Using social media to reduce customer churn

It is interesting that companies are using social media and actively searches for customer complain, then approach them before they decide to leave.

The only catch is the cost is quite high, however as tools emerging this could bring real benefit to service industry.

Offering 20 free Google Plus vote

http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/social-networking-sites/332632-20-google-1-votes-100-free.html

如何得到一百万‘非死不可’关注 How to get millions of Facebook fans (summary in Chinese)

自2007年Facebook推出Fan page以来，这一新的交互形式获得了巨大的成功。最近Facebook要用iFrame取代FBML,也就是你可以把任何其他网站的代码嵌入到你的fan page了。

让我们来回顾一下经典的fan page设计原则（有效利用这些原则依然能让你获得上百万fans）

1.为不同的诉求定制各自的标签页(tab)
相关内容更容易提高转化率
2.别让新用户登录到wall
你不希望他们困惑地看到七嘴八舌的wall聊天。定制一个专门的页面给第一次到访的人，提供给他们一个不受打扰的关注你的机会

3.创建一个独特的头像图片
这是fan page最重要的几个部分之一，也是用户一来到就会注意的部分。别低估你的‘脸面’的重要性！

4.加上一些应用来增强互动性

如果你不想新访客打开你的页面后觉得无趣就离开，那么就加上一些应用吧

（译者注）如果你不能编程，也有大量的免费和收费工具，比如pagemodo, wildfire


5.让话题再飞一会儿
实际上，社交媒体最大的好处，就是商家可以及时地参与用户之间的互动

6. 多发有趣和相关的内容
内容为王！这个重要性不必多说。通常可以从blog search上得到新的有趣话题

7. 转发别人的评论

适度转发，可以让被转发者有受到重视的感觉

（这点星巴克做的似乎过了一些，经常和单个用户进行类似版聊的互动）

8.经常更新

最可怕的就是有大量关注和评论，而你却不进行更新和互动了。忽略用户声音的后果很严重

9.上传图片，视频，并标注其他用户
这是非常好的病毒营销，唯一限制就是你必须是该用户好友

10.活用Facebook Events
如果连奥巴马和facebook自己都在用，那么你是不是也该用这一渠道来和你的fans互动呢？让他们承诺投入一定的时间(RSVP)，你会发现其妙的效果！

Where to get your Facebook fan base

I am write a series of comments about vendors of social media traffic: Facebook fans and Twitter followers. I am not talking about fake accounts because these only partially helps with your initial social proof, on the long run it doesn't help you much. If you want to sell, you need to reach real people who are interested in your offer.

That's the rule No. 1


Ok, so we start with the most expensive one (I found)

You pay $499.99 for 5000 Facebook fans, how is that? You will be told each fan is worth $136. So this can be a good deal, isn't it?

There is no testimonial or the trace of recent customers, so it's difficult to estimate how well is bulksocialfans doing.

According to its Alexa rank, it's not that popular.

How can a vendor prices 5 times higher while can't convince his customer he is 5 times better?

jobmet startup in difficulty (article in Chinese)

职脉网jobmet.com是我用过的用户操作体验比较好的找工作垂直网站，也就是类似skyscanner,去哪儿，800团，自己不产生内容，而是靠抓取和有效组织其他门户内容的内容。

可是，今天突然发现，他们已经不提供抓取来内容了。可能是被转让了，现在是一个web2.0的类似社区的东西，还在内测阶段，没有开放注册，所以无从得知内情。。

Twitter seeks to shutdown Twiter.com

It has been reported Twitter is seeking to shutdown the scam site Twiter.com, which confuses thousands of people each day and using a similar theme and pretending to be a survey function of Twitter.com

Although Twiter.com is registered in 2004, this doesn't help it if if intends to confuse the visitor to perceive it is a Twitter survey.

