Archive for February, 2010

Viral marketing news and other viral happenings in the Denver Metro and Boulder area.

Dr. David Benke is a Hero – Sadly, Colorado was in world news again for all the wrong reasons. “Deer Creek shooting” and related phrases were hot in search engines this week, as word spread about our most recent school shooting. Fortunately, the actions of Dr. David Benke prevented further tragedy, for which he was recognized on the Facebook fan page  Dr. David Benke is a hero!!! More than just honoring Benke, the page has provided people with a place to share their hopes and fears after the shooting. And Benke has since expressed that he does not consider himself a hero, just someone who did what he had to do. Both are true: we are all capable of heroics if we understand the cost of inaction. Thank you, David Benke, I am a fan.

Unreasonable Institute – On the subject of social-media-for-good, the Boulder-based Unreasonable Institute has a different take on the increasingly popular sport of startup incubation. They are looking for applicants to become “Unreasonable Fellows” and participate in a 10 week program focused on incubating businesses and initiatives that are looking to change the world through social media. In their own words:

We envision a world transformed by social entrepreneurship – a world where tomorrow’s leaders develop sustainable and systemic solutions to issues of global magnitude.

As the Facebook-Benke story demonstrates, social media does connect people for good, and a more connected world is a better world overall. I don’t think that is an unreasonable assumption.

On a less serious note, the next three stories demonstrate the power of sex to get a message across, particularly when it doesn’t involve humans.

Puppet Boobs – A billboard company in Colorado Springs did touring Broadway musical Avenue Q a giant favor by banning their advertising, which features (shudder) puppet cleavage. Not surprisingly, this had people all over the web talking about Colorado Springs, puppet boobs, and of course Avenue Q. Note to marketers: design a ridiculous ad campaign that would only be considered risque in the Springs, and you’ve got yourself viral media.

Skiing for Swingers – In a blatant effort to sell to the id, Copper Mountain is giving skiers the opportunity to “ride something new” with a “Swinger’s Pass”. The pass costs $39 to anyone who presents a valid pass for another ski area. The campaign was designed by offbeat agency Wexley School for Girls and includes provocative Craigslist ads. I wonder if Colorado Springs is going to try and ban Craigslist?

(this is one pun I’m not going to touch) – A bit north of Colorado Springs, researchers at the University of Colorado have been working hard to understand what all the fuss is about sex. Specifically, they are reporting that barn swallows tend to get it on more often when they maintain a diet rich in antioxidants. Are any of us surprised that Boulder scientists think we should swap out our pheromone-saturated perfumes for vitamin supplements? In any case, avian biology has never received so much attention.

Haiku Olympics – With all the sports, sex and tragedy this week, few noticed that Colorado was home to our own global competition: the Haiku Olympics. Now I am a fan of poetry, and one of my favorite people is a poet, but this has to be the least interesting YouTube video I’ve seen in a while. Nonetheless, it did inspire me to try my hand at this simple, but deceptively challenging form:

Haiku Olympics
No Vonn No White No Spillane
So Very Boring

This week’s theme song is Hot & Cold, by Los Colorados. No actual connection to Colorado, but holy crap that dude is like the Tommy Bolin of the accordion!

This is a weekly update, please comment if there are topics or items I have missed.

In putting together this list, we looked at a variety of factors, including overall traffic, domain authority, share of local search and depth of listing content in compiling the list. All of these sites also have paid advertising options, but first you should take advantage of what they have to offer for free. Note that in most cases, you will need to be able to verify a phone number and/or a physical address to add your listing. We have included traffic figures for each site, using Compete.com December, 2010 data.

1. Google Places

By adding your business to Google Places, you show up on Google Maps and Google local results. This is one of the most important things a local business can do to get found on the web. Here are a few reasons why:

• Google Maps is a hugely popular mapping application.
• Google Place Page results show up on Google.com for most local searches.
• Google Maps is one of the most popular applications on smartphones.

