Cómo conseguir miles de fans en tu página de Facebook a un coste muy bajo

Esta es uno de los misterios mejor guardados por ciertas páginas en las que ves crecer su número de fans de una forma increible, pero realmente no hay ningún misterio, sino simplemente técnicas y estrategias bien aplicadas que hacen que vayas incrementando progresivamente el número de seguidores de tu página de fans con unos costes muy reducidos. ¿Quieres conocer cómo hacerlo?
Para conseguir incrementar de manera notable nuestro número de seguidores vamos a recurrir a poner en marcha una campaña de Facebook Ads, esos anuncios de pago por click que aparecen a la derecha de la pantalla.

Creación de una Landing Page adaptada al objetivo

El primer y más fundamental paso es crear una landing page adaptada al tipo de acción que pretendes realizar, y con ello quiero remarcar que NUNCA debemos enviar a la gente que no es fan al muro sino directamente a nuestra landing page adaptada para la acción que vamos a realizar.
Ten en cuenta que uno de los factores que definirán el éxito o fracaso de tu campaña en Facebook será la landing page que hagas, y por lo tanto será la responsable directa de que la inversión económica realizada tenga un ROI positivo o negativo.
Para conseguir que una landing page sea efectiva debe ofrecer a los potenciales fans un incentivo para hacer click en “Me gusta”, ya sea entrar en un sorteo, un cupón descuento… o cualquier otra cosa que realmente les pueda interesar.
Y como siempre medir la eficacia de las acciones, para lo que podemos usar los embudos de conversion de Google Analytics, que nos dirán el % de usuarios que se convierten en Fans en relación con los que han entrado a la página.

Optimizar las campañas de Facebook Ads

¿Cómo pagar menos por cada click en los anuncios de Facebook? El coste de cada click depende de la calidad de los resultados, y es que a mayor calidad, menores precios, por lo que obtendremos más clicks con el mismo presupuesto y con ello seguimos bajando nuestro coste por click.
Para conseguir optimizar al máximo nuestra campaña, podemos basar la estrategia en la llamada “Prueba A/B”, es decir, crear dos anuncios con alguna variación entre ellos, ya sea en el texto o imagen, dejarlos funcionando unos días y pasado este tiempo el que peores resultados tenga lo sustituimos por otro nuevo con otra diferencia y volvemos a hacer lo mismo.
De esta manera conseguimos con el tiempo ir optimizando nuestra campaña en Facebook Ads y con ello bajando los costes.
Como referencia, piensa que la diferencia de costes entre un CTR (ratio de clicks por impresiones)  de 0,8% y 0,9% puede ser de más de un 25%, por lo que está claro que la optimización es imprescindible en cualquier acción.

Resultados reales de una campaña en Facebook Ads

En las siguientes imágenes quiero que te fijes en los resultados obtenidos en una campaña en Facebook Ads, donde aproximadamente con una inversión de unos 265€ (se ha realizado una conversión aproximada de libra a euro) han conseguido 3.000 fans, lo que se traduce en un coste de conversión en fan de sólo 0,08 €.





A la vista de los resultados, ¿te parece rentable una campaña de Facebook Ads? ¿Has tenido alguna experiencia al respecto?
Vía e imagenes: allfacebook.com
Fuente: http://www.juanmerodio.com/2010/como-conseguir-miles-de-fans-en-tu-pagina-de-facebook-a-un-coste-muy-bajo/
Editor: Alex Rojas who writes articles related with technology, social media and marketing. Sponsored by Costa Rica Hotels, Motor de reservas en linea and Travel to Costa Rica 

Los secretos para tener éxito en una campaña de Facebook Ads

Los anuncios patrocinados de Facebook o Facebook Ads, son esos anuncios que aparecen a la derecha de nuestra página de Facebook y que invitan a seguir a otras páginas.

