Loving Apple

As I pulled up my VISA card I thought to myself, "I really don´t need an iPad, but I want one so badly". I already have 2 MacBooks, one iMac, 2 iPods, one iPod Touch and one iPhone 4 at home. Did I really need an iPad2? Absolutely not! Could I do everything I need on my other devices? Absolutely yes. But I can almost feel an urge to spend money on Apple products when I enter an Apple store. All the whiteness and cleanness wakes something up inside of me .
They feel like my friends, my amazing friends that make my digital life both easier an a hell of a lot cooler.

This is succeeding big time as a brand. Making people feel the urge to spend money on your products without them even needing them!

AS ALWAYS after having bought a new Apple product I came home, started it up and now I don´t know how I could have lived without this amazing beauty before. I just discovered some cool apps and I´m sure that within a week I will be even more hooked.
What makes this brand so incredibly great then? Simplicity, Design and Customer Service. Always easy to use, fast and smooth functionality. Gorgeous designs and the more the better, all products fit perfectly together. 10 point customer service. Always when I call Apple I start by telling them that they work at the coolest company in the world, respect.
Apple! If you´re listening I´m your brand ambassador number one.
Gotta get back to discovering all the fantastic features on my leather covered new friend :-)Tweet

How To Analyse Facebook Insights

If your goals and objectives with your Facebook marketing campaigns include Awareness or Loyalty, it's a good idea to know how to analyse the activities on your Facebook page.
Other social media platforms offer external tools, such as Hootsuite or TweetStats for Twitter. Facebook however offer their inhouse measuring tool, Facebook Insight. This is a powerfool tool and can be very useful. I wouldn't be surprised if Facebook sooner than later will roll out even more stats for page owners or maybe an optional pay-for extra service. Facebook Insight could very well be a direct competitor to Google Analytics soon.
So, it's important to know how to read all these numbers and what to do with them.
Yesterday I asked Mari Smith, the Facebook marketing guru of all times to give me some tips how to best read the Facebook Insight Stats. Or maybe not so much how to read them but how to analyze them. She answered me that it's a complex subject and apparently she talks a lot about it in her book Facebook Marketing 1 Hour Per Day so I bought it.

Let me list up what I know now and then I will tell you what I learned more from the book once I receive it.
Lets first mention what is called Impressions which you can see under each post as an admin. This number is the times that that post has been seen in the newsfeed and on your page. ALSO it includes the times the content has been viewed in social plug-ins maybe on your webpage for example.

Next to Impressions you see Feedback. Now here is the math:  Lets say my post has 1502 Impressions, and 0,67% Feedback and 10 Likes. It all ads up by taking 0.67% of 1502=10.
For those of you who didn't do well in the math classes you can use this simple tool: Online Calculator Percentage

Monthly Fan growth. Document the number of fans the 1st of each month to see the growth cycle. Important to watch for are spikes and then go back to those dates and see what happened that day. Did you post something special? Did your company have a TV campaign run that week?
Go to Insight and click on the USERS section.

Number of Likes and Comments.
This is a number to measure engagement. Good tool to use to know what content works good and what does not work good.

Unsubscribes.
Important stat to use to go back and look at days when there was a spike. Did we post too much that day?

Total Tab Views (Under the Users section too)

What tabs get most views? This could help you determine your landing page and content strategy. If the Video tab gets a lot of views maybe that's where you should put your energy...

Another interesting metric is to find out how many of your fans actually come back to your page.
This is how you find out. Take the number of page views, subtract the number of unique page views and you will get the number of returning fans. In my example below I had 127 returning fans on May 14th.

Page Growth Rate is calculated by taking the number of New Likes (My case last month was 406) MINUS Unlikes which you can see here was 97.  My May number would therefore be 309. This number I would write down and compare to next months number.

