“This statistic, combined with the disturbing trends in today’s Facebook business strategies worries me – it really worries me. I’m disturbed by the complete lack of understanding within business America that a “Like” doesn’t equal “Love” and it certainly doesn’t equal revenue.”

So True, So True!

via Likes Are Not Loves – How To Waste Time “Marketing” In Facebook.

Google led search-engine traffic in April, with 65.4% of Web searches taking place on Google-owned search sites, according to the research firm ComScore.

The Mountain View, Calif.,-based company’s search traffic, while dominating, was down slightly from March when Google-owned sites took up a 65.7% share of the market, ComScore reported.

Coming in second place last month was Yahoo, which accounted for 15.9% share of online searches, up 0.2% from March, the research firm said.

In third came Microsoft search sites, which were also up 0.2%, taking up a 14.1% slice of the market, ComScore said.

In a distant fourth place slot was the Ask Network, which nabbed a 3.0% share of online search queries, followed by AOL which had a 1.5% take in April, ComScore reported. Ask and AOL’s April numbers were each down 0.1%, the report said.

Yahoo and Microsoft’s search sites are powered by the Microsoft Bing search engine. When Yahoo and Microsoft’s search sites are combined, Bing powered a 30% share of the online search market.

Like Microsoft, Goolge too powers searches for sites it doesn’t own, one of them being AOL.

When AOL and Google’s performance is counted together, Google’s numbers rise slightly, accounting for 67.3% of searches in March and 66.9% in April.

RELATED:

Bing takes 30% of U.S. Web searches in March

Bing architect’s start-up looking to mine the moon

Google says Microsoft’s Bing is copying its search results

The new generation of smart phones and the 2D barcode – quick response code (QR code) technology is bridging the gap between offline and online marketing. QR codes have emerged as a hot topic in mobile marketing as more and more marketers begin to embrace them in offline marketing and advertising initiatives. Let’s examine some of the advantages of QR codes, look at some great examples of their use in traditional media, as well as how to use them in your business.

Advantage of QR Codes

There are numerous advantages of QR codes. They can drive website traffic from traditional media such as print and direct marketing efforts. For example, instead of using traditional URLs in offline marketing efforts such as magazine ads, which require your audience to manually type in their phone or computer, scanning a QR code will automatically allow a person to access content as if he had clicked on the link. Or perhaps, you are sending out direct mail pieces about specific products or offerings. Including the QR code on the mailer allows the person to quickly and easily access additional information about your product, potentially leading to an immediate conversion or sale. In addition to the convenience, QR code tracking is available through services such as Bit.ly; these services allow you to monitor usage and the success of your campaigns.

QR Code Usage in Marketing Campaigns

I see them all over the place now, as today’s biggest brands, from Ralph Lauren and Louis Vuitton to the National Football League, RealtyGo, SocialscanQRTAG, Ford Motor Co., and Best Buy embrace 2D barcodes in direct marketing print campaigns. These codes are being used in magazine ads, editorial articles, television commercials, billboards, posters, and many other places. For additional information on the types of data that can be stored within QR codes, Angie Shottmuller compiled a list of the “Top 14 Things Marketers Need to Know about QR Codes.”

Geico using QR Codes

Geico, in particular, does an outstanding job of integrating traditional offline marketing channels with online media. It has created direct mailers that incorporate QR codes on the front of envelopes. Additionally, there are clear instructions on what the code is, how the recipient should use it, and what they will gain in return for doing so.

Ralph Lauren is another company leveraging QR codes via magazine print ads. In one example, QR codes link over to its online shopping site, allowing people to move immediately from print ad to conversion funnel. (Image, left, courtesy of Campaign Planning.)

Using QR Codes in Your Business

These are only a few examples that you can apply to your business today to drive customer acquisitions, generate more leads and improve conversion rates. The possibilities of how you bridge the gap from offline marketing to online conversions are limited only by your creativity.

Imagine the ability to add an easy call-to-action with a QR code that takes advantage of YouTube. Once scanned, you are automatically taken to a one-minute welcome video that has an annotation in it to other videos that leads the person into the sales funnel on your website. Or perhaps you embed a link to a Google map so potential customers can locate your closest office or nearest store based on their location or are presented with a special offer they can use by presenting their phone when checking out.

In summary, QR codes are quickly being adopted and gaining in popularity by many major companies and industries as an effective method for immediately capturing conversions from offline initiatives. To promote direct mail and create awareness of the benefits of QR codes, the United States Postal Service is offering a special postage discount during the months of July and August 2011, according to a TheDirectMail.com news report.

Direct mail marketers and mail houses can save three percent on first-class and standard presort mail postage simply by including a QR code that must be easily visible on the outside of the mail piece. Interesting right?

