The Official Fluid Blog

Facebook has updated Insights. Some of you may have had a sneak peek, especially if you’re a brand with a Facebook relationship. Now though, it’s rolled out and here’s what you need to know.

First and foremost, read this from Facebook. It’s a great description of the changes.

Or if you learn by doing, log-in to Facebook, go to Insights and use the question mark roll-overs as your guide.

The highlights as we see them:

- A heavy shift to engagement: Brands are shifting to quantity and quality on Facebook (vs. just quantity). The new metrics of “People Talking About This” and “Reach” directly coincide with this shift. They hit at what people are doing with your content and give you a sense of the potential reach you could achieve.

- Page posts get prioritized: Which content is working? This will tell you. And it broadens the range of what working means based on your objective. Reach + Engaged Users drive at awareness; Talking About This and Virality drive at conversation.

- Infusion of ad data: Reach is a term media buyers understand and we see the terminology of Stories enter the picture here. With Reach we can now see how people were reached – via Organic, Paid or Viral. Viral may be a lower percent of the whole than expected for some brands. Paid may also bootstrap Organic and Viral.

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The trend we’re seeing (and driving): Shifting Facebook focus from the pursuit of Fan volume to Fan engagement. I’m convinced there’s a reason Facebook doesn’t include repeat visits in their Insights metrics – the majority of Fans likely don’t come back after they fan a brand.

That said, Fluid and our clients have been experimenting with ways to change that. Especially amongst core customers who are likely to be big brand advocates.

First step = edge rank. This is the algorithm Facebook uses to prioritize what makes it to Walls and which friends or Fans see it. This article from econsultancy gives a good overview.

Show and tell: Here are four posts that yielded great response rates as a percentage of their Fan bases in the last week.

1. Sears Footwear Fashion First
Key point: Albums get showcased beautifully in Facebook’s new photo layout. Sassy red shoes and anything affiliated with the Kardashians (Sears has a Kardashian Kollection for shoes) spark interactions.

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Hi all,

Fluid got to take the stage at eTail East’s Social Commerce Summit last week. So fun. We share our presentation with you here:

Google+ is on the brink of 10M users. After I received the coveted, Willy Wonka golden ticket, access to Google+ it’s 10M + 1. I’m in.

I dragged and dropped colleagues (we digital geeks are in Google+ in full force) and friends into circles. I hung out in Hangouts (my favorite feature) and scrolled through Sparks. I floated like I was in a neighborhood without the grounding of profile houses.

Then I watched logged out and watched my Facebook wall scroll with Google+ opinions.

What is Google+? David Pogue of the New York Times explains it well.

The top seven things that strike me:

1. Exclusive invites: Google excels at invitation-only. Gmail invitees forgot to care that their emails were being used for ad targeting. We still don’t mind. The club with the red rope is enticing. Even if we don’t know what’s inside.

2. The “not yet public” launch: Google has downplayed this launch. The NYT blogger above stated “it’s unfair to mention bugs because the service isn’t even public yet.” Really? Put a product launch behind a invitation wall, say it’s just a part of a bigger whole and people will concede on criticism. Brilliant.

3. Aimed at Facebooks’ achilles: Circles within Google+ strike Facebook where it’s weak – filtering and content distribution to specific friend networks. Within 3 minutes I could see streams of content coming only from my work connections. It’s easy.

Plus drag and drop is fun. Remember when digital driving what happened offline was exciting? Now we’ve moved on to Smart Phone and tablets changing the way people interact with computers. Polyvore caught on early. Now it’s everywhere.

If they want to issue a double blow, Google+ needs to kick in search. Hard. Facebook is notoriously lacking in search. (Does anyone else love that the Google+ name can be rough in search because the + can be a command or a proper noun?)

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In late January Facebook launched Sponsored Stories. Here’s our initial POV…

What are Sponsored Stories? A great name for ads created from brand relevant content that is produced by Facebook user actions. Important: These ads are only seen within a users friend network.

The included actions: Likes, check-ins, actions within custom applications and Page posts. User postings on brand walls can also be used.

Best case description: Brands are highlighting relevant content that a user may have missed in the steady stream of their Walls.

Worst case description: User actions are unwittingly being turned into brand endorsements without any kick back.

This is not unlike what Gmail does by selling ads based on keywords within emails, although these Facebook ads are more overt with the identification of the user and their action. Twitter Promoted Tweets are also similar – although Twitter’s solution is more closely aligned with search ranking or a Digg model. It is also based on aggregated, anonymous data.

Why are Sponsored Stories important:

- They are a new ad format for Facebook. They dip a toe in the old Beacon pool but don’t dive in fully. I think this is the major reason why they’re launching with lots of non-profit partners – which is smart. Users are going to be a lot more amenable to, and potentially lenient towards, non-profits than to for-profit brands.

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Retailers are bringing it big this holiday. While we, the gift seekers, think of people on our lists, drink hot cocoa and make out under the mistletoe, retailers are busy making gift giving easier.

The four examples you need to see:

1. Etsy’s Gift Guide

The best use of Facebook liking data that I’ve seen yet. Pick a friend and Etsy matches their likes (and interests) to Etsy products. It’s a peep show of the possibilities this public data holds.

2. J.Crew’s Very Merry Gift Guide

This stands out for two reasons: 1. Talk about beautiful, curated collections. It tells a story that makes me forget that it’s cross-sell. 2. Of-the-month offering. Subscription selling finally meets style. Why aren’t more brands doing this? Expect them to be doing so in 2011.

3. Victoria’s Secret Gift Cards (on Facebook)

Sharing gets sexy. Not only can you comment on photos from last night’s holiday party, now you can share a gift card – without ever leaving Facebook. Buying just got easier for last-minute Lucys. (Starbucks has Facebook gift cards too).

4. Coach’s Gift List (on Facebook)

The ripple effect of Polyvore permeates this design (as it continues to do throughout fashion). Drag and drop from Coach’s yummy collection to a wish list within Facebook – and affiliate each item with a friend.

Who’s going to top this in 2011? Fluid has some tricks up our sleeve. Exciting.

Happy Holidays,
Amy

In a head-to-head match between Twitter followers and Facebook fans, Forrester puts their money on Twitter followers. What’s at stake? The winner is deemed to hold the most value for brands.

The score according to the study? Twitter followers are more likely to recommend the brands they follow to friends (33% vs. 21%) and to buy from them (37% vs. 21%).

My interpretation: This is misapplied competitiveness. I’m the first to egg on arm wrestling, cage matches and ego over ability efforts but these channels serve different purposes. Consumer expectations and interactions vary accordingly. The channels can amplify and augment each other. I will be using this data to make the case for each channel independently.

That said, I’m going to cheer on Forrester’s winner with three of my favorite Twitter examples. Share these with your creative team to spark ideas. After all, both mediums need ideas to survive.

Uniqlo’s Lucky Counter: Every tweet means the price gets cheaper. For a set time in September Uniqlo posted a collection of clothing with the simple call to action – more tweets, lower prices. Flash sales meet GroupOn with a twist of simplicity.

World Cup Cheering: Yay open API. The Guardian in the UK created an interface to visually watch the tweets affiliated with each World Cup game. It brings new excitement to goals. Ghana vs. U.S. is my personal favorite.

Diane von Furstenberg’s Fall Collection: In a convergence of social and shopping Diane von Furstenberg integrated iconic lip rollovers on their imagery to let users Tweet or Like in context. (Click on “Shop the Catalog”)

Reminder: I’ve also posted this entry at ad:techNY. Let me know if you’ll be in town for the event next week!

Coach is the latest retailer to leverage Fluid products to launch a pop-up shop on their Fan Page within Facebook in just a matter of weeks. Take a look!:
Note: you’ll have to Like the brand first to access the exclusive, pre-sale content:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/Coach?v=app_130296760321957


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Follow Andrew Sirotnik at twitter.com/asirotnik

*Thank you* to the people behind the “people’s choice” Adweek Buzz Award! And special thanks to our great clients at Rachel Roy and the Jones Apparel Group. We’re thrilled to get this recognition for the facebook pop-up store for Rachel Roy!

(more on the facebook fan shop and why it worked here)

I’ve been learning the results of Olympic events via Facebook. Unintentionally. But it is happening.

I wonder how NBC feels about that? They (and everyone else) better figure something out because timezone delay is doomed.