The world according to Facebook.

Following advertisements for a contest where Facebook fans can enter to win a 60” 3D television, anchors’ guffaws at “The Facebook” and “The Twitter,” and the third run of a talk about how Facebook and social media peacefully brought down a dictator in 18 days, FOX8, our beloved Fox affiliate network channel, ran a special report on Facebook privacy which showed how confused people are about Facebook.

Stirring up fears about Facebook’s lackadaisical attitude towards users’ privacy is almost as old as the site itself, but really took off after the introduction of the news feed, prompting this post from Michael Cera himself. But FOX8 reports that there yet is one more person who knows “everything” about you, even after 170 types of privacy options: the social media marketer.

We’ve determined a rough estimate of the gay population of the military using the tools they’re talking about. Dr. Kimberly Mason, cyber-bullying expert at UNO, claims:

“The majority of the individuals who use Facebook of course are on there to make their social connections and keeping in touch with friends and family. So looking at advertising and looking how they monitor that really is not in their realm of awareness.”

Strengthening this argument is the general concern about privacy that Facebook users have cultivated. Avoiding questions of survey design, there is no attempt by Gallup/USAToday to reconcile this data with the knowledge users displayed about the privacy settings even at an early stage of development for the site, nor with the skyrocketing membership and constant activity seen as the site has become the second-most-trafficked site on the web. Obviously we’re not dealing with an all-or-nothing situation, and maybe even analysis of risk perception could be appropriate, though of course not under the language of physical harm.

The FTC supports a browser-based “Do Not Track” system, while Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) offers a much more nebulous, but more proactive and far-reaching system. These proposals and recommendations are to protect the users of the site from their private lives being compromised.

But the privacy argument driving interest, polls, and media stories is too muddled to be coherent — there’s privacy, and then there’s privacy, and then there’s privacy. These three realms where users can unknowingly give out information — your network, the public, and advertisers — have different priorities and different interdependencies when it comes to blocking access.

The first kind of privacy — hiding your information from your own network — seems simply counterintuitive to me. Like having a private Livejournal, not using the social aspect of a social network seems a bit counterintuitive. There’s got to be some kind of control here — Reuben Foster of UNO says, “If I don’t want it to be public, then I won’t … click these things,” and that’s right on the money.

Found directly beneath the status box.

In addition, the News Feed is smart. That first variable, the affinity score, is user-controlled. If you don’t talk to someone, they won’t show up as often. To boot, the other variables, weight and time, simply fulfill the definition of a social network. Combined with easy to navigate deletion and blocking capabilities, it’s a hard sell to me that there isn’t enough privacy options for the user.

But that’s a straw man; privacy can be breached in other ways. While privacy settings can stop a lot, so many checkboxes to look at and discover over time might be overwhelming. Worse still, Facebook has a bad habit of resetting its users’ privacy settings when it updates its features. We’ve talked before about other people looking at your posts and online image branding. There are a number of news stories where someone posts something that unintentionally irritates the wrong people, all of which bring up the divide between what is or isn’t public speech.

While I’m not about to open that can of worms, two alternate court cases show the two likely outcomes of privacy issues: either an out of court settlement or a court siding with the company, who can probably show a solid link between loudly kvetching about work and “job performance.” The question on the level of privacy and anonymity of your Facebook profile has not been answered; best to tread with care, but not necessarily lightly.

Even with careful Facebook pruning, you still have your information going to advertisers, and it is this what puts Facebook in a unique position for privacy. Google doesn’t have the instant interest data to tailor their content offerings like Facebook does. Even Microsoft, whose use of Internet Explorer to strengthen Bing’s ranking pages is more insidious and less publicized, gets their data from Facebook

Obviously not the best tool for small fanbases...

WVUE reflects the average Facebook user’s view when it refers to all ads as “Sponsored Stories.” Ads are ads — it’s neither Facebook’s intent nor in their interest to try to fool you into thinking they’re not, and you’d have to ignore clear headings to think they’re from your friends. There is a difference, though: Sponsored Stories refers to ads that look more like regular news feed posts; however, they again have the telltale heading. They also can only be shown to people “whose friends are already connected to” the Facebook page or post that they’re connected to. Similarly, fan page ads can only be shown to people not already connected to the fan page.

