The Secrets to Mastering Facebook, Get Ready For F-Commerce!

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Dan Schawbel

 With over 700 million users now, Facebook is growing rapidly and becoming more entrenched in our society. In order to learn more about Facebook, and how we should and shouldn’t be using it, I caught up with Mikal E. Belicove, who is a business strategist, author, and writer for Entrepreneur Magazine. He  specializes in content development, market analysis, and messaging/positioning for a select group of individuals and businesses. Mikal’s latest book is The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Facebook. I asked him if Facebook can hurt your career or business, to reveal some Facebook secrets, what the true value of Facebook is, and more.

Could it hurt your career and/or business if you’re not active on Facebook?

Having a strong Facebook presence is more important for businesses than it is for advancing one’s career (in fact, you could easily argue that Facebook has hurt more careers as a result of user naivety than it has helped). In the current marketplace, where discretionary spending is anything but discretionary, and where anyone can attempt to sell anything, businesses must prove why

 

Mikal E. Belicove

they’re special, and one of the best ways to do that is to leverage engagement and word-of-mouth. Facebook now reaches nearly 75 percent of the total U.S. Internet population each month. Businesses that fail to include the world’s largest social utility in their business-aligned communication strategy do so at their own risk.

What are a few Facebook secrets that most people don’t know about?

The Privacy page is deceptively simple; it doesn’t show all privacy settings on one screen. I encourage users to go to their Privacy page and then check the settings for Connecting on Facebook (click View Settings), Sharing on Facebook (click Customize settings), and Apps and Websites (click Edit your settings).

Also, Facebook is in the process of rolling out Check-in Deals. If you’re a consumer, you can check in at a business location using a smartphone or other mobile device to obtain promotional offers. If you’re a business owner, you can use Check-in Deals to promote and drive repeat business. But really, not much is secret on Facebook, because if a feature is cool enough to use, everyone’s talking about it.

Do you think that Facebook is worth $100 billion dollars? Why or why not?

Placing a value on a private company while it’s experiencing exponential growth is an inexact science. That said, Facebook appears to be on track to earn around $4 billion in FY11, which is slightly more than double what I conjecture it earned in FY10. While revenue growth won’t maintain its current pace, the company could earn around $10 billion in 2015. At that rate, with net margins of 15-20 percent and a growth multiple of 20-25x, I peg Facebook today to be worth something more along the lines of $30-$35 billion. And while competition for consumers’ time and discretionary dollars is fierce — and the fact that more people are spending more time on Facebook gives it an incredible potential to generate revenue — unless SMBs realize unmatched ROI and ROE (return on engagement) from the site, I feel $100 billion is nothing more than unbridled enthusiasm.

If you make your entire profile private, can people still access your pictures and updates?

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Facebook

Your name and profile picture don’t have privacy settings, so even if you make your entire profile private, people can still find your name and profile image on Facebook by searching for you by name. As for other pictures you upload and status updates, you can choose to have all of them accessible to only yourself, friends, friends of friends, everyone, or only certain friends. In addition, whenever you post something on Facebook, you can click the lock icon and choose who can see it.

What do you think is the future for Facebook? Will they consume all other social networks?

Certainly not all networks, and “consume” is too strong a word. I suspect Facebook will command the lion’s share of the most popular social networking features. For example, Facebook hasn’t completely replaced photo-sharing networks including Flickr and Photobucket, but it did rise very quickly to become the number one place for sharing photos on the Web. YouTube remains top dog in the video-sharing arena, and I don’t see Facebook ever taking that over. Bottom line… Facebook does an excellent job of incorporating the best of what other more specialized social utilities and platforms offer. You can see this with Facebook’s Groupon clone – Deals. This could make Facebook a one-stop-shop for users and businesses, giving Facebook a huge competitive edge in many social categories.

Dan Schawbel, recognized as a “personal branding guru” by The New York Times, is the Managing Partner of Millennial Branding, LLC, a full-service personal branding agency. Dan is the author of Me 2.0: 4 Steps to Building Your Future, the founder of the Personal Branding Blog, and publisher of Personal Branding Magazine. He has worked with companies such as Google, Time Warner, Symantec, IBM, EMC, and CitiGroup.

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Attention Facebook Shoppers: Get Ready For F-Commerce

Written by Tim McMullen

Tim McMullen: Shopping Facebook.

Ready or not, we’re approaching the age of F-commerce: Facebook-based retailing.

It’s time for retailers around the world to prepare for the rise of the Facebook consumer, a new breed in convenience-seeking online shoppers. From shoes to plane tickets, it’s all right there on the social network.

Facebook now offers options for retailers to tailor their Facebook page layout to look less like the familiar profile page and more like a Web page. The simple click-and-pay option seems to be attracting more shoppers. And where shoppers flock, retailers follow.

One thing in particular that’s encouraging businesses to participate in F-commerce is the fact that the platform is completely free. There are no hosting or domain fees (yet), and Facebook isn’t keeping portions of your profits. As more and more people adopt social media, F-commerce will only grow and take on more retailers.

Facebook has more than 600 million members, a fat slice of the world’s online population. People want to be social, and shopping is a social act in itself. And retailers are paying attention to the changes taking place within the online shopping world.

When businesses post news or updates to their Facebook account, they hope that users “like” what they have to say. Now, instead of sharing thoughts, people can share discounts and products. “Sally now likes Delta and has purchased two tickets to Hawaii,” could show up in your news feed anytime. Delta, Coca-Cola and Barneys New York are just a few of the major brands that have added a Facebook shop to their fan page.

Best Buy is one retailer that wanted to offer more options for their customers, so they created a Facebook page that has a shop-and-share option. This is in addition to their e-commerce site; savvy sites are not switching but rather adding channels to their arsenal of outlets.

Now, disregard the fake profiles for newborns and people’s cats and go straight for the fastest growing demographic on Facebook: Women over 55. I’m thinking online shopping has a great deal to do with their interest in Facebook. And I couldn’t be more… right.

According to a survey conducted for Kirkland’s, a home decor specialty store with brick-and-mortar and online stores, that’s exactly what this growing audience wants. It’s important for retailers to recognize that they must prepare for F-commerce by engaging their Facebook audience first. With Kirkland’s specifically, coupons and discounts are their game.

s was a virtually unknown retailer in the social commerce space that blew everyone away when they became the sixth-fastest growing fan page on Facebook. Just four days after launching their Cha-Ching! interactive game promotion, Kirkland’s went from 43,000 fans to 140,000. They have since surpassed their goal of 200,000 fans. Now, this is all without actually selling merchandise on their Facebook page. They are still in the engagement stage, working with their customers to make their Facebook site more fun and trustworthy at the same time.

The promotion included a $25,000 cash prize and a chance to win Kirkland’s merchandise in a swap game where people trade virtual merchandise with other players. And everyone who plays the game receives a coupon for future purchases.

This is a positive step into the direction of F-commerce. Interactive games will keep an audience interested, and will solidify pages in terms of getting sales. In the survey, Kirkland’s found a majority of their Facebook customers wanted to save money, and to see merchandise and prices alongside content such as decorating ideas.

After conducting the survey, they saw a purpose and direction for their Facebook page that was different from their online community, mykirklands.com, and they went for it. The survey clearly showed that more and more Facebook users want to engage on Facebook. Campaigns such as the Cha-Ching! promotion are driving users to the social media hub and retailers must quickly follow to meet the demands of the users.

With the Kirkland’s campaign, we saw that 36-45 year old females were more involved with the online community, and that 46-55 year olds were more engaged with the Facebook page (which squashes the belief that F-commerce is limited to young and hip brands). Another interesting find was that the online community members were generally not interested in Facebook. They went online for different reasons.

The critics of F-commerce have begged the question, if Facebook starts to overlap with more traditional means of online shopping, why have two touch points? As we learned from the success of Kirkland’s, it seems that it would be best practice to have multiple touch points because the consumers have the option of how they do their online shopping. There was little crossover between the online users at mykirklands.com and the Facebook users, which shows that there isn’t that universal preference just yet.

It’s no secret that people spend hours on their Facebook pages weekly or even daily, whether it’s on their smart phone, tablet or computer. This sort of accessibility is what’s driving retailers to set up shop on the social network. F-commerce is still in its early stages, but judging by the consumer response so far, many more retailers are sure to begin exploring it within the next few months.

Tim McMullen is President and partner at redpepper, an  integrated marketing agency with offices in Atlanta and Nashville.

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US Financial sector layoffs rise, more cuts ahead

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By Lauren Tara LaCapra

NEW YORK | Tue Jun 21, 2011 4:48pm EDT
 

(Reuters) - U.S. financial firms have been cutting staff dramatically this year, with more layoffs expected to come from Wall Street, according to a report on Tuesday.

Unlike the widespread layoffs stemming from the financial crisis of 2008 that was followed by hiring when markets recovered, the 2011 reductions appear to be more permanent.

Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an employment consulting firm, said the financial sector has outlined 21 percent more job cuts so far this year than it did in 2010. Banks, insurance firms and brokers have outlined plans to eliminate 11,413 positions through May, according to publicly available information cited by Challenger, compared with 9,431 during the same period a year ago.

Wall Street has long been characterized by fickle hiring patterns, but John Challenger, head of the consulting group, said new cuts reflect fundamental changes in the business structure and returns of financial firms.

"They will not be as profitable in the future as they were in the past," he said. "That means they're just not going to be able to afford the workforce levels that they had when they were more profitable."

Most cuts to date have occurred in retail banking operations, reflecting subdued economic activity and loan growth. Mergers have also led to headcount reductions as smaller regional banks combine forces.

However, Challenger expects layoffs at large investment and commercial banks to accelerate through the rest of 2011.



Regulatory restrictions and declines in trading volume have challenged the business models and profitability of large investment banks such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Morgan Stanley.

Goldman reported an annualized return on shareholders equity of 15 percent during the first quarter, adjusted for special items, compared with more than 30 percent before the crisis erupted. Morgan Stanley, which now has a 20 percent return-on-equity target, delivered an annualized ROE of 6.2 percent in the first quarter.

Wall Street stocks have fallen along with profits in recent months. Goldman shares are down 19 percent so far this year, and Morgan Stanley's are off 17 percent. The KBW Bank Index of large-cap financials is down a more moderate 8.8 percent.

(Reporting by Lauren Tara LaCapra; editing by Andre Grenon)Newscribe : get free news in real time 

Chinese success story: Huawei Technologies

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Huawei Technologies Co., Quiet China Giant, Embodies Technology Aspirations

(JOE McDONALD, AP/THE HUFFINGTON POST) SHENZHEN, China -- China's quietest multibillion-dollar Chinese success story began when a former soldier founded a company in the 1980s to sell imported phone switches.

As sales rose, Huawei Technologies Co. invested to develop its own products, a radical step for a private company in the first decade of China's reforms to open its economy. But it paid off: Today, Huawei has grown into a major equipment supplier to phone carriers across Asia, Europe and Africa, with $28 billion in sales last year and 110,000 employees.

Now, this giant the public has barely heard of wants to become a consumer and business brand, moving into markets dominated by Apple Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. It is marketing its own mobile phones and tablet computer and is expanding in the United States, backed by a global network of 20 research and development labs from Moscow to Silicon Valley.

"The consumer market, and especially the mid-range, is something we certainly will get into with our own brand," said Song Liuping, a Huawei vice president, in an interview at its tree-lined research campus in this southern Chinese city bordering Hong Kong.

In a country known as a cheap, anonymous factory, Huawei is a leader of an emerging group of Chinese companies that are creating brand-name technology in fields from telecoms to clean energy to medical equipment and starting to compete with Western industry leaders.

The newcomers can draw on a low-cost Chinese talent pool of engineers and scientists and support from a communist leadership that is pushing to transform this nation of farmers and factory workers into a creator of profitable technologies.

Chinese companies are climbing the technology ladder faster than Japan and South Korea did in past decades, said Oded Shenkar, a professor at Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business who studies Chinese companies.

"In 10 to 15 years, China could be where South Korea is now, as far as having a number of global champions," Shenkar said.

Rising Chinese competition could hamper hopes by the United States and other Western governments to spur growth and create jobs by boosting high-tech exports.



Huawei has graduated from selling sturdy, low-cost gear to developing countries in Asia and Africa to supplying top global carriers. That is adding to pressure on Nokia Siemens Networks, Cisco, Sweden's Ericsson AB and France's Alcatel-Lucent SA.

"Many view Huawei as their main competitor over the next few years," said Mark Koh, an analyst for Frost & Sullivan, in an e-mail.

Huawei has grown at explosive speed but has to cope with complaints it copied rivals' products and suspicions it is controlled by the Communist Party or is a front for China's military. In February, a U.S. government security panel rejected its purchase of a California computer company, 3Leaf Systems.

Huawei denies it is a security threat and invited Washington to investigate it after the failure of the 3Leaf acquisition.

The company was founded in 1987 by Ren Zhengfei, a former military engineer and one of China's most enigmatic business figures.

In a society where founders of Internet, retail and other companies far smaller than Huawei are celebrities, Ren never appears in public or talks to reporters. Forbes magazine estimated his wealth last year at $1.1 billion.

Huawei says it is owned by its employees but has released few details about who controls it, fueling questions abroad.