Other things to measure could be mentions of your brand or demographics.
These are my points for Insight. Lets see what Mari Smith can teach me with her book :-)Tweet

ReTweet Tool

I just tried out the pro version of ReTweet Rank. It´s a simple tool to help you see who retweets you, what time people retweet you, best day to post to get retweets e.t.c. Also it gives you a percentage score on your influence, a bit like Klout does.
It´s neat little thing, simple and easy to use. 9USD per month for the pro version, there is a free version and also a 3USD per month version as well as the superversion for 50usd per month.
14 day free trial.
What I personally like most about this tool is the Most retweeted words as well as The best time to tweet stats.

More info below.

Retweet Rank looks up all recent retweets, number of followers, friends and lists of a user. It then compares these numbers with those of other users' and assigns a rank. So, if you get a retweet rank of 4,500 for instance, that means you are the 4,500th most influential person on Twitter.
What is percentile?
Percentile score indicates how do you score relative to other twitter users. It ranges from 0-100.

http://www.retweetrank.com

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How To Gain Facebook Fans or eerr..."Likes"

The number one focus for a brand shouldn't be just the number of Facebook fans. You would rather have 100 engaged fans than 500 who hide you in the newsfeed everytime you post something right?

But still, it IS one of the many ways you can measure success on Facebook and since the basic idea is to reach many people, of course we would like to increase our fan base.

Somebody who was going to start his Facebook Fan Page once told me his strategy was to invite all is contacts because for sure they would "fan" him and suggest to their contact and soon he would reach as least a few hundred people. That page has not hit 200 people yet and it's been up for about a year.

Also that option contradicts the nature of social media so let's not put all our cards in that bucket please.

I'm not saying you shouldn't send out an email to your email list though, tell people about your page and include the latest Facebook posts and links/Like button in your weekly E-letters.

Fisrt of all, just like the post How To Gain Twitter Followers you need to create visibility for your fan page. Embed widgets on your website, use the Facebook Social Plug-Ins and link from your blog, include the Facebook button in your email signature and integrate the LIKE button on various sites.

The Landing tab is another important thing that according to many people increases the "liking" ALOT. Make sure you have a nice landing tab and make sure it tells people to like you (and tell them WHY! for exclusive offers, contests e.t.c...)

Use Apps! Some are for free, some you have to pay for, but they spice up your page and make it more interesting. You can do simple polls, or maybe more advanced quizzes or contests.

Some examples below:

http://fanappz.com

http://wildfireapp.com

http://northsocial.com

With some apps you can launch Fans-only offers.

Use Facebook ads and make sure that by clicking on the ad the user likes your page. make sure to TARGET well. If you are in the education industry you may want to target people in a certain age rank and in certain countries.

If you publish a company magazine or something else that's printed, make sure to include an info box about your Facebook page.

If you have a store, include a little sign on the door or in the check-out counter and tell your employees to remind customers about your fan page.

Go to other pages that are in the same industry and comment on their post, sign with your fan page name (in the settings of your page so can choose to post as page or fan) IMPORTANT! Don't mis-use this. Be smart and clever and DO NOT spam pages and people.
Also, don't over post cus then people will UNfan you. Try to experiment with the timing, try posting on nights and weekends and pay attention to the Insight section of your fan page to see what is working and what is not.

If I would have to pick a good ending pgrase it would be the following:
Be a solution provider to your customers and craft GREAT content!

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How To Gain Twitter Followers

How do you kick off a Twitter presence? How do you gain Twitter followers? You sit there and you're ready to start but you don't have any or very few followers, what should you do?

A brand is usually on Twitter to be able to spread it's advertising messages, deals, support and offers to a large number of people.
The objectives you may want to ashieve could be retweets, more followers, click-throughs to other pages and of-course redemption of offers. You may want to be thought of as a leader in your industry, or as the company with the best customer support.
You sit there with your business or brand and you have carefully crafted a content-plan, you have listed your objective and started with Sales, Awareness or Loyalty. You have a tweet schedule and a structure about everything from Tweet timing and a content map to time limits of answering people and much more.
Now, how do you gain Twitter followers?

First of all make sure people KNOW you are on Twitter. Integrate the Twitter button on your webpage, on you blog and on your Facebook page.
Post Twitter buttons and perhaps a link to the latest tweet in your email signature, AND in your colleagues signatures too. Make sure the company is with you and support you.