As of today Twiter.com is still functioning

Comment in Chinese for Demand Media's IOP

http://tech2ipo.com/2713

ech2ipo点评：Demand Media上市是一件引起轰动的事，此前Tech2ipo也出过多篇文章来探讨这家公司的商业模式和最新动态，“媒体巨头DemandMedia将迎来IPO创新模式受资本追捧”，“Demand Media冲击市场 Google为低品质内容寝食难安”，“媒体巨头Demand Media商业模式解析” 等。放到中国而言，这家公司基本上就是现在网络上比较流行的“水军”巨头。它综合了庞大的水军力量，再辅以多个前沿阵地，以及强大的SEO搜索引擎优化能力，从而实现了对用户需求的覆盖。这种对用户需求的覆盖很大程度上是依赖于搜索引擎体现的。它的商业逻辑的实质是在搜索引擎和真正的用户需求之间，增加了一个属于自己的隔层，建立起一道自己掌控的增值体系。事实上，如果都以真正的用户需求为导向，Demand Media作为搜索引擎的有力合作伙伴，提供优质内容，那作为一个独立的隔层，它也会被用户和搜索引擎理解和接纳，是联系它们的良好纽带。但现在的做法是，为了让自己更多的在搜索引擎中以隔层的形态出现，它已经把从以真正的客户需求为导向，变为了以搜索引擎的抓取为导向，从而忽视了最核心的真正的用户需求的价值，从而也失去了它作为隔层的价值，反而成了整个价值链的多余环节。其实，国内的很多公司也严重存在着类似的问题，它们要么同样变为了百度和 Google的奴仆、要么就成为了垃圾广告的聚集地，这些都是可怜又可悲的现象。Demand Media还有巨大的资源和灵活的机制来应对这一挑战，我们呢？

Social Cycle (blog article in Chinese)

Abstract:

Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, whatever you use, you probably has a lot of strangers, or people you know, but don't expect them to follow/connect with you, as your 'friends' now.

That's the problem of today's social network, you don't have a good control about your cycle as you do in everyday life.

现在的社交网络，功能不可谓不强大，但看到身边很多有影响力的人士，并不使用。少数宁可使用Linkedin,更多的则是什么都不用，不写博客没看过微博更不用说人人非死不可，只用邮件。（很多‘长’可能连邮件都不用吧）

为什么呢？因为，社交网络不符合他们的社交，没有解决他们的问题。Email解决了他们通讯速度的问题，社交网络却只带来了无法控制的圈子，大堆陌生人，大堆认识但并不像搭理，或不想让他们近距离接触的熟人。那么，不需要无谓传播渠道的人，又何必费力不讨好地来网络社交呢？

解决方案1：单独开发圈子社交，这个有点像世纪佳缘的VIP线下服务，或者一些所谓的模特网，不遵循所谓的六度空间理论，只照顾小圈子

解决方案2：在现有社交网上开发面具插件。用户可以戴上插件面具，只有通过小圈子（面具主人主动邀请）的认证后，才算真正进入对方的社交圈，可以看到面具后的真人。

实际上我们已经可以看到一些雏形

Google is copying social media giants?

Google decides Orkut would not make them contend. The way they express their concern and to make even? Add a like button to search results.

This is called collaborative filtering, which has been widely used by Amazon and many other E-commerce.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20067712-93.html

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-20048886-36.html

Google Irritates Britain, Ireland, and... US for tax avoidance of 4.6 billion

It has been reported and widely discussed: Google is not contend with the 12.5% tax rate in Ireland (after avoiding the 28% corporate tax in the UK)

They have again transferred the profit to Bermuda, where there is no tax for the category Google claimed the revenue is from. In order to do this, they setup complicated Dutch companies to do the transfer and avoiding detection by Irish laws.

Result? Google transfered 3.2 billion pounds almost without a slice to tax man, to its Bermuda heaven. Yes, that is $ 4,600,000,000 for the past few years

Googling or Facebooking

Facebook is no. 1 now.

I am not talking about traffic in bytes. Active facebook users spend 1400 minutes per month on the social media site, contributing content, interact with their friends and connections. That's a lot more comparing to the time they spend interacting than any other websites.

However, for the active 500 million Facebook users, do they use Google or do they use Facebook if they need to find information on the web? Most people I know use Google

They have a new choice now: Bing

After Google Translate API shutdown, shall we switch to M$

People may understand why they want to encapsulate Andriod, but what if Google want to shut down many popular APIs? This 'spring cleaning' has been scheduled.

Some has been destined to close (nobody knows when is the last day...)

• Code Search API
• Diacritize API
• Feedburner APIs
• Finance API
• Power Meter API
• Sidewiki API
• Wave API

These have specific date of execution set already:

• Blog Search API
• Books Data API
• Books JavaScript APIImage Search API
• News Search API
• Patent Search API
• Safe Browsing API
• Translate API
• Transliterate API
• Video Search API
• Virtual Keyboard API

Google explained these services cost too much and have been widely abused.

Shall we switch to Micro$soft ? Microsoft APIs support SOAP, HTTP and Ajax, one more reason, Microsoft(nasdaq:msft) has enough cash...

Increasr, another social traffic exchange? Or crazy economic system with inflation?

There are hundreds if not thousands of link exchange platform now. But this one is different from Tweepi or Twiends .

It doesn't reduce points when doing the exchange, unlike most major exchanges.

