CLICK EARN GROW

Being the 4th largest country in the world, with a population of about 237.5 million – it isn’t a surprise to know that Indonesia is the second largest market for Facebook and third largest for Twitter.

Because the prices of mobile phones and contracts are so cheap in the country, mobile phones are more widely used than personal computers, particularly the most popular set being the Blackberry with about 2 million users in the country alone, out of 12 million worldwide. It is easy to access to social networks on the go, and this trend has been picking up rapidly. Currently, fewer than 20% of the population are connected to the Internet.. and can you imagine what the impact would be when social media gets even hotter in Indonesia?

Collectivism culture in Indonesia has made its people to gather in several occasion and medium. They love to care about happens to other people – it could be our friend, classmate or colleagues. Marketers utilize social media to create community brand on Facebook and people in Indonesia are willing to click “like” button easily to gather with the people similar to them.

Pretty good infographic: Click Earn Grow Fan Base

What will happen in the year ahead? I’m no fan of making predictions, but there are some major social media tactics that we can expect to affect businesses in 2012. Some of these tactics already have been adopted by select companies, but this year we’ll see mass adoption of these tactics by businesses of all sizes.

1. Social Listening for Marketing Intelligence

Last year we saw a plethora of new technology platforms that moved social media monitoring and started crunching some sophisticated data to gauge sentiment to drive marketing campaigns.

In my view, 2012 will be a year where businesses will take a step forward from simply looking at company mentions, debatable “sentiments”, and arguable influencer scores, and instead move toward combining all disparate social data to form a marketing intelligence that drives future marketing campaigns. Quite a few tools are doing this already, but expect to see more.

Marketers will no longer be tongue tied when asked by C-suite “mentions on social media…so what?” Instead, platforms will help marketers make smarter marketing decisions based on social listening.

2. Facebook – Advertisers and Brands will Focus More on Profitability

With Facebook on pace for a billion users, playtime is over. Businesses had in the past put lot of emphasis on the somewhat superficial numbers like number of Facebook fans without taking into account the quality of that fan acquired. What we’ll see instead in 2012 is businesses focusing more on profitability and a laser-sharp ROI focus when it comes to Facebook contests, Facebook ads, and Facebook only promotion.

Businesses will also realize that there is more to Facebook than measuring a linear conversion path from a fan to a paid customer. Marketers will be open to measure non-linear path of ROI measurement like creating Facebook-only promos to drive offline traffic. Retailers are a classic example, where lots of buzz and Facebook-only promotions will be done to drive foot traffic into retail stores. Besides large retailers, we’ll see an increasing number of small and medium-sized businesses adopt this strategy.

Advertisers will start measuring their Facebook Ads campaigns based on profitability that either helps generate revenues or supports in some kind of cost savings. Brian Carter’s new book “The Like Economy: How Businesses Make Money with Facebook” is an excellent resource.

3. Google+ – Pedal to the Metal

Google will aggressively roll out new features to Google+ and make Google+ pages more business-friendly. The biggest advantage Google has is its integration with other Google properties, like in its search engine results pages, in paid search ads, Google Reader, YouTube, etc.

Google also put a great internal focus on social last year by restructuring its employee bonus and salary structure based on Google’s success on social. This internal focus ensures that everyone inside the Googleplex thinks of social all the time. So, this internal focus with external push to consumers could make 2012 a year of Google+.

4. Quality Content

We all appreciate the importance of quality content – content that is engaging, relevant, and unique to the user.

Over the past few years, we’ve seen this mad rush (and budget) from companies to create content with the sole purpose of creating content for SEO. But we all know what happened to that with Google’s Panda update! So, in retrospect, Panda was a timely and much needed update from Google.

Instead, what we’ll see in 2012 is a more structured approach by businesses to create content that focuses on provides unique value to readers resulting in higher engagement levels with their community members. We’ll see a more holistic approach from businesses with content, whether it’s videos, how-to content pieces, or other types of content.

5. Community Building

As marketers get sophisticated with planning and measuring their campaigns, we’ll find businesses paying close attention to their existing community members. An increased emphasis will be placed on building an engaged community as opposed to simply amassing numbers. This means community managers must energize their community members as well as engage members for a variety of things like product development, market research, and special product discounts, to name a few.

