own about BlackBerry phones. We were using Twitter as sort of a guerrilla marketing tactic to increase traffic to our site and more importantly, promote our brand.

The results were encouraging – we’d acquired 500 followers in a short period of time and found they were actually visiting our site and engaging with us as a result. The initial results were promising enough that we kept with it, kept learning, kept testing – and we’re very glad we did.

We went on building our brand via being an “online help desk” of sorts for BlackBerry issues, much like we did in the previous case study:

One of the BBGeeks.com staff was the voice of @bbgeeks on Twitter.
We continued in our belief that our goal should be for him to become a BlackBerry trouble shooter (.i.e. help people) first, promotional evangelist (i.e. drop links) for BBGeeks.com second.
None of our tweets were automated, not even links to our blog posts – if we didn’t feel it was worth dropping by hand, we didn’t drop it.
We continued to seek out BlackBerry users via various search methods.

We had built our following up to about 5000 people by February of 09. Our traffic from Twitter continued to grow from the time we’d last graphed it and we were starting to get excited about the possibilities even larger follower counts might bring:

In March of this year, we really “geared up” our efforts. We began to be more aggressive in seeking out followers:

We began to seek out the Twitter accounts of our major competitors and follow their followers… if they were interested in the competition enough to follow them, chances were, they’d be interested in us too.
We ran contests to get people to retweet about us to their followers.
We sought out top twitterers we knew had an interest in BlackBerries.
We continued to be extremely helpful to anyone would could, and in turn, those folks often told other folks about us when their friends had BlackBerry issues arise.

Within a month, our follower count had gone to five figures and over the next few months, it continued to rise steadily:

Our traffic from Twitter also severely increased over those next few months:

Now, if we go by Danny Sullivan’s theory that analytics under-counts Twitter traffic by as much as 500%, our actual traffic numbers from Twitter, in theory, may have more resembled the below during that timeframe:

At the time this post was written, BBGeeks has over 19,000 followers on Twitter. Based on internal data that I’m not willing to share (hey, you can’t expect the entire farm for free), I can tell you that Twitter traffic converts higher than any other social network we track to date, by leaps and bounds. Twitter traffic actually clicks on our affiliate links, on our contextual ads and uses our coupon codes (we run Twitter only coupon codes sometimes).

In addition to the direct revenue Twitter brings us, it also helps increase our brand, gives Google signals of our authority and trust and it has been directly responsible for many links we’ve acquired.

Twitter also helps us develop content that contributes heavily to our long tail search volume on the site from various search engines. As I mentioned in my last case study:

We get tons of content ideas from the various questions and problems we see our followers and the people we are following experiencing.

My theory is that if folks were looking for answers to specific questions and/or problems on Twitter, non Twitter folks were likely typing those same queries into search engines as well. So we started a dedicated section of our site we refer to as the Twitter help files.

In it, we round up the various questions we receive each month, the answers we’ve given and develop and entire post of “long tail” information that is helpful to search users. Additionally, the folks who help us out by asking us these questions get some promotion to our large readership as well.

Win, win.

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Commercial Twitter Case Study Revisited

Announcing Tweetwasters

Rae Hoffman — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:31:33 +0000

A few weeks ago, I was attempting to point out how much time Streko spent on Twitter (whether or not I spend more time than him on Twitter is irrelevant) and after a number of calculations, gave it to him in actual “time”.

He thought it would make a cool WordPress plugin. Then Barry got wind of it and thought the idea would make a fun site (and offered to actually program it). Add a dash of Design by Reese and today we’ve launched Tweetwasters.

In addition to launching the site (which will calculate the actual time you’ve spent twittering as well as tell you your rank compared to other Twitterers in the system) we’ve also created the Tweetwasters WordPress plugin so that you can display your Tweetwasters stats right on your blog (assuming the amount of time you spend on Twitter is something you *want* to bring to light). For an example, check out my sidebar on Sugarrae.

The plugin is simple and free. The site is the same. We made it to have some fun. We hope you enjoy Tweetwasters and please, feel free to tweet about it.

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Announcing Tweetwasters

Twitter Lays Down for Google

Rae Hoffman — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 17:56:12 +0000

Or do they just not trust you? As you may have heard, Twitter recently decided to “nofollow” links left in the “bio” section of user profiles.

The “web” link has long been a nofollow link, but the bio links passed popularity until Dave Naylor exposed it, which alerted Matt Cutts (a Google engineer) who sent a tweet to @ev (a twitter founder) about Dave’s forementioned post and *poof* bio links were nofollowed.