Will be interesting to see how this goes!

Big part of Chinese social media research.

You can not talk about social media in China without mentioning GFW (Great Firewall)

There are some interesting articles in Chinese discussed the influence of GFW and some affected websites:

http://www.dasheyin.com/qing_bo_ke_fu_wu_tumblr_jie_feng.html#comment-114

http://www.managershare.com/2011/01/21/how-to-gain-competitive-insight-with-social-media/

Basically if GFW selected you, it is an endorsement and proves you are quite influential. And if it allows you to be visited by 1.5 billion people again, it means you are even more powerful and they can not simply block you. They have to selectively block part of you (Wikipedia was blocked from around 2003 to 2009, and Chinese now can access most part of it, their connection will only be reset if a political incorrect term or sensitive words is being accessed)

I have 5,000 friends and pages on Facebook. SO What's next

Friend limit reached.

Individual Facebook members can connect to a maximum of 5000 friends and pages. To do this action, you will need to remove a friend or unlike a Page you're already connected to.


Do I already have five thousand friends and pages? I would rather guess it's their wrong error message of hitting a dynamic limitation.

Klout score, twittercounter and networkedblogs

These are 3 good tools to help you to grow and evaluate your social media presence.

Networkedblogs is a Facebook application.

Klout score allows you to understand how much influence your Twitter account has.

Twittercounter.com does what it suggests.

Taobao: not satisfied with biggest C2C or B2C

Taobao has become the biggest retailer in China, beat all traditional offline giants such as Walmart, Carrierfour, HuaLian. This was achieve in less than 5 years.

However Jack Ma is not content. Besides Tmall.com (Business to Consumers service), he had launched afffliate system (Taoke), advertising chain (Ali Mama) and community (TaoJianghu), besides all these, now Taobao begins to provide content and application service (See picture below)

7,523,218 people has used Taobao's healthier life assitant, as an example.

Will Taobao ourrank QQ or Tianya to become the Number 1 communication service provider in China? My answer is yes, if Taobao wants.

Facebook, why you are joking on Beijing?

Anyone who want to grab good unique custom URLs such as http://facebook.com/beijing will be disappointed.

Although when you type the URL in your browser, it seems is available by showing a message "

The page you requested was not found.

".

If you try to register this username, you will be prompted "this username is not available"

I did a bit research, it seems that Facebook reserves names of countries and their capital when the population or area is above a certain threshold:

For example: Lesotho, Eritrea

They have been reserved, by Facebook.

People who want to own a URL of a capital city, be quick! One is available for some reason: Maseru (It is a city with over 200,000 people, capital of Lesotho.）

Go to http://facebook.com/username to grab it now! When it's gone, it's gone. If you are creating a fan page for this name, you will need 25 Likes before your page is eligible for a unique name. You can get 100 likes here

It is interesting to see that Twitter allowed people to sell accounts such as @Isarel for 6 figure sum, while Facebook retains these geographical names and potentially will give the right to use them to the owner for free?

how to market your business to Asia Pacific customers on Facebook and get more sales

While I was reading a book on Amazon, I realised it didn't cover a big part of the market: that is India, China, Japan and other Asian countries which count for 50% of Facebook population, and there will be more.

I will write a series of blog to discuss how facebook marketers can use the same principle and different cultural and demographic elements to boost their sales and impact and gain income from developing countries

>

How To Market Your Business on Facebook and Get More Sales, New Customers and Brand Awareness

Social book marking

Today I met a guy who provides SEO service, and I asked him if he serves pages in non-English.

His answer is Yes. But only for social bookmarking. The understanding is to add bookmarks on site such as digg.com

Twiends are giving away hundreds of followers?

I 'd rather think it is a small bug..

there are a few accounts with "1 credit", however when you follow them on Twitter via twiends.com you will be surprised!

Ebay Sellers: how to add another email for sending out messages

I received the following email from Ebay, and hope it is useful for sellers who want to assign a dedicated customer service person to answer messages.

:
Oops. We weren't able to send your message to recepient, because the email address you used to

send this message, isn't linked to your eBay account.

To keep eBay safe, we need you to send messages from a registered eBay email address. This will

prevent your messages from being blocked in the future. This is easy enough to fix, just do one

of the following:

* Set up someone@tweetrade.com as an additional email address for sending messages. To do

this:
o In My eBay, click the "Account" tab and then click "Communication Preferences" in

the drop-down menu.
o In the section titled "Delivery Options", click the "Show" link next to

"Notification Delivery Format".
o Enter the same email address to send member-to-member messages.
o Click Save.

