Cyber Bazaar

A Picture is worth a thousand words, an infographic is worth words a few order of magnitudes higher than that. No? Check this out then

Enough Said.

Infographic Source

Content with over 1.13 trillion clicks on its famous “like” button launched since Feb 2009,Facebook recently announced the launch of its new “want” button, similar to the “like” button with more promise for e-tailers to turn the social networking site into a social shopping forum. Facebook is testing this feature with 7 retailers, including Pottery Barn & Victoria’s Secret, which will allow users to create wishlist of items they desire and announce it to the world at the click of a button.Other  Retailers involved in the program are  Wayfair,  Michael Kors, Neiman Marcus, Smith Optics, and Fab.com. FB said it is “creating three distinct groups of users to test each action,” referring to the Like, Want, and Collect variants of the Collections test. It translates into options for users to identify themselves as “wanting” a product in a vendor’s Collection, or in the process of “collecting” it, in addition to “liking” product content tagged by the participating retailers.

How will it work?

The new button will be placed alongside images of  home furnishings, clothing, and other retail products that consumers will want, and the information will appear on the news feed of the connections of the user. The collect button will allow users to create wishlists of products they desire to have, and share it/display it on their profile. Users can actually click through these buttons and purchase them online , and will be redirected to the original website of the retailers.

How will it look?

This is how the prototype will look like.

Honestly. a “dislike” button is what I (and millions of users) was expecting , and this want button makes me wonder what Mr. Zuckerberg might be planning for the future to capitalize on the social wallet of 1 billion users. IMO, with a dislike button in place,online retailers would have got the feedback for not only what the customer likes, but also what he/she dislikes,and that information is becoming increasingly important for marketers trying to comprehend the nuances in Gen Y behaviour. It is evident from the dominant online opinion, and also from FB’s actions that it has chosen to balance the tightrope of appeasing investors and users alike. What remains to be seen is how would the success of this button compare with Pinterest, which is proven to be better at driving purchases than FB- 69% of Pinterest users found an item they would like to purchase, while its only 40% for FB. Also interesting would be post “want”FB’s performance pitted against Google,whose bread and butter  still comes from ad revenues. Till then, its game on!

Here’s a brief synopsis of US web activity for the month of October, as published by com.Score Inc., a leader in measuring digital world metrics. The results suggest that politics was the key web traffics driver and deciding factor for the most visited website in this month, on account of the US presidential elections. This is easy to guess, given the mention of many political sites in the October list,as opposed to the September list. The press release from com.Score also mention retail sites being visited second most frequently after politics, as “mericans shopped for Halloween and other holiday gifts.

As per com.Score’sreport, US Presidential campaign propelled record crowd to political news sites, up by 30% from September. Huffpost politics ranked # 1 in the category while BarrackObama.com ranked #4 in the category.

Flowers,gifts and greetings represented the fastest growing category in October,growing 31% from September. Partycity.com was ranked #1 in the spot, being the most popular Halloween e-tailer for the month,up by a whopping 103% from last month.Babylon.com, the translation software website saw an increase of  63% web traffic from September,followed by TheDailyBeast.com (up 59%). Toy sites saw a rise in traffic volumes,10% more than that of September. Apparel sites benefited from the holiday season as well, growing by 9% over this period.

Google sites ranked #1 in October, followed by Yahoo,Microsoft and FB respectively. Microsoft climbed one spot from September to keep Yahoo down at # 3. Pinterest made a debut entry in the top 50 list in September and managed to climb to # 46. Other social networking sites to feature in the list are Linked In # 24(from #26 in September) and Twitter # 25 (from #27).

Ad-Focus Ranking

Small and Medium businesses (SMBs) continue to move funds aggressively to online marketing channels.According to BIA/Kelsey,Digital marketing will constitute 70% of the total marketing budget for SMBs by 2015 in US. The Kauffman foundation of Entrepreneurship reports internet sales of 26.8% for Start-ups and SMBs as opposed to 6% for all firms combined, in 2011. These facts prompted me to dig into the available online marketing resources and here is a list I came up with,based on user reviews and recommendations from notable marketing firms,  that could be highly relevant  for SMBs and Start-ups-

Search Engine Optimization

1. SEOmoz – SEO and Social Monitoring software in one. Apparently its the world’s most popular SEO software that provides a robust link intelligence API, and hosts the web’s most vibrant SEO community. Read this for comprehensive information  to get on the road to professional quality SEO.
2. Planet Ocean – Specializes in revealing and simplifying search engine strategies and gear  services toward online marketing professionals to give them a competitive edge.
3. Raven Tools– Provides a broad spectrum of e-marketing solutions,for  SMBs and big businesses alike. Basically an online platform that helps users quickly research, manage, monitor and report on SEO, social media and other Internet marketing campaigns. Its collaborative, multi-user features and fast, professional reports make it the software choice of thousands of online marketers worldwide.

