A better course of action would be to allow employees to post content on the company blog that might not be construed as all pixie dust and roses, suggests the authors of a new study from the University of Utah and University of Connecticut.

In in the report “Blog, Blogger, and the Firm: Can Negative Employee Posts Lead to Positive Outcomes?” researchers discovered that moderately negative posts not only make corporate blogs more credible but also increase readership, which in turn offers more exposure to positive posts as well.

Readers expect business blogs to tow the company line, which results in predictably positive and boring posts that make the blog more of a public relations and marketing tool than an open forum. But you add some constructive criticism or critical commentary to the mix and you’ve suddenly got some honesty and openness about the company’s products or services.

Let’s say, for example, your company markets specialized automobile parts through an online catalog, and an employee notices that shipments are being delayed because of a particular supply chain practice that she finds archaic. You could choose to not publish her blog post addressing the issue, instead choosing to handle the situation in-house. Or you could run the post — and any additional commentary that is spurred by the original post — all in the spirit of improving delivery of your product to consumers.

I like to characterize these types of posts as “positive controversy,” because when a company or corporate blog permits moderate criticism of its…

Continue reading Why Negativity Can Be Good for Your Business Blog

Those who profess to be fans are much more likely to participate in “desirable actions” using Facebook, such as making a purchase, installing an app, entering a sweepstakes or voting online in a contest. That’s according to SocialCode, a full-service social agency owned by the Washington Post Company, which looked at 50 brands and more than 5 million Facebook ads over a five-month period earlier this year.

Of course, it should come as little surprise that fans are more likely to perform desirable acts than nonfans. But the knowledge that they do so at a situational rate of up to 547 percent higher than nonfans is eye opening.

Specifically, the survey shows that Facebook fans are 291 percent more likely to engage with brands than nonfans. For example, the fan conversion rate to install an app is 38 percent compared with 12 percent for nonfans. That’s a 239 percent difference, or, in other words, fans are three times more likely to convert than nonfans. The conversion rate for existing or new fans to enter a brand’s contest was found to be 6 percent as opposed to 1 percent for nonfans — a 545 percent differential.

When it comes to making an actual purchase, the SocialCode survey shows that fans do so at a 7 percent rate, while nonfans buy at a rate of just 2 percent.

Among the seven actions a user might perform on a fan page, SocialCode found that the difference in cost per acquisition, or CPA, between fans and non fans is…

Continue reading Understanding the Value of a Facebook Fan

Despite all the technological advances in recent years, especially in the realm of social media, a recent study suggests that the vast majority of public discussion about products, brands and services occur in everyday word-of-mouth encounters with others, not online.

A yearlong study from the New Brunswick, N.J.-based research firm the Keller Fay Group, which included more than 32,000 participants, found that 91 percent of respondents’ information about brands came as a result of face-to-face conversations or over the phone. Just seven percent of word-of-mouth conversations about brands occurs online.

The report shows that a well-rounded approach to word-of-mouth marketing and consumer participation is every bit as important as blogs, Facebook posts and tweets in getting the message out, says Chris Laird, CEO of Tremor, Procter & Gamble’s in-house word-of-mouth marketing organization, which commissioned the study.

Your customer or potential buyer needs a reason to engage, a reason to care and a reason to tell others about your brand. It comes down to having something sharable that you can get out there, Laird says. Here are his three tips for getting the most out of word of mouth:

1. Drive real-world conversation. Laird suggests that companies use social media tools to drive conversations out into the real world. In other words, discover ways to find and engage customers in online and offline conversations. As an example, the survey shows that 60 percent of respondents said they were “highly likely” to make a purchase based on an offline word-of-mouth interaction about a brand. Match that figure against engagement brought about by your social-media tools and you start to see why offline word of mouth is so much more valuable.

   Not only that, but the study shows that 67 percent of references to brands in offline conversations turn out to be positive in nature — yet another good reason for businesses to…

Continue reading Measuring Offline Vs. Online Word-of-Mouth Marketing

The Fall 2011 Attitudes and Outlook Survey from email marketing firm Constant Contact, shows that small businesses are wising up to their customers’ desire for engagement. And they’re responding to that desire by actively “listening” to their clients — on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and company web sites.

Here are three benefits business owners cite from their use of social media:

Cost savings. In the half year that has lapsed since its last survey, found that the owners who said they’re allocating time to social media marketing climbed to an eye-popping 81 percent, up from 73 percent six months earlier. When asked why, 83 percent of owners said they could pinpoint cost savings at the top of their reasons to market online. That’s up from 72 percent in the spring 2011 study.

Ease of use. Another 67 percent of owners said the fact that social media marketing is easier to master and utilize brought them around. That’s up from 54 percent in the previous survey. And it didn’t hurt a bit that 51 percent of these surveyed merchants and business people discovered that their…

Continue reading More Small Businesses Extol the Benefits of Social Media

If there’s one thing Facebook has taught us about the care and feeding of word-of-mouth marketing, it’s that to properly manage a business-related profile on a social utility, the utility has to be easy to use. Moreover, it has to offer a compelling and scalable set of features. Google appears to have missed that memo, as have the droves of experts touting Google+ Pages as the next big thing for marketers and business communicators.

In addition to requiring a Gmail address to set up and access the Google+ platform (seriously, who needs yet another email address to manage?), Google+ Pages falls short in a number of other areas, including:

Page administration: Google doesn’t allow multiple administrators to manage a Page, meaning only one person can manage a business or brand on Google+ (the only workaround for this is to open yet another Gmail account and give that account’s login information to anyone who needs to administer the Page).

