Zibaba http://zibaba.com/blog Zibaba corporate blog Wed, 24 Jun 2009 22:52:24 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7.1 en hourly 1 The new ROI http://zibaba.com/blog/the-new-roi-23-06-2009 http://zibaba.com/blog/the-new-roi-23-06-2009#comments Wed, 24 Jun 2009 03:57:58 +0000 Shira Adatto http://zibaba.com/blog/?p=59 A slew of conferences took place this week all focusing on the importance of social media. Analysts threw around buzz words like engage, measure, outcomes, ROI. What we’ve learned is that if something happens on Twitter, YouTube or Facebook, it’s automatically going to jump to the next level. Brands like Domino’s, Skittles and Amazon learned their lessons the hard way. Every brand mis-step can spark a wildfire that spreads through the social media universe faster than brands can control. To stay safe in the social media minefields, brands need to be everywhere their consumers are and build communities of fans they can leverage in a crisis. There are a variety of tools and applications that brands can use to optimize their social media presence. So what should a brand be looking for? An application like Ngage360 with robust reporting tools is a must-have. Being able to measure any aspect of your social media marketing efforts will give you the capability to monitor and measure the ROI of your initiatives. Apparently many people ask what is the ROI of social media but the best answer I heard to date was “what is the Return on Ignoring?”

]]> http://zibaba.com/blog/the-new-roi-23-06-2009/feed Will Facebook change the way it approaches advertising? http://zibaba.com/blog/will-facebook-change-the-way-it-approaches-advertising-01-06-2009 http://zibaba.com/blog/will-facebook-change-the-way-it-approaches-advertising-01-06-2009#comments Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:33:23 +0000 Shira Adatto http://zibaba.com/blog/?p=56 Last week the social media gurus were all abuzz about Russia’s Digital Sky Technologies $200 million investment in Facebook and what it means for the future of Facebook. Many people balked at the $10 billion valuation of Facebook. Fortune caught up with Digital Sky partner Alexander Tamas who stated in the interview that he believes that Facebook is worth every cent of the valuation. Analysts are excited to see what the Russian company will contribute to the business model. They bring invaluable knowledge from Eastern Europe where companies are testing different models for social networks. Although Tamas says he is not focused solely on advertising, he did emphasize that it is a strategy they are going to explore. For instance, he said the following about display advertising: “The mistake people are making here is to say display advertising does not work in social networking. That is true, but what does work is much more intelligent ads.” If I am interpreting this correctly, I think what he means is that the platform is not the problem but the ad format is. In other words, what social networking needs is intelligent advertising, not trashy ads about how to become an Internet millionaire or how to get rid of belly fat. These kind of ads teach the users to ignore the ad and therefore teaches reputable brands not to invest in the space. I’m so glad that someone intelligent finally spoke up about the state of advertising on social networks. Or as Catherine Taylor, Social Media Insider columnist, put it “Finally a guy who doesn’t suffer from the Fear of Advertising that seems to permeate so many social media sites.” I am excited for what this means for the future of social network advertising.

]]> http://zibaba.com/blog/will-facebook-change-the-way-it-approaches-advertising-01-06-2009/feed Just. Do. It. http://zibaba.com/blog/just-do-it-07-05-2009 http://zibaba.com/blog/just-do-it-07-05-2009#comments Thu, 07 May 2009 23:17:25 +0000 Shira Adatto http://zibaba.com/blog/?p=49 Brands listen up! It’s time. There’s no more avoiding it. The web has gone social whether you like it or not. If there is one thing we’ve learned from the success of Facebook and Twitter, it’s that consumers have a voice and they want to be heard. And if you don’t believe me, Forrester Research last week became the first independent research firm to encourage clients to use social applications and to commit to social marketing campaigns. In the report, Forrester’s Sean Corcoran emphasizes “To enhance an ad campaign with social elements, interactive marketers should know their audience’s behavior, commit to the communities for the long term” - the key phrase here being “long-term”. Marketers need to adjust their way of thinking and measuring and forget the “quick-hit nature of advertising” and think about ways to connect with customers in a more impactful way. It’s about building a deeper connection and using social tools to drive people into your community. Social media is about conversations. Consumers don’t want to be blasted with messages. They want to be listened to and partake in dialogue. Don’t be afraid of consumer input. It adds authenticity to your message.