Los anuncios de Facebook están basados en un modelo de Coste por Click  (CPC) o Coste por Mil Impresiones (CPM), y a mi personalmente me ha dado mejor resultado el CPC en el que sólo pagas por cada click que recibes.
Un reciente estudio realizado sobre Facebook Ads, ha dejado al descubierto los patrones de funcionamiento de su algoritmo con lo que vamos a poder utilizarlo para conseguir campañas más efectivas y exitosas.
En este estudio se han planteado ciertas preguntas a las que han dado respuesta, que serán las claves para conocer el algoritmo de Facebook Ads. Vamos a responderlas una por una:

¿Es el CPC inversamente proporcional al CTR?

La respuesta es que si, al igual que en Google Adwords, es decir, que cuanto mayor sea nuestro CTR (ratio de clicks por impresiones) más bajo será el coste de nuestro click.
Como podeis ver en el siguiente gráfico para conseguir un CPC en torno a 0,10€ necesitamos conseguir CTR´s superiores al 0,10%.

Por ejemplo, si comenzamos una campaña en la que estamos pagando el click a 0,70€, por cada incremento del 0,10% en el CTR, nos supondrá un descenso del CPC de 0,21€.

¿Cuál es la relación entre el Ratio de Acción y el CTR?

Llamamos ratio de acción al % de usuarios que ven un anuncio y posteriormente hacen click en Me gusta, y según este estudio se ha podido ver una relación directa con el CTR.
El CTR será superior al Ratio de Acción porque los clicks incluyen las acciones y las acciones serán alrededor del 50-70% de los clicks, aunque este dato dependerá de cómo estén hechos los anuncios.

Como recomendación prueba a crear dos versiones de anuncios y monitorizar cuál obtiene mejores resultados.

¿Qué relación hay entre las impresiones sociales y las impresiones totales?

Las impresiones sociales es aquel porcentaje de impresiones en las que ya se han visto también que algún amigo sigue a la página, y su valor no supera el 30% de las impresiones totales, y entre ambas existe relación.

¿Un incremento de las Impresiones Sociales supone un descenso del Coste por Conversión?¿Significa esto un aumento del Ratio de Acción?

Como demuestra el estudio esto no es así por lo que no debemos optimizar los anuncios para impresiones sociales, y tampoco aumenta el ratio de acción.



Todos estos resultados extraidos del estudio, analizados para nuestras campañas nos ayudarán a optimizarlas mejor y conseguir unos costes más bajos con mejores resultados.
Vía: allfacebook.com
Fuente: http://www.juanmerodio.com/tag/facebook-ads/
Editor: Alex Rojas who writes articles related with technology, social media and marketing. Sponsored by Costa Rica Hotels, Motor de reservas en linea and Travel to Costa Rica 

5 consejos y trucos para crear mensajes de 140 caracteres en Twitter

En el año 2009 hice un post en Esquizopedia con algunos consejos básicos para comenzar a escribir actualizaciones en Twitter usando los 140 caracteres de forma más eficiente. Dos años después y con la proliferación de personas que quieren saltarse la limitación principal de Twitter, es hora de retomar el tema y plantearlo nuevamente. El uso exagerado de Twitlonger y Deck.ly por algunas personas y medios de comunicación, tiene muy poco sentido y se puede evitar siguiendo 5 pequeñas y sencillas recomendaciones. Hay forma de saltarse esta limitación al igual que puedes saltarte un limite de velocidad, pero a diferencia de los controles en las autopistas, aquí no llegaras más rápido a ningún lugar. La mayoría de los usuarios detestan estos servicios “alargadores” de tweets.
Si lo que tienes que decir ocupa más 140 caracteres, no lo digas en Twitter. Abre un blog, ve a Facebook, hablalo en persona. Si aun así, crees que tu mensaje es indispensable para la humanidad usa Twitlonger o Deckly, pocas veces en un mes. Un limite sensato puede ser de 5 tweets al mes. Pero aún así lo mejor es que puedas aprender a resumir, a usar la síntesis, volver a lo básico. Expresar tus ideas en 140 caracteres es un reto muy divertido, pero no lo es todo. Si te gusta escribir y tus ideas son complejas, a mucha gente le encantará leerte en WordPress con tu nuevo blog, es hora de intentarlo. Y mientras estás en Twitter, puedes seguir estos consejos y escribir en 140 caracteres o menos.

