Earn commissions! myPOPupshop

Interestingly, brands continually to exploit Facebook as a marketing tool and a place to engage customers. Vacant a US company who deals with a lot of large and small brand pop-up store has enabled Facebook users to create Flash Sales and Earn Money through the use of "mypopupshop"! MicroMarketing a Swedish company who has designed an App for Facebook, allowing online users to open "Pop-Up Shops" for their selected brands.

All users need to do is download the App, Choose and Brand, and Promote it to their friends. Commissions will be paid to each sales made by the users. After 30 days representing the store, users can choose to continue to sell the selected brands or choose other brands. This is interesting in terms of what we discussed in class yesterday about Forrester Classifications: Owned, Paid, and Earned. Would this be a Paid? or Earned?

I really think this is a very clever strategy to expose a brand through the use of social media and actually earn some revenue from it. As many marketing classes has mentioned WOM is a very powerful in terms of influencing ones network. In this case, users benefits from paid commission by the selected brand, and brands benefits from getting to sell more products and exposure of products through these users. What do you think?

Unlike eBay, you have to choose your own products and sell, you can represent a brand selling its product to your friends and social network, through the use of an APP in Facebook! How good is that!

I would use this to make some extra income! :) Unfortunately, this App hasn't been launched yet! :(

Lets earn some Money $$$ 

Read more about it here: Mypopupshop

Source: Springwise

more Facebook functions!

Yesterday in class, we were discussing some Facebook functions and Marketing functions on Facebook. As we seen in class, there are many things that organizations and SME can use to expose themselves on Facebook. However, there are more functions in Facebook that businesses can use and can be beneficial to ones business.

As a page, you are allowed to add Apps or Customize your own Apps, as mentioned in class. There is an App call "Review", which allows fans to rate and comment on your business. This is extremely suitable for restaurants and service industry allowing customer to "Give Stars" and give a "Review" about the brand or the company.

This App was developed by Facebook but doesn't seem to be popular among businesses. I looked at several restaurants Fan Page e.g. Hardware Societe and Thai Culinary (Some of the restaurants I go to! Great Food!) The Review function is not there. Which I think would be beneficial for businesses such as restaurants to drive more traffic through opinions, comments, and ratings.

Have you spotted any Facebook Fan Pages using this "Reviews" function? If so, do you think that it can be as powerful as food blogs or other food rating sites such as "Urbanspoon"? I personally think that it would be quiet useful for businesses such as restaurants to integrate everything in one platform.

Tell me what you Think :)

Snapshots of what "Review" looks like!

Gone VIRAL!

I was watching "Gruen Transfer Season 4, Episode 2" just now over the ABC website, and came across an interesting topic for Social Media Marketing. There was a part in the show talking about users generated content going "Viral". In this particular topic it was a user generated commercial posted on YouTube and Vimeo and has received massive views and feedbacks.

To start things off, let me just explain a bit about what the term "Viral Video" & "Viral Marketing" means.

According to Wikipedia (2011),
"Viral videos are videos, often containing humor, shared through an online social networking platform such as YouTube and has gain its popularity in a short period of time."

"Viral marketing is a buzzword referring to marketing techniques that uses social network platforms to increase brand awareness or achieve other marketing objectives."

In the show, they talked about a user generated video of a "Fake Skittle Commercial". The clip has gone Viral and received more than 3 Million hits in less than a month through YouTube and Vemeo. In the clip it also mentioned that the video has nothing to do with "Skittles", therefore making it a fake ads spreading across the internet. Check out the video below.

Note: (I am really sorry for the inappropriateness of this video ><", but it is the actual video that was shown on Gruen Transfer (Half Censored - This one is Original Version) and made me want to blog about!)

Apparently, in the Gruen Transfer show, it mentioned an interesting point about how "Viral Videos" are normally taken down by the companies due to the image and contents that social media users generates about the brand. However, this video hasn't been taken down just yet. Why is that?

The experts mentioned that the video is actually helping "Skittles" to increase its brand awareness through its attention catching content. Moreover, many viewers also suspect that this is an actual "Skittles" banned or leaked video, where the experts in Gruen Transfer also mentions that it has all the characteristics of a real branding commercial. However, it is mentioned that it has nothing to do with "Skittles" at the beginning clip, which makes it interesting in the fact that "Skittles" has not taken any action to this particular "Fake Ad".

Should "Skittles" take any action on this viral clip? or should they keep it on there since it is somehow beneficial their brand?

In my opinion, I guess because it is beneficial to the company, may not be the right image to convey but definitely did a great job in increasing brand awareness, Skittles should not take any action towards this clip. However, the image and content of the video in my opinion is quiet inappropriate, since Skittles is a candy brand targeting children.

What would you do if you were Skittles, and what do you think about the Viral Video? Comments :)

PS. I couldn't post the "Gruen Transfer" Video in here, if you would like to watch the show, you can follow this link. It is at the "Ad Cruch" part at around 19:20. Enjoy!).

Threats?

I have just came across our class mate Mary Wong's blog, and read an interesting blog about the benefits of social media for an organisation that she provided. Like I mentioned in my previous blog post, is social media platform such as Facebook a good marketing tool? Mary Wong's blog post has answered the question of what social media can do and the benefits of it.

However, What are the risks, threats, and issues that marketers might face when not managing their social media properly?

I mentioned eWOM (Electronic Word-of-Mouth) as one the threats that marketers should be aware of in Mary Wong's blog post. I also came across a blog talking about the threats to social media marketing, and "lack of control of the message" was one of the top 10 threats that these marketing seniors face. I thought it was equally important for us to look at the threats versus benefits, where after all we may all face these problems and frustrations. Therefore, what are some other existing threats that organisations may face with social media?

"FB!" A good Marketing tool?

Hello everyone, this is my first time blogging seriously :). Hope to hear some comments and gain some knowledge from everyone.

From my observation and also being an online store owner myself, Facebook seems to be one of the "MUST HAVE" Social medium nowadays. However, it is quiet Tough to do things right and get the traffic going, especially when wanting to engage to your consumers and earning a "Like" from them.

I have been running my online store for more than 4 years, and have just recently (6 Months Ago) created a Facebook Fan page and still can't get a hold of HOW??? to increase sales and reputation through the use of Facebook. Facebook advertising has also been used a lot to gain exposures to the public. Does it really work? From my experience (I have actually attempted to advertise through FB with the "Pay per Click" ads). It does work to an extent in increasing traffic. However, it did not increase interactions and sales.

There are many successful cases and examples of both individuals and firms using Facebook and gaining a fortune out of it. How do they do this? and What is the key to success of using Facebook as a marketing tool? However, there are also cases of FB pages that fails.

This leaves a question to us to explore the issue of whether or not "Facebook is a Good Marketing Tool?" Also, how should marketers actually manage their FB pages?

Thoughts?