I read with interest a post recently sent from a Facebook group asking whether ads on Facebook would still qualify it to be referred to as Social Media Marketing? 

Recently Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, opened up advertising on Facebook  taking the approach of ‘social actions’ of its users. (1) 

Zuckerberg stated “The core of every user’s experience on Facebook is their page and that’s where (all) businesses are going to start as well. Social actions are powerful because they act as trusted referrals and reinforce the fact that people influence people. It’s no longer just about messages that are broadcasted out by companies, but increasingly about information that is shared between friends. Social Ads can appear either within a user’s News Feed as sponsored content or in the ad space along the left side of the site.”

Some people say taking this next step is evolutionary. It first started with banner ads, then online giants like Craigslist used classifieds, and the third was Google ( & most search engines ) with the use of search advertising. 

These same people will say that ads do not make the cut as “social media marketing.” An ad is still an ad…as has been said its “brand speak versus being consumer speak.” Since social media is conversations WITH the community, this somehow disqualifies Facebook’s ads. Somewhere in the conversation we supposedly loose the sanctity of the conversation economy. As David Armano wrote about recently in Business Week, “Conversation leads to relationships and relationships lead to affinity,” Armano continues. Affinity, in turn, results in communities. “This is why anyone who plays a role in growing brands needs to become a conversation architect.”

David Armano continues, (the) “Conversation architects move marketing beyond the idea of one-way messaging. Traditional marketing efforts were founded on this tried-and-true format and are still prevalent within the industry. Consider the example of a typical creative brief template, which usually says something like, “What are we trying to communicate?” Can you see the old-world residue in the word “communicate”? It lacks the dimensions of experiencing something and having an ongoing two-way dialogue. “What are we trying to communicate?” implies a one-way conversation. Maybe we should ask ourselves: “How can we facilitate?” (2)

Others such as Brian Solis do a nice comparison in Conversational Marketing Vs Market Conversations.(3)

So I ask, after all this conversation about conversation, does it really matter if ads qualify as social media marketing? No. It’s about as silly as the Soup Nazi yelling to keep people in line. Keeping the “purity” of social media marketing just for the sake of purity truly won’t amount to “a hill of beans” if you can’t pay your bills. Business is in business to make a profit. Ads help make a business profitable. Trying to hold out and avoid ads is like being the last one on the Titanic and refusing a life vest because you’re a good swimmer. In the end, as a matter of survival, it really doesn’t matter does it…only surviving does.

I like what Celine Ruffet Directeur France at Qype added,  “Indeed I think you can use Facebook to promote a brand in many different ways including social media marketing but which is the most difficult part of the job!

Many brands are doing a page + ads on Facebook without any “social” way of thinking. This is usually the social part of their marketing plan.

As an example, some brands are using their logo on their page which is absolutely not a social way to act ! A basic recommendation is to create a “real profile” with of photo. To do social marketing, people need to be involve in the process (an artistic director, a boss, a beautiful PR girl…)

In order to discuss & create an exchange with the community, you need to personalise your communication on Facebook and live like a “human being” not a brand! Invite people to take a drink, create micro events in an apartment, put some photos, videos, say personal stuff on your life… People absolutely need to feel it is “real” and “exclusive”. ” (4)

As Matthew Ray of http://www.ourdrivetoalaska.com says “you need to reach your audience at a social level! Discuss, learn from them as they learn from you.”
 
(1)  http://www.facebook.com/press/releases.php?p=9176
(2)  http://www.briansolis.com/2007/09/conversational-marketing-versus-market.html
(3)  http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/2007/09/19/can-marketing-be-conversational/
(4)  http://www.linkedin.com/newsArticle?viewDiscussion=&articleID=18141582&gid=66275&trk=add-news-lnk-cThOon0JumNFomgJt7dBpSBA

Can you generate enough traffic to make it worth your while in terms of sales? Look over what Starbucks did with Facebook as reported in The Election, Starbucks and Social Media Marketing by DrakeCooper 

“Starbucks set up a straightforward Facebook event that looks to be created and administrated by someone inside the company. I am betting this is about an hour investment of their time – max. And…they have garnered 423,792 invitations from people on Facebook just forwarding it around to their friends. Also, 164,883 people have said they will attend with most of the rest still awaiting response. There is also 13,187 wall posts and tons of pictures, etc. That is pretty heavy duty work for a social media campaign - driving a ton of traffic to them on FB – which also has other things for people to do, like see the commercial, participate in the “My Starbucks Idea” section and more. I would love to see their web stats today. If you are on Facebook check it out here. ”

You can read the whole article at http://www.drakecooper.com/news/2008/11/electiion-starbucks-and-social-media.html

The death knell was rung for e-mail a year or so ago. Too much…much of it bad.