1. Usa un acortador de URLs para compartir un enlace. Es una de las mejores formas de ahorrar espacio en un tweet. Todo enlace que compartes en Twitter debería pasar previamente por un acortador de direcciones, en teoría el mismo Twitter podría hacerlo, pero al final nunca se encuentra completamente integrado con la herramienta, no se cuál es la razón. Los mejores son Bit.ly, Ow.ly, Goo.gl y Cli.gs. Para más información visita URL shortening en la Wikipedia
2. Usa sinónimos y abreviaciones. Hay muchas oportunidades en las cuales puedes cambiar una simple palabra por un sinónimo que ocupa menos caracteres. Por ejemplo, la palabra “productividad” en algunos casos se puede cambiar por “rendimiento”, de 13 caracteres pasaste a 11. Al usar abreviaciones el ahorro en caracteres es aún mayor. Un ejemplo puede ser usar EE.UU o USA en lugar de Estados Unidos. Es importante que uses el sentido común y no hagas tweets llenos de palabras cortadas o con el nefasto lenguaje SMS. Puedes usar 1 x uno, 2 x dos, x por por, = por igual, + x más, etc por etcetera.
3. Se simple. En un tweet trata siempre de reflejar una sola idea. Se directo, sin rodeos y no adornes demasiado las cosas. No hace falta (aunque a veces ayuda) que al responder algo incluyas la pregunta original en el tweet, normalmente aparece en la barra derecha, o en un enlace que dice “en respuesta a”. No hay que complicar las cosas, no estas escribiendo un email. No tienes que saludar, despedirte, ni pedir permiso. ¡Ve al grano!
4. Lee nuevamente el mensaje y revisa que palabras puedes quitar. Cuando escribas un tweet no te preocupes por el limite de caracteres hasta que termines de escribir. Si te pasaste de los 140, lee nuevamente todo, trata de quitar palabras o frases que sean innecesarias. Esto funciona en un porcentaje alto de veces. En casos extremos puedes querer dividir el tweet en dos partes. Si las dos ideas no están conectadas, espera unos minutos para enviar el otro tweet. Por otro lado, si no te gastas los 140 caracteres, no hay ninguna razón para resumir nada.
5. Comienza nuevamente. Si no hay forma de resumir un tweet, borra todo y comienza nuevamente tratando de usar otras palabras y una redacción distinta. Es bastante extremo hacer esto, pero funciona muy bien. A veces nos empeñamos en algo y no vemos con claridad como simplificar las cosas. Si en el segundo intento no puedes lograrlo es mejor que intentes con un blog.

Espero que estas recomendaciones te sean de utilidad, si tienes alguna idea para ampliar la lista puedes dejarlo en los comentarios: ¿cómo haces para resumir tus ideas y mensajes en 140 caracteres?. Mi usuario en Twitter es @inti y el del blog es @ALT1040, puedes seguirnos si quieres, por allí también puedes compartir con nosotros alguna sugerencia relacionada.
Fuente: http://alt1040.com/2011/04/5-consejos-y-trucos-para-crear-mensajes-de-140-caracteres-en-twitter?utm_source=destacadas&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=destacadas-v5

6 ways to optimize your business with Foursquare

What is the hottest mobile trend for 2011? The answer seems obvious. It’s Foursquare, the Twitter of 2011, the leading location-based social network which, with a game aspect, encourages people to explore their neighborhoods via their smartphones, share their visits with local attractions, events and businesses and gives them rewards when they do so.

