What's the Big Deal About Facebook?

By now, you’ve at least heard about The Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg, creater and CEO of Facebook, has been a very present name in the news lately as he is opening up Facebook to advertisers. Facebook is part of the growing social media genre, and works much like MySpace. A person can create a profile, add friends, join networks, write (speak) freely about whatever they want, add widgets, send out mass invitations, have newsfeeds, and post pictures, just to name a few.

Facebook has amassed 50 million members who constantly carry on conversations about activities, parties, milestones, etc. The trick is to get them talking about your brand. Go to any Blog, Facebook, or MySpace Page and you’re almost guaranteed to see a person’s like or dis-like for a particular product, restaurant, or vacation destination. You should not underestimate the power of a trusted recommendation from a friend or some one in your network.

For example, if I were to post on my Facebook Profile about an exceptionally fantastic vacation I had at a particular resort, the people in my network who regularly read my Blog and who trust me as an individual, are more likely to at least look into visiting the same vacation destination than if they were just handed a brochure or were just browsing the internet. The Facebook’s “new” advertising model works to exploit this phenomenon of mouth-to-mouth, consumer-to-consumer advertising.

There are three parts to Facebook’s ad plan. The first part of the plan is users initiate product recommendations. Once a user interacts with a brand, it will be broadcast to their networks through their news feeds and mini feeds. Like bands do on MySpace, brands are encouraged to build a page, or profile as Facebook calls it, so users can become “friends” with the brand and write on the brand’s wall.

Part 2 of the Facebook ad plan is for advertisers to buy highly targeted advertising. Users volunteer information on their profiles, like their age, where they work, where they live, what books they read, and movies they watch, all things that are helpful to marketers to narrow down a target audience and target ads toward them. The paid-for ads run in news feeds and can be bought on a cost-per-click or cost-per-thousand basis. Ads can include a short amount of test as well as an optional graphic.

The 3rd part of the ad plan is on the Facebook side and entails combining user interaction and paid-for advertising to create socialads. For example, the news feed, “Brian is a fan of Gatorade” could be accompanied by a Gatorade ad. Like regular paid ads, these socialads are frequency capped so users see a maximum of two per day.

See more about Facebook’s marketing plan in Abbey Klassen’s article in Advertising Age entitled, “Real revolution isn’t Facebook’s ad plan,” from the November 12, 2007 edition.

Favicons- Our Customers are Asking for them- Why?

A favicon is a branding item that appears in your site visitors’ browser window next to your URL. You may be familiar with the Google ‘G’ that appears when you are on a Google page, or the ‘Y’ of Yahoo!

Most importantly, when a visitor to your site bookmarks it (example: by using the Add to Favorites of Internet Explorer), your icon appears next to your bookmarked link.

As stated, a favicon is a branding item. By having your favicon on each of your website's pages, you are making your name more credible and more memorable.
Creating a favicon is really very simple. You can go to a favicon generator site such as http://www.favicon.cc/ to get started. After creating your favicon, just upload it to the root directory of your website and add the following code to your header:
link REL=”SHORTCUT ICON” HREF=”http://www.yourwebsite.com/favicon.ico”/
(Don’t forget to surround the syntax with brackets that look like <>)

Of course, you can always have a favicon created by using an image or graphic. Since favicons are so small, it is usually best to choose an image that is simple and clean, like Google’s ‘G’, GMail’s envelope, or Marion’s ‘M’. A favicon (a .ico file) can also be converted into a .jpg file and placed through out your website’s pages. Though a favicon does not seem to have any SEO benefits, a larger version of your favicon found on your website helps you to increase your site visitors’ exposure to your brand especially when bookmarked.

Information from this article can also be found in the SEO Blog by Nick Stamoulis.

What in the World is a Widget?

When you hear the word “widget” what do you think of? I think it sounds like the name of a mythical creature that could have appeared in the Lord of the Rings series. Do you know what a widget is?

Here is a general definition:
A widget is anything that can be embedded within a page of HTML, i.e. a web page. A widget adds some content to that page that is not static. Generally widgets are third party originated, though they can be home made. Widgets are also known as modules, snippets, and plug-ins. Widgets are written in JavaScript, flash or any other scripting languages that will be run when the page is called.

Here is an example of a widget.



Basically, a widget is a box that you can put on your website, blog, iGoogle page, MySpace, Facebook page, etc., that allows you to add content from another website and interact with it. In the example above, I downloaded a widget from The Office website on NBC.com and added it to my Blog, so I can watch clips from The Office whenever I want.

How Widgets Affect Marketing
If you are a Facebook, MySpace, or iGoogle user, you are probably already familiar with how marketers are using widgets. Companies such as Slide (a popular picture widget) create applications for websites and are allowed to generate revenue from them however they want. There are two basic ways that widgets are used for advertising. One such way is through selling ad space or sponsorships that will show on the widget. Another option for using widgets to advertise is to follow the example of companies, such as Google and NBC, who use widgets as media to advertise themselves. With our society becoming more and more tech-friendly, using widgets could be a very good way to generate exposure, especially if you advertise on popular social-networking sites.

It would be a good idea to look at both ways to use widgets when considering how your advertising dollars should be spent. Think of widgets like you would think of a website. What type of people would use your widget? How much time do they spend? Asking these types of questions can help you to determine if a widget already exists that reaches your target market, so you can consider buying ad space or sponsorship there. If there is not already an appropriate widget for the target market you are trying to reach, you may need to create your own. Though widgets are not a MUST in internet marketing right now, as they become more and more popular, they have the potential of being major players in the internet marketing game.

Subsribe to Our RSS Feed!

If you look to the right, you'll see an icon and a link that will let you subsribe to our RSS feed. Simply follow the prompts and you'll be able to add it to your blog, homepage, just about any where. If adding our feed to your Google Homepage or anyother page that calls for you to login to your account, you'll need to do so before adding our feed to your page or site. Every time we update our blog, your feed will be updated as well, and when you click on the feed to read our articles, you'll be brought back to our blog automatically.
Thanks for keeping up with The Marion Group!