Then along came this thing called Social Media - Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace. A funny thing happened while this phenom continues to grow right before our eyes, e-mail has all of the sudden become “better.” To prove the point, please read this post by Nicholas Einstein with Datran Media.

As Social Media Grows, Effective E-mail Thrives
Over the past two years, the rapid adoption of social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace has transformed the way many consumers interact on the Web.

Some customer segments, especially younger ones, now spend an increasingly large percentage of their online time on these sites and primarily use them to communicate with their peers. These same consumers, according to a recent report from JupiterResearch, are apparently spending less time in their e-mail inbox and may be paying

less attention to the messages they receive there. This shift is causing some to question, perhaps prematurely, the future of e-mail as the dominant social networking tool.

In his report, The Social and Portable Inbox, David Daniels quantifies this shift in alarming detail and, according to Jupiter, it may not be isolated to younger segments. Nearly one-quarter of e-mail users reported using social networking sites in this way. Fifty-three percent of respondents age 18 to 24 reported doing so, and 42% of those 25 to 34 also reported using social sites instead of e-mail for personal communications. The reason for doing so was consistent across segments: Too much irrelevant messaging in the e-mail inbox.

I believe that e-mail marketers who ignore social media, especially those that target younger audiences, may be missing a real opportunity. As it turns out, the social sites are excellent places to share information with friends, family, customers and prospects — the trick is to communicate with them openly, honestly and in a human voice. If relevance is the key to e-mail marketing, authenticity is the key to marketing in social media. Social initiatives that leverage messaging interpreted by audiences as fake or overly promotional will never get off the ground and, worse, may negatively impact brand equity.

Marketers who are able to add value to the conversations within the social sites and who can forge honest, genuine communication streams that empower users to interact with a brand on their terms, however, will be well positioned to benefit from the social shift.

Is e-mail dead? Far from it. The future of e-mail looks quite bright. Daniels acknowledges that e-mail specifically remains the primary reason that consumers connect to the Internet. For many customer segments, e-mail is still the social networking vehicle of choice, and it shows few signs of abating. Publishers who deliver highly relevant communications through the e-mail inbox increasingly command premium CPMs from advertisers who realize excellent returns from their investments.

The recent sale of Daily Candy to Comcast for a whopping $125 million is just one of a myriad of signs that e-mail is alive and well. The social networks are helping to foster new conversations online, for sure, and I believe they can be extended and enhanced through e-mail - a ton of transactional e-mail messaging is already coming from the social networks in the form of updates and such things.

Consumers haven’t given up on e-mail; they’ve just given up on bad, irrelevant e-mail. So, while launching engaging, authentic social media messaging programs is an excellent idea for many online marketers, the other near-term imperative is to allocate the resources required to drive truly relevant, timely email messaging based on data intelligence. Incorporating demographics, click-stream data, e-mail response history and other behavioral factors are good places to start.

The era of batch and blast is officially over. With the conversation spilling out of the inbox, it’s no longer good enough.

Nicholas Einstein is director of strategic and analytic services at Datran Media.

I recently came across an article about Facebook that should be shared with the readers of SocialMarketingExpert.org.  The site does sell a downloadable product of PDF’s and MP3’s. You might want to do more research on it if you like the article. If you use Facebook with success, please drop us a note to share your success…we’d like to hear your story.

The article is entitled Leaving Insightful Facebook Notes to Generate Traffic to Your Site by Michael Mulkern

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Many online marketers are looking to Facebook notes to drive traffic to their websites. This fascination with Facebook is easily understandable. Facebook is one of the most popular social networking websites in the world. According to some estimates, Facebook attracts more visitors each month than any other social networking website available today.