The tools and technology to engage your customers exist and I thank Forrester for making this their focus because it brings to light what Zibaba is trying to do with our Social Ads solution. Zibaba is set to release an interactive advertising application that will allow brands to engage consumers and deliver effective and targeted ad campaigns on any ad network. This first of its kind technology incorporates User Generated Content (UGC) into the ad with comments and reviews and allows users to share the ad with their friends via email, IM, Bookmark or Post to profile on any social network. It even displays a Follow on Twitter button so fans can be continually updated about your brand. Interactive and personalized ads have shown a 154% increase in CTR, 66% increase in conversion rate and a 3-5 times increase in revenue per 1000 impressions. Best of all, your Social Ads campaign features built-in reporting and will tell you instantly who is clicking on your ad, what part of the ad is being shared and let you follow the conversations that are taking place. And they are taking place, whether you are part of them or not.

Having said that, I will leave you with one final thought. Just Do It!

]]> http://zibaba.com/blog/just-do-it-07-05-2009/feed The Future of the Social Web: The Era of Social Colonization http://zibaba.com/blog/the-future-of-the-social-web-the-era-of-social-colonization-29-04-2009 http://zibaba.com/blog/the-future-of-the-social-web-the-era-of-social-colonization-29-04-2009#comments Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:20:29 +0000 Shira Adatto http://zibaba.com/blog/?p=46 If you are a marketer, brand manager, advertiser or social media trend follower, Jeremiah Owyang’s recent report “The Future of the Social Web: In Five Eras” is a must read. Marketers must not ignore the power shift from brand to consumer that is taking place as a result of the social web. The old model of marketers dictating the message and consumers passively listening is fading quickly. As Jeremiah predicts, “the community will take charge, and that’s going to happen whether or not marketers or brands participate”. In his report, the Forrester analyst outlines the 5 eras of the social web:

1. The era of social relationships
2. The era of social functionality
3. The era of social colonization
4. The era of social context
5. The era of social commerce

The era that I would like to focus on is #3, the era of social colonization. It is described as an era in which every web site is social, even if it doesn’t chose to be, and it is taking place now. Consumers share products, links, opinions and rely on advice from friends to make purchase decisions regardless of whether or not the brand is participating. Many of us have been referring to this as social commerce but Jeremiah actually defines social commerce as the era during which consumers work with peers to define the next generation of products and make purchases as groups. There is some overlap obviously but I wish to focus on social colonization because the technology as it applies to ecommerce and advertising already exists and consumers are primed for it. How does it work? Say you want to buy a new cell phone and are debating between an iPhone and a Blackberry. Wouldn’t you rather ask your friends opinions than spend hours wading through anonymous online opinion sites? Applications like Zibaba Social Shopper let you instantly ask your friends opinions through email, IM, surveys and even read archived reviews written by the people you know through the social search feature. If someone you know has already written a review on a particular product or seller, that search result will surface first. What this means is you can consult with your friends instantly without ever leaving the page and instantly make your purchase decision.

Crucial to this era is the trend in profile portability that is rapidly being adopted. This feature allows you to login to an ecommerce site using for example your already existing Facebook login and thereby bringing your connections with you and giving you the ability to instantly get advice from your existing social connections. For brands this means you have created a powerful and effective marketing network for your product or service. Brands can then use all that shared information to focus on influencers and offer discounts or personalized offers. As users begin to congregate around common interests and create niche groups within their larger networks, this will lead to the era of social commerce and group buying.