Compete puts monthly visits for maps.google.com at 58M, but Google.com and mobile are probably the bigger traffic drivers. If we conservatively estimate that 10% of search on www.Google.com is local, that amounts to over 300M locally-oriented visits per month. I don’t know of a good source for usage data for the mobile Google Maps application – please let me know if you do.

To add your listing: Google Places. And while claiming your Place Page is a good start, you should also invest the time in optimizing your page so that you rank well for your categories.  Here’s an article with some pointers on Place Page optimization: To-Do List: Creating a Fabulous Google Place Page

2. Facebook Fan Page

Apart from being the most visited site on the internet, over 1.5 million businesses have created fan pages on the network, and 20 million people become fans of pages every day (source). Facebook is a long way from being the first place where consumers search for businesses, but it has quickly become the most likely place for consumers to connect with local businesses online. According to Compete, Facebook received almost 3.5 billion visits in December, 2010, though little of this constitutes local business search traffic.
To create a page you must be logged in to your personal account. People who follow your page won’t be able to see your private information, FB just doesn’t allow people to anonymously create pages. Also, once you’ve created it, you can add other administrators to the page.  Create a Facebook Page. And here are some suggestions for how to engage with prospects and get people interested in your business: Great Content for Facebook Business Pages

Facebook users can also check in to locations, and Facebook has their own version of place pages as part of this functionality. You need to claim or create a place page in addition to creating a business page, and then link it to your business page. Here are instructions for doing this.

3. Yellowpages.com/YP.com

AT&T owned Yellowpages.com rebranded as YP.com, and it’s not your parent’s yellow pages any more. Under pressure from the likes of Google and Yelp, YP.com has a fresh look and more social content and features. They also distribute listings to a number of syndication partners. Currently at 29 million visits per month.
Claim your listing

4. Superpages.com

Superpages also went through a significant redesign recently, but doesn’t seem to be keeping up with Yellowpages.com or the others. Their traffic figures indicate same, but they did have a nice uptick last Fall. They get 19 million local search visits a month.
Get your free listing now

5. Yelp

The review site Yelp is the most popular social site focused on local business search. Given its emphasis on social content and interaction, Yelp tends to do better than other directory sites when it comes to attracting younger, more social users. Currently at 18 million visits per month.
To add your listing: Yelp signup page

6. Citysearch

Citysearch.com has been holding steady for a number of years now in terms of on-site traffic, but they have been growing their network of distribution through syndication and the recently announced CityGrid blows their distribution opportunity wide-open. Currently at 9 million visits per month. Citysearch is also a powerhouse when it comes to review syndication.
To add your listing: add business – note that you must be logged in to a personal Citysearch account to see this page.

7. Yahoo! Local

As with many things Yahoo!, Yahoo! Local is holding steady, but not seeing the growth of Google or even Bing. But they still provide a very popular service, so worth making sure you are listed there. Local.Yahoo.com is currently at 17 million visits per month, and we estimate about 60 million more local search visits at search.Yahoo.com.
To add your listing: add a business page

8. Bing Local

Microsoft has long struggled behind Google and Yahoo! in the world of web search, but the tides have turned of late. Since Microsoft launched Bing.com last year, they have steadily been gaining search share. Bing local and maps operate under the www.Bing.com domain, which gets 654M visits per month. We estimate 65M of that to be local search.
To add your listing: Local Listing Center

9. LinkedIn

LinkedIn isn’t exactly a place where people go to look for local businesses, but it does offer rich business listing functionality, and the domain carries quite a bit of authority. LinkedIn has also been adding many useful features for businesses, such as the ability to announce promotions, share articles and blogs, and list open jobs. LinkedIn is very important for business-to-business exposure, since people will often browse from a personal profile to a business profile. Currently at 48 million visits per month, though very little of this is local search traffic. Add a company to LinkedIn

10. Localeze.com

Localeze is not a local search site itself, it is a back-end data provider to many other local search services. Create an account on Localeze

Honorable Mention – Universal Business Listing

Universal Business Listing’s basic submission service costs $75, but deserves mention here. UBL.org provides an automated submission service that gets your listing into Acxiom and InfoUSA, back-end data providers similar to Localeze. UBL also distributes business information to a number of other sites. All told, submitting to UBL will get your listing on to hundreds of sites and services, definitely worth the $75.

You’ll notice that both Localeze and UBL distribute listing data to some of the sites mentioned here – we still recommend that you claim them and enter all the information you can.

A Couple of Pointers When Creating/Updating Listings

• Be accurate and consistent. If you have a registered business name, use that as your business name in all cases. Some of these sites will verify your information with public business registration data, and consistency will help your search ranking.
• Fill out everything you can. More information helps you get found, and makes your listing more useful to searchers – remember, your goal is not just to have your listings show up, you want people to visit your business.

There are many benefits to getting your business listed on other web sites. Four important ones are:

• Links – links pointing to a web site are major factor in how that site ranks in search engines. I would say the most important factor, but linking is a complex and nuanced topic. Links are not all created equal. Where a link comes from is important. For example, a link from the home pages of nytimes.com is worth a lot more than a link on a page buried deep within a blog like this one. And some web sites put a “nofollow” attribute on links. This attribute is a way of telling search engines not to follow nor associate value with a link. However, there is still some SEO value in a nofollowed link, in particular because user behavior is also a factor in Google ranking. Matt Cutts of Google explains more about the value of nofollowed links here.
• Web site traffic – this one is kind of obvious, but your listing will include a link to your web site, which will result in more traffic. Many consumers like to visit a web site before visiting a business. If yours isn’t listed, you lose out.
• In-store traffic – consumers are using the internet more, and print yellow pages less.  According to one study, print accounts for less than a third of local business search. Listing your business on the web is now the best way to get people to walk in to or call your business.
• Citations – citations are references to your business that include your business name and some sort of geographic identifier, like a phone number or street address. Citations are one of the signals Google uses to determine ranking for local listings.

[note: this post was updated in January, 2011]

Viral marketing news and other viral happenings in the Denver Metro and Boulder area.

This doesn’t really count as low-budget viral, but if you have a helicopter, Shaun White, a secret half-pipe hidden in the mountains of Colorado and crazy-good production equipment, you can be like Red Bull and dominate YouTube.  Oh yeah, and it helps if your poster boy blows everyone’s mind at the Olympics.

Everyone who wasn’t talking about Shaun White this week was talking about Boulder, after USA Today ranked it the happiest, healthiest city in the country. But lest you think it’s all sweetness and fluorescent light in the Gore-Tex Vortex, the Wall Street Jounal also highlighted the city in a story about the challenges of going green. RedState.com was happy to pick up the latter story, and lambast our hypocrisy and megalomaniacal government. In spite of our government, we are a happy people, though it is true we can be a bit hypocritical. But shame on the pundits for missing the best set-up ever for a “how-many-boulderites-does-it-take-to-screw-in-a-lightbulb” joke.

I came across this item just now, but only because I’ve had my head in the sand since the first video came out in 2006. Technologist/polymath David Terrar blogged this week about a series of videos created by Centennial teacher Karl Fisch and Iowa professor Scott Mcleod. The videos illustrate the massive impact evolving technology has had on, well, pretty much everything. And millions of people have watched them. I guarantee that the 4:45 seconds you spend watching the most recent video (below) will be more informative than the time you spend reading this post.

And the award for  ’Harnessing People’s Limitless Animal-Video Enthusiasm for Good‘ goes to the Humane Society of Boulder Valley. Their YouTube channel made it in to the top 100 most-viewed non-profit channels this week. I can see why, after watching this adorable video of Sydney the pit bull mix. The videos are a great way for prospective owners to get to know the dogs, and they help create awareness for the Humane Society. Overall, I’m really impressed with HSBV’s web efforts. For example, check out their Facebook page.

I’m honestly not sure how I feel about this story, but it seems worthy of mention. Two Boulder guys dropped out of “ad school”, whatever that is. Then they created a WordPress template site to showcase their talents and to crowdsource feedback, and they are offering a prize for people who submit comments. The site is graphically uninteresting, and the campaign ideas they are presenting would end up in the discard pile at most agencies. But what surprises me most is how anti-social the site is. You can’t see other people’s comments, there are no social bookmarks, and there is no information on the two dropouts. So the site ends up leaving me feeling cold and lonely, rather than part of a crowd.

And last but not least, here is a true story of viral media and the power of love. Or something like that. Colorado teen Conner Cordova has been stalking wooing Ultimate Fighting Championship ring girl Arianny Celeste via YouTube. For nearly six months, he has been trying to get her to be his date for the prom. And his relentlessness has paid off: she accepted! Check out the story on his site, MMAreligion.com. I’d hire Conner for my agency in a heartbeat over the two aforementioned dropouts. Kid’s got panache.

This is a weekly update, please comment if there are topics or items I have missed.

Network Solutions has partnered with the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland to produce a series of studies tracking a variety of factors that affect the competitive health of small businesses. The most recent installment is detailed here: The State of Small Business Report – December 2009 Survey of Small Business Success. There is a lot of useful information in the report, ranging from statistics on methods of acquiring capital to characteristics of an effective workforce.

Below I have pulled out some choice statistics from the study relating to small business marketing and in particular social media. The number of small businesses who are using social media has doubled in the last year! While small businesses have been slower to adopt social media than big companies, they are starting to catch up. I believe this harkens a sea change in consumer habits, as social connections are strengthened between local consumers and local businesses. Mass marketing benefits big brands and big box stores, because it favors price as the common denominator across all consumers. But social media benefits businesses that are owned and operated by people who live in the community, because it favors social connections between individuals.

• “The incidence of small businesses having a social media presence has doubled from 12 percent to 24 percent in the past 12 months.”
• 70% of small businesses who use social media believe the medium has met or exceeded expectations.
• 50% of small businesses who use social media say it has used up more time than expected.
• 46% of small businesses have a web site – down from 50% a year ago.
• Marketing & innovation was second to capital access in affecting overall competitiveness. Workforce, customer service, computer technology and compliance were all less important factors.
• Referrals from existing customers are the most effective source of new customers.

Oh, and unrelated to marketing, but I couldn’t resist pulling this statistic out as well:

60% of small business owners are highly satisfied and 33% are somewhat satisfied with their jobs. Only 43% of the overall population are satisfied with their jobs. Source for the latter: The Conference Board.

Viral marketing news and other viral happenings in the Denver Metro and Boulder area.

In my house the Superbowl came and went, but we are all atwitter about the Olympics. Like many, my sympathies go out to the family of the luger who died. But the Games must go on, and this year sees an increasing number of athletes on Twitter. It is much more interesting to hear the athletes describe the excitement and anticipation in their own words than to watch the over-produced bio segments put on by the networks. I put together a list of Colorado athletes who are at the Games and twittering:

http://twitter.com/#/list/nicobrx/colorado-olympians

Here’s a little teaser from Aspen cross country skier, Simi Hamilton:

Now I would have thought that statement to be a bit redundant, but never having dived naked in to a swimming pool of awesomeness, I will take Hamilton’s word. Go Colorado! Go USA!

And if you want to shake a little cowbell while you watch the games, there’s an iPhone app for that.

We have our world-class athletes,  but we have our world-class artists too. Denver artist Evan Hecox designed a brilliant series of Macbook and iPhone cases for manufacturer Incase. But that’s not the viral bit – the viral bit is this video that captures the process of Hecox producing the designs:

I love this video and I love these designs. Nearly 5,000 people have watched it in less than a week, so I guess I’m not the only one.