The question now is how can you leverage QR codes while standing out from the crowd? How can you use SEO, MobileURL’s and its principals to drive the right traffic and get in front of the right people and convert them in multiple new ways? Or, if you are already using them, what tactics did you use and what were the results?

Earth Day is intended to raise awareness and appreciation for the Earth’s natural environment which is what I am trying to achieve with this blog.

The Earth Day Network works with over 22,000 partners in 192 countries to broaden, diversify and mobilise the environmental movements. It was founded in the United States by Senator Gaylord Nelson in 1970 with the aim of teaching people about issues affecting the environment. Since it began, it has seen several environmental laws including the Clean Air Act, the Water Act and the Endangered Species Act come into force which is a huge achievement and has obviously fulfilled its aim of informing people on environmental issues. As with most things each Earth Day has a theme and this year’s theme is “A Billion Acts of Green: Our People Powered”. They are asking people to demonstrate their commitment to environmental protection and sustainability with the hope that with all of these small pledges acting together will go a long way to conserving the planet.

Earthday history;

An oil spill in California was behind the creation of the first Earth Day in 1970. Now, 41 years later, the worst oil disaster in the nation’s history, along with rising greenhouse gas emissions and budget battles, dominates America’s debate over the environment.

Environmental catastrophes inspired official Earth Day ;
On Jan. 28, 1969, an oil well blowout near Santa Barbara, Calif. leaked more than 200,000 gallons of oil into the ocean for 11 days. The damage done to California’s coastline and the massive scope of the cleanup effort led to reforms in the energy industry, such as the National Environmental Policy Act which requires the federal government to do a detailed assessment before approving potentially hazardous projects like offshore oil drilling.

Later that same year, industrial chemicals along Ohio’s Cuyahoga river caught fire on the surface of the water, making it look like the river was on fire.

Images of blackened coastlines and flaming rivers led to a heightened awareness among the American public about the fragility of the environment.

In early 1970, Gaylord Nelson, a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, took note of these shifting attitudes toward the environment and hired 25-year-old Denis Hayes to organize a national “teach in” on the subject. Hayes teamed with other young people to organize the first national environmental movement.

On April 22, 1970, 20 million people responded to Hayes’ and Gaylord’s movement and rallied for environmental awareness. It remains the largest demonstration in American history and was the first-ever Earth Day.

Energy production tops today’s environmental concerns;
In the years since the first Earth Day demonstration, the activities have changed, but the source of the main environmental issues facing the country remains very much the same. Energy production and consumption continues to cause the most pollution and pose the greatest dangers to the American ecosystem.
The Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion, which took place a year ago off the Gulf coast, is the most disastrous oil spill in the nation’s history – about 200 million gallons of oil spewed from the damaged well before it could be capped.

Similar to the Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969, images of oil-covered animals and damaged coastline prompted strong reactions and debates over offshore oil drilling. However, today’s businesses and policymakers remain largely divided over how to meet America’s energy needs.

“The oil will be drilled,” Kenneth Green, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute told the NewsHour during the Gulf oil leak. “We need to find ways to keep it from our shore. We need to improve our technology and ability to prevent oil from moving to the shores and learn how to use this material safely, because we are going to use it.”

Daniel Weiss, director of climate strategy for the Center for American Progress, disagreed. He said, “We have put off for too long addressing our long-term dependence on oil, both foreign and domestic. The tragedy in the Gulf isn’t a wakeup call. It’s a sonic boom. And what we need to do is to dramatically reduce our oil use.”

Debates rage over greenhouse gas regulation and EPA funding;
Congress has the authority to create and change laws having to do with the environment, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is the government agency responsible for overseeing and implementing those laws. Recently, lawmakers have disagreed sharply over whether to create legislation to combat greenhouse gas emissions and how much money to give to the EPA.
In 2010, a bill that would have created a cap-and-trade system, which would involve companies buying credits to emit carbon pollution, failed in the Senate when Democrats and Republicans couldn’t agree on how many restrictions should be placed on businesses.

The Obama administration then turned to the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases, which contribute to the warming of the planet. The Republican-led House of Representatives voted to strip the EPA of that authority.

In budget negotiations that almost led to a government shutdown, Congress cut funding to the EPA by $1.6 billion, a significant sum according to most analysts.

“These cuts give us the opportunity to take a close look at how the agency is spending its dramatic increases in funding and look at whether the regulations it is putting out are appropriate.” said Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), who supports the cuts.

The advocacy group Environment America sharply criticized the funding cuts, calling them an “assault on protections of our air and water” that will “compromise public health.”