]]> http://zibaba.com/blog/the-future-of-the-social-web-the-era-of-social-colonization-29-04-2009/feed Measuring ROI in Social Media http://zibaba.com/blog/measuring-roi-in-social-media-20-04-2009 http://zibaba.com/blog/measuring-roi-in-social-media-20-04-2009#comments Mon, 20 Apr 2009 20:54:06 +0000 Shira Adatto http://zibaba.com/blog/?p=43 With all the talk about Twitter, Facebook and other social networking tools being the new revolution in marketing, I’ve been thinking about what tools are out there to measure ROI in consumer driven marketing (CDM) efforts. AdAge conducted a study on measuring ROI in Facebook, MySpace and other social media marketing efforts. Another blog (Never Stop Marketing) discuses another theory on how to measure the ROI of social conversations by using an equation to calculate the number of net promoters your brand has. An expert panel made up of Jeremiah Owyang, Charlene Li and Peter Kim presented at Web 2.0  in NY about how they think social media marketing is failing (a great summary written by Jennifer Leggio of ZDnet can be viewed here). Owyang, a web strategist and analyst at Forrester Research, feels that companies are measuring social media wrong because you can just measure clickthroughs. How do you aferall measure conversations or tone? More good takeaways from this panel: don’t let social media efforts sound like rehashed press releases, get top level executives involved, make sure social media is part of long term business strategy, figure out by what standard you are going to measure effectiveness.

]]> http://zibaba.com/blog/measuring-roi-in-social-media-20-04-2009/feed Social Profile Portability http://zibaba.com/blog/social-profile-portability-13-04-2009 http://zibaba.com/blog/social-profile-portability-13-04-2009#comments Tue, 14 Apr 2009 02:23:50 +0000 Shira Adatto http://zibaba.com/blog/?p=40 In an interview with Portfolio, MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe says the next big thing coming from MySpace is “We’re allowing our users to export their profiles onto other websites. The internet is becoming totally mashed up. Imagine you’re on Flixster, which is a movie-review site. You’re probably not going to want to set up a profile on that site. You’re probably not going to be able to find any of your friends on that site. But if you can log in through your MySpace user name and password, you can see if any of your MySpace friends are on there too. You can write reviews and see which movies your friends recommend.” Facebook has a similar service with its Friend Connect and Zibaba is unveiling it’s Social Shopper service which will let you take your online friends with you anywhere while shopping on the web or shop with your friends at your social network community through a distributed social shopping marketplace. Imagine that you need to buy a digital camera and one of your friends has just done extensive research on the subject. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could save yourself time and benefit from your friends’ collective knowledge by being able to search reviews written by the people in your social circles? People have a natural tendency to want to buy what their friends bought. And in today’s social web environment, consumers want to be able to consult with friends before making a purchase. If you are a marketer, giving your customers the capability to get advice from friends in real time allows them to go from indecision straight to purchase.

]]> http://zibaba.com/blog/social-profile-portability-13-04-2009/feed The end of the free lunch…again http://zibaba.com/blog/the-end-of-the-free-lunchagain-01-04-2009 http://zibaba.com/blog/the-end-of-the-free-lunchagain-01-04-2009#comments Wed, 01 Apr 2009 18:50:32 +0000 Shira Adatto http://zibaba.com/blog/?p=36 The Economist hit the nail on the head with it’s March 19th article (The end of the free lunch) about the demise of the free content business model being able to sustain itself with advertising. The latest Internet stars – social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter – each provide a free service and have managed to attract huge audiences but still have not figured out how to make enough money to keep the service going for their millions of users. It turns out that the number of companies that can sustain itself by advertising revenue alone is much smaller than anyone anticipated and Internet companies are again laying people off, scaling back or going under. What we have learned in this struggling economy, similar to what happened after the crash of the first Tech bubble, is that it is not enough to provide free content, every business needs revenues in order to survive. For the social networks, one of the more promising prospects for 2009 is social commerce. If retailers bring their stores to where the users are spending the majority of their online time anyway, and allow users to socialize, get recommendations and shop with their friends without ever having to leave their Facebook page, why would consumers ever need to go anywhere else?