Another local video that’s getting attention is a parody of The Office called The Class and produced by Denver University students. Alumnus Sinbad notwithstanding, comedy doesn’t appear to be a strength at DU, but give them credit for aiming high. And the clip is striking a chord, as more than 20,000 people have watched it in the last couple of weeks. In particular it is getting talked about and linked-to by teachers and faculty all over. That should be a slam-dunk for an A.

And here is viral media at its best: Boulder toy store Playfair Toys was robbed by an employee at the end of the year and the robbery has put Playfair in a tenuous situation, given the already difficult economy. Proprietor Marilyn Walker bared her heart and balance sheet in a moving appeal for help. And she’s not asking for handouts. Until they get their cash situation sorted out, they are offering all of their inventory at 40% off. The story and video spread like wildfire, especially on mom-centric forums and groups. I haven’t found data on how successful the appeal has been, but a number of items show out-of-stock, which is a good sign. So hurry and buy something. This is an unbelievable deal, these are good people and this is a good cause.

If you are wondering how Coloradans distinguish themselves on Facebook, researcher Pete Warden has some data you might be interested in. He’s done a comprehensive analysis of Facebook user’s Fan page habits and identified some interesting geographic trends. Colorado’s Facebook habits can be found here. The navigation is a bit weird, but worth digging around a bit. There are way too many trends to cover here, but I will point out that Coloradans are fans of the Colorado fan page, but Kansans are not fans of the Kansas fan page. Can’t say as I blame them

As a little pre-Valentine’s treat, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) dragged a bed down to 16th street mall and populated it with attractive and scantily clad couples to promote the message “Fur Out, Love In.” The event got decent press, but was apparently a little underwhelming if you bothered to show up. In the words of one Denver Egotist commenter, “what a pathetic stunt that turned out to be.” I guess all the skin on TV and the internet  has desensitized us to near-naked hotties. Still, I’d much rather see that than buckets of blood.

Ironically, the PETA folks may need to stay away from Boulder, where stricter public nudity laws are being considered. In classic Boulder fashion, the ordinance got stuck on the question of equal treatment of topless men and women. If male toplessness is outlawed, I’m pretty sure CU will become an all girls school. Good for parking, I guess.

This is a weekly update, please comment if there are topics or items I have missed.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the impact an unhappy customer can have on a business by writing negative reviews on sites like Yelp and Citysearch. While I suggested that businesses should actively solicit positive reviews, I also believe that unhappy customers should be heard, and in fact that giving unhappy customers a voice is good for your business. But this is different.

Unfortunately, there are scumbag marketers that generate fake reviews, both positive and negative. This is highlighted in a recent story involving Peak Studios, based here in Boulder. The story is long and involved, so I will summarize it here. Someone from Peak Studios gained the attention of Scott Hendison by attempting to post a spammy self-promo on a forum Scott moderates. The attempted post pissed off Scott – not good for Peak Studios, since Scott is a well-connected SEO expert and a self-admitted hothead. Scott did some investigating, and found that Peak Studios was in the practice of generating fake reviews on behalf of clients. This offense is hearsay, but Scott has documented his findings on his blog and I believe his accusations to be true. Scott described what Peak Studios was doing, and his exposé ended up ranking just below Peak Studios in Google for the search “peak studios”. This anecdote is particularly telling, both because it describes a marketing firm that was unrepentant about their fake reviews and comments, and because it shows what can happen if such activity is exposed.

