That’s a lot of money for a very shaky product.

Runaway success?

Before this IPO process kicked off, Facebook was the golden child of social media. With far and away the largest user base (over 800 million accounts) how could they not wipe the floor with everyone else in the market. A steady stream of updates designed to entice us to open our wallets and purses seemed to back that up. Adverts, sponsored stories, games, and so on. Surely everyone was spending money as a result of their Facebook activity?

Instagram – how much?

Such was Facebook’s popularity that hardly anyone batted an eyelid when it was revealed that Mark Z himself negotiated the purchase of Instagram for a nice round $1 billion! If Mark has spent that much then it must surely be worth a lot more and he’s nabbed another bargain, the consensus seemed to be.

The Emperor’s New Clothes?

Personally, I viewed that purchase with some incredulity. OK, Instagram is one of the darling apps of the iPhone world, and purchasing it instantly gives Facebook access to a serious number of subscribers details, as well as some pretty cool photography expertise. But how many of those Instagram users were already on Facebook? A pretty high percentage I would venture. And how much expertise could you buy in for a few million, and have plenty of change left over to, I dunno, feed an African nation?

Crazy!

People don’t go to Facebook to buy

Here’s the big issue I have with Facebook’s valuation. If you watch the recent BBC programme on Facebook (UK only I’m afraid), then at one point it is asserted that, in order to justify a $100 billion valuation, Facebook needs to carry on growing by some insane amount each year (80% I believe). Admittedly it has done so over the last few years, but it’s almost unheard of for a company to grow at that rate for that long, maintaining it is unprecedented.

And the warning signs are already there.

GM cops out

With exquisite timing, General Motors announced recently that it is not going to spend any money of Facebook adverts in the future. Is this the beginning of an exodus by some big brand names? I’m not certain it’s that serious, but I do think this move is a reflection of a recognition by big businesses that Facebook ads are not as general purpose as they hoped.

Think about it, if you’re using Facebook, as most do, to catch up with what’s happening in the lives of your friends and family, then what sort of purchases will you be interested in? Maybe food and drink if you’re organising a meeting. Perhaps photography products if you’re envious of their pictures. Cars? Unlikely.

Is it really a Ponzi Scheme?

No, not really. But it seems to have similar characteristics. This articles in Forbes explains in some detail the thinking behind the assertion, but the argument can be quickly summarised. In essence, the problem is that companies come in, invest significant amounts of money in Facebook ads, find they don’t work well enough, so scale back or drop out completely. In order to keep the platform growing, Facebook thus need to entice other companies to purchase ads and go through the same cycle.

Whilst there are enough companies out there that haven’t yet tried Facebook ads, the cycle can continue and their revenue will grow. But at some point the feed of new companies will dry up, and that’s when Facebook could be in serious trouble.

Of course, in the interim I’m sure they will be working hard to move to an advertising setup that actually works. But it’s not guaranteed that will happen. In particular, the move towards mobile browsing is even more of a challenge for Facebook. Engagement with ads on the ‘full-fat’ website is poor, but mobile users are even less tolerant of adverts.

So I think I’ll pass on Facebook shares, thank you.

Just 12 months ago, Google had a lot of niche products which were integrated to some extent with the search and advertising sides of the business, but not particularly well. The drive to change this seems to have come from Larry Page, who replaced Eric Schmidt as CEO back in April of last year.

Wave and Buzz – huh?

At that point in time Google’s efforts at social media had consisted of the technically impressive but difficult to use Wave, and the twitter-a-like Buzz, neither of which had set the world alight; or even started it smouldering a little bit. Page recognised that social was the future. Just look at how accurately Facebook can segment its audience for advertising purposes for an example of that, although the jury is still out on click-through rates for those ads. Without a means of gathering more information about people, Google’s lead in search and online advertising was likely to be eroded. Get it right, though, and they could even improve their share.

Their efforts up to that point had been disjointed and lacked integration with Google’s other products. So Page made some big decisions. The drive to build a winning social platform came directly from him, to the extent that employee bonuses are tied to the success of Google+. He also decided that it needed to integrate with every Google product; to act as the ‘glue’ to use their term. Finally, Google started being ruthless about supporting the myriad pet projects that were constantly being developed. If you were to compare Google’s product list today with last April you’d find it a lot shorter.

