acebook pages are changing. And that means your business strategy will need to change.In fact, Facebook has made many new changes that will impact anyone with a Facebook page.

These changes emerged from Facebook’s fMC 2012 Conference.

The overall message was that Facebook is looking at pages as a “mission control” point (which is where the MC comes from in the conference title).

Here is an overview of the changes and how brands can take advantage of some of the new features.

#1: Cover Photo and Profile Image

Obviously one of the biggest changes that we all knew was coming was the cover photo. No more photo strip across the top. You now have one large image to showcase your page. This image must be a minimum of 399 pixels across to be used as the cover photo. But you can have a photo cover designed to take advantage of the extra space you get. The cover photo maximum dimensions are 850 pixels by 315 pixels.

The new Timeline cover photo.

One of the biggest restrictions is the fact that you can’t have any calls to action in your cover photo. You can’t tell people to like or share your page or have any contact information at all, including your web address, phone number or mailing address. Get the full details about cover photos here. These restrictions will require some creativity in drawing attention to your business without some of the methods that have been used in the profile pictures recently.

The profile picture size has been changed to 180 pixels by 180 pixels. It appears next to every post in the news feed as a 30 pixel by 30 pixel picture. The profile picture is best used for your logo or other eye-catching picture without a lot of words.

#2: Larger, Highlighted and Pinned Posts

One of Facebook’s mantras during the conference was the way we tell stories with Facebook. To help you tell your stories, the pictures and videos are now larger and more eye-catching.

You can also highlight a story (by clicking the star icon in the upper right of a post) so that it spans all the way across the Timeline as shown in this Lexus post with a video.

Use Highlight to emphasize a particular post.

You can also pin the story to the top of your Timeline for up to a week. To do this, click the pencil icon in the upper right of the post and select Pin to Top.

Pin a story to the top of your Timeline for greater emphasis.

#3: Setting Company Milestones

Another thing you can add to make your Timeline more interesting is Milestones. You can tell people about big events in the life of your brand or company.

All you need to do is click on the line that runs down the middle of your Timeline and select Milestone. Then you can fill out the information as shown.

Add Milestones to tell your company’s story.

Because the posts from your fans are in a separate area, your Timeline is now more focused on your story.

People may be spending more time reading your Timeline rather than just coming to your page to ask a question. The more visually engaging you can make your Timeline, the better.

#4: New Applications

One of the biggest changes is the removal of the default landing tab.

Applications are still available and if you have created a custom welcome tab or added any other special application, it hasn’t disappeared.

You now have 12 applications you can showcase and only the four applications that you move to the top row will appear prominently. You cannot change the position of the photos, so technically you only have three applications that you have control over in that top row .

Choose which apps you want displayed by placing them in the first three rows.

To move your apps around, first click the down arrow next to your top row of apps to display all of your apps. Next, click the pencil icon in the upper right corner of the app. Then select the app that you would like to swap positions with. As mentioned, you cannot change the position of the Photos app.

Change your app position.

Many people are lamenting the disappearance of the default landing tab, but the new app buttons give us an opportunity to be creative. You can change the photo that appears for the app and you can rename the app to give a call to action as shown on Holdren Design’s page.

Use an eye-catching image and rename the app to have a call to action.

Another good use of custom images and tab names.

To change your app photo, again display all of your apps with the down arrow button next to the top row of apps and click on the pencil icon. Scroll down to the Edit Setting selection and from there you can add a custom tab image.

Select Edit Settings to change the name of the tab and use a custom tab image.

Select Change to upload a custom tab image.

The custom tab image is 111 pixels by 74 pixels.

You can have an enticing call to action in your custom tab image.

#5: Facebook Offers

Only a few companies have access to Facebook Offers currently, but it will be rolled out soon. According to Facebook’s Offer Help section, they “expect to make Offers available more broadly soon.” Facebook Offers are like Facebook Deals on steroids.

The post is sent through the news feeds of your fans, which is much more visible. There are easy ways to share the Offer, both through the post itself and then when the Offer is claimed. Fans get the Offer by clicking the Get Offer link, see the terms and then click the blue Claim Offer button as shown.

Click Claim Offer to get the coupon sent to your email.

Because Facebook has everyone’s email address, they are able to individually email your Offer to the person who claimed it. Unfortunately, the page does not have access to those emails through which the Offer was claimed, but at least the word is spread about your Offer.