Now, as I sat there thinking about all of this happening, I became increasingly annoyed by one question. Why? Why would Twitter, or Google (and I don’t care which) think that a profile link, be it in the “web” section or the “bio” section from my Twitter page should be nofollowed? So, I asked:

@mattcutts curious as to your reasoning that this link http://tinyurl.com/6hxmaj SHOULDN’T count? imo, profile link shouldn’t be nofollow about 1 hour ago from web in reply to mattcutts

@mattcutts curious as to why Google thinks a link from a page that only should have pop to pass if it is being linked to and read about 1 hour ago from web in reply to mattcutts

@mattcutts that I am providing the content for shouldn’t have a link back to my site that counts for me about 1 hour ago from web in reply to mattcutts

@mattcutts unless of course, Google can’t figure out which Twitter pages have true value and which are owned by bots… about 1 hour ago from web in reply to mattcutts

@mattcutts in which case, I might suggest turning down the dial on link buying hunts a bit and up on detecting basic link pop by page about 1 hour ago from web in reply to mattcutts

@mattcutts Y says my tweet page has 1700 links, all cause people like the content *I* am putting on it… now, I ask you… about 1 hour ago from web in reply to mattcutts

@mattcutts why on earth should a link from my profile back to my core site where people can find more from me be nofollow? about 1 hour ago from web in reply to mattcutts

@mattcutts *I* gave this twitter page content, *I* got this twitter page 1700 backlinks, why should *I* not benefit from it? about 1 hour ago from web in reply to mattcutts

And that last tweet is something everyone should really be looking at. My personal twitter page has 1700 links, 1500+ followers, contains over 7000 tweets and is a toolbar PR of 5. Last I checked, I got all those links. I wrote all that content. All those people were following me as a person. I developed that link popularity. Why on earth would I not deserve ALL the benefits (including that in the form of a profile link) from building up the value of that page?

If Google is the one who wants that web link nofollowed because some twitter profile pages may be automated bots or spammers, then it is time they realize that THEY are responsible for determining which of those individual pages is authoritative, trusted and legitimate enough to pass link popularity, by a method other than demanding that other websites and social networks change the ways they do business to help Google stop links being used as a form of currency and to manipulate their algorithm – an issue Google and Google alone created and profited from.

But then @oilman brought up the other side of the coin:

@sugarrae @ev is saying he doesn’t vouch for his users – why not a nofollow filter on spam accounts? they’ve identified most of them by now about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck in reply to sugarrae

And maybe @ev isn’t willing to vouch for his users. So, I asked @ev:

@ev question, why did you agree to nofollow the twitter profile link? do you not feel your users should benefit from their participation? about 1 hour ago from web in reply to ev

@ev I can’t see a logical reason you would feel the need to do that, except for fear of what happens to your own site if you refuse about 1 hour ago from web in reply to ev

If @ev truly feels he can’t trust his users, then why is he taking the link popularity I’ve built to my profile at Twitter and using it to help the core Twitter site in the search engines. Why aren’t all the links to @ev’s site (Twitter) nofollowed as well. He can trust my link popularity enough to use it for himself, but not enough to let me benefit from having developed it? That seems a little hypocritical to me.

Now other users went on to point out a few things, such as the fact that the majority of Twitter users wouldn’t even know what nofollow was or that getting a link isn’t the reason we use Twitter.

But here’s the deal. Just because someone doesn’t realize that you’re denying them a benefit of their work while taking the benefit for yourself doesn’t make it OK.

I could get a child to give me their twenty dollar bill in exchange for a “shiny quarter”… they would be none the wiser and not realize they were missing out on anything. Does that make it any less slimy for me to do?

If the reason I sing is because I love it and I reap many benefits, does it make it any more acceptable that my manager took way more than the normal cut because he knew I wouldn’t know any better?

I find it hard to believe that @biz (another twitter founder) and @ev would not feel their users deserved ALL the benefits of being active on Twitter and helping them build their own popularity and brand. I find it easier to believe that maybe Google wanted these links nofollowed in an effort to make up for their inadequacies and like the many others in Silicon Valley, Twitter has no interest to be made an example of. But who knows? Only they can answer.

An even bigger question for me is, if, IF, Google is really coercing companies like Twitter based on threats of dropping them from their index for non-compliance, at what point does someone decide that due to Google’s reach and power, that doing so is no longer a case of “guidelines” but rather one of blackmail?

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Twitter Lays Down for Google

Twitter Cloaking to Show Adsense Ads

Rae Hoffman — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 02:51:16 +0000

Ok, so, I have been doing a little redesigning on Sugarrae as you all have probably noticed and I added the user photo plugin. The plugin will show pictures for commenters and authors – and since I have a lot of guest posts, I went to grab some photos of my guest posters from Twitter so all the posts would show author photos.