Advertising

1. Google Adwords – Google’s flagship advertising product that helps webmasters create ads and choose keywords,relevant to the business for both SMBs and big businesses alike. When people search on Google using one of your keywords, your ad may appear next to the search results, and you have a qualified target audience as they searched for the keywords themselves in the first place.
2. Nextmark Mailing list finder -Focuses primarily on media- finding, planning, operations and  sales. lets you choose from 60000+ targeted mailing lists from 1400+ suppliers – Virtually every mailing list available all in one place!

Customer Relationship Management

1. Address Two – Simple CRM software for small businesses that helps organize contacts,manage leads,follow up tasks and activities. You can create multiple user accounts, each with their own login credentials, at no additional cost—create unlimited user logins. Customers can be assigned to specific “account managers” according to the different usernames you create.
2. Nimble –  Helps easily connect all of your contacts, calendars, communications and social conversations. Listen to and engage any individual in order to attract and retain the right customers.

Content

1. Hubshout- Transforms business websites into information hubs using SEO techniques and proprietary technology.
2. Inbound Writer – Social writing application.Its essentially a  Cloudbased software for online content optimization.Works equally well for fortune 500 companies and individual bloggers with a flexible price plan to suit the range.
3. Casting Words–  Quick,high quality,Audio transcription service. If you are wondering why transcripts are important content, read this.

Social Media

1. TweetDeck– Its an app  for staying in touch with what’s happening now, connecting you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc.
2. Hoot suite–  Social media management system for brand management. The User Interface is in the form of a dashboard that integrates Facebook,Twitter,Linked IN, Google +,Four Square, Ping and WordPress.
3. SproutSocial– Social media management tool that offers contact management, competitive insight, lead generation, reporting, analytics and more

Published in November of 2011 in the “Voices that Matter” series, Grouped tries to put together latest research from leading Universities and organizations that describes how the social media has caused a disruptive innovation in the way people interact with each other and what it means for businesses and brands. Paul Adams does set the stage for the audience and tells them what to expect in the subtitle of the book itself- “how a small group of friends are the key to influence on the social web”.  A big plus for the reader is the  excellent structuring that Paul uses throughout the book, often reminding me of seminar synopsis-Principles,Recap,Quick tips,Reading list , which did make the multitude of concepts discussed in the book  easier to digest. The language flow is smooth and without jargon which helps keep up the interest with every flipping page and adds to the brevity.

The novelty feature in the book is the analysis and insight of extensive reference sources,studies and hypotheses that an individual is not likely to do by himself. The basic premise of Grouped is providing a refreshingly new perspective on the way we look at traditional marketing, tying it up with Malcolm Gladwell’s “Law of the few” in Tipping Point and unequivocally challenging the same by describing it as a pure myth. Paul goes on to say that “People with more connections are not necessarily more influential”, and cites it as the main reason for the shift in traditional big-name brand ambassador marketing to a combination of “innovative” and “follower” hubs on social web.An interesting point made in the book for avid social media users is the fact that we are being influenced  on the web all the time by other people whom we don’t necessarily know in person,even without being aware of the fact. The ability of such influencers fall drastically beyond three degrees of separation, as suggested by numerous studies mentioned in the book. Grouped provides ample food for thought when it challenges the funnel marked model of  awareness at the top and purchase at the bottom, and tries to flip the model upside down in iterative incremental steps. Paul is convinced that advertising and marketing on the web needs to be more social media centric, more meaningful and relevant and should be increasingly geared towards permission marketing as opposed to the traditional and annoying practice of interruption marketing,which is strongly coupled with existing peer-to-peer networks. To quote form the book-

“We live in a world of exponentially increasing information which we can’t consume. We’re going to increase our reliance on our social networks to make decisions.”

“In a world of too much information, people turn to their friends.”

“The amount of permission can increase over time.”

Overall an enlightening read on how to leverage the ongoing fundamental shift in the nature of the web as it gets more social.