See, nothing terribly creepy here...

Facebook’s ad targeting is much less sinister than it seems. You can filter by age, sex, and broad category of interest. While the Family Status category under interests is on one hand a bit questionable, it can heavily influence relevance of ads; you wouldn’t want to be showing ads for singles sites if a member is married with kids.

You can then target by Connection to a Page, Event or App. The next section, the Advanced Demographics, provides advertisers with better opportunities to provide relevant content and avoid marketing gaffes. Finally, you can target by education level or workplace.

And that’s it, right? You get your broad information, and nothing’s even tracked deeply enough to cause any concern. That doesn’t seem so bad.

... But we could make this comparison much creepier. I just like music.

But when something* happens with your account, the advertiser gets access to Likes & Interests. This narrows the interests so that it is more like traditional keyword bidding. This isn’t unusual, and follows the traditions from Google pay-per-click advertising. The advertising platform provides vague statistics to give advertisers an idea of how many people are interested in ideas that are related to your link.

But not only does the advertiser get this information. Another privacy craze was raised over Facebook’s Open Graph Platform, which began the rash of “Like” buttons on the site. Extending the simplicity of the “Like” from every kind of “Edge” — the term Facebook uses for any post, link, comment, or ad — to web pages seems logical and extends not only the brand, but the whole social media mentality.

Open Graph allows a content provider to, like Google Analytics, track his links’ likes and clicks on Facebook, even without having a Facebook presence. While this might seem like nothing new to your loss of privacy, an important distinction has to be drawn between this and Google’s tracking programs. Facebook offers this information with your personal information like your friends list in the unseen data. Obviously, this is used not for advertisers, but for the inner machinery. However, the concern remains that someone with a bit of knowhow can get that information.

But that information isn’t useful for advertisers right now. A list of friends might be interesting on a massive level, but then again, the individual is lost looking at larger trends. The other factors, publicly displayed on your profile

Through these three realms of privacy, it seems that there’s good reason to be afraid of Facebook and its privacy issues. But here’s the catch — who’s really looking at this? Advertisers and content providers, even among the slimiest of content farms, simply want to provide a better user experience. They, including us, are looking for the most people clicking on ads and, more importantly, interact with the content behind the ads.

There’s a tendency for people versed in Facebook to blame the user — we all see the inner workings, we know how easy the whole system is if you turn off your brain. We know that all you have to do is click the “Like” button and you’re giving us good information that we can use to give you more of what you already, at least in a marketing sense, “Like.” Those that are trying to target you are trying to give you more of what you’ve already said you want, even if it’s an admittedly selfish gift, since advertisers obviously get benefits from you clicking the link.

But the Skinner box that is Facebook, and particularly the games and apps that tweak and complicate privacy settings beyond the basic problems described, is ultimately something from which its users benefit. The on-first-glance underhanded data-gathering techniques are ultimately the way that Facebook serves its users, by providing content relevant to them, as determined by them.

Don’t forget to “Like” this page. We promise to do every creepy thing we can with your information and show you what you’re sending to advertisers and content providers in an upcoming blog post.

Coming in for a smooth landing

1.)    Your Company Logo clearly marked in the top left corner of your landing page.

Your company logo is your brand and it is what is going to clearly connect your landing page to your website.  You do not need or want the exact navigation that exists on all of your web pages, it offers too many distractions and takes up too much room, most likely forcing the more important information (the Form) below the fold.

2.)    The only content needed is a few credible and useful facts that must satisfy the users search inquiry.

Display this text concisely using bullet points.  The messaging should match the ad copy and try to use relevant keywords. Only add relevant images that will enhance the users intent to take action.  Do not use stock photos for design because it will likely distract the user from the intended action.

3.)    Make the point of your page loud and clear with clear and obvious calls to action.

To be golden be loud and clear

If you want the user to fill out the form or call a number don’t make it difficult for them. Add the phone number clearly in the top right of the page.   Add a visible contact form that is above the fold, and does not ask irrelevant questions like “how did you hear about us?”  Since, we can track all of our leads in analytics, we do not need to ask this question, so don’t ask it!