But, the “green brigade” has invaded Twitter (which means everyone tinted their photos green today) and I went to view the Google cache of Reese’s twitter page, hoping to find the non green picture of her to use for her profile picture here on Sugarrae. And I was beyond confused at what I saw (click images to see large versions):

Yep. It is what it looks like. When you view the Google cache of many individual status messages, the Twitter users picture and name are laid right on top of a Google AdSense ad. [sarcasm] Wow, the advertisers must be loving the quality of that traffic! [/sarcasm]

So I click back and check the actual page thinking, “maybe Twitter is trying to monetize!” but nope. No ad on the actual page.

Only on the cache. And again, not clearly displayed, but only under the photo/name of the person. I check a few more and find the same thing.

I checked to see if it was a Firefox bug, but nope, it is happening in IE too. You know, it is already against the Google guidelines in my interpretation to be feeding Google millions of one line status messages:

Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don’t add much value for users coming from search engines.

But being a bigger company, they seem to get away with it. But I wonder how Google will feel about them doing what looks like them not only cloaking (which is against their organic search guidelines, at least for this purpose!), but cloaking to serve Adsense ads on a cache with something laid on top of it.

Maybe this is a glitch of some kind? I don’t know what kind of “glitch” could cause this though – any ideas? And if it turns out Twitter was indeed cloaking Adsense ads, do you think Google will actually punish a big brand instead of slapping them on the wrist per usual?

Edited to add:

As has been discussed in the thread at Sphinn on this post, the ads appear to not be clickable due to the photo/username laying on top of them. But, as I commented in the Sphinn post:

Even if it isn’t clickable to the point of costing advertisers money, it adds to their impressions and drops their click through rates – which affects their bid prices.

Edited to add again:

I finally found a clickable one thanks to a suggestion by bunltd to look for shorter user names. A cache of a status of streko is finally clickable all the way to the right side of the ad title since streko’s username is short and the ad I was shown at the time had a long title. I wonder how this company (where the ad took me) feels about the quality of my click. Since the ad I got was for “Liposuction in New Jersey” I am guessing it cost a pretty penny.

Edited to add a third time:

Thanks to xDFuNK, we now know that Twitter has AdSense code on the page if you’re not logged into Twitter – which Googlebot wouldn’t be. Not just in the cache. But, the AdSense only shows visibly in the cache. If you view the page regularly while logged out, the Adsense ads are hidden. Googlebot can actually SEE the ads, but humans can’t, except for in the cache. Why only actually show the Adsense to Googlebot? Does anyone know if the code being on the page counts towards advertiser impressions and click thru rates even if only visible on the cache?

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Twitter Cloaking to Show Adsense Ads

Twitter Case Study of a Commercial Brand

Rae Hoffman — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 16:44:34 +0000

Anytime someone asks how a business can use Twitter effectively, most people point to the twitter accounts of big brands like Comcast and Zappos.

While both companies are definitely standout examples of how you can use Twitter for business, you probably aren’t marketing a household name and have a hard time seeing how your small merchant site or information site can use Twitter effectively. And by now, you’re probably sick of the “top ways” people guess or hypothesize that a commercial website could use Twitter to their advantage.

Luckily for us all, I’m not going to guess or suggest, but rather show you a specific example (a step by step guide and Twitter case study all rolled into one if you will) of a non “big brand”, commercial website utilizing Twitter to further its brand, get traffic and gain backlinks. I wouldn’t call it the “ultimate guide” because Twitter is too new a medium for anyone to be an “expert” at it. But, hopefully it helps people see the potential of Twitter as more than a time waster.

Anyone who follows me on Twitter has likely figured out by now that my company owns a BlackBerry related website. BBGeeks has had a Twitter account for around eight months now and has grown from zero to over 500 followers in that time. Not bad for a website targeting a very niche market in less than eight months. So how did we do it? And what has it gotten us?

The Fumbled Beginning:

We weren’t really sure what to do for a commercial account when we first signed up for Twitter in December 2007. We changed the background to match out site colors and put up our basic logo (which was a poor dimension to use as a twitter background we later found).

We followed a few of our personal friends and put a link in the sidebar of our website along with some other social profile links. We made a few tweets of conversation here and there. I also tweeted about the @bbgeeks account on my personal account since I have a four figure following. We added our Twitter account to the “first time visitor” plug-in we use on the site. We utilized the TwitterTools plug-in to “auto tweet” our posts on the site to Twitter as they published (and unfortunately, as we later found out, were edited).

