Blogs

Today, Facebook goes public and has pocketed about $100 billion to grow it's business. In typical Wall Street fashion, a la when Google went public, the great guessing game has begun to try and figure out just how much Facebook will be worth next year, 5 years and in 10 years.

And with that, we have joined the great guessing game...

We believe Facebook will be the first company to become worth more than $1 trillion dollars.

How?

There are a number of reasons why Facebook will be worth more and more money over time.

1. There are 900 million people on Facebook, which is roughly 12% of the world's population so there is lots of room for future growth and with the exception of China and Russia there is no one else out there with compelling social networks.
2. More and more people especially in developing countries won't buy computers, they'll buy smart phones. They may be used Apple iPhones but they will be smartphones and will have Facebook on the device. 500 million people log in via mobile to Facebook every day and they haven't been monetized so they remain a huge potential for growth.
3. More products based on Facebook data. Facebook's main product is a website that culls personal data. It knows your likes, age, when you got married, what your friends like and where they live. This data can power and awful lot. Imagine a few different products:
   1. TV commercials based on your likes. This wouldn't be too terribly difficult if you are watching a show from your Xbox or ondemand by using Facebook single sign on
   2. A display network - for any site that people use Facebook single sign on, a display network could easily push ads based on the user's preferences rather than what Google does which is based on keywords
   3. App Sales - Facebook recently announced an app center where developers can sell apps to Facebook users.

Facebook brought in $3.7 billion in revenue in 2011 and will be valued at 100 billion which is 27 times earnings. In order to reach a $1 trillion valuation, it would have to earn a little over  $37 billion in revenue.  If the Price to earnings ratio goes down to say what Apple multiplier is 14 then the company would have to make $71.4 billion.

Today, Apple makes about $28 billion a year in revenue, so Facebook reaching $37 billion is not out of reach. Further, marketing will remain big business. In 2011, roughly $600 billion was spent on marketing. Can Facebook capture 20% of that number to reach 1 trillion?  We believe it can because the majority of that $600 billion will move online and that's where Facebook plays and no one is close to them right now.

Facebook is having quite a week. On Friday they are expected to go public, but today the news came out today that GM will be dumping Facebook Ads and spending the $10 million in advertising elsewhere. Their main complaint seems to be that the Facebook Ads are not effective. Unfortunately we are not able to look at their Facebook ad campaign to see where they might be able to improve. So we will do the next best thing which is to look at their Facebook page and do a social media evaluation, which is what we do for free for any of our prospective customers. 

The first step is to establish their goals. The goal of GM is pretty simple. GM sells cars. 

The second step is to understand how people buy cars. Buying cars is pretty simple, you go through a few different steps to arrive at a purchase decision:

• Dreaming and Exploring - How many times have you dreamed about a new car and then went online and explored that care and all the ways you could trick it out.
• Research and Buying - Once you start to figure out what you want you start to research it against other cars and other dealers for the best deal out there and then you buy the car
• Experience and Driving - Once you purchase, you show off your new car to your friends...possibly on Facebook?

Once we have the main goal and buying pattern established we can use them to evaluate the page. Are they talking about their goal? Helping people dream or explore? Sharing new driving or experience stories? 

In a word....No

Here is where GM's Facebook page falls down and most likely where the Facebook ads well down as well.

1. There aren't any links to the CARS! Sure there are links to press releases or human interest stories but no links to the CARS. 
2. There is WAY too much text on this page and very few pictures of CARS. Why would anyone click on these stories when all they want to see is CARS
3. There are no apps - no contest to win a car or even trick out a car. 
4. No links to a dealer network to schedule a test drive

Not only is the GM page like this but so is Chevy, Chevy Volt, the only page that actually helps refer people to a sell is Buick Facebook page. It's no wonder they only have 486,000 fans. My guess is that the Facebook advertising either lead them to a website or lead them to some of these boring Facebook pages. So it's easy to understand why their advertising was ineffective, it lead consumers to something that was uninteresting. Why continue to purchase if you can't even get a good dream going?

