marți, 22 mai 2012

GM's Doing it Wrong: Facebook Marketing Lessons

GM's Doing it Wrong: Facebook Marketing Lessons

GM's Doing it Wrong: Facebook Marketing Lessons

Posted: 21 May 2012 02:44 PM PDT

Posted by wrttnwrd

By dumping Facebook, GM’s doing it wrong

GM made a huge stink last week when they pulled their $10 million Facebook advertising budget.

They’re doing it wrong. And you can learn some valuable lessons from their mistake:

Facebook is the best display advertising deal on the internet

The Register pointed out that Facebook ads average a .05% click-through rate. Click-through rate is the total number of clicks on an ad, divided by the number of ad views, or impressions. That’s very low, compared to .4% on Google’s Display Network.

But you can purchase ads on both networks on a cost-per-click basis: You only pay if someone actually clicks on the ad. If a GM ad shows up on my Facebook page, and I glance at it but move on, GM doesn’t pay a thing. But I still saw GM’s ad. It’s free display advertising!

There’s no way to pin a value on that glance, but there is a value. If nothing else, GM just occupied attention otherwise available for Toyota.

Managed correctly, Facebook advertising is an unbeatable display ad bargain. GM’s losing a huge branding opportunity.

Understand earned media

Social media is earned media. Selling in earned media is a two-step process:

  1. Attract and build an audience over time.
  2. Then you sell to that audience.

Facebook ads boost step 1.

GM claims Facebook ads aren’t delivering results. But they’re measuring the wrong results, I’ll bet: They’re looking at clicks, sales and web site traffic. They should be looking at new followers, share of voice, and the quality of the following they build.

You can grow your brand without paid Facebook ads, by posting to your Facebook page. In our tests, 2-4 great posts per day is the minimum effective pace for a major brand. Post less often and your brand shrinks. General Motors posts every 1-2 days, at best. With that pace, and without ads, they can’t grow their brand.

Don’t repeat their mistake: Understand earned media. Your Facebook following is a long-term asset. It’s a community that’s primed for your marketing message. Neglect it and you’ll fail. GM has to either maintain their ad spend (clearly they won’t) or step up their other efforts (hopefully they will). As it stands now, when GM stops their ad campaign, their Facebook page will stagnate.

Learn to measure earned media

You can measure the return from earned media on Facebook. Run Facebook-specific offers. GM could run a regional campaign with participating dealers and offer cash back, or free oil changes for 3 years, or similar. See how many people participate. Use the performance of those campaigns over time to track the value of your average Facebook follower.

That’s only part of the value generated, but it’s a start. It lets you sketch out a comparison of ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ ads, content and offers.

Learn to measure earned media performance.

Don’t amputate for a hangnail

$10 million is a huge Facebook spend. Chances are, GM can optimize it and improve performance, or reduce waste by removing non-performing ads and segments. Instead, they’re chucking the entire budget baby out with the bathwater. If GM applied the budgeting technique to print and television, they’d shut down those campaigns, too.

If you manage a Facebook campaign, you’ll hit a point where you want to turn it off. Don’t. Instead, test, refine and improve. Use Facebook’s amazing segmenting tools to create precisely-targeted ads.

Don’t hack off a limb because of a hangnail. That’s what GM is doing.

Keep perspective

Facebook ads represent .5% of GM’s total marketing budget. To be worthwhile, Facebook ads would need to generate 45,000 cars sold. Staggering numbers for you and I, but for a company that sold 9 million cars last year, that’s a totally achievable goal.

My last advice: Don’t shut down an ad spend that’s less than 1% of your budget unless you’re 100% certain it’s a failure. When the stakes are low and the potential high, keep perspective. Bottom line, that’s what GM forgot to do, and it’s going to hurt them a lot more than Facebook in the long run.


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Getting Started with the Mozscape API

Posted: 21 May 2012 03:30 AM PDT

Posted by Lisa - MozStaff

I’m pretty new here at SEOmoz, and one of the projects I’m working on is improving the Mozscape API wiki content so it’s easier for you to learn how to access all of the cool data available through the Mozscape API.

I decided to jump in and try to figure it out. My initial plan was not to cheat... that is, not use the help I have as an employee that’s not available to most API users.  But I got stuck, so I had to change the rules... You’ve heard of Calvinball, right?  I made a new rule that I get to cheat, as long as I share.

Joining the Game

I’d already signed up, since I work here, but this part isn’t hard. If you’re not already a member, go to http://www.seomoz.org/api/keys, and either sign up for a free PRO trial, or register for the SEOmoz community. Both of these give you access to the free version of the Mozscape API. If you like what you see and want more requests and full access to the API, details on what’s available are on our API Pricing page.

Getting My Secret SEOmoz API Key

This part would fit right into Calvin Ball... I get a secret key! Once I’m signed in, the Getting Started page shows the Generate API Credentials section. I wasn’t sure what to put in the Your Access ID section, so I just clicked the button. Then had to agree to the terms of service, and clicked it again, and voila, I have my Access ID and my Secret Key.

Tip #1: You don’t enter Your Access ID, we generate it. Just read our terms of service, click the box agreeing to them, and then push the big Generate Secret Key button (or Regenerate, if you’ve already done it once).

Secret Keys, Signatures, and Signed Authentication, Oh My!

As I looked at creating my first API request, I came to a complete standstill figuring out how to authenticate my request. My problems were completely self-inflicted, but I had to resort to cheating to overcome them.

Cheat #1 - Asking for internal guru help

I’d started reading the forums, and the number one issue on the forums at the moment is failed authentication. Before I started this exercise, I’d read a forum post that said the authentication example on the Getting Started page was old and no longer the recommended way to do things.

This led me to ignoring what it actually said on this page, and trying all sorts of things to create a Unix Timestamp and Valid Signature on my own, when it was sitting in front of me the whole time. It took talking to folks here to get me back on track.

Tip #2: Remember that the forums represent a moment in time.  We’ve been changing things, and fixing things, and what you read in the forums *could* be outdated.  We noticed the sample was bad, wrote about it in the forums, and then fixed it, meaning the forum post is now out-of-date.

The Sample Valid API Signature really is a Valid API Signature

After the above flailing about, and my first cheat, I realized the Sample Valid API Signature is actually a genuine, A#1, valid API signature, and allows me to do a query right away.

So, I was able to use the Sample Request on the Getting Started page to get the correct member ID, timestamp, and signature in the correct format.

Tip #3 & 4:

  • If you've been flailing about after getting your secret key (as I did), you'll need to refresh the page to update the timestamp. The timestamp on the sample is only valid for about 5 minutes.
  • Your signature has to be base64 and then URL encoded. This is why the Signature line on the Getting Started page is slightly different from the Signature in the Sample Request, which has been encoded for you. Make sure you use the Sample Request string.

 

URL Metrics for the Win

Once I realized the signed authentication was provided for me in the sample request, it came down to just using the wiki documentation to modify the request for the URL and metrics that I wanted.  The URL was easy; I just changed the website in the sample request from “www.seomoz.org&2fblog” to the website of my local food coop.

Then, since the sample request uses the url-metrics API call, I looked up how to add the URL metrics I wanted on the URL-Metrics API wiki page. I picked these metrics:

Metric Bit Flag Returns
Title 1 ut
URL 4 uu
Subdomain 8 ufq
Links 2048 uid

Adding all of the bit flags for these up gives me 2061. So I put 2061 in the Cols parameter.

Cheat #2 - Knowledge Aforethought

Since I’ve been here a little over a month, I had already looked at the URL-metrics API page, and been working on improving the content there. So I already knew how to use the Cols parameter and how to add up the bit flags to get the metrics I wanted.

Hobbes gets the Link Data

All of the above modifications to the Sample Request gave me my first working query:

http://lsapi.seomoz.com/linkscape/url-metrics/www.snoislefoods.coop?Cols=2061&AccessID=<my_member_ID>&Expires=<My_sample_timestamp>&Signature=<My_sample_signature>

I put it in a new browser window, hit enter, and got my first response:

{"ufq":"www.snoislefoods.coop/","uid":864,"ut":"Organic Produce Co op, Natural Food Cooperative | Sno-Isle Natural Foods Co-op Everett WA","uu":"www.snoislefoods.coop/"}

Success! I used the table on the URL-metrics API page (excerpted above) to interpret my link data.

Changing the Rules

So, this is what I learned that might be helpful to you if you’re just starting out. Now, most of the time, you’re not going to access your link data by typing a request like I did in the browser window, but I hope this helps you in understanding what all of the moving pieces are when generating your queries programmatically.

After my experience with this, I’ll be working on improving the Getting Started page, forum pages, and the wiki docs to help you avoid the parts that confused me on my first go around.

If you have any suggestions, success stories, or really good cheats, I’d love to hear from you. Email api@seomoz.org.

Lisa - Mozstaff


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