Inside Facebook
Inside Facebook |
- How Facebook Pages Can Use “Invite Friends” to Gain Fans
- Gekko Pulls in Prices and Lets Users Request Deals to Differentiate From Other Facebook Travel Apps
- Facebook Asks Users to Help It Get Local Business Owners to Claim Their Places
- New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: Context Optional, Spooky Cool Labs, Ubisoft and More
- The 25 Most Liked Pages on Facebook, Summer 2011
- Horoscopes, Friends, Mobile and Dating on This Week’s Top 20 Facebook Apps by DAU
| How Facebook Pages Can Use “Invite Friends” to Gain Fans Posted: 20 Jul 2011 11:27 PM PDT
The following is an excerpt. The complete article, available in our Facebook Marketing Bible, includes a full walk-through of how to send invites for friends to Like your Page using the “Invite Friends” tool Facebook launched this week, as well as additional strategies for maximizing the conversion rate of the invites you send. To grow a Page, you need dedicated fans. These are the people that share your Page with friends, tag it in status updates, and take actions that seed Facebook’s Sponsored Stories ad unit. Page administrators can convert their friends into dedicated fans using the “Invite Friends” tool which sends notifications to friends suggesting they Like a Page. This can help jumpstart growth for new Pages or facilitate further viral growth for established Pages. Here we’ll walk through how the tool works, and provide strategies for attaining the highest conversion rate on your invites through timing, targeting clusters of friends, and more.
“Invite Friends” can be accessed from the right-hand Page admin menu that admins see when viewing their own Pages. It is the most direct and visible way Facebook has ever allowed Page invites to be sent. Therefore, we recommend using this tool now in case Facebook removes the feature or begins delivering the invites through a less visible channel. Invite Friends StrategiesTimingYou want to send your invites at a time when friends are likely to be using the web version of Facebook. This is because users are more accustomed to browsing Pages from a full sized browser, and some native mobile apps do not support Page browsing or Liking. Think about what time zone your invite recipients are in and send invites when they’re likely to be home, such as in the weekday evenings, rather than out using their mobile device, such as weekend evenings. This way when they first see the notification they’ll have the time and correct browser to check out your Page and Like it.
If several of a user’s friends Like a Page in a short period of time, they may see a “[friend name] and [x] other friends Like [your Page] story in the news feed. For instance, if within a few hours four of my friends Liked the Starbucks Page, I might see a news feed story that says “Eric Eldon and thee more friends like Starbucks”, with the name of the Page linked. These stories can expose a link to your Page to people you aren’t friends with via a compelling implicit social recommendation, helping you earn additional Likes from your invites. The full version of this article, including a full walk-through of the tool and three more strategies for sending successful invites can be found in the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network's complete guide to marketing, advertising, and ecommerce on Facebook. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gekko Pulls in Prices and Lets Users Request Deals to Differentiate From Other Facebook Travel Apps Posted: 20 Jul 2011 06:31 PM PDT Gekko is a new Facebook app that allows users to get travel recommendations from friends, but also pay for rooms and requests deals from hotels and restaurants. While there are already several travel apps and websites that let users ask for tips from their Facebook friends such as TripAdvisor and Gogobot, Gekko differentiates itself by aggregating hotel prices within the app rather than forcing users to check each travel booking site individually. While the concept of being able to request discounts and perks sounds good, it’s unclear whether businesses will actually take the time and have the savvy to grant them.
Gekko was developed by a 12-person team plus some outside developers. The London-based company has taken private investment from Holland’s Velocity Capital, which is also the primary investor in Gekko founder Dino van Es’ online stock brokerage firm Zecco. The company receives a revenue share from any bookings made through the app. Once users have installed the app, they’re given options to ask friends for advice by posting to the Facebook news feed. They can invite friends to the app or follow other users so they can see their in-app activity on a Gekko news feed. Users can also build lists of their favorite places that can be shared with friends. The interface is reasonably well-designed, but all of these features can found on other apps and sites where they’re more likely to have friends. What’s more interesting is what happens when users search for a hotel, city, or restaurant. Search results are filtered to promote places that friends have been to, favorited, or commented on. While viewing a hotel users can set their stay dates and request prices. At this point, Trip Advisor and Gogobot open a cascade of individual windows displaying prices from each travel site users leave checked — not a good user experience. Gekko loads for a second before displaying a list of prices from each site. This makes it simple to find the lowest price and click through to pay.