* Change your registered eBay email address to http://tweetrade.com. Go to

http://pages.ebay.com/help/account/updating-registration-information.html to learn how.
* Send your messages from . This is the email address you already

have registered with eBay.

For assistance, you can contact eBay Customer Support at:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/contact_us/_base/index_selection.html

Thanks,
eBay

How to make money from Twitter, Facebook

This sounds like a difficult question. But if you rephrase the question to "how do I help other people to spend money on Facebook?"

Then you got so many answers:

1. Promote customized products that people are interested

2. Provide service that fits the needs of your local community

3. You of course know how people want to spend money, so find a way to help them spend!

http://www.tweetrade.com

How to shutdown godaddy or google.com (or any website) quickly

Just send a claim to their domain registrar or hosting provider, saying they have violated copyright law (display copyrighted things without permission etc, like google cache).

Then hopefully the hosting company will suspend the site! You can do this in 5 minutes! Huuray!

Twiends

Service Unavailable

What's wrong with Twiends?

Again, we lose all our sparks on Twiends, like we lost credits. It has been renamed again to Seeds.

Will seeds grow by themselves? We will find out

Japan earthquake and nuclear crisis, what can we do as Facebook/Twitter users?

Things are getting worse for people in Japan. Earthquake, nuclear leak, volcano...

And like most people, I'm sure your thoughts have been with the people of Japan and the families who are suffering from the toughest times in their life.

So far, people all over the world have been supporting and providing aid to the country in the unprecedented disaster, but the fact is harder times are
still to come (Nuclear leaking, medication, volcano, home rebuilding...).

Can we just sit back and do no more? No, I can't. And I know you won't

So...

We decided that TweeTrade would do something to beneift not only people who are suffering from the crisis, but also your online presence.

If you're considering buying our services:

1. We''l rebate 25% of the price to you, If you have donated for the Japan earthquake.

or

2. We'll donated 25% of the your purchasing price to Redcross (Designation for Japan earthquake 2011) under your name.

Our services specialist will contact you for after your purchasing this service.

And next week we'll be posting a blog as well as sending
you a message to tell you how much we raised.

You can do this by clicking the link below:

http://

Again, we can not do this without you... If you want to invest on your online business and make a bigger impact, this is a good cause and it is the right time.

Thanks in advance for doing something meaningful for yourself
as well as the people affected by the Japanese crisis.


Regards,

Chris Dong

CEO -- TweeTrade.com.

No score for Twiends anymore?

Yes that's true. For Twitter lovers, there is no more credits to earn from the website Twiends.

For some reason, Credits are now called Sparks. Is that a revamp? Please follow us for more details.

4 Tips of better tweeting from Twitter

1) Follow your interests. We've found that the people who enjoy Twitter most tend to follow a variety of accounts: friends, family, people in their profession, local shops and events, and most importantly, people who share their passions.
2) Get specific. Like sports? Follow your favorite leagues, teams, players, coaches, commentators, writers and fellow fans. Love food? Follow chefs, restaurants, critics, bloggers, specialty shops and respected foodies.
3) Don't panic. People turn to Twitter during emergencies. Snowstorms, power outages and fires are just a few emergencies where Twitter may be helpful. Search for #hashtags and follow local civic accounts to stay informed.
4) Return to Twitter. There are about 200 million accounts on Twitter now - that means new interests, new voices, and new ideas every day. We offer services in seven languages, apps for most devices, and SMS worldwide

Shall I pay for new twitter followers?

In the era of internet, if you can get attention, you will find your ways to make money.

So if you are not using the new social media website Twitter, you are not getting attention from a base of over 50,000,000 people. If you are using Twitter, then it is time that to bring more attention (i.e. attract more followers) to your business.

How can you get more followers quickly?

Most gurus will tell you to tweet. Tweet regularly on a topic that people are interested in. This is the most traditional and the most time-consuming way.

Alternatively, you can use mass following tools to follow people, and expect 20% of them will follow you back.

Last but not least, it is possible to buy twitter followers, if you pay a few dollars, people will help you to attract hundreds or thousands of new follows!

After all, you have to tweet some interesting content and you want more people to read that content. If you get a few hundred followers, you can have an idea of how you would handle thousands of followers and keep them (and then make money)

If you want to find out how to obtain more followers, then try Twiends .
It is an efficient tool that allows you to follow users interested in certain keywords and earn points, the points will be paid again to people who will follow you from twiends.

Also give http://tweepi.com/ a go, it is a tool to remove those you followed and didn't follow you back.

Pay or not to pay? Please let us know your experience or ideas.