Facebook is the most popular social networking website among many English speaking countries. Unfortunately, in the US, MySpace is still more popular than Facebook. At the time of this writing, MySpace has approximately 2 times more US users compared to Facebook.

However, this weakness can be easily mitigated when one notices the tremendous global popularity of Facebook; a popularity that extends to Canada and the United Kingdom. Facebook marketing is one of the most popular demands I receive from my clients. As a result, I have developed several marketing strategies that can be easily applied to Facebook by the novice webmaster.

One of the easiest methods of generating links on Facebook is by leaving a message on your contact’s Facebook note.

Facebook differs greatly from other social networking websites. Facebook prominently features applications as part of its product experience. These applications are programs that can be applied to any Facebook user’s profile. It is like an application you install on your computer. The applications are applied universally. Whenever a Facebook user logs into his/her Facebook account they will be greeted with the same applications, regardless of which computer they are using.

Several applications come ‘preinstalled’ whenever someone sets up a Facebook account. “Facebook Notes” is one application that comes preinstalled in all accounts. Facebook notes is a simple application that acts as a virtual notepad that can be used by all. Facebook users can write in their own notes or in the notes of others.

This presents two opportunities for traffic generation. You can generate traffic by promoting your website on your own Facebook note or you can promote your website on someone else’s Facebook note. Leaving a promotional message on your Facebook note is a simple affair. However, you should exercise caution when promoting your website through Facebook notes that belong to other people. Overt promotion can be seen as spam by some users and may result in you getting banned from Facebook. Exercise caution when you promote your website on someone else’s application.

To successfully promote your website, you should ’soft sell’ the website’s address. The best way to achieve convert marketing success is by genuinely contributing to the Facebook note. You should make informative and constructive contributions to the Facebook note. You can gently mention the website at the end of your post.

It would be even better if you utilize html to embed the link in some text. Facebook note accepts some html, but it does not recognize Flash or javascript.

Leaving an insightful message in a Facebook note application is just one way to market your website on this popular social networking platform. I have spent years perfecting the art of social network marketing and have seen many trends come and go. But in the dynamic and ever-changing landscape of the internet, Facebook is an immovable mountain that is here to stay. Websites who fail to leverage upon the phenomenon of social networking websites risk getting left behind.

Click Here to discover how you can quickly and easily drive hordes of visitors to your website today! Michael Mulkern is an experienced authority on Internet Web Site Marketing, providing special advice on social traffic generation.

Since today is sort of a slow news day, being Friday and everything, I thought that I would mention 10 or more items that are useful tips for bloggers and marketers alike.

Legit News Photos for Free. Om Malik has the scoop on PicApp, where you can get legit news photos for free. It’s an interesting service, but I actually prefer to use something like the Voxant, a service that actually pays you for views of the latest news. I like free stuff, who doesn’t, right? Well, it’s even better if they pay you. Here’s sample content from today from Voxant, about the Republicans who have been instructed to blog, blog, blog:

In an interesting post, Louis Gray says that “The new company profiles on LinkedIn are a gold mine for reporters who want to get data beyond what the PR guys may want to dish out.”.

Henry Blodget asks if Facebook is hot today and going to be dead tomorrow, like AOL. I guess Henry forgot about the post that I wrote a while back, saying that AOL is really going to be TMZ, which is hot now.

There is not much time left to sign up for evernote for free. downloadsquad has all the scoop about it.

TechCrunch talked about how mytopia, the new casual gaming network works with all sorts of other stuff. Monday it will release the same games across the major Web and desktop widgets: iGoogle Gadgets, Apple Dashboard Widgets, Yahoo Widgets and Windows Vista Toolbar Widgets, says TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld.

According to Cnet, Google wants to fill in the TV white spaces. Google is “planning a conference call with journalists on Monday to discuss a company filing with the FCC regarding the use of unused portions of the TV spectrum band, known as white spaces.”

OK, well, that’s not quite the number of updates that I thought I would make today, but five is quite enough. So, to fill up some additional space on this post (bold, right?) let’s again see what Voxant has to offer today: