Quick rundown: F-Commerce allows brands to have a shopping cart function within their Facebook page (the ‘F’ ingeniously stands for ‘Facebook’!). The great news is brands and their followers are taking advantage of F-Commerce and the benefits it generates as the complete engaging marketing experience within Facebook.

A good, secure shopping cart app means followers can make purchases without moving away from your Facebook page and also ‘share’ products and purchases with others, spreading your brand’s good name and wares far and wide.

The downside is: not all shades of F-Commerce are legit, and this presents the scenario of a few bad apples spoiling the bunch. Cavalier F-commerce practices are creeping onto the scene –  take the Facebook ‘auction’ page, for example.

These pages have become prevalent in recent months, and are usually restricted to the personal selling of second-hand goods, electronics or home-crafted items, tending to appeal to the at-home, Trade Me-type of seller, keen to escape Trade Me fees.

Sellers list sale items on their profile with a pic and a price. The first ‘Liker’ or friend to enter ‘sold’ in the comments field is the lucky new owner. Payment and delivery are sorted via private messaging.

Sounds simple, straight-forward, and hassle-free, right? But without an onsite moderator or safety net, there’s plenty of room for the sort of misunderstandings that typically max out in Judge Judy’s courtroom. To say it is haphazzard is somewhat of an understatement.

The good folk at powerhouse auction site, Trade Me, noticed a spike in these slightly errant auction pages, with Jon Duffy, Head of Trust & Safety, saying, “There are increased incidents of offenders being thwarted in their attempts to commit fraud on Trade Me and migrating to Facebook where the controls and restrictions are not as rigorous as ours.”

So what does the growing presence of wayward F-Commerce mean for your business, and how can you differentiate yourself from it?

With apps like Catalyst90’s trusty shopping cart now available, brands can securely close sales within a compliant Facebook environment.

“Having a shop front on Facebook is same the same as having a shopping cart on your website. It makes huge sense to sell product within Facebook because that it is where a large portion of the customers are,” says Tom Reidy, Catalyst90 Managing Director.

“While Facebook is a trusted site, its auction pages are a bit problematic because it relies on the general public to moderate it, which is why we created a sleek shopping cart app for businesses keen to extend their marketing reach in a secure platform.”

Other handy tips on successfully engaging in F-commerce:

• Build apps and design promotions that people actually want to share with their friends. This market appreciates the clever, witty, smart and savvy, and will share what they love. Watch the sales follow.
• Make sure you’re facilitating, not getting in the way of your clients discussing, sharing and ultimately purchasing products. Focus on enabling fans to promote your products for you rather than overtly pushing the product and trying to close a sale.
• And as always, know and engage with your audience. (We know you do!)

So get going, and F-off! (The ‘F’ is for ‘Facebook’, remember?)

Over the next few months we’re going to review successful social media campaigns from around the world to gain insight into how everyone else is tackling social media marketing, we’re kicking off with the eagerly anticipated The Hunger Games which opened a few weeks ago to global box office records. At Catalyst90, we’re always up for a great movie, but in this case, what we’re really interested in is the social promotional activity that accompanied the movie’s launch in the States.

For those of you not familiar with this latest literary obsession, The Hunger Games is the first in a trilogy of books by Suzanne Collins and focuses on a futuristic and post-apocalyptic country, Panem, where the governing authority holds an annual televised event called the Hunger Games. Competitors are selected by lottery from all teens aged 12 -18 (a boy and girl from each of the 12 Districts of Panem). There can only be one winner, the individual left alive at the end of a series of ‘to the death’ challenges.

Sounds gruesome, so what does all the hype have to do with marketing professionals? Leading up to the film’s release in the US on March 23^rd, social media was extensively employed to hype the movie, alongside traditional cinematic advertising channels: TV, radio, bus shelters and theatres. But unlike the traditional channels, social networks go a step further, through in-depth engagement, involvement and handing the job of promotion to the fans.

Facebook: Calling Citizens of Panem

Facebook fans register as a citizen of Panem via their Twitter or Facebook accounts and are assigned a job, District and a District Identification Pass, which can then be used as their Facebook, Twitter or Google+ profile photo.

Registered ‘citizens’ join their District on Facebook, where they can participate in elections, stand for office, become ‘recruiters’ for more citizens (how genius is that for building your likes?) or journalists. Citizens are rewarded with exclusive content like teaser previews and star interviews. A like-gated tab on each of the 12 District pages takes the fan to The Square, a virtual central meeting place, mirroring the location of the same name in the books, where everyone from all the Districts can gather.

Twitter: Advanced Screening Program

The Advanced Screening Program was run specifically through Twitter. Fans tweeted special hashtags to unlock cities running advanced screenings of the film. If the city the fan tweeted was unlocked, the fan was entered into a draw to win tickets.  Unsuccessful fans then were able to access exclusive live-streaming via Facebook of the red carpet event.

Giving Back

For social good, The Hunger Games teamed up with charities focusing on feeding the hungry. Via Facebook, fans could complete a quiz that put them in the draw to win a signed Hunger Games poster, and in doing so, spread the word socially about the charitable opportunity. Plus, they had the opportunity to donate via PayPal, text donation or credit card. (Catalyst90 offers a similar payment process through Facebook via our shopping cart app).

Our Score: 9.5/10

As far as integrated campaigns that really understand targeting a niche audience and enabling engagement go, we can’t fault this one.

While some social media experts advise against running campaigns across multiple social networks simultaneously, The Hunger Games has tagged the tactic to the social network, tweaking campaign components to the most appropriate execution for each network, all the while integrating into a sensible overall campaign that complements traditional marketing activity.

Market insight is key to success. Facebook has been used to great advantage ( 3,690,538 likes · 513,910 talking about this) to develop deep involvement and engagement, relying on the passion of the fans to create and maintain momentum.  Turning some content generation by the fans guarantees return visits, generates a communal sense and establishes the official site as the ‘go to location’ for fans.

Twitter, conversely, has been utilised for short, sharp campaign activity, with a clear end date. Competitions aimed at generating quick viral activity, with a short lead time and great aspirational prizes work best within the Twitter environment.

With these established networks fully in place, we love how the franchise will be able to leverage activity for reasonably low investment for the next two movies in the Trilogy.

Another thing we love is that all these products, services and capabilities are available from Catalyst90, so you and your clients can put together a similar campaign right now.

But it’s a common one currently being tossed around on a number of online articles.  One of their latest gripes is that Facebook ‘Likes’ don’t always equate to brand loyalty, and that brands spend far too much time worrying about how many ‘Likes’ they can hoard on their pages.

First of all, we’ll be the first to agree that a brand should never assume it has an individual’s loyalty just because a ‘Like’ button has been pressed, and more so that an accumulation of ‘Likes’ makes a successful Facebook page

Most importantly, a Facebook ‘Like’ certainly doesn’t hold it’s weight if the Facebook page isn’t being utilised properly by the owner. Once a ‘Like’ is gained, it must to be tenderly nurtured with some good quality, personable customer-engagement.

But we here at Catalyst90 do think a Facebook ‘Like’ is worth its weight in marketing gold.  Literally. So just how much is it worth?

We commissioned a group of highly analytical statisticians (ourselves), to calculate the exact cost of a ‘Like’ for an online product-based business.

If you apply the Catalyst90 ‘‘Like’ It Lots’ theory, a Facebook ‘Like’ on your page can actually work out to deliver a better ROI to a business than traditional forms of web marketing. Let Jim show you how it works…

But it certainly was the case when Catalyst90 created a new Facebook app for Social Media Club Wellington to replace its current website.

The new app allows social media geeks to experience a one-stop shop for all the latest news and updates on Social Media Club Wellington.

“Most SMC members practice what the club preaches, and receive much of their content via social media,” says Tom Reidy, Catalyst90 Managing Director.

“Therefore it made sense to streamline the club’s comms channels instead of having several different ones. Content coming directly from a Facebook app is a more effective and engaging way of communicating with SMC Wgtn members.”

Feel free to chat to us about creating a swanky Catalyst90 Facebook app suitable for your clients’ brand or business.

But we won’t go on about its magnificence…you can check it out for yourselves!

So how does Facebook’s new Timeline affect your brand and its marketing campaigns?

Timeline isn’t anything to get too panicky about – in five minutes it will be the ‘new normal’. The most obvious changes are aesthetics and function – and how these will affect engagement with your followers. So this may be a good time to tinker with your social media strategy and marry it up with the new function of Timeline.

Timeline is gonna make you work it. Because of the new layout, an inactive page will be more obvious to viewers. Therefore, businesses must have a more ongoing and active engagement with their followers by telling the brand’s narrative and story, as well as pushing more effective campaigns.

But don’t worry – Timeline is proactive when it comes to telling a story. Because of the layout, the evolution of business is easy to follow, and it’s a great way of tracing corporate history over time. The addition of a Timeline image means you can get your creative story on, and scream your brand from the rooftops. Plus, Timeline is aesthetics-friendly – images or clips posted on the page really stand out, so it’s another way to make your brand pop.

You’ll also be pleased to know you can still run those awesome new apps Catalyst90 has lovingly crafted for you. But since Timeline scraps the default page function, you won’t be able to guide your followers directly to them.

So listen up closely: Facebook is introducing ‘pinning’. (Ooh, Pinterest – you little pioneer, you!). From here on in, you can now ‘pin’ posts, and it immediately becomes the main attraction at the top of your page. Not too taxing, really, and it means you can select what you want your followers to see the most.

But for complete exposure, shine the spotlight on your app with Facebook advertising – it’s fantastic bang for your buck. Tweet4yourtee recently spent a measly $80 on Facebook advertising and quickly notched up an extra 300 followers within three days.

Another new exciting feature of Timeline is sending and receiving private messages from followers, allowing a more personable avenue of communication.

So don’t fret too much! Facebook just likes to keep us on our toes. Feel free to get in touch with us here at Catalyst90, and discuss a new strategy for your clients and their Facebook pages.

One C90’er reckons if he had a dollar for every time he heard the words ‘Move over Facebook’, he’d have enough dosh to merely purchase his way to total world domination. So are the pundits right?

Pinterest is an invite-only social media site that allows people to create their own virtual pinboards. They can ‘pin’ images from the internet under their own categories (‘jewelry’, ‘home’, ‘cars’). You gather followers and there’s a ‘like’ function, which builds up that connectivity with others, who then go on to share these photos.

And here’s where brands and marketers gleefully rub their hands together.  Every time you click on an image, it will take you directly through to the website whence it came from. A recent Shareholic report claimed Pinterest drove more referral traffic to online retailers than Google+, YouTube, Reddit and LinkedIn combined. Ker-ching.

Now, a diverse range of companies, from Whole Foods to Etsy to General Electric, are already taking advantage of this wee feature, successfully leveraging their brands.

Pinterest was crowned TechCrunch’s Best New Startup of 2011, after it attracted more than 7 million unique visits last December – making the phenomenal jump from 1.68 million in September. Congratulations, Pinterest – you are now the fastest growing independent site to hit 10 million monthly unique visits in the history of the planet. No wonder marketers sat up and took notice.

To say people are hooked is somewhat of an understatement. Its appeal lies – and this certainly applies to its appeal as a marketing tool – in creativity and visual connection. As Pinterest co-founder, Ben Silbermann puts it, “Pinterest is a visual site, and a lot of people are visual by nature.”

It has even inspired copycat man-site, Gentlemint, a Pinterest-type platform for blokes who feel the latter is a bit too girly for rugged males such as themselves. (We still reckon ‘Gentlemint’ sounds a bit too polished for a rugged man-site.)

So should Facebook, et al be shaking in their boots?

This is a lovely little David and Goliath-type scenario, but successful niche social media platforms sites such as Pinterest are likely to build on their successes by integrating with and complimenting larger social media platforms rather than go head-to-head with them. And is success just may happen to elbows a few other secondary social media platforms out of the way in the process.

So in the meantime, consider making your brand Pinteresting.

Post-massive backlash, Twitter’s PR wheels furiously whirred to life. They logically explained that its censorship policy was actually a very healthy way of encouraging free speech.

It allows more transparency of censorship, explained Twitter CEO, Dick Costolo. A tweet in a country with social media censorship laws will only disappear in that country, but can be seen everywhere else in the world. Isn’t that great? Freedom of speech! And not only that – we’re so transparent, that we’ll also post the reasons as to why that tweet was censored in its own country. (“Abed said too much.”)

So, continued Dick, Twitter isn’t removing any content. Just censoring it in the country where Tweeters want to communicate. That’s reasonable, right? Isn’t it better that people can see that tweet elsewhere rather than not at all? It’s the lesser of two evils, see? (Twitter PR machine nods academically.)

Dick also clarified that Twitter doesn’t wish to do business in China or Iran, where its services are already blocked.  But it is OK with doing business in other countries who don’t block Twitter, but take umbrage at what its citizens post.

Basically leaving these people with the ability to tweet about the latest freak show on ‘Afghanistan Has Talent’ and listing what they’ve eaten for brekky. But nothing of substance.

OK, so maybe that wasn’t exactly how he put it, but it’s the basis of his argument. As we pointed out last week, Twitter is a company fundamentally based on free speech, and it’s now saying that free speech in certain countries is free speech only if it involves commentary on the weather and how bored they are at that moment.

But in the name of diplomacy and balanced, fair arguments, etc. etc. we opened up the floor here at Catalyst90 for a bit of discussion on whether Twitter’s eyebrow-raising rationale was a fair one or empty-minded idealism.

One C90 staffer pragmatically pointed out that Twitter is like any other business, and like any other business operating within territorial boarders they must adhere to local laws. If they didn’t like the local landscape, they could just choose not to do business there.

And therein lies our beef. (Well, most of us had beefs.) Twitter had a choice whether or not to do business in countries with repressive regimes, and they chose yes.

No matter how they package it, its censorship policy is not a noble cause, powered by some desire to give the repressed a degree of free speech. (And if it was, that was how their PR machine should’ve spun it when they made the original announcement.) It is driven by money, and the desire to expand their audience. Nothing wrong with wanting to expand business. (Hell, we know all about that.)

But Twitter had the clout to turn this around – potentially set a precedent and highlight the issues by refusing to do business with countries where freedom of speech is repressed. They already had a leg up on this especially after its game-changing role in the Arab Spring Uprising last year. But they folded.

And that is why, we are still of the opinion, that Twitter has, indeed, set up camp on the dark side.

But we respect those articles that argue otherwise. After all, it’s a democratic society, isn’t it?

Most of us have been there. Trying to acquaint parents, nana, granddad, kindly next-door-neighbour, etc. with social media. And sometimes it is a frustration beyond pain.

One member of the C90 team had to quickly delete a Facebook post when an errant parent randomly posted something about Piri Weepu’s groin injury underneath a post about the Queen’s congratulatory message to the All Blacks for winning the Rugby World Cup. (The comment really should have gone under the more relevant post of ‘Just saw Piri Weepu at the Warehouse’.)

But research shows Baby Boomers and those beyond are spending more time online – social media sites in particular. They’re connecting with old friends, family members who have flown the coop (including their offspring) and professional networking.

Whereas previous older generations were winding down in their 50s, preparing for a life in the slow lane, today’s are defying the definition of aging, living life to the fullest and debunking the gross generalisation that they are slow to adopt anything new.

And as a result, businesses – such as Apple – are conscientiously tailoring their online and social media marketing to appeal to Boomers. For example, Apple found Boomers tend to value experiences over products (while younger consumers tend to be turned on more by the gadgety).