The person who claims the Offer receives an email showing how to redeem the Offer and the terms.

Facebook Offers could be a huge win for small businesses offering things like a “free webinar” or consultants offering a “free 15-minute consultation.”

The danger is making sure you have the bandwidth to deliver the Offer. There didn’t seem to be any way to cap the number of Offers that were claimed. Einstein’s Bagels had close to 30,000 people who claimed the BYGO sandwich offer. Not too difficult to fulfill if you have 500+ locations and you anticipate that some won’t redeem the Offer at all—but still, you don’t want to get into a bad situation with fulfillment problems.

Facebook gives some good tips on ways to make your Offer successful by telling us to “make discounts substantial”—20% off or even free—as well as setting a reasonable expiry date to “let people have a few days to see and claim the Offer.”

The other question is when Facebook Offers will be widely available. Facebook stated, “Offers are only available to managed advertising clients.” Once this is rolled out to more pages, it would seem that every page would want to create one if it was free. Plus it appears that Facebook may not be vetting the Offers before they go live. Offers may become too much of a good thing, but that remains to be seen.

#6: Facebook Insights, Admin Panel and Messaging

Another change with the Timeline is the location of the Insights. You can now access them by clicking on the Admin Panel in the upper right corner.

The Admin Panel tells you about new notifications and gives you access to the “back-end” of your Facebook page.

The Admin Panel has much different navigation than before, but everything appears to be there.

Access your Insights through the Admin Panel.

You will still be able to see the old-style Page Dashboard if you click the Manage drop-down menu and then Edit Page.

Click Edit Page to see the old-style Page Dashboard.

From the Admin Page, you can also invite your email contacts, invite friends, share your page and create an ad from the Build Audience drop-down menu.

Use the Build Audience drop-down menu to access several options on getting the word out about your page.

Facebook has done a nice job of giving us lots of options to learn more about the new page design from the Help drop-down menu. During the Preview, the Help drop-down menu links to tutorials, but once you publish your Timeline you will have access to some different options.

One of the capabilities will be to easily request a name change for your page. This name change is the title of your page, not the custom URL you may have set for your page. You can still access this form here. Great news for people who have changed their company branding, have had a misspelling in the name or have other tweaks they have wanted to make.

Request a name change for your page

One of the most interesting developments of the new page Timelines is that we can now get more information on other pages that have changed to the new Timeline. When you click on the Likes box, just underneath their Timeline cover photo you can see the most popular age group, a People Talking About This Trend graph and their most popular week.

You can now see more Insight information about any page that has the new Timeline.

Companies could possibly hide the Likes box by swapping it to a lower position than the top 12 apps that are accessible to the public. But that would also hide the social proof of how many people like your page.

Pages will also have the ability to receive messages from fans. The Message feature can be turned on or off from the Manage Permissions area of the Admin Dashboard.

Enable the Message button from the Manage Permissions area.

The Message button is enabled by default so if you want to disable it, you will have to uncheck the box. Messages can only be initiated by a fan—they cannot be initiated by the page to a fan. The page can reply to the message sent.

#7: Facebook Advertising

Another new announcement that was covered in the fMC Conference was some changes to advertising. The ads will be larger and the product names are the Reach Generator and Premium on Facebook. The Reach Generator is designed to reach more of your existing fans than you currently are reaching through the news feed.

Mike Hoefflinger, Facebook’s director of global business marketing, said that currently pages only reach about 16% of their audience each week with posts. With the Reach Generator ads, pages can reach 50% of their fans each week and 75% each month. Beta testing done by brands such as Ben and Jerry’s was able to reach 98% of fans and double engagement.

The Reach Generator ads are designed to connect to your existing audience and will include the Page Post stories. The ads will not be based on CPC or CPM models, but will be an “always on” ad. These ads will be shown on the right side of the page and they will also go into the news feed and mobile streams. Learn more about this product in Facebook’s Reach Generator Guide.

Premium on Facebook is designed to distribute your stories to new connections and will be shown on the right side of the home page, in the news feed, in mobile streams and when someone logs out of Facebook. Find out more in the Premium on Facebook Guide.

Again, there were lots of big changes to pages that came out of the fMC Conference. Read more about their guides here. Ultimately, the Timeline look needed to come to pages and there are a lot of ways we can use it to our advantage.

