It is not really a story worth noting else than that it is such a typical example of when social media success does not rhyme with big ego. Sphinn is one of search and social medias true resources online. Not so much for the content on the platform, but for the relationships you are able to build through it quickly.

You have been able to find, promote and discuss interesting content with other users there or on their respective blogs. As you know, I have previously been quite critical towards Sphinn. In part, because I truly have wanted the service to improve and get even better. Now, naturally, my wishes have never been heard. Probably because of my lack of smooth language skills. I am never far away from the insult as I see the world through the perspective of a hip hop battle.

However, I have continued to post my stories as well as other people’s stories to the platform as I am able to connect with other users through the platform. I have liked voting for content that I enjoy reading and discussing content that I find interesting.

That will all stop. I don’t think I will ever visit the website again. The reason being that they just announced they will remove the voting functionality from the website.

Now… A crowdsourcing website without voting?? What’s the point??

Read Danny Sullivan’s arguments here.

Oh… Danny Sullivan, one of the webs self proclaimed pricks, argues that there was too much problem with spam, and that the quality content didn’t reach the front page enough times. So they thought they should just take away the crowdsourcing out of their project and let the editors decide what was valuable content instead of leaving it in the hands of the users. This kind of reasoning reminds me of something… hmm… old time media perhaps…. naaahw… These guy’s are online heroes… they wouldn’t turn away from the social nature of the web and turn to old school tactics just cause they get a little spam now… would they?

Well, never mind what they’ve actually done. Nor shall we care about why they do it. But what we should focus on is who they blame for their failure…. namely the users of their website. See, they seem to think that it is the voting mobs and the spam that is decreasing the interaction levels of the website. They don’t consider any of their own actions, rules or changes to be a part of the blame. NOOO…. it is the users who built the website who are the ones to blame. Naturally… don’t you think?

Seriously… Danny. You cannot be this narrow minded and ego centric. You have to realize that it is not the spam that is driving the users away. Look at Digg, look at Stumbleupon, look at any other real crowdsourcing project out there. They are growing, thriving and improving their services as a result.

The difference between them and you is that you have always made changes that limit the users rather than make changes that improve the visibility of their content. You have imposed unfair into a system where everyone is free to leave at their own will. That is what you are seeing the result of now. Your “editor’s choice”, your obnoxious replies to comments or critique, your relentless self advocating blog posts and your never ending promotion of those who only agree with you. Those are the real reasons why people do not care about interacting with your website. That’s why they stop voting and that’s why they stop coming back else than for self promotion. You set the court yourself, all users did, was to play ball.

I don’t blame you for shutting down the website. That’s completely your choice. But to try and martyr yourself out of your own misery, well that’s just wrong. You need to thank every single one of us who have contributed to your website. You should be ever thankful. WE created the website’s success and WE are the true heroes of the story. You’re just a name with a dwindling legacy.

Thank you for the few years the service was operational. Try and learn something from the experience. In this open, social and very much real time web where we are operational today, it seems ever so difficult to make old dogs sit. I know this post won’t make you change your mind. I just had to air mine.

There has been some talk about social search, but I lack the complete guide to it, the general reflections and the updated know how. Very few people have conducted real tests and there is generally only guesses out there. I have studied search within Facebook for some months now, perhaps that’s why I’ve focused so much on Facebook in my blog posts. However, there is more to social search than just what “the book” has to offer.

Social media as the #1 referrer

No matter how things work in different algorithms and how pages rank in relationship to each other, it is quite evident that social aspects are becoming increasingly important for search. For many news pages, social media has become the number one referrer and we are seeing some evidence that websites in the travel vertical and other such experience/story based content websites are moving towards the same pattern.

Traffic is one thing, what about conversion

I’ve covered social media and conversion in some of my older blog posts. If you seem to get an increasing number of non-converting visitors from social media, you should probably have a look at those. Or perhaps flip through my latest keynote on Social media money.

• Online Marketing Matrix
• Social Networking and CRM
• How to Convert a Social Media User into a Buyer
• Social Media and KPIs

Social Search – yeah… how to get the traffic…

But I’ve already written about that and want to post a fluffy Friday post. Thus, I’ll continue writing about traffic. What you have to think of when optimizing for social search is that you are dealing with two types of searches.

• Content that you search for
• Content that finds you

The general idea behind social content search is that content closely related to your network ranks better than content that is far away from your network. In practice this means that Google will index search results that people closely connected to you have shared, whilst Facebook will rank content that is liked by many of your network buddies.

The general idea behind content that finds you is such content that is being posted to news feeds and that is being discussed on the real time web. This means the content currently ending up in top list directories for tweets, that is currently being posted to your query tabs in TweetDeck and that is being liked, commented and re-shared in the news feeds of Facebook. You do not search for this content but you search for what’s on the mind of the person sharing the content. The person behind the share is in focus rather than the share itself. If you’re in the same mood or have an opinion, you too will share the content to your network listening in on what you are thinking.

I’ve thought about creating a method on how to rank in social search engines, but I sort of realize that this is too much of a deal as I would have to cover so many aspects. However, this blog post shall give you a short list on how to plan your work in order to sort out the unnecessary and thus also increase your focus and likelihood of success.

1. Start off by creating a list of technologies where you want your content to be findable.
2. Make an inventory list of what kind of content people are sharing on those platforms.
3. Have a look at your content (now back at me, then back at your content), does your content resemble what is being shared on the desired platform.
4. Turn your content into social objects by making them shareable (Ie. turn it into content you find people are sharing on the platform) and indexable by the platforms of your choice – as an example you can read my post on how to index and rank on Facebook.
5. Make your objects easy to share. For example create news releases about product pages, create videos for tutorials, create images and other easily consumable content available. Ie. make it web content.
6. Make your objects easy to interact with and connect them to the social platform. For example, add comment fields, ratings and such interactive ingredients.
7. Oh… yeah… start talking to people online… or create a sophisticated bot to do it for you (me)
8. Choose social sharing buttons with care… perhaps don’t add them at all, but think of how to integrate the sharing into how the user interacts with your page – the like button is an exception as it just as ratings is a statement which is induced by the reaction of the user “liking” the page – something I should write a post on… anyhow..

Please continue in the comments field. Have a nice weekend.

I am currently at the Dialogue conference in Strömstad, Sweden. I have just had my talk and I am eager to share some of my feelings from Stockholm departure until now. It has truly been a weird trip so far. I will update this post with my presentation, with references and with insights from the sessions I join, so stay tuned.

Social Media Money – my presentation

First off I wanted to kill some myths. I don’t know if I did, but at least I tried. First, social media is all about creating billing relationships. You can do this by using the social persuasion mechanisms available through social networking platforms and open source data mining. Secondly I wanted to kill the myth about viral campaigns. They are not based on luck but on skill and I released my 5 C’s of Vrial Marketing which will be the topic of my book (that still needs some final touches before it gets published).

The challenge I was facing is that I can go on forever about those things, but I managed to squeeze it into a 40 minute session.

The audience was absolutely brilliant and they were awake, laughing, moving around and smiling throughout the presentation. I should provide some links to the data that I base my assumptions on, but I’ll do that later as the nielsen reports and forbes studies have some copyrights that I’ll have to check on first.

Here is the presentation:

The trip to Strömstad

Have I ever told you I am scared of flying. Well, I am… ridiculously scared. Especially flying in propeller airplanes looking as though they are a rest product of Aeroflot’s golden days. I don’t know, but why do they call this Golden Air? There is nothing golden about it at all. Perhaps it’s like the expression “Silverbacks” we tend to call experienced people. Only that these planes have been through so much that they are now Golden. Bah… The flight was scary and I think I saw my life flash by outside the window there for a while on the inflight to landing.

Then I guess I had my longest cab ride with “Nenad the Serb”, actually, he might have been Macedonian or Albanian as well, but I just don’t know. He was a great companion for a 1,5 hour ride that put Dialogkonferansen back another 2400 SEK for my journey.

When I got to the venue I tested my stuff and it was amazing how quickly they got the set in order. As you can see from the “day before” image below, the room was barely even thought of being setup when I got there. Amazing people working at this conference. The hospitality has been great and everyone seems to be genuinely smiling. I really should move elsewhere than Stockholm. Hmmm… hehe…

I checked into my hotel and enjoyed the late night view from my window. Strömstad should be visited again, I thought to myself.

The Conference – day one

The first day I got to listen to three presentations. One by Mike Teasdale from Harvest about e-mail marketing, one from Søren Brahm Lauritsen about data driven marketing, winback campaigns etc. and one from Jay Highley about mobile marketing. All of which were highly interesting. I especially enjoyed the one from Jay as it was down to earth and focused on where the mobile marketing sphere is heading. I think that we as ad agencies have a lot to do in this sector. Hopefully sooner than later.

The mobile market is full with notify-possibilities, something which we use in social networking all the time. I don’t really see why we shouldn’t utilize this when we run TV-ads, online banner campaigns and YouTube video promotions. It simply makes no sense to exclude the mobile, sms or smartphone services from the full experience of a brand communication.

I would like to take a mobile campaign and use it to launch a viral e-mail campaign, using the triggers available on Facebook. I think I am going to have to conceptualize that and pitch it to someone… hmm….

Sadly I didn’t get the chance to listen to the last speakers of the day as there is a reality to take into consideration at home as well. I held two Skype meetings and 4 calls in two hours. But I am sure tomorrow will treat me with some excellent stuff and so I am not that worried the rest of my time here will be the same as home time. I already feel inspired to create!! Something which I haven’t felt for the longest of times.

Bring Dialogue – Day two

The second day was harsh on me. I got really “tipsy” the first evening which wasn’t a bad thing at all, however it made me quite sore in the head the second day. I managed to squeeze in some of the talks and it was nice to kick back and listen in on some thoughts from people I rarely get to meet otherwise. I had the good fortune of talking to some people from other companies that were experiencing some of the “usual” problems. Hopefully my advice can help them push through.

I haven’t had time to reflect for so long and listening to other peoples problems, challenges and ideas really helped me, not only neglect my headache, but also get inspired to some new and original ideas that will be published in this blog later on.

The high note of day two was to listen to PG Wettsjö. Not that he brought a lot of new stuff to the table, more the way that he put it out there. Truly inspiring and humorous.

At night we went to Koster and had a meet and seafood fiesta! It was a great hang at our table with Johan Ronnestam and two Swedes from a Norwegian company. The party wasn’t over when we left Koster and I found myself in a room filled with happy people until 5.30 the next day. The funny thing is that we really didn’t stop talking about trends on the web when dancing. Happily enough I stayed a bit less intoxicated the second evening and I got some really good discussions going. Amongst other things I realized that I have to get deeper in my presentations. People really want to see “how things are done” and not only listen to what can be done.

For my next two talks this year I will do just that. eMetrics in Stockholm and SEM-konferansen in Oslo will get some detailed examples from my crypt.

Dialogkonferansen – day three

I only listened in on one speaker – Johan Ronnestam – on day three. I was too busy working with stuff from home. It is crazy times at the agency right now as we’re steamrolling on all frontiers. I won’t say we are a success yet as there is still so much to do, but getting out of the house for three days really didn’t help my todo out the least bit.

However, Johan is a great speaker and I managed to pick out some takeaways from his methodology that I will hopefully be able to integrate into my own way of presenting ideas.

Dialogkonferansen – the Staff & Organization

If you haven’t been to Dialogkonferansen yet, then you have really missed out. It is not only good, but it is spectacular. The staff is really professional, friendly and help you out in ways you really don’t expect them too. The venue is amazing and although the weather wasn’t the nicest, you really appreciate the sort of remote location and the focus that it brings.

I am truly thankful for the experience.

I think I’ll update with more images and text later, but I am too exhausted right now.

You might be one of those companies who have currently created your social media strategy. Somewhere in it, you should have some lines about how to leverage Facebook’s technology from two perspectives.

1. How can I work on the Facebook platform
2. How can I leverage the value of user data derived from Facebook

You must remember that Facebook is a technology and not a network in itself. Just like the fact that you aren’t guaranteed a lot of visitors, buyers or other success just because you choose EPiServer or WordPress as your CMS. You need to do good stuff in order to do well.

First something about transparency and content

In your strategy you will probably have some sentences about transparency and that social media is about sharing valuable content. This is good, but we have to elaborate on this a bit for it to make sense business wise. You shouldn’t be transparent about everything, and you shouldn’t create any kind of content, just because your users find it valuable.

What level of transparency do you need?

Let’s start with transparency. What users expect from you, especially if you are a product brand, is that you are transparent about your intentions. Your goals and ambitions with your social media investments shall be public and easily accessible by the users. Also, you should make sure that you are transparent on the full promise you can deliver on with your products. If you are using child labor or if you are engaged in some kind of tax fraud, this is not the time to let it out there. You should probably get it sorted and change your business ethics instead.

The transparency of intentions sets the users expectations at a reasonable level. They know why they connect with you and they know what kind of communication they can expect to get out of you. All you have to do after that is to stay true to your promise. In some companies this is difficult as the bosses tend to neglect reason when they see a nominal number. You should make sure they understand, and are in compliance with the promises you make, before you start being successful. Otherwise things will/might turn really ugly. When it comes down to it, you will take the blame, so make sure your boss is there to make the promises with you in the beginning.

Is remarkable content really necessary?

Secondly, we have the question of “remarkable content”. Your primary objective is to find a funnel that leads to a billing relationship with all your fans as soon as possible. This is important to remember. If you give away stuff for free, people will expect this in the future as well, and thus you will have little success in driving business if you don’t set the foundation for this right away.

On Facebook, you are not allowed to give offers in the news feed, so you need to find another way of utilizing your Facebook page in order to drive sales. One of the best ways is to create a weekly coupon. People love coupons. I don’t know why, but they simply do. I can tell you that you will have a million times more success putting a weekly coupon on a Facebook page tab than you will if you put an online offer with a direct link on the same tab. Make an image of a coupon, create a button that reads “Claim your weekly coupon”, and then watch it go.

Naturally, you connect your coupon with special permissions that post to wall and collect all the user data through an application. Just imagine the possibilities with a “Jesper just claimed his weekly coupon on xxx.com” (don’t go to that site by the way… it was just an example… bad one perhaps.. ). It would surely go viral.

What I mean with this is that your content surely has to be good. But good content doesn’t have to be a purple cow. It might as well be a good offer, or an offer placed in a setting that makes it relevant.

But let’s get back to the billing relationship.

So how about that billing relationship?

Every week I hear social media prophets talk about remarkable content as though it was the easiest thing in the world to create. Most of them are talking about creative content. Such that make people go wild. But think about it. How many times a week do you do something just because you think wow? How many times per month do you buy something because you think wow? How many times a week do you connect with a new person because you think wow?

Most of the times you don’t. Most of the times you do stuff that you normally do, buy stuff that you feel you need, and connect with people that you think might be able to benefit your social or work needs in some way. Of the three things stated above, I would say it is the connection phase that has the greatest need for a wow-factor. But it is not to say that you have to create that remarkable sensation of storytelling success every time you share some kind of content. Especially not if you have been transparent with your intentions from the beginning.

But let’s get down to the tactics.

Facebook page conversion funnel

When I think of launching a new Facebook page I think of three steps. I will only go through one tactic in each step of the process.

• Persuasion to join
• Persuasion to share
• Persuasion to buy

These steps can be taken on site or on Facebook. Why I split it into these three stages is because it gives me clarity when I work and helps the client understand at what stage they are in the process.

If you need some insights into persuasion it basically states that you set up a goal, then you think of three or more reasons as to why a person shall want to walk the line to your goal. Then you find three facts that support each reason. Almost like building an essay. Each paragraph has a statement and at least three facts to support the statement. Here is a pdf that gives you a good matrix for when you work with this.

Now, this is what social media allows. Especially when working in social network environments. It allows dialogue, and thus you can make a statement and then use the facts in the dialogue to support it. Don’t give it all away at once. By doing that you will induce more dialogue, debate and be able to tell who is ready to move onto the next step in your conversion funnel.

Persuasion to join

Let’s do this with an example. I create a Facebook page and my primary goal is to get fans. I decide that I should buy a social ad from Facebook in order to grow quickly.

What’s great with the social ad is that it includes the facts you need in order to convince people that your page is the right choice. First of all you have the headline where you can make the statement of your goal. Then you have the text where you can make the statement of reason. Then you have the “social circle” that gives the user the final persuasion to join in compliance with theories of conformity. If some of my friends have joined, then why am I not in it already?

Perhaps a simple tactic, and there are much more sophisticated ones such as building a challenge or charisma app, but I’ll save those examples for my book… hehe..

Persuasion to share

Secondly, you need to get them to share some information about themselves. You do this through an application where the user grants you special permissions to your Facebook data. Now, this is more tricky than it sounds as you have to provide them with quite a persuasive argument in order to make them join. Either you can do it like Amazon did it:

• Goal: Connect your Amazon account to Facebook
• Reason: Improve your amazon shopping experience
• Facts that support the reason: See what your friends buy, get suggestions related to your network, ie. more relevant shopping experience.

In their case they put some security stuff in there as well. That’s natural as they are the first to do this kind of advanced integration, but the sense of security can be accomplished with some symbols as well (such as https or verisign).

If you do not wish to do it like Amazon and utilize the user data on your website outside of Facebook then you should probably have a look at some of the more fun and creative applications. Here you can have a look at what Burger King did with the defriend campaign or perhaps what FarmVille is doing. Two really strong ways to get special permissions from people. I strongly recommend you have a look at what Amazon has done though as I believe it will be the future of online business. It is highly persuasive in the phase of creating buyers to actually have an integration set up on your website. Otherwise you might loose the social stimulus and guarantees for your shop visitor when they are IN your online store choosing between several goods.

Persuasion to buy

Last but not least you have the persuasion to buy. Now this is what people forget about social media. Building value and equity is only half way there. You need to get the billing relationship going as soon as you can. You need to start giving offers, news and such information related to your business goals – making more money – as soon as you connect with the person. I do not agree with people who say you cannot sell through social media. I’ve seen the contrary several times and so, I believe it is a matter of poor tactics rather than lack of possibilities.

Anyhow, once you have the user data, the rest is a matter of fishing. Put on a fat worm on the hook and kick back and relax. If you get one person to bite, you will get the rest to follow. I am going to introduce something called aggregated conversion rates in my book about viral marketing. This concept builds on that you only need a very low conversion rate in big networks such as e-mail or Facebook in order to get great results. A conversion rate of 1% in a network where people have an average of 100 people makes your viral campaign infinite. It will go from one person to the next, to the next and then to the next.

Anyhow. Again… Once you have the user data you can choose between running your buyers persuasion on Facebook or off Facebook. Either you do like Amazon and use gift/birthday notifications via e-mail, together with social circle persuasion once on the website.

• Goal: buy a book (or several)
• Reason: This book is probably something you like
• Fact: So many of your friends rated the book top notch!

Another way of building a persuasion to buy, getting back to the coupon, is to create a survey on your Facebook page where you poll what people want to buy from you, or what they are interested in knowing more about. Then you base your weekly coupon on the findings you get from the survey.

• Goal: Buy my stuff
• Reason: Because this specific thing is the hottest stuff right now
• Facts: Because 90% of the Facebook page fans says so

Conclusion & disclaimer

So these are some tactics on how to build a buying customer out of a Facebook user. Think of persuasion and what type of way you can persuade your fans into moving along the ladder towards becoming a returning customer. If you happen o be at Dialogkonferansen in Strömstad next week I will elaborate on this in my session. Getting nervous as I usually speak in front of specialists and not marketing directors.

Naturally there are a million ways to build your customer base through Facebook. The above statements should be seen as inspiration and are not guaranteed to work for each and every business. I take no responsibility for what you do with my advice and if you decide to invest in any of the above be sure to consult me or someone else first so that you don’t make a mess of things. Add me to Skype: jesperastrom or just give me a call if you need clarification.

Possibly related posts:

• Related posts on Earn money social media
• Daily Digest for November 13th
• Ways iGaming Affiliates Can Earn Money: Social Media

• Related posts on Facebook Pages
• Facebook Tabs: What They Are & How to Use Them
• [Video] Facebook Launches Location Service “Pages” With Style …

[This blog post is a rewrite of a Swedish post by Magnus Bråth who published his findings on the Swedish SEO blog sokmotorkonsult.se. If you want to do the same with any of my blog posts into your own language, please ask first.]

It is not usual that I do rewrites on this blog. However, since I get the question about static vs. dynamic URLs a lot, I thought this post might be interesting to rewrite for those of you who don’t speak Swedish. Magnus Bråth, a Swedish SEO, with many years experience of building competitive performances within various sick verticals, made this tiny little test to see whether or not there was any sense in the assumption that Google didn’t give any extra value to static or “user friendly urls”. Google say’s that they can read the dynamic ones equally well. As usual, a lot of people jumped to the conclusion that it was now as good to use dynamic urls. Some even said it would be better to use them. For some complex calendar or forum indexing this might actually hold. However, what Magnus found was that if you can keep the keywords in your URL, you are better off than if you don’t.

Magnus test virtually went down something like this:

1. He wrote a blog post that he wanted to make rank for the Swedish keyword “installera antivirus” which logically means “install antivirus”.
2. The URL contains the keyword “installera antivirus”
3. Nothing in the post else than this includes the first of the two words “installera” of the keyword
4. However, when you search for “installera antivirus” the post ends up as number 1

Perhaps Magnus only wants to show the strength of his blog but regardless of his reasons, this helps us draw the natural conclusion that it does effect indexing (at least, if not rankings as well) to use static and user friendly urls. If it wouldn’t then his post simply wouldn’t rank or be indexed due to the keyword being placed solely in the URL.

This also means that those of you talking about going to Google to know what the best advice on SEO is for the moment, just might consider thinking twice before talking to loudly. It just might be so that they “just don’t tell the truth” all the time.

A simple but effective test to display something that a lot of people are thinking. Thank you Magnus for spending some time for sharing this test.

There are quite a few of us that have received wicked posts from friends lately on Facebook. They have amazing titles such as “The worlds greatest…”, “99% of people cannot…”, “Get iPhone 4 for free…” etc. Naturally, some of us know that this is SPAM and don’t click the stories, accept the extended permissions and give the application access to all our user data.

Sadly, we all have our days and I made a blooper yesterday that could have been costly, hadn’t I realized my mistake quite soon. This is SPAM that might cost you a lot if you are not eager to protect yourself and your privacy. The spammers are out to get access to your data through the OpenGraph. They use the data to achieve several goals where the most prominent is to generate content on other websites as the private profile data and discussions are hidden for Google. Thus unique content.

The applications work like viruses. Once you are infected, you become the carrier and thus spam your friends walls with messages. As the messages come from our friends, we are kind of likely to click the story as we trust the carrier. Sort of like an STD.

I will not go into how they do it in this post as it might inspire others to do it as well. Considering most of the readers of this blog come from areas of the world, creatively seeking methods to bend the rules, I will keep that to myself for now. What I will post though is how you protect yourself if you feel like you might have accepted an application or you see that you have spammed your friends.

There is virtually no way of protecting yourself if you continue clicking links in Facebook. Until they come up with a durable solution though (as I am sure they are looking for a solution as this might be the REAL killer app otherwise) – this is what you should have a look at to protect yourself:

1. Go to application settings

2. Go through the list of applications that have access to your personal profile

Be sure to look at both tabs on the dialogue box that appears.

3. Remove the applications that you don’t use or don’t recognize completely.

4. Do this process at least once per week, at best, once a day

I think that’s it for now. I’ll get back to you later with more updates if this continues. It has been there for a while now, but it is accelerating as we speak so I just wanted to make you aware of it.

Cheers,

Jesper

Facebook just released news about Facebook Answers. They say that:

Today we’re introducing Facebook Questions, a beta product that lets you pose questions like these to the Facebook community. With this new application, you can get a broader set of answers and learn valuable information from people knowledgeable on a range of topics.

I suppose the publishing and speed up process of this beta product is a result of the news being released today that Google is partnering up with Zynga and other Games producers to develop games for some new platform that Google will launch in a while. I would love to work at one of those companies right now. When WAR is on and competition is fierce I excel like a… I just love the sensation of competing.

Facebook Questions will be available from your normal status bar:

The whole point is that you can ask any question you like and get real time answers from all your friends, but also from their friends. Thus you will reach outside your normal sphere of contacts which are your closest 250 people. I am sure we will se some creative spamming done in this area. hehe..

You will be able to add polls or images to your questions. You will be able to tag it with a specific topic so that people with that interest will be able to see it in a more promoted space. I am sure Facebook will develop experts functionality here as well so that people can develop status within certain fields of expertise.

They will also develop a kind of directory of questions and answers and you’ll be able to follow a flow of questions and answers.