4.)    Add your credibility symbols above the fold.

This is very important, because the users need to immediately see a reason to trust your brand, if they do not see it right away, they will not scroll to the bottom of the page, but they will hit the back button to find it somewhere else.

Visible trust symbols are also very important for the ad copy.  For example many of our client’s are plastic surgeons, and we cannot say, “board certified” in the ads unless it is proven on the landing page.

5.)    Offer links to more information or to other pages on your website.
Link to the website at the top and the bottom of the landing page and from your logo.  Add “read more” links to your bullets points, which will allow the uses to find more information.   Remember you do not want to use too many links out because this will distract them from the purpose of the page, but not using any, the user will use the back button and navigate off the page, which is the last thing you want to have happen.

Everything else will distract you from your purpose.  Yes your pages should look good and be visually appealing, but they should be simple.  Make sure all content is fact and not marketing jargon, also provide links to read more.  Read more about this in Technique: How to build the best PPC landing page , 7 deadly sins of landing page design and 8 Dimensions Of Excellent Landing Pages.

Airplane image courtesy of Flickr user: Rennett Stowe

Bullhorn image courtesy of Flickr user: LuMaxArt

The tactics of Local Facebook Marketing just got a whole lot easier to understand. Sarah Smith gave up the goods in her presentation at the Local Search Summit. It turns out there are some very subversive ways to use current Facebook technologies. Marketing on Facebook just got a lot easier.

Local Search Summit 09

Don Campbell gives a great overview of the ideas presented in our “Using Facebook and Twitter to Drive Local Leads” session. And, I’m looking forward to Aaron Irizarry posting the rest of the video…

… But in the mean time, I’m going to share some ideas based on the Facebook marketing presented by Sarah Smith.

I’m so excited by these ideas that we’re going to be implementing some of them THIS WEEK with clients.

But look, I’m even more excited by what YOU are going to do with them. Please comment and let us know what you think the opportunities are.

Ok, ok – so the list:

• Kinda mundane but still very helpful: Sarah indicates there is now radius based targeting for ads (e.g.: 15 miles around city X)
• Real-time Search with greater search granularity.
• Target just your fans or people coming to an event with Facebook Ads (this is definitely cool, and I can see some good applications but not mind-blowing).
• Birthday Targeting! Holy cow! This is huge. I have a whole program already laid out for this one.
• 1 to 1 communication with Event attendees/maybes. The pain point here is less obvious – you’ll get it when I ‘splain it.

Killer Facebook Marketing Opportunities:

Birthday Targeting:

Happy Birthday to You!

So, Birthday Targeting – my goodness, how subversive can you get?! Imagine yourself cruising along in Facebook and Blammo

“happy birthday Bob, click here to register for your birthday gift – good all month”.

Notice, we plan to message “good all month” (or “all week”, or “for the next 10 days”). There is still a serious call to action but clearly it’s an obtainable goal.

The challenge of the Birthday message in Facebook marketing is that if you make it a “today only” deal you may miss those who sign in after work hours or who are otherwise unable to commit today. Maybe they’ve got a party to go to .

You can see how this would be a killer tactic for a local business. Let’s say you have a non-impulse product. You could make an offer of a $25.00 commodity gift card (Wal-mart, The Gap) or $100.00 gift certificate for your service. Even if you’re not perfectly targeted you have the opportunity to start a dialog with a local buyer who knows someone who is.

Event Focused Permission Marketing:

Facebook event invitations are becoming much more prevalent. And, it turns out given this new feature, they’re a sneaky marketing opportunity.

Ant Party

One of the problems we’ve had with “Fan Pages” vs. Facebook Groups is that there is no way to push communication to your fans. You can post something which will show up in their feed but  you can’t get into their inbox without a more personal connection.

So, Sarah says that all you’ve got to do is get someone to respond ”Yes” to your invitation (or “Maybe”, I think – hopefully Sarah will clarify) and you can then message them up until the event.

But wait, there’s more: You, the group owner don’t necessarily have to initiate the “Event” invitation. Meaning that you can easily convert the Fan to a Friend with much less restriction on continued messaging.

I’m not going to tell you how we’re going to put this one into use but I’ll tell you once we’re done.