What do you think? Now it’s time to weigh in with your thoughts about all the changes. Leave your questions and comments in the box below!

Source: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com

Facebook has outlined plans to encourage users to share more of the media they consume - including music and movies - with friends.

Its founder Mark Zuckerberg also unveiled a dramatic redesign to the website, replacing user profiles with an audio visual timeline of their life.

The updates were revealed at Facebook’s annual F8 developer conference.

A wave of new features in recent weeks have been welcomed by some users and caused annoyance to many others.

Facebook’s latest changes point to a desire to keep users engaged through new features, in the midst of rapid innovation from social networking rivals.

The site’s application platform has been redesigned to allow users to share what they are consuming on streaming music services such as Spotify, and the movie rental site Netflix.

News sites, including the Guardian and Independent newspapers, are also included in the initial roll out.

Depending on privacy settings, users will be able to see what friends are doing - for example, playing a song - then listen-in themselves.

Mr Zuckerberg said he wanted to create, what he called, “real time serendipity”.

“Being able to click on someone’s music is a great experience, but knowing you helped a friend discover something new and they liked your taste in music, and that you now have that in common is awesome,” he added.

Facebook said that users would only be able to do as much on the site as its media partners allowed in each country, so free music sharing through streaming apps would only work where that service was already available outside Facebook.

New look

Alongside the deeper integration of media content, the restyling of Facebook’s profile pages is also likely to prove a hot topic among users.

The most radical departure so far from the site’s well known profile format will doubtless prove contentious with its sometimes conservative members.

Identities will now be defined through a densely packed vertical timeline of major life events, made up of photos, videos and other items. The level of detail diminishes the further down a reader scrolls.

Profile pages had previously been limited to basic information along with a stream of every single item posted by a user.

The latest offering is significantly different to those of Facebook’s biggest social networking rivals, Google+ and Twitter, and more closely resembles the once-popular site Myspace.

“Facebook is positioning itself as not just your social graph online, but your life online,” Forrester Research analyst Sean Corcoran told the Associated Press.

“These changes not only help trump rival Google but will open up new opportunities,” he said. “But concerns around privacy and immaturity in how to do these things effectively will make it a slow go.”

Facebook stressed that all of its new offerings could be controlled by members using its recently simplified privacy controls.

In particular, it stressed that timeline items could be modified within the new “activity log”, allowing users to limit who can view certain events from their past.

The updates are expected to start appearing on users’ computers in coming weeks.

Source: bbc.co.uk 22/09/2011

Web search data can provide an early signal of house price changes in the UK, a study has suggested.

The research in the Bank of England’s latest quarterly bulletin concluded that the search data outperformed other traditional economic indicators.

Using Google’s Insights for Search tool, researchers found that searches for “estate agents” tended to peak a month ahead of rises in house prices.

The Bank also said the data could help predict changes in unemployment.

Searches for “unemployment” and “JSA” (jobseeker’s allowance) rose markedly in line with the unemployment rate during the 2008-09 recession.

Surprisingly, searches for the term “jobs” did not seem to vary much with changes in employment.

Although the results provided a good leading indicator of the jobs market, they were not significantly better than other existing indicators, such as the Jobcentre claimant count or consumer confidence surveys.

‘Noise’“Internet search data have a number of appealing properties as economic indicators,” said the study.

“They are extremely timely and cover a potentially vast sample of respondents,” it explained, noting that 60% of UK adults use the internet on a daily basis.

However, the researchers warned that the data also contained pitfalls.

Internet users tend to come from specific age and income groups, which may skew the data.

Many users made searches based purely on curiosity - which can add a lot of unhelpful random examples to the search data - while some important economic activities, such as business investment decisions, did not typically involve internet searches.

The Bank also noted problems with the Google data itself, particularly the fact that it only provided percentage changes in the relative popularity of a given search term, but did not give the actual number of searches.

This made it particularly hard to know which search terms to use for the study.

The fact that the data only went back a few years also made it difficult to draw definite conclusions about its usefulness.

Source: BBC 13/06/2011

Experian Hitwise’s latest Search Engine and Social Analysis shows that Google and Yahoo! both lost market share in terms of searches in May 2011 as Bing, Ask and other search engines made significant gains.Google Sites were still responsible for over 90% of UK internet searches in May, accounting for 0.32% fewer searches than in April. Year-on-year, Google Sites were also down by 1.40%, with a lower share of the search market than in May 2010.