Further than that, Foursquare, which in April 2010 reached a million users in just over a year of existence, is driving new online strategies for businesses. It offers them multiple ways to attract customers and gain qualitative and quantitative feedback on their establishment. If you own a “physical” retail business such as a shop, a restaurant, a bar, a hotel, etc,. find 6 ways to use Foursquare in order to boost your sales and increase your customers’ loyalty:
1. Are you listed?

First thing to do is visit Foursquare website and search for your business to see if it is already listed. If yes, make sure the information presented is correct and complete. You will need to create a personal account in order to correct your information or add your business.
2. Offer “Specials”!

Businesses can offer discounts or special offers to reward people who “check-in” their establishment and develop stronger relationships with their customers. There are many ways to treat your customers with Specials: Some of them are the “check-in specials” that help you reward the customers that reach a specific number of visits or the “frequency-based specials”.
3. Give tips!

You can give your customers tips in order to enhance their experience within your business. If you own a restaurant, you can leave tips about the day specials, the best time to come for a drink, the things to do in your establishment, etc. It is definitely a fun and creative way to attract customers!
4. Learn about your business

FourSquare offers business analytics that makes it possible for business owners to see how customers interact within their businesses. Additionally it helps them improve their services, since they can read the reviews about what customers like, what tips and comments they leave, understand their needs etc.
5. Reward Mayors!

The person who “checks_in” the more frequently in your business in a period of two months, reaches the “Mayor” status. Offer the Mayor something really special to reward him for his loyalty, like “free drinks” or give him the power to be a creative part of your team by choosing the music you will play or a theme for a special night, etc. Not only you will make your Mayor happier, but also you will increase the competition amongst your customers in order to de-throne the current mayor and take his/her place!
6. Interact with your customers

Foursquare gives you the opportunity to get closer than ever with your customers, since, not only you will discover your best customer by checking his Mayor status, but through the game, you will interact with all your customers and acquire a friendly reputation.

Most of all, always keep in mind that Foursquare is a game which gives businesses the chance to be creative and build relationships with the customers. If you adopt the Foursquare philosophy, your customers will inevitably talk about your business and reward you back for your services.
Fuente: http://www.webseoanalytics.com/blog/6-ways-to-optimize-your-business-with-foursquare/

Is Your Web Site SEO and Social Media Friendly?

Numerous companies are losing vast amounts of revenue due to their web sites doing poorly in the search engines. Web sites that are not easy to find via search miss out on attracting new customers as well as repeat customers that use Google to navigate sites they already know about. Is the same true for web sites that are not social media friendly?

People discover new sites through search, but also through recommendations made via email, word of mouth and through social media content. Making a web site social media friendly will facilitate the saving and sharing of content with others, extending reach and facilitating engagement.

Consumers find new content via social networking sites ranging from links on Twitter to Facebook to their favorite blogs. Content creation and links that occur as an outcome of social media participation can provide positive signals to search engines and affect search visibility. Making a site more social media friendly will expand the opportunity for content to be discovered directly and indirectly.

Search is the most efficient and effective way for consumers to discover content. Companies that want to take advantage now of where trends in information publishing, discovery and marketing would do well to ensure their content strategy factors in the value of search as well as social media.

Core concepts to understand search engine friendly web sites includes:

* Crawlable content
* Site organization
* Internal links
* Keyword usage – content optimization
* Code/HTML optimization
* Inbound links from external web sites

The notion of “search engine friendly” basically means making a web site easy for search engines to find, make a copy of, understand and rank in search results. Search engines are by no means perfect, not even Google. Making web sites more search engine friendly means making up for shortcomings in the search engines’ ability to crawl, index and sort web content.

This is why SEO is an important asset to the performance of natural seasrch results. All major search engines invest in continued improvements in order to achieve a better search experience for users. Some of the things that SEOs have traditionally done for web site publishers are now handled automatically by search engines such as many of the features included in Google’s Webmaster tools.