Community building and management is all about people, content, and consistency. This tactic will be widely adopted in 2012 and will become an integral part of community management.

6. Social, Local, Mobile (SoLoMo)

SoLoMo – the social, local, and mobile triumvirate, will get a strong hold in 2012 with more integrated campaigns combining social media with local offers involving mobile devices. Essentially, socially advocated mobile content has the potential to boost brand loyalty, and this can boost sales among nearby on-the-go shoppers.

Top daily deals sites like Groupon and LivingSocial are perfect examples of this where they using deals to drive local sales. Foursquare is perfectly positioned for this SoLoMo tactic. We’ll see more local merchants signing up with Foursquare.

7. Social Media Drives SEO

Traditional on-page SEO factors will still hold true since it’s all about making your content search friendly, but what we’ll see in 2012 and beyond is strong social media sharing activities will drive SEO results. Last year we witnessed Google’s push to integrate social results into its SERP’s (and the newly launched Search Plus Your World update) and the Facebook-Bing partnership.

Ultimately, SEO will win because conversions will be higher (and relatively straightforward to measure) on organic search. As a result, more businesses will ensure closer collaboration between their search and social teams.

Summary

It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the rapidly evolving social media and search landscape. Social and search are also closely intertwined so pushing on few tactics above will impact other tactics as well.

Will Google become a bank this year (2012)? Time will tell as they’ve got a lot going for them already.

Google has the cash, the incentive and heck, they’re already a bank in some respects. They’re offering credit cards at 8.99 percent to AdWords clients and a securities lending program in the billions.

The biggest downside for Google resides in how the governmental bodies would react to such a move when they already have their eyes on Google for monopolistic tendencies in a number of countries. And you can bet that the banks themselves will put their dollars and lobbyists and donations behind any efforts to keep Google from doing so…

F-Commerce is basically selling via Facebook (Facebook e-commerce).

The jury is still out on whether social media can drive sales – but one thing is clear: Sales are starting to happen in social media – specifically, with Facebook.

Adding e-commerce functionality to Facebook will help marketers prove how closely social media can be tied to sales, and will also help Facebook’s primary revenue strategy, advertising, by enabling advertisers to monetize campaigns directly with e-commerce sales.

P&G sold out of the 1,000 packs of diapers it was offering via Facebook within one hour. P&G used Ohio-based digital agency Resource Interactive‘s Off the Wall e-commerce technology, already used by retailer The Limited.
Jones Apparel Group has been trialling Facebook stores for it’s Nine West and Rachel Roy brands. Nine West has launched a Flash-based Facebook sales app powered by Fluid software, offering exclusive products and 15% discounts to Facebookers. In February, the Facebook store for Rachel Roy store sold out of a limited quantity of jewelry within six hours.

Avon’s trendier, Lauren Conrad-endorsed teen cosmetics brand, Mark is enabling peer-to-peer network marketing sales on Facebook, powered by Alvenda, the f-commerce developers behind the 1-800-Flowers Facebook store.

Facebook has partnered with online-payment platform PayPal to allow marketers to test e-commerce apps and turn 400-million-member social-networking site into giant, global shopping mall.

Third-party developer payment recently used PayPal’s API to build an app anyone can use to set up a retail store on a Facebook page.

Whilst Facebook does not take commission on e-commerce sales on Facebook pages, it will now collect 30% on purchases of virtual goods (the virtual goods market is estimated to be worth $5 billion) made with Facebook Credits, that can be purchased via PayPal.
In addition to selling virtual goods, Facebook is now selling digital and real gifts in its Gift Shop; music from Apple’s “lala” brand, flowers, candy, cakes and tickets from “Real Gifts” – that can be purchased with Facebook Credits
Setting up a shop on facebook for companies like Gap, American Eagle, Levi’s, John’s Apparel, P&G and others, have certainly paid off. It is estimated that $30 billion will be generated in social commerce by 2015.

Companies that are selling stuff on Facebook include -
Adidas
Apple
Chanel
Kmart
Pampers
Gillette

If you are interested in setting up a free Facebook shopping application, check out VendorShop.