Yahoo! Sites also lost search market share last month, dropping from 3.15% of all UK Internet searches in April to 3.08% in May. The dip in performance for both Google and Yahoo! Sites can be attributed to Microsoft Bing’s growth in popularity.

Microsoft Sites, led by Bing, increased their market share of all UK Internet searches by 0.18% last month, taking the company to 4.26% of UK searches. Microsoft also improved on its performance in the search market year-on-year with a 1.26% increase in searches. Although not as prominent as Bing, Ask Sites saw growth in May improving their market share of searches by 0.10% and the niche search engines included in the Other category also saw growth of 0.10% between April and May 2011.

“Google is still very much in the driving seat when it comes to search, and May’s minor loss in market share does little to dent the 90% share Google has in this field,” commented Experian Hitwise’s Research Director, Robin Goad. “However, the more interesting trends are to look at year-on-year changes in the search market, where Microsoft is taking market share away from Google. The key will be if Microsoft can continue this trend and mount a stronger challenge on Google.”

Facebook loses further ground to YouTube and Twitter

YouTube and Twitter were the fastest growing social networks in May, whilst market leader Facebook lost market share of visits for a third consecutive month. YouTube consolidated its position as the second biggest social network in the UK, accounting for 20.52% of all UK Internet visits to social networks during the month. Meanwhile Twitter had its biggest ever month of UK Internet visits, peaking on 21 May when the website accounted for 1 in every 184 UK Internet visits.

The growth of YouTube and Twitter during May had an impact on Facebook’s market share, which dropped to 53.61% of all visits to social networks for the month. Overall seven of the top 10 most popular social networks in the UK gained market share of visits in May, whilst Facebook, Moshi Monsters and MySpace all lost market share.

Robin Goad added: “It has been a pretty extraordinary month for Twitter, with more visits coming to the website than ever before. Twitter has carved a niche for itself as an excellent platform through which Internet users can share and consume news. As the micro-blogging platform becomes more mainstream marketers need to be able to monitor what is being said about their brand and how they can engage with this ever increasing audience online. Twitter is no longer purely in the domain of early-adopters; rather it is becoming a mainstream tool which is being used increasingly by all types of Internet users, regardless of their online preferences.”

Source: Experian Hitwise 07/06/2011

LivingSocial will use a raft of product and service innovations as it looks to overtake market leader Groupon in the UK by the end of the year.

he group buying site says it has seen a “good trajectory” of growth in the UK since its launch here last June and expects its upcoming advertising campaign to attract more users to the site and make it the market leader in terms of users.

The campaign, which is set to launch in July, will include “more traditional forms of advertising” although further details have yet to be announced. LivingSocial currently focuses most of its marketing spend on digital display and search campaigns.

LivingSocial’s UK site will also be updated to migrate its family deals platform from the US and to include “Instant Deals”, a service that will bring offers to users in realtime on their mobiles.

The UK site is also set to extend its hyperlocal offering, by including more towns and smaller areas in cities in location-based targeted deals. LivingSocial in London currently features six separate markets.

LivingSocial UK managing director Peter Briffett says: “Hyperlocal is our key driver, we’re the only company offering that - it’s the future of local advertising. We give businesses real ROI and a powerful model to promote themselves.”

LivingSocial currently attracts about half as many monthly unique visitors as Groupon, according to comScore.

Briffett says the launch of similar deals and offers services by bigger internet players such as Google and Facebook is not a threat but instead shows “the big appetite there is for deals”.

Groupon’s UK managing director Christopher Muhr also denied that services such as Google Offers would dent its position as the market leading daily deals service.

Top 5 coupon sites
Source: comScore April 2011

Source: Marketing Week 03/06/2011

Former Miss Wales and Big Brother contestant Imogen Thomas has signed up with Paddy Power for a campaign to promote its UEFA Champions League final offer.

Full-page press ads featuring Thomas in a Manchester United shirt, wielding a Paddy Power-branded football, have appeared in newspapers today (26 May).

Thomas has been the centre of a media storm around “super injunctions” due to her alleged affair with Manchester United player Ryan Giggs.

Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming used Parliamentary privilege to reveal Giggs’ name, after tens of thousands of people on Twitter had also named the player who had taken out the writ.

The ad promotes Paddy Power’s money-back special offer ahead of Saturday’s (28 May) Chaimpons League Final between Manchester United and Barcelona.