"The place where they have the greatest trouble is the West, where they face a lot of suspicion about their origins. It's clearly a handicap," said Tarun Khanna, a professor at Harvard Business School.

Ren started the company after his engineering unit was disbanded and he left the army, according to Huawei's February statement. He started with 21,000 yuan ($5,500 at the time) from his savings and a deal to sell phone switches supplied by a Hong Kong company. Demand boomed as Chinese carriers upgraded decrepit equipment at the start of reforms that would ignite China's economic boom.

Song said Huawei got into developing its own products almost by accident, launching a research arm only after its Hong Kong supplier was acquired by a state-owned company in 1990.

Early gear targeted rural Chinese phone companies and included a switching unit in 1994 marketed as "mouse-proof" for carriers that suffered from gnawed cables.

"Our main goal was survival," Song said.

Huawei spent a decade selling in China's countryside and developing countries in Asia and Africa, then moving into Chinese cities. It made its first sale in Europe in 2004 to a Dutch mobile phone carrier.

Today, Huawei works with 45 of the 50 biggest phone carriers.

On the consumer front, Huawei's latest gadget is the "MiFi" – a portable wireless modem the size of a deck of cards that creates a local area network for a half-dozen laptop computers. As it expands in the U.S., Huawei is also looking at opportunities in fields from finance and government to health, transportation and "smart grid" management of power networks.

The company's research-and-development staff has grown to 50,000 people and research spending is set at about 10 percent of sales, or $2.5 billion last year. It operates 12 joint development centers with partners including Vodafone Group, Deutsche Telekom, Japan's NTT Docomo and Egypt's Etisalat and has research ventures with Microsoft Corp., IBM Corp. and others.

Its corporate campus is a cluster of sleek, glass-and-steel buildings on a 325-acre (130-hectare) campus with an artificial lake. A training center where new employees spend six months was designed by star architect Norman Foster.

"They're generally a pretty impressive story," said Duncan Clark, managing director of BDA China Ltd., a Beijing research firm, who has followed the company for a decade.

"Some people in the United States see them as a creature of the government. But that's unfair, because if you look at how they've grown, it's almost despite the government, not because of them," he said. "They get export credits and other things, but it's wrong to dismiss them as a knockoff shop or a product of the army."

In contrast to major Chinese state-owned companies, which do most of their business in China and benefit from monopolies and other official favors, Huawei says it made 70 percent of its sales abroad last year.

In another break with tradition, Huawei also looks abroad for senior managers. Its chief technology officer was recruited from BT in 2009. The former CTO of Canada's Nortel Networks Corp. was hired last year to run research and development in North America.

"You have Chinese people based in Sweden and Western people based in Shenzhen. It's become a very globalized process," said Richard Brennan, a Californian who has worked for Huawei since 2007 and is deputy director of industrial standards.

Other Chinese companies also are starting to make a name for themselves as technology creators.

Mindray Medical International Ltd., also based in Shenzhen, competes with General Electric Co. and Germany's Siemens AG to sell X-ray machines and other medical devices in the United States and Europe.

ZTE Corp., a Huawei rival also based in Shenzhen, sells switching equipment, mobile phone base stations and handsets.

Shenzhen's success as a center for technology and finance has propelled its growth from a fishing village of about 30,000 people in 1980 before it was declared China's first "special economic zone" into a skyscraper-filled metropolis of more than 14 million.

Beijing urgently wants to nurture more such innovators to reduce reliance on foreign technology and create higher-paid jobs. It has promised grants, tax breaks and other support to promote "strategic industries" including clean energy, environmental and information technology, biotech and high-end manufacturing.

Some of its tactics have irritated its trading partners. The government is pressing global companies to hand over wind power, computer encryption and other technologies as the price of market access. Business groups complain Beijing's efforts to nurture local suppliers by favoring them in government purchases of computers and other technology violates the spirit of its free-trade commitments.

Chinese officials respond to some of the criticism by pointing out that U.S., European and Japanese companies also receive tax breaks, export subsidies and other help from their governments.

Song, the Huawei vice president, rejected suggestions its success is based on government support. He said it comes instead from market-driven decisions and a corporate culture that motivates employees with stock and quick promotions.

Huawei's February statement said some customers receive financing from China's state-owned banks. But Song said that while it gets some government grants, Huawei pays for most of its research out of its own sales.

"In the 1980s, there were hundreds of state-owned companies in the telecoms industry with Huawei, but they did not survive," he said. "If the state or military connection were the key to success, they should have developed very well, but they no longer exist."