We gained about 100 followers in the first month, with very little purpose, use or direction, and we sat there status quo for about four more months. Some may have dubbed Twitter a time waster for a small brand commercial site. But I decided to do a little research, talk to a few friends and try again.

The Second Coming:

Our second attempt was a bit more organized and began in April of 2008.

One of the BBGeeks.com staff was assigned to become the voice of @bbgeeks on Twitter.
We decided that our goal should be for him to become a BlackBerry trouble shooter (.i.e. help people) first, promotional evangelist (i.e. drop links) for BBGeeks.com second.
We pimped the background with a more Twitter friendly design

We decided not to have our posts auto tweet and instead decided to take the same approach with dropping links into Twitter that we did years ago with link requests – make it obvious that we were taking the time to do it personally.
Thanks to a tip from @graywolf, we learned about Summize (which was later bought by Twitter) and used it to find BlackBerry users (we’d search for “BlackBerry”, “8330″ etc.). We’d follow those users and hope that they’d visit our Twitter homepage, see what a great resource we were, and follow us back. And even if they didn’t follow us back on first glance, we hoped we would catch their BlackBerry related questions by following them and earn their following if we could help solve it with an @reply.
The employee running @bbgeeks (to be clear, he is not dedicated to Twitter and spends about 30 minutes a day on it) was encouraged to also post off topic here and there and to join in the conversation with our followers and people we were following even if it wasn’t always BlackBerry related (i.e. we wanted him to get involved).
We participated in a group effort to post and cross promote guides on Twitter related tools and created a guide to TwitterBerry (the Twitter application for BlackBerry users).
Completely of his own idea, the employee running @bbgeeks started doing small giveaways here and there of branded T-shirts and stickers to followers (note: I recommend you get your boss’s permission BEFORE doing this). ;-)
We run occasional “twitter only” discounts at our software and accessories store

Our second attempt proved to be a bit more successful. Over the next three+ months, we were able to increase our following by 400 people and find some actual uses and benefits from our time Twittering.

What the Results Were:

When talking about the benefits of commercial Twittering, here is what we have seen in regards to the @bbgeeks account specifically:

We have 500+ people who want to hear what we have to say listening on Twitter – and they may not have found our site had it not been for that Twitter account and efforts.
We receive several hundred visits to our site each month from Twitter that adds to our traffic and page views in regards to CPM ads.

Those several hundred visits a month add to the toolbar data Google gobbles up that shows that people actually visit and spend time on our site.
We have 500+ people, who we know are interested in our site topic, that we can promote social media stories too (such as Digg attempts, Stumble attempts, etc) and get help in getting not only votes, but viral spread of great stories.
Our site receives free brand exposure on Twitter by our followers who pass around our links and tell friends with BlackBerry issues to hit up our site or Twitter account to find an answer.
We’re able to get instant feedback from our followers by using informal Twitter polls and keep our site going in the direction our readers want it to continue heading.
We get tons of content ideas from the various questions and problems we see our followers and the people we are following experiencing.
We have made friends via the @bbgeeks Twitter account that have resulted in things like us getting into exclusive press conferences during our CTIA conference coverage (Thanks @mobilediner) and have also received promotion of things like our podcast as a result of people responding to guest requests on Twitter (a thanks to @shoemoney). And these are simply two of many potential examples we have of content and links we’ve received as a direct result of our Twitter usage.

For the BBGeeks.com website, Twitter has been a valuable tool – both from a branding standpoint, a content development standpoint, a traffic standpoint (we hope to see it continue to increase), a revenue generation standpoint (people purchasing as a direct result special Twitter sales and/or discounts) and a backlink generation and promotional standpoint.

Twitter won’t be productive for every site, but for many sites, ignoring Twitter as a B2C or even a B2B tool, especially if a competitor isn’t, could make your website miss out on some of the benefits of branding with Twitter that we’ve experienced above.

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Twitter Case Study of a Commercial Brand

Facebook No Longer Wants Random Play

Rae Hoffman — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 15:31:01 +0000

There was a change at Facebook recently that seems to allude to a change in focus. For a long time, in the “looking for” area, there have been two options that often made people laugh when they saw them… “random play” and “whatever I can get”… but those options have now been *removed* and have been replaced with “networking”.

*Note: it would appear that people currently using them are not affected, but you can no longer choose these options if they are not currently checked.