The campaign carries the tagline “Imogen can’t keep quiet about this!”.

A Paddy Power TV ad featuring a blind footballer kicking a cat was the most complained about ad of 2010, according to the Advertising Standards Authority.
Sourec: Marketing Week 26/05/2011

Their is no hiding for Ryan Giggs this week, ahead of Champions League final, the Manchester United star has been tangled up in the Twitter war.

Can this story now make him a famous brand? Why not? He is a legend and a family man that’s has appeared in the UK media all for the wrong reasons. This story will soon be forgotten about next week if United win the Champions League against Barcelona and Giggs is the star man. If he performs on the day, then their is no doubt that he will be a household brand in years to come.

So what makes a good brand? Well let’s look at David Beckham, Giggs former teammate. Beckham has become a global brand with the help from his amazing football skills as well as sponsorship deals.

Although Giggs case is different, there is no doubt that after this weekend, people will always see him as a legend.  I can only see his brand profile increase.

UK consumers have spent a massive £300bn shopping online in the 11 years the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index has been running.

MRG, which started the index in April 2000, predicts that the e-commerce market will be worth nearly £70bn in 2011.

Shoppers spent just £800m online in 2000, but a decade later, that figure reached £58.8bn.

Clothing is the biggest contributor to the sales surge, growing 3,245% in the past 10 years. Electricals is the second best-performing sector, up 996% since February 2002.

The nation’s thirst for booze has also fuelled growth – beer, wine and spirit sales have grown 825% since February 2002. The segment experiences seasonal sales spikes in November and December. The IMRG said that the size of the spikes is growing at an increasing rate.

James Roper, IMRG’s chief executive, said: “We expect [2011’s £70bn forecast spend] to easily double within four years.

“With 80% of the UK population now online and government plans to extend the speed and geographical reach of broadband services, we anticipate a continued acceleration of growth, irrespective of the economic situation as a whole.”

Last month, IMRG published data revealing that, in spite of economic pressures, consumers spent £5.1bn online in March, the strongest figure in years.

Total retail sales hit £30.7bn in March, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Source: Marketing Magazine: 25/05/2011

A massive 31% of Britons do not expect to buy a property, according to research by comparison website moneysupermarket.com.

While many are not taking the home ownership plunge, others are leaving it till later in life as tough market conditions continue. The average age for buying a first property is now 38 years old. In London it is 43 years old.

There are many reasons why Brits are holding back or opting out of buying home. Less mortgage products available and the need for higher deposits are two of the main ones.

Only 5% of potential first time buyers currently have a deposit saved while the number of mortgage products available to first time buyers has tumbled to 1,581 from the 14,940 available in pre-credit crunch Britain, the data showed.

However the number of mortgage products available is starting to rise, albeit slowly while the drop in house prices should provide a welcome incentive for first time buyers.

Clare Francis mortgage spokesperson at moneysupermarket.com said, “There is no rush to buy as the housing market looks set to remain subdued for the foreseeable future. Therefore aspiring homeowners can take their time to save that all important deposit without the fear that house prices are going to soar out of reach.”

Source: LSE: 20/05/2011

Orange and Barclaycard have launched a mobile payments service that lets users pay for items via their phones at retail outlets including EAT, Pret A Manger and Subway.

The service called Quick Tap lets users pay for items up to the value of £15 in a single transaction by tapping their phones against compatible NFC readers.

Other telecom providers have NFC handsets close to launch. O2 will partner with Visa to deliver its “mobile wallet” contactless payment service in the second half of this year.

Quick Tap sees payments made through a chip in the device’s SIM card, which is connected to a user’s Barclaycard, Barclays debit or Orange Credit Card. Users can then transfer up to £100 to the device.

Users can activate the service via an app that is installed on their device and confirm payment by entering a secure PIN.

Pippa Dunn, Orange VP, says: “Orange Quick Tap is the first of its kind, a service that allows you to pay for everyday items just by tapping your phone wherever you see the contactless payment symbol.

The service launches officially today and will be available to all Orange customers using Quick Tap handsets.

The service will initially be available on Samsung Tocco Lite and Samsung Tocco Quick Tap handsets with other supporting devices to follow.

The launch will be supported by an integrated marketing campaign although exact details of its executions were not disclosed.

Source: Marketing Week 20/05/2011