You may want to consider this when reviewing your marketing mix – tapping into online marketing input from Boomers, moving your presence to where they are online, increasing awareness of your potential demographic and/or revisit messaging to a more cross-generational appeal.

This is the generation The Who sung about in ‘My Generation’ and counts the likes of Steve Jobs and Barack Obama among its contemporaries – suddenly not so old-fashioned now, huh?

For more detailed info, view the Pew Research Centre’s Internet study on Older Adults and Social Media.

The repercussions strike so deeply at the fundamentals of free speech we thought it might be a top story on one of New Zealand’s leading news sites. But no, that space was reserved for a story following the bidding war between Oprah and Barbara Walters for an interview with Pippa Middleton.

So since you were reading about Pippa Middleton, we’ll just fill you in a bit more: Twitter is on the end of extreme global backlash since it announced last Friday it will be restricting tweets in certain countries to conform with various local censorship laws.

The apparent rationale behind Twitter’s compliancy with government officials is the desire to expand its audience from 100 million active users to one billion. The change in policy would allow Twitter to coexist more comfortably within certain countries.

It’s a strange turn of events for an organisation crowned the harbinger of free speech in the wake of the popular Middle East civil protests last year.

Social media – Twitter in particular – gave activists a voice and vehicle to spread the word beyond their boarders. Not surprisingly, many critics of Twitter’s latest policy change are from those countries that are affected by Twitter choosing to play nice with governments.

There is a strong sense of betrayal; this once social media darling that previously enabled the repressed from certain corners of the globe is now committing to what is essentially the antithesis of what Twitter and tweeting stands for.

So whether Tweeters or not, there is outrage that the basic rights of free speech are being challenged by the very organisation which bases its entire success on free speech. (Forbes magazine tech blog item ‘Twitter commits social suicide’ has already become a popular hashtag.)

Fair to say, this sense of outrage was rife at Catalyst90 headquarters.

“Obviously, Catalyst90 is disappointed with Twitter’s decision to fold to pressure, especially as that pressure seems to be coming from particular governments looking to restrict free speech,” said Tom Reidy, Managing Director, Catalyst90.

“The Internet is a podium for free speech, and people are so used to having that now, they will find ways to get around it. Twitter’s move to censorship will only create underground social media platforms, where people can say what they want without the threat of government discipline.

“From a business point of view, I understand Twitter wanting to expand their target market, but it’s not freedom of speech when you’re pandering to the government, and making them your target market.”

And with that said, we’re just going to hop down off our soapbox before the Chinese government spots this and decides to target us.

No one gives Ashton Kutcher too much credibility. But your brand has credibility. And now, because you are immersing yourself in the glorious foray of social media marketing, it’s doing great things for your brand. It’s like a digital fist bump with your customers.

But there may come a time when you have to do the proverbial Ashton Kutcher back peddle, and dive into damage control mode (insert musical score of impending doom here).

Social media is a fantastic vehicle for marketing your brand – low cost, interactive and immediate. However, the ‘interactive’ and ‘immediate’ part means you are open to the opinions of your customers.

You have your customers’ best interests at heart, but what happens when their best interests are left in the merciless hands of a 16-year-old part-timer? Yes. Best not to wait until that happens, but plan ahead in case it happens.

It should be part of every business’ social media strategy. Think Kiwis are far too easy-going and controversy-shy to throw down the public gauntlet on social media forums? Here’s the thing – it happened last week (impending doom music).

Well, OK – the finger-pointing was done by an Aussie, but you get the drift. It happened here and the business involved found itself in a very uncomfortable and sweat-inducing spotlight.

Which is why it is so important to have a sound damage control contingency plan mapped out and locked away in your panic room. If you haven’t got one yet, work it into your business’ New Year’s resolutions list, and get onto it quick. It may save your business some panic.

New Zealand is a cosily small country. You can’t do too much without your neighbour telling your boss telling your mum. Imagine what it’s like when every second Kiwi has a keyboard at their fingertips and a cursor readily hovering over the word ‘post’.