Another change that they did quietly (which I found amusing because it was a *great* addition) is that you can now also add a “former name” – which most people would use to list their maiden name. But, it could also be used to add a screen name if you chose (for instance, I could put Sugarrae in the field) or to list your full name if you go by a nickname of vice versa (mine is a combination of my maiden name and full first name).

These two changes aren’t huge deals, but it does say to me that Facebook might be trying to “grow up” and take away some of the more “brass” features that were a hit with their (former) target user base and try to morph themselves into something bigger. Picture myspace merged with linked in and classmates.com… now if they could control the spam issues allowing applications has created, and keep working on the ability to monetize their user base without annoying them, this might be interesting.

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Facebook No Longer Wants Random Play

Facebook Overtakes MySpace – For a Moment – and Some Fun Statistics

Rae Hoffman — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 02:45:48 +0000

When I saw a friend invite from Brian Prince today, I thought “wow, maybe it’s time to check Facebook’s traffic standings” and did a quick check on Alexa. Sure enough, as I predicted about this time last year, Facebook (now six) has eclipsed MySpace (now seven), albeit slightly, and temporarily – for now – in the Alexa rankings.

A quick search around the Blogosphere showed me that a few other people had already reported the shift, which looks like it officially took place last week. There were a few things about the stats though that I thought were worth mentioning that I hadn’t seen mentioned elsewhere.

The first is to note the difference in the countries the users come from. In the US, myspace is still the winner. But, Facebook is kicking myspace ass in places like the UK (as Dave noticed a while back), Canada, Egypt, South Africa and more.

See the chart below for a more side by side comparison (the OC stands for other countries which is appears a stat is lumped into if the percentage isn’t at least 0.6%). Myspace wins are in blue and Facebook in purple… yes, I know this isn’t an exact science, but as their so close in Alexa rank, it was worth looking at.

Additionally, take a look at the rankings in the sample countries of both Facebook and myspace when compared to that of Internet giants Google.com and Yahoo.com.

Another interesting thing to check out was the percentage of visitors to Facebook as stated by Alexa vs. the percentage of Facebook’s combined “55 million active users” in each of those countries based on Facebook’s statistics from its social ad service.

But all in all, it would seem Facebook hasn’t eclipsed myspace for very long. According to the end of the graph when shown as a one month graph, you can see Facebook dips below myspace again.

Nonetheless, I’m sure myspace, and its owners, weren’t too happy to see the temporary pass. The question is, how does myspace compete to retain their number one ranking in the social space… if they even can. My other question is with Facebook being a top destination, why haven’t they partnered with a search engine ala CNN to make money on the search ads…

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Facebook Overtakes MySpace – For a Moment – and Some Fun Statistics

Facebook Videos You Should Watch

Rae Hoffman — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 17:57:14 +0000

Instead of spending your weekend surfing the net or catching up on all the latest blogger debates/slamfests/bullshit, maybe you could take some time to do something that will actually increase your knowledge base. The topic for today is Facebook and below are some videos you should take the time to watch.

The first is a video by Fred Stutzman that was presented to Googlers on the subject of a study of Facebook that Fred did. It’s 40 minutes long, but if you have any interest in the social networking space, this is a must see:

If you enjoyed that video by Fred, check him out moderating a panel on social networking at the CIE Entrepreneur Speaker Series or read one of his numerous interviews.

If you’ve been wondering what developing an application for Facebook is all about, check out Part One of the Facebook Developer Garage in Palo Alto:

If you found part one interesting, you can find part two and part three on YouTube as well. You can also find two slides from the same event there as well.

If you’re still feeling like you need to check a blog and read some drama filled with paranoia and conspiracy theories, you can find that in a Facebook video as well:

Watching the above will give you a few shivers, but also show you some of the possible humps social networking sites like Facebook might hit when trying to monetize their user population. It also gives well over your daily requirement of conspiracy theories. Don your tin hat.

There is a site out there called Face Reviews which offers information on Facebook and they recently did a video interview with Justin of Inside Facebook:

If you enjoyed that video or want to see how everyday users, and not internet savvy marketers, view Facebook, you might be interested in checking out some of the various videos they have been putting out on the topic.

If you’re still struggling to “get” Facebook, check out this interview done by CBC news on the “Facebook phenomenon”:

For another video done by some of their largest single user group – college students – that shows an “outsiders” view of the social networking phenomenon click here.

In the video from CBC, you’ll notice they touch on the way Facebook is being utilizing in politics. Below you’ll see a report from ABC News on how Facebook is changing the presidential campaigning landscape:

If you’re trying to figure out how to monetize a Facebook application to make it worth your while to develop one, check out this interview with Pod Class and Rodney Rumford on monetizing Facebook applications:

You’ll find the subsequent parts here. As a side note, these guys may be experts on monetizing new media, but they seem to suck at SEO when neither of them ranks number one for Pod Class or Rodney Rumford. Let me know if you guys would like some advice on that. ;-)

If you’d like to hear Marissa Mayer speaking on the topic of Facebook applications (along with gadgets for the Google homepage of course), check out her short statement on the topic:

And last, though certainly not least, if you’re looking for a laugh today, check out the parody some students did of the famous eHarmony commercials:

And if you need more, check out some of the other numerous Facebook Parodies for your viewing pleasure.

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Facebook Videos You Should Watch

"Analysis" is Not Equal to "Basic Statistics and Assumption"

Rae Hoffman — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 15:09:46 +0000

My wordpress dashboard showed that a blog was linking to mine with a post entitled: “Analysis of blogs who opened a Fb group”… however, when I clicked through, what I found was basic statistics and assumption on seo blogs with Facebook groups. He ended the “analysis” of the Sugarrae Facebook group with the following comment:

The Sugarrae group doesn’t have a real purpose, doesn’t use media to encourage activities, and the strategy to recruit members seems to have been a negative experience for a good majority of the members.

I felt the need to respond to XavierV and to correct the totally “off” assumptions he made. First, he made the comment that the wall for the group had a “good load of negative comments” and then cited some of those “negative comments”:

“But for you, I clicked confirm instead of ignore. Mainly because you scare me.”
“I can’t believe you made us all do this. I feel so dirty.”

These comments were left by JC and Barone, who are actually good industry friends of mine and those comments are the way we joke with each other. They also have both written for the Sugarrae blog before as well.

“Who the hell is Sugarrae?”
“I don’t see a hello… though I do see a hell”

Both of these comments were from former employees of mine who have both since turned into friends I hang out with and see on a regular basis. Again, the smartass banter is something I’m known for and something that definitely occurs between me and my friends.

So, to recap, what you see as “negativity” is actually smartass banter between myself and friends – and regular readers of the my blog should be able to “catch” this – and that’s who the Facebook group is for to begin with.

Additonally, the following comment was made at the end of the post regarding all of the blog groups that were “analyzed”:

What clearly shows from those observations is the cluelessness of the admins who create their group. I like the “it seems like the trendy thing to do” which is full of honesty. These people just don’t know what to do on these groups. However, it seems like they don’t experience any trouble recruiting a lot of members (which is good) to look popular.

I was surprised to find such clumsiness from the people who pretend that they get Webmetrics.

Actually, what shows to me from the post is the cluelessness of the author in regards to the reasoning behind each individuals reason to start a Facebook group. I can’t speak for the rest, but I definitely know my shit when it comes to Facebook. Additionally, I had several reasons behind creating the group. First was to simply claim my “territory” on Facebook before someone else did.

For example, Webmasterworld failed to create a Facebook group and a group was eventually created by other people. Luckily for Brett, the group was created by myself with stuntie as a co-admin (and we did this to make sure we got to it before someone else did) and we are both Webmasterworld moderators and fans of the site (and we have offered to turn over control of the group to Brett should he ever desire us to do so).

Secondly, the group was created as an experiment to see if there were any useful use for the group to the blog readership or if it would simply be a Facebook “home base” for the blog. Since I don’t like to be on video, and since I don’t see the point in creating posts or content specifically to confine to the walls of Facebook that may cause it to be missed by other people, creating any type of unique content for the group seemed silly.

However, I did use the group to kind of be a citation spot. Meaning that there are links in the posted items to some of what I feel are the more “memorable” things that regard the Sugarrae blog (as far as the links *I* have posted there)… the famed video, the Goldschalger/Crackberry game and a recent mention the blog had received in the Register for breaking the Compare People “scandal”.

My opinion is that, for me, I don’t have a “specific use” for a *blog membership* group on Facebook. I’ll continue to keep it as a “home” on Facebook, will continue to post items I feel are of interest to readers of the blog, especially those with Facebook accounts, will continue to moderate the group and will continue to be thankful that people find my blog interesting enough to even *want* to belong to a group for it.

However, a while back, the Facebook group whore and I created a “little Facebook group” called Facebook Whores for SEO, SMO and SEM Awareness that we used originally as an experiment to see if a Facebook group targeting our industry *could* be a fun or useful resource, though we admittedly never expected it to get as big as it has. The group contains four photos (mock covers of the totally fake and made up “SMO Magazine”), no videos, ten posted items, 26 discussion topics with 139 posts, 106 wall posts and 581 members.