Another smart thing you can do is to search topics that relate to your industry on Twitter.
Now my suggestion is to create search lists within Twitter and monitor them. Look for questions related to your brand or product, answer them and engage with them. Talk in a human way. Don't over market, don't focus just on your brand, talk about other brands and ALWAYS listen first and talk later.

Another part is to find Influencers which I would use Exportly to do. Find the people with the most followers and simply monitor them, retweet them and eventually contact them! Are they incredibly important? Make a deal with them, see if they like your brand and would be willing to collaborate with you. Reaching his or her followers can be a big deal to your brand.
You can also list your bran in so called Twitter Directories. It makes it easier for people to find you based on the sector/industry you're in. Popular Twitter directories are: http://justtweetit.com and http://wefollow.com

Tomorrow I will talk about how to gain Facebook LIKES!Tweet

Swedish Spotify + Facebook = True?

Swedish music service Spotify may very well partner up with Facebook sooner than later.

I've been thinking back and forth about signing up for the Premium account with Spotify but to be completely honest, I am so rooted into iTunes that it takes a big effort for me to change my music routines. Don't get me wrong, I love Spotify but I also love iTunes and I buy so little music these days that the once in a while 1 eur song doesn´t bother me.
Now the fact that the U.S still can´t enjoy this music service is so absurd keeping in mind that usually everything comes to the americans first.
Well, lets see if these rumors are true or not. A Spotify icon inside Facebook could very well be the turning point for me...
Facebook & Spotify To Launch Streaming Music Service Tweet

A Clear Guide to Facebook DEALS vs Check-In Deals

Yes there is a difference! A pretty big one.
It took me a few days to digg into this when both services were first launched. Couldn't they have picked slightly more different names?

Since I am a huge fan of location based services, both using them personally as well as really believing that this is an amazing opportunity for companies to INCREASE Business I decided to write a short summary of what this is about.
Deals go into the users news-feed and the news-feed is what you need to win as a business. Deals can't be ignored.
Facebook now has more than 250 MILLION mobile facebook users and they are twice as active as the desktop facebook users. Ignoring these people as a marketer is dumb.

Check-In Deals was first launched late last year and like all Facebook features it was first launched in the U.S and was quickly rolled out in 6 more countries.
Canada, U.K, France, Spain, Germany and Italy.
A check-in deal is basically you as a local business creating a DEAL within your PLACE page (NOT your fan page) and offering customers one out of four types of deals.
Individual Deals which basically is a one time offer for a person checking into your store.
Loyalty Deal lets you unlock a deal through repeat visits, anytime in between 2-20 times visits which you can select as the business owner.
Friend Deal is something I personally believe very much in. This lets a person share savings with 1-8 people. Let's say you and your friends are out having a drinks and dinner and you check in and this deal offers one free appetizer when ordering 3 drinks.
Lastly is the Charity Deal wich promotes a cause. It lets a company donate money everytime a client check in.
Facebook Check In Deals is equivalent to Foursquare while Facebook DEALS is similar to Groupon.

Facebook DEALS was introduced a few months ago but it's still in the beginning phase and only available in 5 U.S cities. Facebook takes a percentage on the deals purchased, there is no upfront cost and it's mainly focused on entertainment activities.
This works like this: You as a business owner decide that for example if 5 people purchase your dishwasher they will all benefit from a 30% discount. Setting up these types of deals is done through a personal Facebook representative.


Another tip is to COMBINE your Foursquare deal with your Facebook deal!
Install a Foursquare widget on your Facebook page HERE!














Read more about Check-In deals HERE! as well as HERE!
How do you promote your deals ON and OFFline?
On your FB Page, Through FB ads, on Twitter, in an email newsletter, in a blog post, launching a promotion, in the retail store on a window sign, in the menue if you are a restaurant owner or through sites like meetup.com.

Here are some further ways to find local people (through Twitter) and maybe be able to contact them about your local offers: 5 ways to use twitter to connect with local customers

By the way LOVE this site. As a marketer this lets you investigate your Facebook market: http://www.socialbakers.comTweet