ecommerce

Social Media is more than just "LIKES" - for companies in particular it should be an online encounter where they can have valuable conversations with their customers.  Social media can be such a valuable tool for business both big and small, for customer interaction and acquiring new customers as well.

I believe that companies can enjoy real benefits of social media without splashing their increasingly limited cash on relatively expensive ads such as those sold by Facebook as part of its much-touted advertising service.  And whilst you might not get 3000 new "followers" in a month, you can still strengthen your brand’s profile among the people who actually matter: new and existing customers.

Last week I attended the Chinwag and Our Social Times conference on Facebook Marketing which was excellent. The topic I found most interesting was Facebook’s EdgeRank, but when asked how many of us know about the algorithm, I was surprised by the lack of hands that showed.

It’s actually quite a simple concept and one all Facebook Marketeers should be aware of. The following Q&A explains all you really need to know about Facebook’s EdgeRank and how to manipulate it to boost your Facebook marketing activity.

Last Wednesday Chinwag and Our Social Times held the long awaited Facebook Marketing Conference. The day was packed full with speakers, case studies, stats and quotes, our favourite still being from Tom from We Are Social, asking "are you a dipper or a smotherer" (in reference to Heinz ketchup that is).

The day was a huge success with over 120 people through the door, 22 speakers and a twitter hashtag that not only trended during the day but reached over 76,818 people (baring in mind we ended up with two hashtags being used #fbmk12 and #fbkm12)!

For those of you that could not attend the conference, we've done a recap of the event highlights with links to some of the presentations. It'll almost be as if you were there... just without the free chocolate (thanks again Cadburys Dairy Milk).

As mentioned at Wednesday's Facebook Marketing Conference, comScore have released their latest whitepaper - The Power of Like Europe: How Social Marketing Works for Retail Brands.

Focusing on European brands such as H&M, ASOS, La Redoute, Topshop and Zara, the independent research illustrates how popular consumer brands are using Facebook to deliver media impressions at scale, acheive brand amplification and resonance, and ultimately drive desired behaviours among key customer segments.

What better way to begin our Facebook Marketing Conference next week (Weds 18th July) than with Facebook themselves?!

After some essential tea & coffee and a short welcome, we'll kick things off with a keynote from Andy Pang, Measurement Solutions Group Lead from Facebook.

You'll then get to hear about BBC Worldwide, Cadbury Dairy Milk / Kraft Foods, Yorkshire Tea, Manchester City FC, TBG Digital, Beyond, Markettiers4DC, Edelman, GlobalWebIndex and more! The full programme is below...

At the recent Youth Marketing Strategy summit in London (Chinwag was a media partner - thanks Chinwag) I previewed some interesting new findings from our newly-published Youth Insight Report. These findings were based on research in April and May looking at the aspirations, attitudes and habits of UK 16-24s. We received around 1,700 responses to our survey.

These insights were broad, so here for the benefit of digital-biased marketers I've pulled out six fresh stats that relate only to digital...