The group has been an interesting thing to watch and we see some potential “value” in this one and it can be fun and informative for the members. In addition, at quick glance, it appears to be the second largest seo related group on Facebook. We still have some plans in store for this group in regards to testing its usefulness. But so far, so good.

I’m not going to full-fledge “ream” gooruze as the author of the original post already took back a lot of his assumptions after Marketing Pilgrim made an appearance in the comments on their blog. XavierV made a follow up post saying:

You’re right. When I wrote this, I was too much focused on making a point + I never thought the blogs’ owners would actually read this = confrontational tone.

Truly sorry about that, to you, and to the other blog owners I’ve cited in this post.

However, I still wanted to touch on the “negative comments” in my group and my reasoning behind the group as a whole. You can’t quote some very basic statistics and use them to make an assumption about the reasoning, purpose and person behind a Facebook group. But if you had taken those basic statistics, sent an interview request to the blog owners you chose to profile and thought of some thoughtful questions to pose in regards to their intent, you could have had an amazingly interesting and accurate article.

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

"Analysis" is Not Equal to "Basic Statistics and Assumption"

Facebook Expands Targeting Opportunities for Advertisers

Rae Hoffman — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:19:16 +0000

I spotted Patrick Ruffini referencing a post about Facebook demographics in his twitter feed today and was surprised to see the detail they had on a chosen set of demographics. Turns out, they were able to compile those demographics via the interface on the flyer creation page on Facebook.

Funnily enough, I had just mentioned to rmay last week that I had begun seeing ads for the sixth season dvd set of the Sopranos on Amazon.ca when I was logged into Facebook. I had mentioned being curious as to whether or not that was random or based on me having the Sopranos listed as one of my favorite television shows in my profile. I guess now I have my answer.

Back in February I did a post on reasons to use and watch Facebook and in it, on the ninth point, I touched on the under utilized advertising/targeting opportunities that social networks historically overlook and haven’t figured out how to monetize… and my prediction/hope that Facebook would be the social network to finally grasp the concept of monetization based on information being handed to them.

They collect a ton of information via my profile – they simply need to use it to offer me relevant advertising…

— If I’m listed as single, I might be interested in dating ads.

— If I list my political views definitively, during election time show me political ads.

— If I list a website in my profile, I may be interested in hosting advertisements or the like.

— If I list activities and interests, advertise products I’d use to do them to me.

— If I list favorite music, books or movies, use something like Amazon to find products I’d also like based on my listed likes and show them to me.

— If I’m an underclassman in college in Guelph, Canada, I’m a prime target for sites that offer to find me student housing in Guelph or college bookstores I can order from online. Same with any other location.

— If I list no college information and am over a certain age, ads for online degrees might make sense for me.

— If I list being in a specific job, it gives advertisers the ability to target very specific education services. If I have a bachelor’s degree in a certain field, I may be interested in seeing ads about getting my masters degree in that same field online.

— If I’m listed as unemployed, maybe a resume creation service or job sites will catch my interest.

— If I live in a local area, show me advertisements for local businesses, bars or events that may be of interest to me (as Ryan mentioned he was starting to see).

There are a ton of ways to classify me and serve me relevant and targeted advertising. I’m not a random surfer. I’m not an unknown user. I’m giving you everything but my social security number and blood type when I sign up. Monetize me!

It appears they may be the first social network to “get it”.

Now an advertiser can advertise to those who are single (dating ads), married, in a relationship, engaged (hello wedding supply people), in a certain geographic area, are of a certain sex, are between a certain age, based on whether their liberal, moderate or conservative in political views (hello election campaign people), based on their current education status, based on their college major and year of school (hello head hunters), or their current workplace (head hunters everywhere need a tissue).

Think of the possibilities… some real world examples…

- If you sell concert tickets, target the people in the cities near the shows who have the musical group you’re selling in their profile. Suddenly, you can advertise the latest Rascal Flatts concert in Albany, New York to the 1,520 fans in the Albany network.

- If you sell NFL tickets, then you can target the people in specific cities who have football or a specific team’s name in their profile. For instance, you could advertise tickets to the next Buffalo Bills vs. Miami Dolphins game (they’re heated rivals) in Miami to people who have football, Buffalo Bills and/or Miami Dolphins in their profile and are members of the Miami (or surrounding) network.

- Screw rock the vote… reach one of the biggest MIA from the polls group is on Facebook. If you’re a conservative representative of the house looking for re-election in Tampa, remind the 16,580 conservative people in the Tampa network on Facebook to get to the polls this year.