If your business is the victim of fake, negative reviews, I’m sorry to say that there is little you can do. Some sites will remove reviews if you can prove that they are fake, but providing such proof is very difficult. The best you can do is to encourage legitimate dialog about your business, and thereby drown out the scumbags. And you can and should avoid the fate of Peak Studio’s clients:

Stay in Control of Your Marketing Activities

What I recommended in my previous post was that businesses ask customers for input in the form of reviews on 3rd party web sites. If you serve your customers well, the majority of your feedback will be positive. As a  business, this is very much within your power to do. But an outsourced marketing firm doesn’t have a relationship with your customers, so will often resort to tactics that are at a minimum less effective, and at worst could damage your reputation. A good marketing partner will work closely with you and provide full visibility in to what they are doing on your behalf. And trust your instincts: if a marketing activity smells fishy, it probably is.

I’d also like to include a shoutout to Sebastien Provencher, who proposes a solution to the problem of scumbags and reviews: Social Graph-Based Commenting Systems. With the ever-increasing importance of reviews on the web, Sebastien’s solution seems both good and inevitable.

[edit: please see the comment section below for clarification from Scott Hendison on his initial and ongoing frustration with Peak Studios]

Viral marketing news and other viral happenings in the Denver Metro and Boulder area.

Boulder agency TDA Advertising & Design gets credit for an infectious campaign created for Titus Cycles. There are two parts to the campaign. One part is a contest whereby participants submit a tattoo design featuring Titus.  The winner gets the design permanently tattooed on his or her body and a $5,500 Titus bike. The other part is for those more timid among us. By voting on submitted designs, you get a chance to win a Titus t-shirt. You have to become a Facebook fan of Titus to see the submitted tattoos, but I assure you it’s worth it. There are some truly beautiful and truly ridiculous submissions.

I also love that would-be tattooees are battling it out on Titus’ Facebook wall. Well done TDA.

I definitely don’t want to get bogged down in the political tomfoolery that we can expect between now and November, but a couple of videos featuring local politicos are getting some attention. In one, Governor Bill Ritter is lambasted in a visual collage set to Johnny Cash and featuring cameos by Chewbacca the Wookie and Fred Gwynn, among many others. I couldn’t make much sense of the video, but it is an effective technique and a lot of people are watching. In the other, Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff takes aim at PAC money and the political system it supports. While I found the video a bit campy, his message clearly resonates. The video has over 1,000 views in just a few days. While the two clips come from very different ends of the political spectrum, both show the power of viral media to get a message out.

Last week, I mentioned a blog post questioning the cost versus benefit of Foursquare and other location-based services. This week, Techcrunch took issue with Foursquare in one of the best-named blog posts in recent memory: Does Foursquare Have a Douchebag Problem?. What surprises me is that they quote a comment by Colorado-based web guru Dave Taylor without crediting him. The fact that Foursquare alienated an influencer like Taylor both supports the Techcrunch story and indicates that they are revving up the engines to jump the shark.

A little less hip than tattoos and Foursquare, this story features an icon near and dear to my heart. I travel through Denver’s Union Station every day, and find its cavernous space a monument to missed opportunity. This video, beautifully executed by Harvey Productions in Denver, describes the history and planned redevelopment of Union Station and surrounds. While the video is a trailer for a longer feature that was released on Friday, nearly a thousand people have watched the clip. Considering that the phrase “historic preservation” is most closely associated with paper doilies and pillow mints, that’s quite a turnout. And it was also announced Friday that the US Department of Transportation will be kicking in $300 Million to the redevelopment. Denver’s biggest missed opportunity could become its greatest landmark.

And last-but-not-least, search engines saw a big rise in searches relating to druids and wiccans this week, with news that the  Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs has created a place of worship for a variety of pagans. I like the sentiment expressed by Academy Chaplain William Ziegler, who described the move as “another example of celebrating the freedom we enjoy as well as the freedom we, as Airmen, have pledged to defend.” But while the Academy has said that they are accommodating a pagan cadet, I suspect that it is really part of a secret weapons project.

This is a weekly update, please let me know of topics or items I may have missed.

