Adding Facebook Page Fans: TAG as a Case Study

Facebook now allows Page owners to create Facebook Ads that allow users to "Become a Fan" directly in the unit. It is a natural move since adding fans is a priority for social media marketers - and it is a more difficult task that adding Twitter followers (though arguably more valuable). If you are logged in as a page administrator, you will now see a button on your page(s) to "promote your page with an ad" ... which now includes a "Become a Fan" button. Yesterday TAG Body Spray ran a campaign to promote their new product and Facebook presence. As of yesterday morning, they had 18,000 Facebook fans:

Twenty-four hours later, Tag has over 85,000 Facebook fans. You will also notice that those fans are engaging with TAG's content. Before the promotion, each Facebook post would have 2-5 'likes' and no comments (meaning the posts would not appear virally in people's feeds). TAG's posts from today have 100s of 'likes' and 50-100 comments. Not bad considering the posts are not as social or interactive as they could be (Starbucks is a great example here).

FastFeud.com Launches out of Dog Patch Labs & Rails Rumble 2009

Rails Rumble 2009 concluded yesterday at 5:00pm pst. About 250 teams submitted their 48-hour projects and the early results look great (here's an excellent write / thread on Hacker News). Judging for the event begins tonight.

Dog Patch Labs hosted a team of four (see roster below) that created FastFeud.com: a social way to create viral match-ups. FastFeud is integrated into Facebook (via Facebook Connect) and Twitter - allowing users to share content through their social graphs.

Member and designer Rob Abbott gives a tour of FastFeud and its Facebook integration:

About FastFeud.com: This or That: it is an age old question that pertains to people, ideas, sports teams, and so on. FastFeud.com allows users to quickly create match ups that can then be shared virally through Facebook (using Facebook Connect) and Twitter. The experience is visual, exciting and fast-paced - allowing users to rapidly interact with numerous feuds.

Each match up includes a question, two contestants and images. Users are then encouraged to vote on the match up - on FastFeud.com, Facebook and Twitter. Votes are collected and winners are presented.

When shared via Facebook, users are able to post the match up and images of the two contestants directly into their Facebook feeds. When shared via Twitter, users are able to promote their match up and voting preference to their Twitter following.

Developed for the Rails Rumble 2009 contest in 48 hours by the Browseology Team and friends from Lijit and Egg Haus with the support of Dog Patch Labs.

The Team

Joe Pestro (@joepestro) - Developer for Yardbarker.com and Co-Founder of Browseology, LLC Art Chang (@kineticac) - Developer for Yardbarker.com and Co-Founder of Browseology, LLC Kevin Olsen (@kevinrolsen) - Developer for Lijit.com (flew in from Colorado to the SF Bay Area to work on this) Rob Abbott (@abbott) - Founder and CEO of Egg Haus

Rails Rumble 09: 8 Hours Remain, Project Snapshots

Rails Rumble 2009 has eight hours remaining - all sites must be checked in and working by 5pm pst. In the last hour, nearly 600 commits were checked in as teams race to get finish their projects: You can view and access a variety of screenshots (and in some cases, working demos) of what teams are working on:

Project Runway Overtakes PerezHilton.com for Season Premier

In preparation for Lifetime's season premier of Project Runway, PerezHilton.com ran its standard background ad unit alongside integrated, rich IAB units. The unique part of this campaign, however, was how Perez removed the blog's standard right column so as to better promote Lifetime and the TV schedule. Normally, the right column houses a collection of navigational units and advertising banners. In addition to simplifying the page's visuals - it ensures that the only advertiser on the page is Project Runway... which Perez then sells at premium:

Blue Bottle Cafe & Restaurants using Twitter & Facebook

If you live in San Francisco and love coffee, you likely know about Blue Bottle Cafe - it is arguably the best coffee in the city, has a rabid fanbase and was made famous by the New York Times piece, "At last, a $20,000 cup of coffee". Blue Bottle has started dipping its toes in social media - and why not? On any given morning, half of the shop is seen huddling over a mobile device or laptop.

It is an interesting example because social media is a natural, ideal fit for restaurants (great imagery, food is often social, and people talk about their experiences). It is also interesting because:

- Blue Bottle has a newly started presence on both Twitter and Facebook

- Facebook is about 3x as popular as Twitter: 600 fans vs. 200 followers

- Blue Bottle routinely posts to Twitter, including great photos and interesting updates... but they have not yet posted to the Facebook stream (despite having 3x the fans and Facebook being better suited for visual posts / sharing)

- Blue Bottle Cafe is actively being talked about on both Twitter and Facebook (on Twitter, there are dozens of mentions each day)

Blue Bottle is clearly experimenting with social media and, as an onlooker and a fan of their coffee / food, I find it both interesting and helpful. If I were a restaurateur, I would be watching closely and experimenting on my own. Both Twitter and Facebook are effective ways to showcase new menu items, specials / sales and interact with customers.

Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts and other large chains have found success through social media (and are among the best social marketers)... local shops are starting to figure it out as well. And as mobile continues to play a growing, important role both in restaurant discovery and communication, there will be a stronger opportunity to engage with customers.

Rails Rumble 09 Kicks Off... Sneak Peak

Tonight, Rails Rumble 2009 kicked off. Here is a sneak peak of what is being worked on at the Dog Patch Lab:

Facebook Pages Updates Now Push to Twitter

Though it seems like a relatively minor change - this is a significant change / win for marketers who actively use Twitter and Facebook Pages. Users have been able to send their Twitter posts into their Facebook streams (and a staggering percentage of my social graph's updates come from Twitter)... but it has always been a one-way street. As of today, Facebook Page owners are able to syndicate their updates from Facebook to Twitter... with a variety of controls (updates, images, notes, etc).

These controls currently only exist for Facebook Pages, but it is logical to assume that this is the first step before Facebook Status updates also both directions (collecting data, understanding usage and determining whether or not pushing all status updates into Twitter is wise and scalable). Marketers are an ideal audience to test the integration: they are motivated to share in both directions and the population is active, well-incented and much smaller.

Great landing page: big, clean logos and a simple message: "Now share anything with fans and followers, all from one place."

You will be asked to authenticate your Twitter account and give Facebook access to speak to Twitter (and visa versa)

Select what content you want to share. The default is all content, but you can share status updates, photos, links, notes and events

Rails Rumble 2009 Kick Off Tonight at Dog Patch Lab (Pier 38)

Tonight, two teams will be kicking off the 2009 Rails Rumble from the Dog Patch Lab at Pier 38 in San Francisco. The two teams are competing in a nation-wide Ruby on Rails contest that lasts through the weekend (more info here). We will have an informal kick off for the teams tonight with a pizza bash. If you are interested in touring the lab, grabbing a slice of pizza or meeting the local contestants, please drop me a note at rspoon at gmail.com.

We will have photos and videos throughout the weekend.

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"Still Think Social Media is a Fad?"

Erik Qualman of Socialnomics has put together a great video called "Social Media Revolution". Worth watching and then checking his datapoints and footnotes (a couple of which I included below): A couple interesting footnotes from Socialnomics:

#1. By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….96% of them have joined a social network #10. % of companies using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees….80% #13. 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences? #31. 25% of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video…on their phone #32. According to Jeff Bezos 35% of book sales on Amazon are for the Kindle when available