Improving a web site’s availability to search engines as well as keyword usage and links (internal/external) helps the search engine provide better search results to consumers. It’ also helps companies marketing their products and services to attract more qualified buyers. Not only can web site traffic increase, but the right kind of visitors will self segment themselves by the keywords they use to search.

Many companies have the search issue handled or at least they’re on their way. A recent study by eMarketer shows B2B companies rate Search Marketing as one of their top marketing investments for 2009. A poll run on Online Marketing Blog with well over 500 responses also ranked SEO as a top digital marketing tactic for 2009.

Standard search is evolving but it’s not enough to remain competitive to focus on standard Search Engine Optimization tactics. The social web is the web of the near future and real time search results through services like search.twitter.com or even the new sort by recency option within Google are giving consumers more control over the freshness of the information available to them.

The increasing demand for fresh, live web content as well as the expectation of consumers to interact with what they find in the search results demands that web site owners and content publishers make their web sites both search and social media friendly.

Here are a few ways web sites can make themselves more “Social Media Friendly”:

* Fresh content – To play the search and social media game, a web site must be in the content publishing business. Search engines and participants of the social web respond favorably to the signals created from frequent updates. Participation in off site social channels can be brought into the corporate web site through RSS or widgets providing web site visitors access to additional forms of information and interaction with the company.

* Social content – Not all of a company’s social web participation needs to happen offsite with third party tools. The addition of a blog, reviews, forum or even a social network to the company web site can provide intersted consumers opportunities to interact with other brand fans as well as the company.

* Easy to share – Besides the ability to contribute to conversations happening on a corporate web site, there’s a tremendous opportunity and benefit to making it easy for site visitors to share that content with others. Many sites offer “share this” options that make it easy for readers to submit the page being viewed to popular social bookmarking and social news web sites such as Digg, Delicious and StumbleUpon. Sharing options for Facebook, Twitter and email are also popular.Making it easy for web site visitors to share interesting content (web pages, video, images) facilitates the word of mouth recommendations people make in real life, except when done online, they become searchable assets.

The advantages of incorporating social features include improved online word of mouth, stimulating conversations with prospective customers and advocates and expanded market reach. The question is, are web marketing teams incorporating a social media strategy with their overall search marketing and vice versa?

Are you making your web site search engine friendly for the social web?

You can find 5 ways to make your web site search engine and social media friendly in this companion blog post at Mashable.
Fuente: http://www.toprankblog.com/2009/06/is-your-web-site-seo-and-social-media-friendly/

Future Trends for Marketers in Search & Social Media

The intersection of SEO and social media marketing continues to gain traction amongst online marketers everywhere you look in the industry. As an example, the enthusiastic interest in our recent compendium of blog posts, Essentials of Integrating SEO & Social Media. I think most experienced marketers “get” that SEO and Social Media functions are less effective as distinct channels within a marketing program and work better as a coordinated effort.

Integration of Social and SEO makes sense for a variety of reasons when considering evolving consumer information discovery behaviors. Even so, I think a lot of companies are looking for direction and what’s next. This week Brandon Prebynski and I chatted on his Webtrends.TV show about the mix of search and social media and one area we discussed that I think is worth sharing here is about future direction.

There are two areas of focus (out of many) I think are worth considering with future of search and social media for marketers. First, is the technology that powers the search and social media experience for consumers. The second is the logistics of implementing integrated search and social media campaigns within a company.

On the technology side, you have search becoming increasingly influenced by social signals. For example, Google and Bing are getting feed data from Twitter and Facebook. If you’re logged in to Google, your search results can be annotated by things your friends have shared on Quora or Flickr. Erik Sherma recently covered the award to Facebook of a patent for curated search that combines any type of search engine results with the popularity of each result among members of a user’s social network which shows another direction social sites are taking to make search more social.

True social search is something the engines have been trying at for a long time, but now the momentum Facebook has with 600 million users gives them a lot of data and an audience with which to experiment. From a technology standpoint I think we’ll see an increasing level of influence and integration of social based signals on traditional search activity. The race for true social search is between search engines like Google adding social signals and features vs. social giants like Facebook adding more significant search functionality to their platforms. Who will win is up to consumers.

Logistically within companies we’ll see less silos between search marketing and social media functions. While it’s been up for debate a while, many companies’ social media is managed by Public Relations and SEO is managed by Marketing.

There’s an growing convergence of responsibilities between PR and Marketing. The value of relationships and influence are increasingly appreciated by online marketers. Alternatively, PR and communications professionals are beginning to value search based discovery as they look for ways to communicate more value for their efforts.

PR departments are already creating content, why not make it easy for their target audience (journalists, analysts, bloggers and direct consumers) to find via search? Google sites alone handle 88 billion queries per month – that’s an overwhelming quantity of behavior and too significant to ignore.

As part of the effort to improve the connection between searchers and content, people in the social media content creation business would do well to consider things like a keyword glossary when creating their content marketing strategy and editorial plans.

Search marketers have traditionally used social media as distribution channels for promoting content to drive a flood of traffic. Many of those SEOs are beginning to appreciate the equity in relationships (community) that they can build through social channels so they don’t have to work so hard creating new connections every time they have a new link bait campaign.

Mastering the convergence of SEO and Social Media with Content Marketing starts with an appreciation of how consumers prefer to discover, consume and share information online.

Google’s Panda update is yet another reminder to focus on content that engages. Marketers that make great content easy to find via social channels and links will be rewarded with even more relevant traffic through search engines like Google and Bing.

What can companies do to become more effective search and social media marketers? The simple answer is to develop an approach to online marketing that focuses on customer centric content that’s keyword and social media optimized. Follow how content is consumed and shared – make it easy to do those things while monitoring and engaging to develop networks and relationships. Continue to keep business outcomes in mind and be thoughtful about how success will be measured short and long term.

As many companies deal with figuring out how search and social media will work together, I am curious what your experiences have been?

* How important is the integration of search and social in your company’s current marketing mix?
* Are you incorporating SEO and social media efforts more or less since last year?
* What positive outcomes have you seen as a result of incorporating SEO & Social Media Marketing?
Fuente: http://www.toprankblog.com/2011/03/future-trends-search-social-media-marketing/

22 Social Media Marketing Management Tools

With every online marketing channel and discipline, there must be tools to make the task of marketing more efficient and effective. Social Media Marketing is no different. Over the past 6-9 months, I’ve been researching and reviewing a variety of social media management tools that help with everything from source network connections to campaign & social content management to monitoring & measurement. While there numerous tools that manage single platforms (like Twitter) this list includes services that manage multiple social network accounts, content and measurement.

At some point we’ll do more with individual reviews, but in the meantime, here is a list of 22 different social media marketing management tools, platforms and services to help manage and scale your online marketing efforts on the social web:

shoutlet
Shoutlet – Manages social media marketing communications with one platform for building, engaging and measuring social media. Includes multiple account and platform support, social CRM and ecommerce for Facebook, email marketing and mobile features.

direct message labs
Direct Message Lab – Provides consulting, implementation and a platform (REACH) for centralized management of social media promotions & contests, advertising and measurement.

objective marketer
Objective Marketer - Offers social media marketing and analytics with integrated campaign management (Twitter, Blogs, Facebook, YouTube), multi-channel execution, engagement reports and user management.

wildfire
Wildfire Interactive - Platform for easy creation, implementation and management of branded interactive campaigns including: sweepstakes, contests and give-aways.

strongmail social media
StrongMail Social Studio – Comprehensive social media marketing platform with a referral marketing platform, social sharing tool and campaign management application. (Disclosure: StrongMail is a TopRank client)

Sprout social media
Sprout - Cloud-based visual authoring software used to build interactive Engage Ads and Engage Apps that deliver rich, interactive, and social content across the web and mobile devices.

spredfast
Spredfast - Enterprise social media management system that allows an organization to manage, monitor, and measure its voices across multiple social media channels. Also offers a white label option for agencies.

socialtalk
socialTALK – allows brands to create (text, photos, videos), manage (customize workflow & approval process), publish (single source, scheduled publishing to multiple platforms) and measure (aggregated analytics dashboard) their content strategy and posting schedule.

crowdfactory
Crowd Factory – Suite of social media marketing tools include Social Campaign, that enables marketers to acquire new customers through simple social gestures and custom social marketing campaigns while easily tracking ROI.

awareness
Awareness - Social marketing hub that centralizes social media content publishing, management, measurement and engagement. Also includes access to 7 white-labeled, best practice social networking applications.

this moment
@this moment – Built on the @this moment platform, DEC is a system for managing a brand’s presence across multiple online environments combining multimedia UGC, and a variety of real-time inputs which are distributed across social platforms including YouTube Brand Channels, Facebook Fan Pages, MySpace Brand Communities & the iPhone.

mediafunnel
MediaFunnel – Offers a Business Social Media platform for Facebook and Twitter supporting multiple users per profile and editorial review. Includes monitoring and integrates with Salesforce.com.

virtue
Virtue – Works with clients and agencies through a Social Relationship Management (SEM) platform offering Facebook tabs & applications, a publishing feature for Facebook & Twitter and mobile solutions.

sprinklr
Sprinklr – Social media marketing platform and consulting services for consumer & B2B marketers as well as agencies. Provides social media audience research, acquisition, content promotion and measurement tools.

janrain
Janrain – Web based platform of tools including: Engage to make it easy for users to connect a site with their social networks, Federate to facilitate navigation across multiple web properties & partner sites with a single log-in (currently supports 16 networks), Capture to leverage user data for personalized experiences.

sprout social
Sprout Social – Affordable social media dashboard, monitoring, team workflow, influencer and contact management, performance metrics and daily or weekly email summaries. Supports Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Yelp and Foursquare.

sendible
Sendible – Social media marketing platform that supports 30+ networks & services offering management of: accounts/profiles, messages & content, social contacts, content discovery, engagement, blog content & promotion, monitoring and analytics. Also offers a white label version for agencies.

kickapps
KickApps – Self service social media web site authoring and social content management system system supporting video, social networking, social graph & activity streams, apps & analytics. Enables web publishers and marketers to develop branded communities, social applications and interactive widgets on their websites and across the social web. Solutions for small and large business.

postling
Postling – Local business social media marketing platform to create content, stay organized and reach customers. Currently free for small business or personal use.

pop.to
pop.to Social Marketing – A social marketing suite, including feed-enabled social gestures and widgets, social dashboard, segmentation tools, influencer identification, conversion tracking and built-in friend casting.

hootsuite
HootSuite - Social media dashboard for managing social content and engagement on multiple networks with team workflow and statistics.

seesmic
Seesmic – Web and desktop tools to manage social marketing activity on Twitter, Facebook, FourSquare, Google Buzz and Linkedin plus a plug-in marketplace for more social management options.

This list of social media marketing platforms & services “ad hoc” was compiled by bookmarking various services as they were discovered or pitched to us (we don’t reply to pitches). Here’s another useful list of SMMS was compiled in March 2010 by Jeremiah Owyang.

What social media marketing dashboards, software and management tools from the list above have you tested or use? Reviews, observations, insights and questions are greatly appreciated!

Obviously, tools are only as good as the expertise of the people using them, so TopRank Marketing is always interested in helping companies develop their social media roadmap and recommend the right supporting software for implementation.
Fuente: http://www.toprankblog.com/2010/09/22-social-media-marketing-management-tools/

Study shows promotion effect of online travel sites.