Focus and Design

This streamlined product list makes things a bit easier for Google. Firstly, they can focus a bit more on the remaining products, devote more man hours to getting the functionality just right. There has also been a much greater effort to design the products. Nowadays there is very much a Google ‘feel’ across the product range. Whether you’re using Gmail, Google Docs or Google+ there are design cues that tell you they all originated from the same stable.

In a way, you could credit Apple for this last change. Steve Jobs proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that really great design can have a huge impact on the perception of a company’s products, and needs to be consistent across the board. Google are definitely aiming for the perception of quality.

Google…..Plus

Then Google+, or G+ as it has been abbreviated to, came along. Learning lessons from previous half-hearted efforts, Google have pretty much bet the bank on G+, building integration into pretty much every other product.

The interface started off not dissimilar to twitter, offering plenty of whitespace and following the new design cues. Since then it’s had a major revision, but still has a very clean look and feel.

One of the very clever aspects of G+ has been it’s leverage of Google’s lead in search and online advertising. Instead of looking to place ads in front of G+ users, Google instead has provided a space that encourages collaboration and discovery, both of information and people. That collaboration is then used in Google Search plus Your World to target search results more effectively.

As a result, G+ is starting to act as a space in which people can genuinely collaborate effectively. On a simple level, circling (connecting) with another G+ user allows you to send messages to each other, messages that are longer and richer than other social networks. Of course, this is little different to email, so doesn’t advance the cause much.

Docs and Hangouts

But then you start looking at some of the other things that you can do. For instance, within the Google Docs suite you can now edit a document, spreadsheet or presentation at the same time as a number of other people. It’s pretty impressive, actually, to see this in progress, as the video below illustrates nicely.

Imagine doing this instead of sending half a dozen version of the same document around a group of people by email!

But it gets even better. The ‘killer’ feature of Google+, in my opinion, is Hangouts. These are video chat sessions where up to 10 people can participate. But, and here’s the real benefit, it’s not just for chatting! Within a hangout it’s possible to do some other collaborative tasks:

• Screenshare
• Watch a YouTube video together
• Share and edit documents
• Use 3rd party apps such as Caccoo and Slideshare

So not only can you work on stuff together, but you can chat with each other as you do it. Almsot as good as being in the same room!

Want to try it out?

If you want to dip your toe into this brave new world of online collaboration, then we offer a Google+ consultancy service. We can help you decide which features of Google+ are appropriate for you and your business to use, and make sure you get it right from the start.

I also run a regular business-oriented hangout each Monday morning at 10am UK time, which all are welcome to join. Pop along to The Business Hangout for more details.

Firstly, I must apologise for the lack of content recently. Easter caused a bit of a hiatus for many people, myself included. During the Easter period my family and I had a short break in Madrid. It was great to get away from rainy old England for a short while and spend some time absorbing the architecture, culture, history and tapas that Spain’s capital has to offer. It’s pretty sad to see the economic problems that Spain is facing at the moment, and I hope it comes though this difficult period relatively unscathed.

Bucking the trend

The Spanish economy is not the only one facing problems. Here in the UK it’s been pretty tough too, and the news that we have re-entered recession is not all that welcome either. However, 2012 has been a good year for Four Lakes so far, and I suspect there are many other businesses out there bucking the trend too. Is yours one of them? If so, let us know what you think has made the difference.

For Four Lakes one of the changes we made that has provided a little boost is Google+. I’ve used social media in the form of twitter and facebook for some time, and looked at the offering from Google as just ‘another social network’ initially. But that really does Google+ a disservice.

We have a great infographic on our site that explains is a lot of detail why all businesses should consider using Google+ ahead of any other social network. In essence it boils down to 2 factors:

1. There is potential for a significant boost to your search engine rankings
2. It is easier to connect to potential customers

Let me explain in a little more detail.

Search plus your World

Not long after Google opened G+ to the public, they made a tweak to search results that incorporated recommendations from your G+ contacts. Rather than try to explain this in text, here’s a nifty video from Google about it.

As a result of this change, someone searching for a service that you provide is more likely to find your site if one of their G+ contacts has recommended you. So even if you simply add the Google +1 button to your site you are potentially boosting its exposure.

Perspectives v People v Passions

One of the Google+ superstars, Guy Kawasaki, has a theory about Twitter, Facebook and Google+. According to him…

• Twitter is for real-time perspectives (i.e. news, and opinion about the news)
• Facebook is for people (i.e. connecting, and staying connected, with people you know)
• Google+ is for finding those who share your passions (i.e. new contacts with the same interests as you)

From a business perspective, if you are looking for potential customers, then a network that allows you to connect to people around the world that share an interest, one that your product or service fulfills in some way, is marketing nirvana.