- If you’re a firm or business who would like to scoop talent from the competition, you can advertise directly to them. If you’ve gotten funding for a new search engine and would love to scoop talent from Google, you can show a headhunting flyer to the 4,680 people in the United States on Facebook who are listing the search engine as their current employer.

- If you are wedding cake designer located in Austin Texas, you can now advertise to the 2,300 engaged women listing Austin, Texas as their network on Facebook.

- If you sell SAT prep guides, maybe you can try advertising to the 1,774,520 high school students in the United States who list their age as being between 17 and 18 years old. If you run a job placement service in San Francisco, try advertising your services to the 5,240 college seniors who list San Francisco as their network on Facebook.

- If you run a local bar that is having a wet t-shirt contest in Ithaca, New York, advertise it to the 680 college aged men listing Ithaca as their network or to the 1,940 men who list Cornell as their current school (which is based in Ithaca).

- If you own an online store selling golfing supplies, you could advertise to the 366,200 people on Facebook who list golf as one of their interests. Better yet, maybe target the 77,860 people who listing golfing as an interest (which implies they play and not just enjoy watching it).

- If you’re handling the newest release of a movie sequel (we’ll use Die Hard 4 as an example) in the theaters, you could advertise it to the 139,480 people who list Die Hard as a favorite in their movies section.

- If you’re an affiliate, you might try advertising Stephen Colbert’s new book to the 288,860 people who list The Colbert Report (aka, the greatest living American) in their interests. Or advertise to Colbert fans to influence the latest election.

- If you’re a florist in the Louisville, Kentucky area, you might be able to try running an ad the day after Valentine’s day telling all of the bad boyfriends/husbands (there are 8,640 boyfriends/husbands in the Louisville area) who might have forgotten Valentine’s day that a big bouquet of flowers makes up for anything.

There are a ton of possibilities out there with this type of targeting. What works and what doesn’t will still depend on your demographic, your ad, your pricing and your timing… but Facebook has given you the ability to target advertising on a social network that up until now, was unseen to “the average advertiser”.

There are still a lot of ways to further segment the information… maybe I want to see people who list the Sopranos AND Goodfellas AND The Godfather in their movies/TV shows/interests so I can identify a “mafia buff” vs. someone who simply likes one show (right now, you can add multiple interests, but it shows as OR… there is no AND function at the time I am writing this). I could also see the ability to choose a single state, versus individual cities as a plus (a candidate for Governor might find this useful, as an example).

Being able to pick everything “but” a demographic would help to… as in maybe I want to advertise to people who list their current education status as nothing, alumni or college – and specifically *not* high school students without having to use the age as a “work around”. Knowing if a single person is interested in men or women can help further identify a target demographic as well as being able to target religious views (currently left off the targeting tool). Being able to identify keywords that may be in groups they belong to in addition to interests, movies and TV is another wish.

Additionally, think of the possibilities for the “bigger companies” who may be able to do enough ad spend to get an API to run their database against (total guess/foresight… I know of or do not know of any such thing being in existence)… a site like Amazon.com being able to run their product database against interests/movies/TV shows (like the ad I saw for the Sopranos targeted to me, I am guessing, because I have the show listed in my profile) or a company like ticketmaster being able to run their entire ticket inventory against geographic locations and group/comedian names and show *relevant* ads.

I think social media can eventually become a gold mine for small local business owners as well… companies who only wish to reach a very small, segmented portion of the population. In addition to doing seo for their local business, they can also directly target consumers similar to direct mail campaigns of the past, but with much higher targeting. Direct mail marketing has always had lower return rates… it will be interesting to see if direct social media marketing can outperform the traditional direct mail roi in the coming years.

This is also powerful for data mining and identifying new niche markets if you do affiliate marketing. You can use this tool to find out what topics are gaining interest with the population and what topics are declining in interest. Trending can be tracked directly from the humans who create them rather than relying on what they type into a search bar.

You might also be able to identify that 77,120 people in the states have an interest in UFC… by checking the male tab, you can then see that 63,220 – over 80 percent of them – are men. You can clearly see who your site should be identifying with (or maybe see smaller niches, like a UFC site aimed at women for the 19 percent of female fans). Additionally, of the 63,220 men interested in UFC, 61,860 – or over 97 percent – are under the age of thirty. Starting to get the possibilities?

If targeting like this can continue to evolve, the naysayers who say that monetizing social media is too hard to do, may find their thoughts starting to change in the future. Everything evolves – social media is no different… the money is there… either directly via advertisements or indirectly via learning information about trends and demographics unheard of without massive testing and focus groups in the past.

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Facebook Expands Targeting Opportunities for Advertisers