Both consumers and the media are obsessed with social media. Popular social networking sites, such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, are experiencing unprecedented growth and inspiring marketers in new and exciting ways. Smart companies—large and small—realize that the opportunities presented by social media are too good to pass up.
The Web continues to evolve from a one-way communications medium to a two-way conversational medium, giving consumers greater control and increasing marketing complexity. Not only can individual and business buyers easily research all available choices from suppliers and vendors, but they can also dialogue with experts and other consumers. They can easily ignore irrelevant marketing communications and turn their attention elsewhere instantaneously. And they ultimately make the purchase decisions that give them the best solutions to their problems—and the best user experiences.
Consequently, to influence purchase behavior of individuals and businesses, we marketers must keep abreast of how our customers and prospects use new and rapidly changing forms of digital communications. To be effective, it is critical to have up-to-date information about where our customers are on the Web, what will get their attention, and, in the end, what drives their buying decisions. In order to develop our marketing plans and implement go-to-market tactics, we must stay current on rapidly changing benchmarks, metrics, and trends in the customers’ use of interactive media.
Roy Young
President
MarketingProfs
Social media management company Vitrue has released a free tool today, the Social Page Evaluator, designed to help marketers get a better understanding of a Facebook Page’s value.
Just submit a Facebook Page URL and the app will come up with a valuation based on factors like number of fans, number of posts per day, number of interactions and so forth.
It’s a cool — if not completely scientific — way to gauge the potential value of your Facebook Page to advertisers. The formula used by the Social Page Evaluator is related to the formula that Vitrue released last month to estimate the relative value of Facebook Fans to big brands.
The tool, which was built over 63 hours in a Startup Weekend-style project, is adjustable and interactive. For instance, the base rate of Earned Media Value (or CPM in more traditional terms) is $5, but this can be adjusted to a higher or lower value depending on the brand in question.
Likewise, there is a “Fan-tasize” section that lets you manipulate other features like number of posts per day, engagement level and Fan count to see how that affects the valuation.
Facebook Page Evaluator
You can also compare a Facebook Page with up to three other brands at a time and view a Page’s value history. In addition to the valuation data, there is also a list of best practices for getting the most out of your Facebook Page.
So how accurate is this tool? It’s difficult to determine, as it is based on a formula that, while derived from a study of large brands, is obviously not going to be applicable to all companies. Still, it’s a fun, easy way to get an idea of the factors that impact a Facebook Page valuation. It’s also a good stepping stone for marketers to start thinking about the potential advertising power of a Facebook Page.
What do you think of the tool? Let us know on Chase The Web's Facebook Fan Page!
[ credit: Mashable.com]
Google introduced a new search function, which can help users find new Web sites that are similar to those the user has already visited, and within the scope of his search interest bounded by a given search session.
A new feature called "Similar Pages» ("Pages similar") and displays the page compilation of sites located in similar extradition. In the company blog describes one example of the use of a function to search for charitable organizations:
"For example, during the recent earthquakes in the world, many of us are looking for international charities. We know that in Haiti, worked actively Direct Relief, so we started a search engine with it [direct relief international]. The first result on the page referred to a web site Direct Reliefgde we have found many ways to help Haiti. But what if someone wants to support several organizations? If you click the link "Similar", which is located in the same row with the reference "www.directrelief.org/", you will find a list of charities involved in relief efforts.
We suggested that the function of "like" as a way to find new useful sites, which did not have high visibility. Because we are continuously improving this option and think that it is truly useful, we have begun to show that an alternative time. Starting this week, we’ll show you a list of similar pages are at the bottom of page for technology requests, where we consider them useful … "
Our San Diego SEO and SEM marketers here at Chase The Web are excited about this merger. This excitement stems from the fact that many of our clients including our own website, possess many keywords that rank very well within Bing and Yahoo search engines. This is great, although the quality of traffic from these search engines is a very small portion in comparison to Google. As we know these two search engines are fairly weak alone, but together - well now that's a different story. We're crossing our fingers over here that this merger brings more traffic to maximize conversions. "Only time will tell but 2010 is setting up to be one of those big years in search."
SEW.com