Lets assume you provide specialist photographic equipment. On Google+ you can do a quick search for photographers, circle them, and then start to engage with them. As with any social network you wouldn’t try selling to them immediately, but if you can demonstrate similar levels of knowledge and enthusiasm then, in time, they are likely to come to you over a competitor when they need what you offer.

Hanging Out

My favourite feature of Google+, and one which doesn’t have an equivalent on other social networks, is Hangouts. These are video chats with up to 10 participants, and there are an ever-growing number of apps that can be run in hangout sessions too. These apps can be fun (like ‘wearing’ a pirates hat) or business-oriented (like editing a shared document). Hangouts can be private or public too, and a limited number of people have the ability to broadcast their hangout live on YouTube.

As a means of engaging with existing or potential customers, Hangouts are hard to beat. You could, for instance, hold masterclasses, where you go through the capabilities of your product with a select audience, in place of a ‘try before you buy’ facility. Or you could use them for support purposes. Here at Four Lakes we run a regular hangout as a business networking session, allowing participants to get their networking ‘fix’ without need to travel.

Jump In

It’s important with Google+, as with any marketing channel, that you get it right from the start. Building on our knowledge and expertise, we now offer a Google+ consulting service. We can help sort out your personal profiles and set up your business pages, and link them back to your website in an appropriate manner. We can help you understand how to connect with potential customers, and do so in a way that engages rather than enrages them. We can help you run Hangouts, and provide the ability to stream them live on YouTube for maximum effect.

If you haven’t set up a personal profile, then do so now. Have a poke around, circle me, search for people with your passions, and start talking and listening. Come join our Monday morning hangout (the next one is on the 14th May) and see how powerful hangouts can be. Come on in, the water’s fine!

The reason I mention this is because occasionally I take inspiration from my blog when deciding what the topic of discussion for The Business Hangout is going to be. But this week I reckon its worth reversing that, and blogging about a recent hangout where we discussed VoIP. The nub of the discussion revolved around asking if the negation of tradition reason for choosing VoIP, cheap calls, means that VoIP is no longer the right choice for businesses looking for a telephony solution.

Joining the discussion were two people with a lot of expertise in this area, Randy Resnick and Jason Bordujenko. If you want to watch the recording in full then it’s at the bottom of this page.

VoIP still saves money

No so long ago, the choice used to be between telcos (telephone companies) who ran calls as analogue, or  later digital, signals over copper wires, and VoIP, which converted the audio to data signals and then routed it over a data network. VoIP was cheaper because the data network was already in place (for internet access, WAN’s, etc) and voice was just another service on top of that.

For some time now, the telcos have been slowly converting their networks (at least from the exchange on) to data networks. This has allowed them to easily run data services (e.g. xDSL) over the existing copper line infrastructure, although it seems that it took a serious threat to their call charge income from VoIP services for those cost savings to filter down to consumers.

There has also been a recent move towards bundled call packages – at least in the UK. Thus, for a fixed price, you can often have unlimited calls (normally local and national only). Again, this started off as a model within the VoIP business model which has been copied by the telcos.

The upshot of all this is that there is little to choose between VoIP and telco call charges.

However, the one area that hasn’t been significantly discounted by the telcos, at least not yet, is the cost of renting lines. It’s still the case for SME’s that, in order to have the facility to run x number of phone calls at the same time, they will need x number of telephone lines. In the world of VoIP, it’s perfectly feasible for one telephony line to be capable of hosting 10+ concurrent VoIP calls.

So if you have a need for multiple concurrent calls, there is still the opportunity to  save money through going down the VoIP route. And the great thing is it is an ongoing saving…every month/quarter you are reducing your expenditure.

Which flavour of VoIP?

So if you’ve decided to explore a VoIP solution, what are your options?

Skype

It’s the major player in the consumer market, and has made inroads into the business market too. If you are a very small business then it may be plenty for your needs, even though it lacks some of the PBX-type features (IVR, etc) than might help your business project a bigger and more professional image.

SIP-based

SIP is the most widespread standard for VoIP traffic, and can be utilised by all modern, VoIP-capable phone systems. Different systems have slightly different feature sets, but even relative cheap ones such as those based on the open source Asterisk telephony engine will include Voicemail, IVR, Conference Calls, and much more.