Cross-platform integration: In what can only be described as a huge error of omission, Google+ Pages doesn’t integrate with…

Continue reading Why Google+ Pages Isn’t Good for Business

It all started in 2006 when Fabian Milon couldn’t find squeezable fruit pouches — a popular and healthy snack in his native France — anywhere in the U.S. Voila! The Coral Gables, Fla.-based Buddy Fruits was born in 2009.

A restaurateur in France at the time of his inspiration, Milon used his culinary experience to create recipes. Meanwhile Buddy Fruits’ co-founder and CEO, Jerome Lesur, handled marketing and business development. Here are seven steps they recommend taking to get your foot in the door of a major grocer like Whole Foods Market, Wal-Mart, Kroger and Publix:

1. Use and train your brokers: If a buyer is inaccessible or unresponsive, use brokers with access to the major stores. Brokers have something you don’t: A pre-existing relationship with grocery-chain buyers. Convince them to carry your line, then train and equip them with everything from samples to press kits, which they can use to successfully tell your story.




2. Show the trend: Prove your product’s significance in today’s marketplace with both quantifiable and anecdotal information. For Buddy Fruits, their value proposition of “One Buddy Fruits a day keeps the doctor away” aligned with popular messages from Michelle Obama, Jamie Oliver and school boards across the U.S. Demonstrate that your product is right, not just “right now,” for the store and its demographic. An industry leader such as Wal-Mart won’t be interested in your product if it’s a fad or a flash in the pan.




3. Don’t go in cold: Show that you have…

Continue reading How to Sell to Grocery Giants Wal-Mart and Whole Foods Market

In recent report by the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth social media use among America’s largest companies is losing steam.

Specifically, less than a quarter of the nation’s top 500 companies as ranked by Fortune magazine now have a public-facing blog — the same percentage reported in last year’s study. When UMass Dartmouth began counting blogs within the Fortune 500 in 2008, that figure was 16 percent, growing to 22 percent in 2009.

The use of Twitter and Facebook among Fortune 500 companies was similarly stunted. This year, 62 percent of those corporations took advantage of the Twittersphere, up just 2 percentage points over 2010. Also this year, 58 percent of firms manage Facebook pages as compared to 56 percent last year.

However the same study indicates that smaller corporations — specifically, those included in the annual Inc. 500 listing of American’s fastest-growing companies — host twice as many blogs than their bigger, better-known brethren. And 71 percent of Inc. 500-listed companies have Facebook pages, while 59 percent use Twitter on a regular basis.

This reflects the notion that smaller companies place more importance on open communications with customers, according to…

Continue reading Why Big Corporations Are Putting the Brakes on Social Media

Even businesses that have an air-tight social media policy can run afoul of the law when employees post on Facebook and other social media platforms.

Last week, an appeals court in New York determined that there are limits to how much proof of employee shenanigans a business can legally gather from social media utilities such as Facebook. The Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court ruled that commercial builder Turner Construction Co. should not have a free hand in searching the Facebook activity of an employee who was seeking compensation in a personal injury suit against the company. The company was attempting to use information from the employee’s Facebook account to show that he was not being truthful about the extent of his injuries.

The appeals court decision, which reversed a separate ruling by a state Supreme Court justice, noted that the company couldn’t have access to all of the employee’s Facebook entries because the request for information wasn’t specific enough. Instead, per the latest ruling, the company can only peruse Facebook activities that are relevant, in that the information contradicts or conflicts with a plaintiff’s alleged restrictions, disabilities, losses and other claims. That judgment includes activities that are set to private or offer only restricted access to outsiders.

In a similar case last year in New York, a woman who claimed she was bedridden due to injuries had photos on Facebook showing her walking and apparently mobile in front of her own home. The woman was ordered to provide access to private areas of her Facebook and MySpace accounts to the opposing litigant, much like information from an…

Continue reading Employees’ Facebook Pages Are Private, Until They’re Not

In the days B.C. (Before Computers), losing touch with friends and family was a part of life. You’d graduate and all your school chums would wander off in different directions. You’d leave your job and lose valuable contacts. Aunts, uncles, and cousins would seem to fall off the face of the earth. Even keeping in touch with siblings hundreds or thousands of miles away was a challenge.

Facebook, with the help of computers and the Internet, has reversed that trend. Not only does it enable you to stay in touch with people, but it also facilitates the process of tracking down people you lost touch with years or decades ago. Facebook also provides numerous ways for you to engage and interact with all these folks daily – by sharing status updates, photos, and videos; posting links to favorite web pages or blogs; chatting; messaging; playing games; planning events; gathering in groups; and so on. And if you’re in business (big or small), Facebook provides several valuable tools to keep in touch with customers and clients right where many of them like to hang out most.

Perhaps best of all, Facebook is free, and all you need to get started is a computer with an Internet connection and a desire to connect with others. If you’re concerned about privacy, you’ll be relieved to know that Facebook gives you complete control over whom you choose to “friend” and the information you choose to share.

If you’re concerned that you don’t know where to start, that’s where we come in. In this book, we provide everything you need to know to get started on Facebook; track down friends, family members, colleagues, former classmates, and others; promote your business or yourself; and tap the full potential of Facebook.

Visit Amazon.com to order your copy of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Facebook, 2nd Edition