]]> http://zibaba.com/blog/the-end-of-the-free-lunchagain-01-04-2009/feed Tupperware and Avon got it right http://zibaba.com/blog/tupperware-and-avon-got-it-right-29-03-2009 http://zibaba.com/blog/tupperware-and-avon-got-it-right-29-03-2009#comments Sun, 29 Mar 2009 22:46:47 +0000 Shira Adatto http://zibaba.com/blog/?p=34 Since the dawn of marketing, advertisers have sought newer, better ways to persuade consumers to buy their products – jingles, mascots, staged objective reports by “journalists”. But there is one avenue that brands have failed to exploit and that is the power of a consumer’s immediate circle, his friends and family and people in his social graph. All the recent studies point to the fact that friends and family have the strongest influence on a purchase decision. Who better to trust than a friend who has used a product you are looking for? Social media provides a great opportunity for brands to enter that inner circle. Marketers need to leverage social network communities as a simple, efficient and cost-effective channel to penetrate the inner circles of its most loyal fans. It takes more than just a Fan page on Facebook or a banner ad to attract attention. By offering your fans exclusive offers in the form of private sales, coupons, bonus points, that they can then distribute to their friends, you will gain access to innumerable prospective customers whose reach is as broad as the social network itself.

]]> http://zibaba.com/blog/tupperware-and-avon-got-it-right-29-03-2009/feed Social Commerce Strategies for Small Online Businesses http://zibaba.com/blog/social-commerce-strategies-for-small-online-businesses-23-03-2009 http://zibaba.com/blog/social-commerce-strategies-for-small-online-businesses-23-03-2009#comments Tue, 24 Mar 2009 00:50:41 +0000 Shira Adatto http://zibaba.com/blog/social-commerce-strategies-for-small-online-businesses-23-03-2009 If you’re a small to mid-size online retailer, you may believe that adding social features to your website is just for the big players. Not so says Jennifer Schiff of eCommerce-Guide in this article. There are many things small online businesses can do to beef up their social commerce strategies that don’t have to cost a lot and do not require any technological overhaul – especially if you take the Software as a Service (SaaS) approach like that of Zibaba. Social networking tools are a great way to spread the word about new products and services and build a loyal following. They also help small businesses create a deeper engagement with the customer, which you don’t necessarily find with larger retailers. The way I see it, using social tools to build an intimate relationship with your customer is the online equivalent of the first-name basis relationship a corner shop merchant has with his local customers. Ms. Schiff makes a good point when she states that before the Internet and online shopping, shopping had always been an inherently social activity. Similarly, people had been known to consult with friends for opinions on products and services. Research shows that customers miss the social experience of shopping. Social commerce is a great way to bring social and intimate back to the online shopping experience and can benefit any size business by improving your bottom line.

]]> http://zibaba.com/blog/social-commerce-strategies-for-small-online-businesses-23-03-2009/feed What are the factors that will drive social commerce? http://zibaba.com/blog/what-are-the-factors-that-will-drive-social-commerce-22-02-2009 http://zibaba.com/blog/what-are-the-factors-that-will-drive-social-commerce-22-02-2009#comments Sun, 22 Feb 2009 09:14:08 +0000 Shira Adatto http://zibaba.com/blog/?p=25 Every day, regular people share opinions and experiences online. Their words influence the masses. If it were up to me personally, and others in my generation, I would probably only review a product or service if it was so outstanding or so awful that I just couldn’t keep my mouth shut. Not so for the 20-somethings and under. A friend recently told me that she had to stop her 11-year old from commenting on anything and everything she read online. These words, in the form of product reviews, comments, and shared stories, can drive measurable business, especially when they come from someone in your social graph that you know and trust. The need for social commerce is driven by this generation’s expectation that they be able to share and socialize while they do anything online. But it goes much further than that because it will also help increase sales through the natural viral marketing effect that happens when a friend or trusted source recommends a product.  Companies that listen to their customers and get in on the conversations can only benefit from the sharing that is already taking place.

Shira

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