If users don’t see a satisfactory price, or want to shoot for even cheaper they can click a “Request a deal” button”. Gekko then asks the venue if it would like to grant a discount, upgrade, complimentary drink or other perk. Users are notified in the app if their request has been approved. Gekko CEO Michel Cassius told me there aren’t privacy concerns as businesses don’t know the identity of the user requesting a deal. I expressed skepticism about whether the deal inquiries would reach someone authorized to grant them, and whether businesses would take the time or be willing to respond. He said it’s “too early for us to say. Hotels have deals they offer to their registered users or through sites, and this is another channel for doing promotions.” Cassius told me that the Gekko beta test saw high engagement and time spent in the app. Soon, the app will be available in Spanish, French, German, Dutch, and Portuguese. It is also seeking celebrity ambassador who can amass a following within the app and give special recommendations of destinations. Though it is late comer to the space, the low-friction user experience and social nature of travel booking could help Gekko gain traction. Its long-term success will be influenced by the personalized deals feature. If users believe they can get exclusive perks by booking through Gekko rather than elsewhere, it could stand to monetize well through its revenue share arrangement. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Facebook Asks Users to Help It Get Local Business Owners to Claim Their Places Posted: 20 Jul 2011 03:31 PM PDT Facebook is taking a social approach to getting local business owners to claim their Place, which is the first step to getting them to buy ads and improve the content on these Pages. Now when Facebook users visit local business Places pages that haven’t been claimed, they’ll see a link that asks “Do you know the owner?” They can then submit an email address or friend’s name, allowing Facebook to contact the owner and ask them to claim the Page.
When Facebook launched its Places location-based check-in service, it created Places pages for local businesses by pulling info from location database Localeze as well as allowing users to create Places for locations that didn’t have them. Business owners can claim their Places by submitting documentation proving ownership to Facebook. Claiming a Place allows an owner to moderate content posted to the Page’s wall, post updates to the news feed, run Check-in Deals to incentivize foot traffic, and purchase Facebook ads promoting their business. However, to date, many Places are still unclaimed because Facebook didn’t have contact information for the owners or they didn’t respond to inquiries. To fix this, Facebook has released a feature that leverages an owner’s friends to get them to claim their businesses. Unclaimed Places now display a “Do you know the owner?” link beneath their profile picture. Any user can click it to open a window asking “Do you think you know the owner or someone connected to this business?” A typeahead allows users to enter a friend’s name, or submit the email address if they aren’t friends with the owner or representative. Once submitted, Facebook thanks user for their help, and informs them that the person entered will receive a message explaining how they can claim their business.
Claimed Places Produce Advertising RevenueOwners don’t need to wait for this message, though. All business owners should search Facebook for the name and address of their business to find any Places pages they’re the rightful owner of, and then begin the claims process by clicking the “Is this your business?” link beneath a Place’s profile picture. This will allow them to drive more foot traffic to their location. Facebook has been making an effort to get rid of duplicate Places pages, but many still exist. It’s best for businesses to only have one Places page as it simplifies the check-in process for users, creates a central web presence, and makes it easier for friends to discover which friends are currently at the same location. Therefore, owners should claim the most popular Place for their business, and then report the rest as duplicates by using the “Repoort Page” option beneath the Place’s profile picture. Finding admins for more Places pages is important to the success of Facebook Places for several reasons:
Most importantly for Facebook’s bottom line, though, is that owner’s who’ve claimed Places and become admins are the only ones who can by Facebook ads promoting the Page. A MerchantCircle survey of local businesses owners showed that while 66% of small businesses have used Facebook for marketing, only 22% have used Facebook ads. This means there is plenty of runway for Facebook to monetize local business owners. By allowing users to instantly create a Places page from their phone for any location they want to check in to, Facebook has likely created millions of new Pages. If it can find people to claim these Places, it could significantly increase its local advertising revenues. [Thanks to Kevin Evanetski for the tip] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: Context Optional, Spooky Cool Labs, Ubisoft and More Posted: 20 Jul 2011 11:18 AM PDT The Inside Network Job Board is dedicated to providing you with the best job opportunities across social and mobile application platforms. Here are this week's highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at Context Optional, LeadBolt, Metamoki, Inc., Spooky Cool Labs, Social Point, Ubisoft, Glu Mobile and Kabam.
 Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Social Games, Inside Facebook and Inside Mobile Apps through regular posts and widgets on the sites. Your open positions are being seen by the leading developers, product managers, marketers, designers, and executives in the Facebook Platform and social gaming industry today. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The 25 Most Liked Pages on Facebook, Summer 2011 Posted: 20 Jul 2011 11:13 AM PDT Facebook’s very own Page topped our quarterly list of the most Liked Pages on the platform for the summer. It edged out Zynga and some popular musical artists since our last post in the spring, essentially pushing down the top Pages from the spring a notch each, although most of the Pages on the list have remained the same. As always there are tons of musicians, some TV shows, movies and brands also made our list. We gathered the information for our list with our PageData tool, which counts the number of Likes as Pages grow. Pages on our list ranged from Facebook’s with 48.9 million to 25.7 million for SpongeBbo SquarePants; last time we compiled a list, Zynga’s Poker game was on top with 41.8 million Likes. See how other top brands are maximizing their returns on their Facebook campaigns in the Facebook Marketing Bible. See the list below: 1. Facebook – 48,937,442
2. Texas Hold'em Poker – 47,060,502
3. Eminem – 43,597,895
4. YouTube – 41,950,335
5. Rihanna – 40,970,115
6. Lady Gaga – 40,845,124
7. Shakira – 37,267,475
8. Family Guy - 35,150,975
9. Justin Bieber – 33,219,214
10. Linkin Park – 32,525,479
11. Coca-Cola – 32,463,564
12. The Simpsons – 32,226,366
13. Katy Perry – 32,218,637
14. South Park – 32,181,879
15. Cristiano Ronaldo – 31,221,454
16. Harry Potter – 29,920,891
17. Lil Wayne – 29,169,770
18. Bob Marley – 28,719,894
19. Akon – 27,966,380
20. Megan Fox – 27,238,727
21. Disney – 27,142,012
22. Vin Diesel – 26,583,235
23. Beyoncé - 26,060,654
24. MTV - 25,993,181
25. SpongeBob SquarePants - 25,707,177
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| Horoscopes, Friends, Mobile and Dating on This Week’s Top 20 Facebook Apps by DAU Posted: 20 Jul 2011 08:04 AM PDT
Top Gainers This Week
The horoscope apps on our list had one thing in common (aside from providing horoscopes): daily Wall posts. The Fortune Teller grew by over 1 million DAU, Daily Horoscope by 216,500 DAU and Astrology by 151,100 DAU. Friend quiz-type apps were on our list in varied forms. 21 questions asks users questions about their friends, publishing answers to their Walls; the app grew by 1.7 million DAU. 60photos asks users to rate friends' photos, publishing to their Walls, and growing this week by 254,000 DAU. Friend Buzz asks users questions about their friends, posting the answers to their Walls, consequently growing by 192,900 DAU this week. MyCalendar asks users to customize a calendar with friends' birthdays and other events, growing by 189,400 DAU this week. Between You and Me grew by about 145,000 DAU this week, publishing answers to quiz questions to the Walls of a user's friends.
Mobile apps abounded this week, intriguing given Facebook's mobile announcement last week. Facebook's mobile app, Facebook for Every Phone, grew by 318,200 DAU this week, while the Android app HTC Sense grew by 97,800 DAU. Samsung Mobile grew by about 94,000 DAU and eBuddy, a mobile messenger app, by 90,200 DAU mostly in Mexico, Indonesia and India.
Two dating apps made the list, the Turkish Seçim Anketi with 242,100 DAU and Cupid with 130,300. Cupid's taken a huge dive from a month ago, perhaps due to the summer, but seems to be bouncing back. Other apps included Static HTML: iframe tabs for Page tab creation with 557,700 DAU, Windows Live Messenger grew by 213,700 DAU while BandPage by RootMusic saw 117,200 DAU. All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for our look at the top emerging apps on Friday. |
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