A new study confirms the existence of the so-called 'billboard effect' for hotels that are listed on third-party websites operated by online travel agents (OTAs).

The study used publicly available data from comScore on brands operated by InterContinental Hotels Group to assess the impact of listing at OTAs upon bookings on the "hotelbrand.com" site.

Anderson, an assistant professor at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration, replicated and expanded an earlier study, which found that a hotel's listing on Expedia increased total reservation volume—not including reservations processed through Expedia itself. This larger study looks at 1,720 transactions for InterContinental Hotels brands during the summer months of three years (2008, 2009, and 2010).

"It's clear that there is increased reservation volume on the 'brand.com' site as a result of having the hotel appear on the online travel agent site," said Anderson, "and it appears that the commissions paid to online travel agents actually should be considered a marketing expense."

Anderson also tracked the surfing behavior of would-be hotel guests. He found that almost 75 percent of the consumers who booked at the brand's site visited the OTA, with 83 percent performing a web search prior to the booking (and two-thirds doing both). "Some travelers spend enormous time researching hotels online," he said. "On average, hotel consumers made twelve visits to an OTA's website, requested 7.5 pages per visit, and spent almost five minutes on each page before booking."

The study, "Search, OTAs, and Online Booking: An Expanded Analysis of the Billboard Effect," by Chris Anderson, is available at no charge from the Cornell Center for Hospitality Research (CHR) at:

www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/chr/pubs/reports/2011.html
Fuente: http://www.4hoteliers.com/4hots_nshw.php?mwi=8516

Sitio web en Flash: cuando usarlo y cuando NO?

Flash es una tecnología producida por la empresa Macromedia, para crear sitios interactivos y con animaciones complejas. Para ver una página web con flash, el navegador debe tener un programa o “plug-in” instalado. Muchas empresas han utilizado la tecnología flash con el objetivo de llamar más la atención y poder generar ventas. Pero lo están logrando? Explicamos algunas consideraciones de cuando NO utilizar Flash y cuando sí.

Cuando no utilizar Flash:

Va a perder visitas: un sitio web creado en Flash no puede ser indexado por los buscadores; por lo cual no saldrá en los resultados de búsqueda.
Problemas de visualización: no todas las computadoras tienen el “plug-in” de Flash instalado para ver el sitio web. Además, muchos teléfonos y dispositivos móviles no soportan Flash.

Navegación: el flash es una tecnología que en términos de tamaño, son archivos grandes. Muchos diseños tienen de introducción una presentación Flash, y se debe esperar mucho tiempo mientras se carga la animación (dependiendo la velocidad de internet puede ser mucho tiempo). Esa espera hace que muchos usuarios cierren el navegador y busquen otra opción.

Dificultad de actualización: se dependerá de una persona que domine la tecnología Flash. En cambio los sistemas administradores de contenido, de una forma muy sencilla se pueden realizar cambios en su sitio web.

Cuando utilizar Flash:
Recomendamos utilizar flash para animaciones complejas y considerando: hacerlas bajo demanda (el usuario decida ver la animación) y que no sean el eje central del sitio web.
Actualmente tecnologías como JQuery son buenas alternativas frente al Flash. Si deseas un sitio exitoso, considere qué tipos de tecnología está utilizando.

Ya no hay FBML estático: ¿Qué alternativas tenemos para pestañas individuales en Facebook?

Hasta hace poco podíamos utilizar la aplicación “static fbml” / “fbml estático” cuando queríamos crear una pestaña individual. Ahora ya no se puede. Al haber quitado el static fbml Facebook nos ofrece los iframes - lo cual es técnicamente más complicado y requiere un espacio web propio.

Sugerimos revisar sus perfiles que hayan sido construidos con FBML porque van a dejar de funcionar y se requiere actualizar su diseño. Ver más