Within the SIP offer, you can have services such as those offered as a package by ISPs (i.e. you connect a single SIP handset to their VoIP account), a hosted PBX (where you connect a number of handsets to a PBX hosted elsewhere), or an on-site PBX.

Each has their own advantages, and your situation will determine what’s best for you. But the important point to remember is that a VoIP-based solution will tend to give you a better feature set than a traditional system.

The hangout covered some other related (and some not-so-related) aspects of VoIP. Have a look and feel free to join a future hangout.

Watch the hangout

Whoa, don't eat your cookies just yet!

“Not again!” is bound to be a common reaction to this topic. I’ve blogged about it twice already this year, after all…

Jan 11th – Cookies and your Website

Mar 16th (yes, only 2 weeks ago) – Cookie Audit

Why write again so soon? I seriously considered not doing so, but this Econsultancy article is just too important to ignore.

What’s changed?

If you remember, the advice so far has been that most cookies are deemed ‘non essential’ and so consent should be sought before placing them on a user’s computer. Most controversially, analytics cookies have been included in this category, with products such as Google Analytics looking likely to be deemed irrelevant at a stroke if every company decides to follow the letter of the law.

With the deadline for compliance less that two months away, my advice was for you to put plans in place to start utilising an alternative product, so that once the ICO start challenging the higher-profile non-compliant companies you can implement the change pretty rapidly.

Lack of clarity

I don’t think anyone really expected this situation to change much in the interim period, and clarity would only be achieved once prosecutions started to flow.

Then the Government Digital Service decided that it could decree analytics cookies to be essential to their business, and non-invasive from the customer’s point of view. Yes, another arm of the government is taking a contrary view to that of the ICO. Oh to be a fly on the wall of the ICO’s office when that news filtered through!

Are analytics cookies OK now?

No-one knows for sure if the ICO will challenge this view. Maybe next week that too will have changed (and I’ll have to find yet another cookie image). For now we’ll have to assume that the waters will stay muddied.

Thus, whilst it seems a little more likely now that analytics cookies will escape the net, I still think it sensible to produce a plan that includes replacing your analytics package.

No change then?

Not really, you should still consider the retention of analytics cookies a significant risk, and be ready to remove them in a controlled but rapid manner if the ICO start getting heavy-handed.

Any other non-compliant cookies on your site will remain non-essential, particularly those insidious 3rd party advertising ones that creep in where you least expect them. You should be seriously considering taking action to remove them regardless of the status of analytics cookies.

You should also be looking at means by which your website can gain consent should you decide you want to leave some cookies on there.

As before, our Website Cookie Audit package can help you put a plan in place for a time when you may need to take action.

It’s been a very busy, and very interesting week since my last post, revolving in the main around social networking. Indeed, yesterday alone I had very strong leads for three new website jobs, and a very positive chat about helping someone use Google+ more effectively.

And yet I find myself wondering if social media is an effective marketing tool!

Challenging the norm

Is Social Media quite what it seems?

Why so negative? Well, first of all I would argue that I’m not being negative, but rather doing something that everyone in business should do from time to time, namely reassess the effectiveness of your actions. If you implement a new product, service or way or working, you should be trying to measure its effectiveness regularly, and be prepared to stop if it isn’t having the desired effect.

For example, if you advertise in your local free paper, you should have a process in place to measure how many enquiries you get from that source, and how many of those are converted into customers. After a reasonable period, if it isn’t bringing enough customers in, you can that justifiably stop that particular marketing channel secure in the knowledge that it just wasn’t working for you.

Similarly, with your social media efforts, you should be trying to determine what impact it is having on the bottom line. Of course it’s a lot more difficult to measure ‘awareness’, but even looking at how many website hits are referred from Twitter or Facebook, for instance, will give you an idea how your brand awareness is growing.

Social is not for everyone

I think it’s fair to say that some businesses are better suited to social media than others. It’s also fair to say that some people are more suited than others to social media too. In general, if your target market are particularly active on a network, and you’re comfortable engaging as a person on that medium (only brands that are already strong prosper under that guise), then it’s suitable to use it. Otherwise you need to seriously question if the commitment in time will be worth the return.

Personally, I have found social media a good way of making initial contact with people, and of maintaining awareness after that initial contact. As far as allowing me to demonstrate and prove competence in what I’m trying to sell, probably LinkedIn is the most useful of the major networks. Unfortunately, it also has the smallest reach of what is now the big 4 (Facebook ,Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+). Swings and roundabouts!