So while GM is pulling its advertising, we would suggest that they take a look at one of the better Facebook pages we have seen in a related industry, Harley Davidson, which sells bikes

1. You see lots of pictures of BIKES!
2. Interspersed within the Facebook pages are blogs about things like "how to ride a motorcycle" which take you to the Harley Davidson website where you can try out a bike
3. Some pretty cool apps where you can submit your own photos of you and your bike.
4. A find a dealer app...so people can buy a BIKE!

Harely does a great job of showing people living the dream (riding Harleys) and giving them the ability to go to the website to purchase and then share those pics back onto Facebook so other people can start to dream. Not surprisingly...Harley has 3.6 million fans.

The bottom line is GM is really the reason their Facebook ads don't work, not Facebook ads. 

One of the problems with website redesign is the lack of a website redesign strategy. Sadly, a lot of the time, companies start doing a redesign without thinking about how it effects their standing on the Internet. After all what good is a website redesign if nobody can find your pretty website? 

So in order to lay out an effective website strategy you need to consider a number of other things beside the look and feel of the website branding:

1. What assets does your website currently have?
2. What content management system are you going to use?
3. What do you want your website to do to increase your bottom line?

Assets

Before you engage in a website design, one of the first things you should do is take stock of your current website. How many links does it have from external websites? What keywords bring traffic to your website? How many pages is it? These questions and more should be considered prior to redesigning any website.

Content Management System

You should always consider what foundation you build your new website on. We always recommend Drupal, but systems like WordPress and Joomla are also well supported systems. The system you install should be SEO compliant, provide the ability to share your website on all the social media networks and above all be easy for you as the company to make website changes as you need them without calling anyone.

Increase the Bottom Line

Sadly, this is the one part of the exercise a lot of companies leave out. They don't consider how they want their website to make them money. If you have an eCommerce store, it's a little more cut and dry because you want to sell things within the store. However, if you are a B2B, or don't have an ecommerce store, it's a little more complex. At this point the best thing to do is create easy ways for visitors to become leads. Beyond the ubiquitous "Contact Us" page, what else can you offer? A free book? A PDF of case studies? A webinar? All of these things are great examples of getting people interest in your website and product who may not be ready to buy.

For more strategies on your next website redesign, feel free to download our free ebook website redesign.

One of the problems in social media is there is no direct way to figure out what to do next or even how to connect the dots on what you and your friends are doing. Experiences and memories, places you visited always need to be stringed together. Facebook has started to attempt this with Timeline but only in reference to you and when something happened.

The question of what just happened or what to do next may be close to being answered by a new social network on the rise. A company called gopogo has taken a lot of information on the web and started to connect the dots into what they call strings. The founders refer to gogoo as a  platform for recording, sharing and discovering connected experiences. These connected experiences are called strings. Very similar to Facebook's Timeline stories, but at a higher level because they add context to what you are doing and where you are going. While the Facebook Timeline ends with now, the gopogo string attempts to push into the future.

Those strings are the key to what makes gopogo different. Not only are those strings easy to record and share but easy to follow. For example... Wanna follow in a celebrities footsteps on a shopping trip around Manhattan? Need a list of vodka bars for a 4 stop vodka tasting tour?

What about a guided tour around Manhattan around a subject that interests you? What did you do last night? and how did you and your friends cross strings (paths)?

Check it out. You never know where those strings might lead gopogo in the next few years.

If there is any question we try and answer, it's why can't people find my website. Here are five core reasons why you aren't on the first page.

1. Your website is not optimized for search so since Google can't index your site, well then no one is going to get to your site via Google.
2. Your website hasn't had any content added to it in a long time so Google thinks your site is out of date and isn't crawling it very often.
3. No one is linking to your site, if no one links to your site, Google doesn't click on a link leading back to your website so your site doesn't get indexed
4. You use words on your site like "jewelry" which has millions of searches every day so you end up on page 2,000 of Google's results v. page 1
5. You don't put any words to images via alt tags, so Google doesn't index any of your images either.

The first step if SEO is to admit there is something wrong with your site. The second step is to do something about it by either rolling up your sleeves, learning some SEO and fixing your site, or hiring an SEO firm to do it for you.