Anyhow. More about Facebook Questions can be read here.

A lot of us have been talking about it. Very few clients have dared to implement it. Perhaps not that surprisingly, Amazon launched their facebook connect integration yesterday. It is perhaps the best eCommerce integration I have seen and it is based upon Amazons normal way of presenting offers, but with a twist.

You do not only get the recommendations based upon what you have bought. You get recommendations based on what others in your network have bought. This is perhaps an even stronger sales argument. Previously the recommendation was “People who have bought this book, also bought”. Now they can use the recommendation “Person x an y in your network bought this book as well when buying that book.” They have also included a gift recommendation area which is so good that it almost makes me cry out of joy.

Amazon Facebook Connect Integration – how it works

A user is promted to log in.

On the right side there is the option to connect to your network on Facebook.

Then you go through the sign on process to connect your two accounts. If you want to do this on your own website it is important that you pay notice to the copy here. They are answering the most common worries amongst Facebook users and privacy advocates. It is extremely important to put another step into the connection process just as they’ve done here. They both answer the Why should I? and the Do I dare? questions.

Now the juicy stuff can start to happen. As you log in you get your friends in a list. You get the ones with a birthday on top and you get a couple of other suggestions beneath. Click the image below to enlarge it.

• Popular Among Your Facebook Friends
• Birthday and Gift Suggestions for Your Facebook Friends
• Recommendations Based on Your Favorite Music on Facebook
• Recommendations Based on Your Favorite Movies on Facebook

This is really how eCommerce and personalization should work with regard to social networks. Imagine the implications on your margins this could have if you use the OpenGraph API to suggest packages of products based on networks to your site visitors.

• Imagine if they have added that they like a specific artist, and you can offer them the same deal as that artist likes.
• Perhaps 5 people in a specific persons network have bought one specific camera? Then perhaps that’s a good thing to tell the visitor about.
• If a person has bought product A but all their friends bought product B as well, then an integration as the above could help out with suggesting this to the person
• If someone has a birthday and they have bought stuff from your store to other friends, you should be able to remind those receivers that they can return the favor once it is the first persons time to have a birthday

The extensions of eCommerce in a social environment are limitless. You will earn loads of money and since you don’t have to maintain the database/CRM yourself, as it is hosted, managed and updated by the users themselves, you don’t have to worry about your investment growing old either. Data has gone from being an asset into being a common good. It is what we do with the data that creates value or doesn’t create value.

This is the second post in the summer school edition. For most people, search is synonymous with Google, Yahoo or Bing. In fact, this is what most SEOs are talking about when creating strategies for search. How to rank in search engines which sole purpose is to display search results.

However, searches are being conducted all the time. The difference between standard engine search and social search is that social search is created through spontaneous interaction rather than contextual belonging. Think of it this way. Any update we post on facebook, twitter, wordpress etc. could be seen as a search query. We are posting our thoughts, our questions or some other resource that we want to share with the rest of the world. We search for content consumers with our content sharing. At best, we anticipate that this post will induce some sort of reaction. This reaction is generally spontaneous and based on what we manage to trigger in the people who see our post.

So. If we consider all posts, updates and entries of media into the web as a search query. What used to be static content, becomes dynamic and social objects of data that are searching for context and people to like them. As the social web allows for human interaction, this is the most logic elaboration of the content, links and people components that the web consist of.

Facebook Search

This post however, will be about something more down to earth than the philosophical question of what the web is about. This post will be about how to rank in Facebook Search.

There are basically two ways in which you can rank in Facebook search.

• With a Facebook Page
• With a standard HTML page on your website

Ranking with groups, applications etc. follow the same theoretical ground so you should be able to use this knowledge if you’re running those kind of campaigns as well.

Ranking with a website, page or group in Facebook Search

When Google started out ranking pages they constructed a metric called PageRank. This PageRank was dependent upon how many people had referenced a specific page and what words they were using on the linking page. Thus, it was no longer as important to cram your website with a specific keyword, but it became more important that other people used that important keyword on the page that they were linking from. Even better, if they used that keyword to link to you.