The most effective marketing channel

For me, to date, one marketing channel has been far and away the most effective means of generating new customers….informal partnerships. Working alongside other companies offering complementary services brings in more than half of my business. This is a channel that I cultivate carefully and pay a lot of attention to.

But social media has had an impact even on this source of customers. The initial contact with my partner companies was through events organised through social media (e.g tweetups), and even after the initial contact, social media maintained an awareness level between us until we were ready to work together. The goal of social networks to become all-pervasive is becoming reality.

Engagement

What’s interesting about these relationships is that, whilst social media was the matchmaker, the actual marriage only happened after a deeper connection was made via one or more face-to-face meetings. There is still a trust issue when all your contact with someone is via text. Video can erode that trust issue somewhat, but its not perfect.

This is where my recent fascination with Google+ Hangouts lies. If you don’t know what they are, have a look at a website I set up to help people new to the medium – The Business Hangout. In essence, they are video chat sessions where up to 10 people can interact at a time. Their uses are virtually limitless, but I see them as a great alternative to face-to-face networking sessions.

Meeting a person, or a number of people, face-to-face in a hangout isn’t quite the same as a ‘real life’ get-together, but it comes pretty close. It’s a ‘one take’ environment, so you get to see all the tics and idiosyncrasies that give you an insight into the real person. I don’t think that Hangouts totally replace tweetups or other forms of networking meetings. However, they also add a dimension in that you no longer have the geographical restrictions that physical meetings impose.

The Right Tool

Ultimately, I suspect each person and organisation need to work out the best way for them to use social media. It won’t replace other forms of marketing, but can certainly augment them, sometimes enormously.

After all, as a photographer friend of mine always says…

People buy from People

Social media gives you a little insight into the other person, be the a potential supplier, partner or customer. For me it’s the triage process before I invest significant time and effort in a face-to-face meeting, although Hangouts might just make that meeting unnecessary. You may find a different use, only you can really work out what that use is.

The “Cookie Law”

Back in January I wrote about the so called “EU Cookie Law”, a directive from Europe that was enacted into law back in May of last year. There’s is a lot of information available online about this law and its implications, but essentially it mandates that you must gain consent from website visitors if you want to place cookies on their computers.

A grace period of 12 months, which is now getting rather close to expiring, was put in place to allow companies time to make their websites compliant. Most have yet to do so.

Don’t Panic!

If you’re worried about making your website compliant, there are still over two months to go before it might possibly be an issue. In all likelihood, large companies will be targeted first for compliance checks, so you may even have a bit more time.

The best thing to do now is put a plan of action together.

Need a hand?

If you’re unsure how to proceed, we can help. We have just put together a package that, for a very reasonable fee, will help you understand the scale of the problem, and, should a problem exist, what you need to do to resolve it.

Very soon we will also be launching a product that will fix one of the major Cookie Law transgressors – Website Analytics. Keep an eye on the blog, or even better sign up for our monthly email updates.

The Business Hangout

Before I wrap up, I must give a mention to The Business Hangout, which is the bigger and better version of our Coffee & Tech Google+ hangouts that have been running since January.

As you will see from the link above, The Business Hangout has a shiny new website to live in, and has expanded its remit to cover all business-related topics, although of course technology will still feature highly.

Our first Hangout under the new guise was a roaring success, so much so that we published the audio recording so that those who unfortunately missed out could still benefit from the conversation.

This week’s topic is ‘Cloud Computing’ – and if you can’t make it we are hoping to have a video recording available to watch after the event!

Sometimes you need someone to point out the bleedin’ obvious Thanks Andy!

Demonstrating expertise

In checking my Google+ stream this morning, I came across a post promoting a blog on the SEOMoz website. The main thrust of the blog post was to tell so-called SEO experts that they need to demonstrate their expertise in real terms before they can get a job in the industry. The world is full of guys who claim to know how to boost traffic using SEO techniques, but only a small percentage can demonstrate that they have actually done it. It’s an interesting piece if you have 5 minutes spare.

Why sell someone else’s products?