—

As you can see, these two opportunities, “Birthday Ads” and “Event Focused Permission Marketing”, enable much greater attention getting behavior on Facebook. Marketing through these channels can get you past the banner blindness of the usual ads and may even get you into the Inbox.

With the rate of adoption of Facebook and Twitter we’ll take any opportunity, the more sneaky and subversive the better, to build community and then hopefully move that community offline to buy something.

We’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions on how to best leverage these new Facebook marketing opportunities and any of the others Sarah detailed at Local Search Summit.

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Related Posts:

• Pay-per-click Facebook Advertising Delivers Low Cost per Lead

Image Credits:

• Birthday Cake Image Courtesy of Pink Cake Box
• Ant Party courtesy of Flickr user tarotastic

Rocket Scientist or Pretender to The Throne?

“It’s OK, you’re not cheating on Google”, says the autopopulated search box on the Leapfish homepage. But is Leapfish, the new meta search kid on the block, just another flash in the pan as far as it’s search aspirations are concerned? Innovation and new applications are always welcome in the world of search. It’s obvious however, that except for their “click-free search”, Leapfish is offering nothing new.

Better known for their free domain appraisal tool (which is still available through the search box on their homepage), Leapfish hopes to position itself as a “multi-dimensional information aggregator and search portal” that serves up results from Google, MSN, Yahoo and other engines. But do internet users really need another “me-too” meta search engine in a field overcrowded with new entrants and start-ups jostling for eyeballs?

Leapfish does have some nifty programming juju to support it. Some call it the “fastest search engine” thanks to its click-free search that shows you the search results as you type. For some users the absence of an “enter” key might be a good thing. With its unique search widget interface and reports of its “relationships through APIs in over 200 Web sites dealing with real estate, music, consumer products, traditional search engines,” news-gatherers and reputation managers might find it useful since it cuts down on the task of having to search different engines and sources for information and turns up search results they may have otherwise missed.

A Piece of The Google Pie?

But most searchers looking for the most relevant and useful information on a topic would rather get their results “straight from the horse’s’ mouth” than from an aggregator. Internet users will always gravitate to engines like Google that give them the most relevant results, not one that returns a bunch of choices they have to dig through to find the information they want.

Leapfish’s advertising model is based on selling “sponsored keyword positions” in its top search results for a flat fee. Their 5% yearly renewal fee and openness to resale transactions leaves the field open for keyword arbitrage of the kind that Google is trying to weed out of it’s Adwords program. Selling keywords may not really be the way to attract quality advertisers. As an advertiser, you want to compete with other websites in your industry, not speculators selling your keyword to the highest bidder.

Leapfish also seems to be targeting a different kind of advertiser – those looking for “permanent ad positions” and the “Mom and Pop” businesses who don’t qualify for Google’s Adwords program because their CPC has gone through the roof, as Behnam Behrouzi of Leapfish.com stated in an interview with uber blogger, Robert Scoble, of Fast Company.

Behrouzi also claims that “everyone is competing with Google”. But Leapfish is not Google and their program for advertisers is not subject to the same quality guidelines that Google’s is. Its launch was also marred by reports of click fraud by super-aggressive sales staff, for which Leapfish’s Director of Marketing, Mark Kithcart, issued a clarification and apology.

The real question now is whether Leapfish will offer value to advertisers the way Google’s program does? Even if you don’t consider the fact that Google owns 65% of market share in online search, it seems unlikely that they will make a dent in Google’s share of the search pie anytime soon.

Reputation, market share and sound business practices mean everything to advertisers looking to put their hard earned money where it matters. It hardly seems likely that a new startup like Leapfish will be able to steal any of Google’s thunder anytime soon.

As far as our recommendation goes, Google’s Adwords program is still the best bet for advertisers looking for value and conversions. For those whose ads don’t do well on Google and are willing to shell out a few thousand dollars every year, Leapfish’s advertising model may offer some visibility..

For most internet users and advertisers trying to gain visibility, search aggregators are a mere flash-in-the-pan looking to skim some of the cream off the Big Daddy of search.

Related: Putting All Your Eggs in One Basket , Directory Advertising ROI