In the world of Facebook, they are also using a sort of validated PageRank to index their pages. We generally call these links “fans”. Facebook has changed the button name from Become Fan to Like or Recommend. The fact however remains that Facebook has created their own type of PageRank where they index and rank different online resources – personal profiles, facebook pages, groups and applications – based on how many fans they have that are related to you.

The last part of the above stated is probably the most important. It is not the nominal number of fans on a page or in a group that makes your page rank. It is the social closeness of the page to the searcher that makes it rank. It is important to understand this concept, especially when optimizing your ad campaigns for Facebook pages. You cannot just create a facebook campaign based on keywords, but you have to move your campaign between different demographics, acquire some members until you start ranking in that demographic, then move on to another one. The more successful you are in analyzing how many fans you need in a certain group of people in order to rank as number one, the more successful your growth will be in Facebook Search.

This means you shouldn’t spend all your money becoming number one. But you should spend your money on acquiring the right people to put you as number one, making you show up to all their friends and friends of friends when they search on related topics to you.

Thus, ranking anything available on Facebook is a question of acquiring the right kind of fans. In order to rank your webpages as groups, pages and community pages on Facebook you need to make them into social objects. These social objects shall be given the OpenGraph properties so that Facebook can add them in the right way.

Adding your website to the Open Graph – create social objects

Below is a video on how to add your web pages to the Social Graph by including the OpenGraph protocol on your pages. This will take you approximately 30 minutes to do if you know what your website is about. If some of you don’t, call me!! hehe…

This is the code that you should be adding. You can look at the source code of my website. I have written a stand alone post on how to add the “Like” button which you can find by clicking Like Button for Facebook. You can find the rest of the OpenGraph protocol source code here.

<html xmlns:og="http://opengraphprotocol.org/schema/"
      xmlns:fb="http://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml">
  <head>
    <title>The Rock (1996)</title>
    <meta property="og:title" content="The Rock"/>
    <meta property="og:type" content="movie"/>
    <meta property="og:url" content="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117500/"/>
    <meta property="og:image" content="http://ia.media-imdb.com/rock.jpg"/>
    ...
  </head>
  ...
</html>

The most important fact you need to pay notice to is that this does not make your pages rank. The liking does. Not the inclusion. I have no idea on when Facebook will actually start ranking more pages, but here is a ranking example of how TripAdvisor have managed to start ranking in Facebook search.

1. Search for TripAdvisor
2. On top should be the TripAdvisor page
3. Click “Pages” in the left hand menu
4. Your search result will look different from mine but somewhere you will find a snippet that looks like the one below with a web address in it

In this search result it is the second snippet.

1. Click the link
2. Watch how Facebook redirects you to a “normal” web page and not a standard Facebook Page

These types of rankings can be obtained by integrating your web platform with the Facebook OpenGraph protocol and adding a like button to your website.

Link Values from Facebook

What the Facebook OpenGraph integration also give you is a load of links to your website from Facebook profiles. That is if you are successful in getting people to like your content.

As most of the info pages are public on Facebook and as they are being crawled by Google, this must help you a lot with your standard SEO work. Remember that you can probably build a great microsite network by integrating all your micro websites in the OpenGraph protocol. Just a thought … hehe…

SEO tactic for Facebook

So, as your strategy shall basically come down to “creating compelling/extraordinary content” you should really focus on the tactics. The tactics are the difficult and fun part of working in Social media. The strategy is the dull and boring part of the work. As I said, all it comes down to is virtually – hire great people, who are social and can create great content, be transparent in your intentions and always treat others like you want to be treated. If you do not know, ask the community to help out.

I guess that’s what my next post shall be about.

//Jesper

As you have seen my summer school plans haven’t really added up to what neither one of us expected. It is not that I haven’t got any posts to write or publish. It is just that I haven’t had the motivation to do the last bits and pieces and secondly because my blog got hacked.

This post will help you get rid of the adsttnmq1 hack.

The adsttnmq1 hack attacks you from the hosting end. It is thus not an update error in your WordPress version or such. This attacks you when you are on shared hostings or hostings with low protection.

The adsttnmq1 hack puts two or more directories into your root directory. These contain the code that will be placed into your index.php file or equivalent. What you have to do is to first remove these directories and then turn to your index-file to remove the code generated there. This code is not visible until you remove the directories.

Just watch the video explaining it below. But first some general thoughts on link hackers.