Is Facebook a Valid Marketing Channel?

Posted by Marcel Sim in Sales & Marketing

Article Contributed by Danielle

How many roads must a marketer walk down before we can assume he knows the value of social media marketing?

The tides have turned. Inquiring minds want to know: Does Facebook provide ample opportunity for B2B interaction via its tremendous social platform? The B2B Barometer reports that at least 70% of business-to-business marketers feel that social media is relevant to B2B organizations. They are, however, unsure how to harness the potential value of Facebook.

Some apprehensions involve Facebook’s inherently social nature. How could any meaningful business be conducted over such a highly personal platform? Commercial messages often reflect poorly on a brand when they interrupt social experiences. Add that to the fact that many working adults cannot use Facebook at work, limiting the amount of possible communication during working hours.

In fact, Circle Research has released statistics that suggest Facebook might not even be the social network to be questioning; top social networks according to B2B marketers are Twitter (87%), LinkedIn (77%) and then Facebook (67%).

The fact remains that Facebook is still the largest social network on the Internet. At 800 million users, that potential audience for your social media marketing is just too big to pass up. Those who maintain that the inherently social environment of Facebook is naturally detrimental to “business-doing” should consider that the professional/personal line is not what it used to be even as recently as two years ago.

Innovations pioneered by Google’s “Circle” system have been incorporated into Facebook and users can now select what coworkers see and don’t see, making it easier to “befriend” coworkers in the digital realm. Also, mobile usage is through the roof, and provides another channel through which businesses can connect to other businesses and also the community.

Facebook has proven itself to be a valuable asset in business to community (B2C) interactions for years. The site’s history in providing specified information about users to companies has helped in more relevant ad targeting and other marketing innovations that have deepened the B2C landscape. Facebook pages help promote activity, attract users, increase brand awareness and cultivate an active user base by engaging in frequent customer interaction.

So, the answer to the question of whether Facebook is a valid marketing channel is a resounding “Yes!” It offers a large pool of potential clients, it’s available on multiple platforms and it creates direct consumer demand in real time. Although results can be difficult to measure due to Facebook’s still-nascent marketing state, the benefits far outweigh the negatives and when social media is used correctly, the returns are bound to be impressive. Read more at getentrepreneurial.com

Loud Music Makes Sweet, Sweet Alcohol even Sweeter

Distracting people away from the taste of their drink could lead to more drinking.

New research suggests that loud environments lead people to think that alcoholic beverages taste sweeter than they actually are, perhaps explaining why people drink so much at clubs and concerts. Dr. Lorenzo Stafford at the U.K.’s University of Portsmouth undertook the study after anecdotal evidence (…) led him to believe that there might be a relationship between volume and how much people drink. So, he gave test subjects a selection different kinds of alcoholic beverages and subjected them to one of four levels of loudness, ranging from near silence to a nightclub. (Get free booze to listen to music? Sounds like our kind of research.)The subjects in louder, more distracting environments routinely ranked their alcoholic beverages to be sweeter in taste than subjects in quieter environments. Since humans have a natural preference for sweet-tasting things, Stafford concluded that loud music and other distractions might be taking drinkers’ attention away from how their beverage actually tastes, thus leading to more alcohol consumption. Our personal experience sort of bears this out, although we always figured we drank more in loud clubs because it gives our hands and mouths something to do instead of trying to carry on impossible-to-comprehend conversations. We might need to test Stafford’s findings in the field, though, but strictly in the interest of scientific rigour. Read more at www.themarknews.com

The Total Surveillance Society Approaches

Roland Paris | December 22, 2011

In today’s Ottawa Citizen, I write about a recent Brookings Institution report by John Villasenor, an engineering professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, in which he argues that authoritarian regimes will soon have the capacity to monitor, record, and permanently archive the communications and activities of their citizens from birth to death.

Here is the conclusion of my op-ed (including a couple of hyperlinks that don’t appear in the newspaper version):

“Some might dismiss this vision as a dystopian fantasy. But why wouldn’t countries with records of using every tool at their disposal to monitor their citizens also take advantage of these new surveillance and data storage capacities as they become available? And isn’t it true that even in liberal democracies with strong privacy laws, including Canada, we have also seen a gradual shrinking of private space and pressures for more ubiquitous surveillance?

The main benefit of Villasenor’s report – like that of other stylized visions of the future, including George Orwell’s – may not be its specific predictions, but rather, its ability to shock us into seeing real-time trends that might otherwise go unnoticed, including in our own society. Indeed, it speaks to the importance of a different kind of heightened vigilance: not of our fellow citizens, but of our right to remain largely hidden from the constant gaze of the state.”

You can read the full op-ed here. Read more at www.opencanada.org

New Car Engine Sends Shock Waves Through Auto Industry

Despite shifting into higher gear within the consumer’s green conscience, hybrid vehicles are still tethered to the gas pump via a fuel-thirsty 100-year-old invention: the internal combustion engine.

However, researchers at Michigan State University have built a prototype gasoline engine that requires no transmission, crankshaft, pistons, valves, fuel compression, cooling systems or fluids. Their so-called Wave Disk Generator could greatly improve the efficiency of gas-electric hybrid automobiles and potentially decrease auto emissions up to 90 percent when compared with conventional combustion engines.

The engine has a rotor that’s equipped with wave-like channels that trap and mix oxygen and fuel as the rotor spins. These central inlets are blocked off, building pressure within the chamber, causing a shock wave that ignites the compressed air and fuel to transmit energy.

The Wave Disk Generator uses 60 percent of its fuel for propulsion; standard car engines use just 15 percent. As a result, the generator is 3.5 times more fuel efficient than typical combustion engines.

Researchers estimate the new model could shave almost 1,000 pounds off a car’s weight currently taken up by conventional engine systems.

Last week, the prototype was presented to the energy division of the Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is backing the Michigan State University Engine Research Laboratory with $2.5 million in funding.

Michigan State’s team of engineers hope to have a car-sized 25-kilowatt version of the prototype ready by the end of the year. Read more at news.discovery.com