As if local businesses needed the playing field to be any further out-of-level, Google is solidly tilted towards big business. Do some local searches and you will see what I mean. Google’s own map results favor big chain stores, and the organic results favor directory sites, which tend to put the big-spending advertisers first. I did a search for “pharmacy boulder“, and the first locally-owned pharmacy showed up on page seven of the organic results. Since very few people even go to page two of the results, I am probably the first person to see that listing in quite a while.

This is not due to any ill-will on Google’s part, it is just a function of how Google’s ranking algorithm works. Much of how Google ranks sites is based on the number and quality of external links pointing to a domain and specific pages on the domain. The SEO resource site SEOmoz.org publishes a bi-annual report of search engine ranking factors, which puts 4 of the top 5 ranking factors as having to do with external links. National chains and directories will generally have more external links, and so rank better.

But there is something you can do about it: start showing some link-love to your neighbors and partners. By link-love, I mean create links on your web site that link to other local businesses. One way to do this is to create a “resources” page or similar. An example of this can be found on the Builder’s Appliance Center web site. They link to a number of local businesses on their trade partners page. This page would have more SEO value if they added a one-sentence description to each link, for example “Plush Designs kitchen designs in Colorado Springs,” instead of just a logo. Google looks at link text as an indication of relevancy, so including the type and location of the business will help the site rank for those keywords. It can’t hurt to add a personal touch as well. For example, saying “We’ve been doing business with ACME Plumbing for 30 years and always get great service,” leaves a good impression of both you and ACME Plumbing. Of course, you will only benefit if your neighbors and partners reciprocate by creating their own links back to you. If they need convincing, point them to this post.

This truly is a case where you can help level the playing field by being neighborly. And check out Yahoo Site Explorer to see who is linking to you now. You may find that you owe someone some link-loving already.

I’d like to follow-up yesterday’s report with a little more perspective on the massive Einstein Bros free bagel campaign. The campaign offers Facebook users a free bagel in return for following the Einstein Bros fan page on Facebook. The resulting increase in Einstein’s fan base has been incredible (source: allfacebook.com):

That’s the kind of growth chart that sends ops people hiding under their desks. And while Einstein Bros is making a big investment by giving away so many free bagels, they see Facebook as a prime channel for acquiring new customers. Chief Concept Officer James O’Reilly says “I’m confident that when consumers come into our restaurant they will become key customers for life.”

Kudos to Einstein Bros for this bold experiment. With today’s news that 175 million people log on to Facebook every day, businesses around the world should be thinking about their strategy for the social network. In particular, I see several ways in which Facebook can transform marketing for businesses:

First, as Einstein Bros has demonstrated, Facebook and other social networks present an online marketing opportunity for companies who sell discretionary consumer products. As effective as search engine marketing has been for many businesses, it doesn’t work very well for the kind of product Einstein Bros sells. People rarely search for bagels, but they do often eat them. And the same can be said for much of what we buy.

Second, the Facebook fan list could replace the email mailing list to a large extent. As a consumer, I like the control I have over promotions I view in Facebook. I can easily scan updates on my Facebook page, and I don’t have to delete anything: messages  just go away if I ignore them. With email, my only choice is to keep subscribing or unsubscribe. And as a business I can have two-way conversations with Facebook fans, as demonstrated by the Einstein Bros fan page. Just as Facebook has replaced a lot of person-to-person email communication, it is likely to replace email communication between businesses and consumers.

Third, Facebook allows locally-targeted broadcast promotions. A local bagel shop can execute a promotion just like Einstein’s, but only pay to reach local consumers. And Facebook also allows targeting by age, gender and other profile characteristics. Here are some helpful tips on Facebook advertising from AllFacebook.com: 9 Rules of Facebook Promotion Every Small Business Should Know. And here is Facebook’s guide to setting up a page.

So go and get your fan page set up, if you haven’t done so already. And if you already have a fan page, do a promotion and tell me about it. I’m excited to see where this all goes.