The G+ discussion asked the question “If someone is really good at SEO then why would they work for someone else and not promote their own stuff”? I disagreed with the statement for a couple of reasons:

• SEO covers a number of disciplines. So our SEO person, let’s call her Linda, could be great at producing search-engine-friendly copy, but not so good at link building, for instance.
• Even if Linda is good at all aspects of SEO, do she have a good product or service to sell? Wait a moment, Linda wants to sell her SEO skills…obvious really. All she needs to do is rank higher than the 2 billion other SEO consultants out there!
• OK, even if Linda has a product or service to promote, does she have the skills to run all the other aspects of the business? Can she design and build an attractive website (not just promote one)? Can she handle logistics? Is she comfortable with accounts and taxes? Can she manage staff if the business grows?

The bottom line is that entrepreneurs are generalists, not specialists. They often have an aptitude for sales and promotion, because that helps generate a buzz around their business, but if they spend all their time on one aspect of the business then the business will fail!

SEO experts are like the travelling salesman of old. They can go a long way towards making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, but you wouldn’t get them to do your accounts.

Selling a vision

New 'new iPad' - more hype than substance?

All this talk of selling brings me to yesterday’s iPad launch. Before I expand on that, I need to ask a question. WHY is it just called “New iPad”? Are they trying to confuse us even more? What happens with the next iPad, will that be called the “New, New iPad”? Will we end up referring to it as TIFKAI3 (The iPad Formerly Known As iPad 3)?

Anyway, rant over. What I took from the announcement, and admittedly I didn’t pay a huge amount of attention so please correct me if I’ve missed the killer new functionality, is that this device is a minor incremental improvement over the iPad2. More pixels, LTE capability for those lucky enough to have 4G, better battery (obviously) and very little else. The rest is mainly software upgrades which will probably be available for the iPad2 before long.

And yet you can guarantee that people will head out in their droves and buy one. Even at the inflated prices that Apple charge (£659 for a New iPad 64GB with 4G!). Why do we do it?

Aspirational Marketing

We do it because we see it as the entry price to ‘living the dream’. Apple have carefully positioned this, and all their products, as the ultimate devices to have. The best display, the best software, the best experience. Having one of these makes you one of the ‘beautiful people’.

Of course it’s all marketing hookum. The devices are nice, of course, but any techy will tell you that they have their limitations. Want to plug your SD Card full of MP3′s in and play them? Nope, sorry. You’ll have to use iTunes sir!

So billions of people behave like sheep, stop thinking for themselves, and do things the Apple way. After all, they know what’s best for us, they said so themselves!

Bursting the dream

Apple’s problem is that they need to keep ahead of the market, to keep convincing us that their products are simply the best. This isn’t sustainable forever, and as soon as someone produces a product that works better and costs the same or less, then the whole bubble will burst. Without Steve Jobs at the helm, my guess is that this will happen fairly soon.

The Business Hangout

In closing, I would like to point you in the direction of a weekly online video chat session I run. It previously existed as ‘Coffee and Tech’, but has been relaunched with slightly different goals as The Business Hangout. The sessions are free to attend, and will cover all kinds of business-related topics, with an emphasis on technology. The site and Google+ page will also offer resources on how a business can use hangouts effectively to their benefit. See you there!

The new Facebook timeline for pages matches the look and feel of personal timelines.

So Facebook roll out their new timeline feature to business pages, to a bit of a mixed reaction. It’s a bit of a curious move, as in a stroke they have removed one of the features of the old pages that businesses exploited to the full to gain as many ‘likes’ as they could.

Fan-gate

Nope, it’s not a reference to any Facebook scandal, but rather a means by which companies, ahem, encouraged visitors to their business page to ‘like’ it. So how did it work?

• Facebook business pages allow you to create multiple tab, each with different types of content (wall, photos, events, etc.).
• Using a Facebook-specific markup language, it’s possible to have a tab that looks like a web page.
• It is also possible to choose which tab is shown first to visitors who are not fans.
• On a tab you can display different content to fans and non-fans.

You can see a tab like this in action by looking at the page for our weekly Google+ Hangout – Coffee and Tech

We haven’t tailored the content for fans/non-fans, but if you imagine a teaser message being displayed to non-fans, offering some compelling content if they click on the ‘like’ button then you’ll get the picture.

Using a fan-gate like this, companies have boosted their number of fans considerably, thus getting their content onto their fan’s timelines, spreading the word to their friends.

The brave new world

The new Timeline for Pages changes this model in one crucial way. You can still have different types of tabs, and presumably still display different content to fans and non-fans on appropriate tabs, but visitors will always see the new timeline first. So there will be no opportunity to encourage people to become fans before they progress further into the Facebook micro-site.