With Facebook leading the charge, would we see G-Commerce (by google), T-Commerce (by Twitter) next? Irrespective, Social Media is taking over. Interesting times ahead.

Overall  we’ll need to move beyond simply helping people connect and buy where they connect. The emerging social commerce is about adding a social layer to retail and a retail layer to social, but it’ll only fly when it is fun and rewarding like social gaming. The success of social gaming is about people, not software and will be the same for social commerce. To Build your social commerce strategy from a people-perspective, requires people insights to make your solution addictive. Critically, your social commerce solution has to be designed – like a game – rather than merely be a plugin.

Source: Social Commerce Today & Darren Matadeen WWW.SOCIAL-INVESTOR.COM

What will really affect your bottom line, here are my predicted Top 5 Biz Tech Trends for 2012:

1. Fewer new business cellphones
If there is one trend I take real joy in reporting, it’s the end of cellphone new-model madness. The next 12 months will see fewer new devices, and I say hallelujah. Business-ready models worth watching in this leaner mobile device market will be the new Nokia Lumia 800. This phone will run the latest Windows Phone mobile OS and be Nokia’s attempt to regain a toehold in the American business phone market. Also look for Android devices running an upgraded operating system called — I kid you not — “Ice Cream Sandwich” that should offer upside for firms. And yes, the iPhone 5 is expected later in the year. Be ready for the madness.

2. A more business-focused Microsoft
This year will also mark a new focus on business software for the software giant. Microsoft says it is stepping away from live consumer marketing events such as the International Consumer Electronics Show, held in early January in Las Vegas, and clearly consumer software will be less and less the focus. A release of the near-final version of the business-friendly Windows 8 is due this month, and the reality is it will be a tough sell — many firms haven’t even bothered with Windows 7. And with Google eating Microsoft’s market share by giving away powerful consumer software, Redmond will have little choice but to focus its resources on selling products such as Windows 8 to businesses that are willing to pay for it.

3. The birth of the “business TV”
Interesting reports are circulating that Samsung will be shipping an Android-powered television in 2012. This device will offer smartphone-like features such as apps and touch control yet still create a TV-like experience. Such a smart TV will blur the line between what a TV does and what a PC does. Factor in consumer comfort with iPhone-like touch control and suddenly businesses are looking at a new family of tools: TV sets that can play an interactive role in a firm. Want a low-cost kiosk in your shop? Or, say, a simple, interactive terminal to run a printer? A smart touch-enabled, app-friendly “business TV” could be just the ticket. Watch this trend.

4. Using your smartphone to make your car smart
While major carmakers such as GM and Ford will be pushing advanced features such as OnStar video services and efforts to monitor personal health in vehicles, for the average business these sorts of technologies will be non-starters. Much more modest — and much more effective — will be road-ready apps that run on a user’s smartphone. I like what Find My Car Smart offers for pin-point vehicle location accuracy and how iOnRoad turns the camera in your smartphone into an onboard collision-avoidance tool. Considering how distracted we all — including your employees — can be, these are tools will help keep us on the road.

5. On-the-go, cloud-based printing
And finally, only in the nutty Internet age could something old-school such as printing be new again. Printer giants such as H-P, Lexmark, Kodak and others have at last gotten so-called cloud printing technology working. While not idiotproof, PCs, smartphones and tablet computers can now really connect directly to printers via the Web. That means serious printing jobs can be managed while you travel. Want to customize your business cards or brochures for a particular client or event? Simply carry the needed files with you on your portable device and adapt them as needed, then send that modified version to a cloud-connected printer you find in the hotel or client’s office. It can take a bit to get the mobile cloud-printing knack, but once you do, you will never go back to carrying a pile of business cards.

1. Don’t put all your products up, unless you have the time to update the listings frequently. Prioritize your best sellers and any exclusives you offer. Selling on social networks isn’t about replacing or porting inventory from your ecommerce site.

2.  Offer exclusives. The viral nature of social networking sites means you have the ability to give followers, circles and fans an exclusive discount for promoting and sharing their interest in your brand.

3. Talk about specific items for sale. Interact with your followers, circles and fans to create a two-way conversation about your specific products. Don’t just talk about your brand, but discuss what you have for sale.