If it ain’t broke…

I’ve been pretty sanguine about previous Facebook changes, sometimes they have been a nice improvemnt, sometimes they smack of change for change’s sake. But this one really confuses me. Many, many businesses use Facebook fan-gates effectively to gain fans and spread the word about their business virally. Some may object to the method, but for most the opportunity to gain a free gift in return for liking a page has been a transaction they’ve been happy to undertake.

I fully expect the number of likes gained by business pages to go down. You can argue that this is more representative, that the likes are more ‘real’, probably with some justification. But I’m sure most pragmatic page owners would rather more likes that not. There just doesn’t seem to be a compelling reason to use the new timeline, and so its introduction will be resented. Hardly the reaction Facebook would ‘like’!

Setting up your own recommendations page

I’d like to talk you through how I’ve set up this page, in case that’s something you might want to do yourself. Assuming you have a WordPress website, it’s very easy, although there’s a little quick in how I’ve done it that you might want to use too just to make life even easier when pointing people at your recommendations.

If you have a look at the page, you’ll see that there are a number of websites listed, but all the links are internal, i.e. they all start http://www.fourlakes.co.uk/recommends/… followed by the name of the service. There’s a good reason for that, which I’ll explain after we digress onto the subject of affiliate links for a minute.

Affiliate links

In common with many purveyors of online services, I have signed up to a number of affiliate marketing schemes. If you don’t know what affiliate marketing is, then follow the link and read up a bit, it’s pretty essential knowledge for the rest of this post.

OK, up to speed? Great. So let’s look at affiliate schemes. Now some people believe they are bad. Actually, not just bad, but the spawn of the devil. Why? Put simply, they question the motives of anyone using an affiliate link.

As one of those people, I might take exception to that, but I can understand where they’re coming from. Would I recommend a product or service if I wasn’t getting something out of it? I can say I would, but as a casual browser of this site how would you know otherwise? I may just be promoting the affiliate scheme that makes the most money for me.

Giveaways

Sometimes, though, it’s pretty easy to spot someone who’s ‘playing the system’. If any of the following apply to someone’s list of recommendations, then you should beware:

• Dozens, or even hundreds, of affiliate links
• No disclaimer (are they trying to hide something?)
• No relation between their site and the affiliate product/service

My Promise

For what it’s worth, I have the following to say about the companies, products and services I recommend:

I will only recommend anything which I have used myself and found to be worth the time, effort and/or cost.

Blind trust

Having said that, I would always recommend that, if you are considering using a service I recommend, that you do your own research too. A Google search can often reveal information that hasn’t been produced by the company’s marketing department, as can conversations on relevant forums too. Much as I appreciate blind trust in my recommendations, I am as aware as anyone that circumstance are never the same, and what works for me might not be best for you.

Creating your affiliate links

Anyway, should you decide to put some affiliate links on your site, you might want to replicate what I’ve done.

1. Have a single page – much easier to say “Go to the ‘recommendations’ page on my website” than “Go to any page on my website other than the home page, scroll down a bit, and find the images in the sidebar”.
2. Organise it…people hate having to wade through a bunch of links in random order.
3. I avoid using image links, although that’s as much personal preference as anything. Whilst a bunch of 125×125 images in the sidebar look OK, I don’t think that would translate to a page as well. If you want to organise your page differently, go for it.
4. Equally, using the WordPress ‘Links’ section is down to preference too. It may help you organise the page more easily, or like me you might want a bit more flexibility. If you do use links, then the Link Library plugin is your friend.
5. Install the ‘Quick Page/Post Redirect‘ plugin. Don’t argue, just do it
6. For each item on your recommends page, create a link in the format http://your-sitename/pagename/recommendation e.g. http://www.fourlakes.co.uk/recommends/ezpz This is so you can easily remember the affiliate link, as quite often they use a fairly random code to identify which affiliate has sent traffic their way.
7. In the Redirect plugin, create a ‘quick redirect’ that goes from /pagename/recommendation/ to the actual affiliate link. e.g. from /recommends/ezpz/ to http://www.ezpzhosting.co.uk/affiliate-code

If your site doesn’t use WordPress, then you will have to find another way of doing the redirects, possibly within your control panel, but this solution keeps everything within the WordPress admin screens.

Conclusion

So there you have it, a foolproof way to make affiliate links easy to remember, and my thoughts on how to make them look honest and sincere (which of course the are, right?). Do you have any tips on how to get started with affiliate marketing schemes?