A Billion Acts of Green;

The theme of Earth Day 2011 is “a billion acts of green,” and organizers are calling on every individual to do one small thing in their lives, such as switching to energy efficient light bulbs or walking instead of driving, to improve the planet.

Earth Day participants around the world are planting 1 million trees, drawing up plans for green schools, and celebrating sports through Athletes for the Earth.

Grow Life – Please tell us what you did today to contribute to a great cause.

Manufacturers are starting to take notice and provide better packaging with less left over waste.

Remember unboxing your last big gadget purchase? How many unnecessary layers of plastic, paper and cardboard did you have to wade through before getting to the actual hardware?

More to the point: Would you rather have more efficient packaging, less trash and a healthier environment?

The origami-like swaddling of hardware could be a much greener undertaking, and the companies focusing on better packaging solutions say their efforts could be a big part of making the gadget industry more sustainable. Supply chain firm ModusLink is one such company, and it’s done a bit of research on how much CO2 its environmentally friendly packaging is saving the planet.

ModusLink SVP Lorcan Sheehan wrote on the company’s blog that its sustainable packaging changes have so far “eliminate[d] a combined 4,085 metric tons of GHG through package changes — the equivalent of 672 passenger vehicles not driven, 8,254 barrels of oil not used and 404,421 gallons of gasoline not used.”

He says the new packaging is not surprisingly also good for the company’s bottom line; ModusLink saved its customers $6.2 million annually.

Take a look at the infographic below. Do you think more companies should be focusing on streamlined, greener packaging?

Special thanks to Jolie O’Dell for writing such a great article.

See the original at Mashable/Jolie O’Dell

According to NAR – National Association of Realtors, in 2007 International home buying activity;  How are consumers accessing your real estate listings today. According to the chart and marketing online, the internet is the most widely used tool in accessing real estate listings today. RealtyGo includes all your listing in a well structured and organized manner, specifically categorized and properly tagged for indexing by major search engines such as google, yahoo, youtube and bing.

Though the internet is the most popular source today for real estate search, buyers also cited information from real-estate agents (85%), yard signs (62%), open houses (48%) and print or newspaper ads (47%). Fewer buyers relied on home books or magazines, home builders, television, billboards and relocation companies.

Yard sign statistics is what we are most interested in for the purpose of this article. Even though the internet is the most popular tool when starting your home search; what happens when you find that perfect home, your desired  area or even the most charming neighborhood with all the right amenities that makes you want to jump in the car and start your search right away.

Most buyers start exploring right away, they may not even have an agent. So what’s the chances that when buyers look in an unfamiliar neighborhood for a new home or real estate investment, they also want to know about other homes, listings, and professionals specializing in real estate in the area. We would say its a very good chance. The more information a buyer can get in a shorter amount of time, helps confirm their emotions and good emotions lead to buying. So be proactive and provide buyers what they need to feel satisfied in their real estate search.

Flyer box Mobile TAG Sticker.

To help buyers along you should add a Mobile TAG to your real estate listing(s), enabling buyers immediate listing information, including photos, video tour, pricing, details and other important information they may want in order to make a valid decision. Mobile TAG’s encourage buyer interaction, which increase lead generation and additional sales. The image above shows a mobile TAG on a flyer box. This is also a great way to cut back on excessive paper and ink waste, giving end users the option of getting all your real estate listing information through a digital channel, such as their Smartphone, iPad, Tablet or any other enabled PDA device.

The internet has changed every aspect of how consumers make decisions nowadays, and that includes how people acquire and/or put their properties up for sale. So how will you use technology to practice successful real estate marketing in 2011?

RealtyGo – Your Real Estate listings Best Friend!

Twitter RT means ReTweet

RT is an abbreviation for ReTweet, which is like Repeat. It’s like forwarding, but for Twitters instead of emails. If you see something really cool from one of the people you follow, you may want to ReTweet it so that the people following YOU (and not the original person) can see it.

“RT is slang, not a system function. Twitter doesn’t do anything special if you put in the RT.”

Why don’t people follow me back?

Just because you follow someone doesn’t mean they’ll turn around and follow you back. Some people are paranoid because they think you’re a twitter spammer, or maybe you don’t have your Twitter profile set up completely. Here’s a few pages where I explain why I follow people back – or don’t follow them back.

Top 10 Reasons I’m not following you on Twitter; by Brent Ozar @BrentO

Top 10 Reasons I *AM* Following You On Twitter; @BrentO

Adding more info to your twitter profile!

When someone views your Twitter page, they make a snap decision whether or not to follow you.  People want to know in a matter of seconds if you’ve got something interesting to say or valuable information they can use to make their own twit feed more interesting and relevant.

Unfortunately, sometimes your most recent Tweets have less relevant articles that may not be related to what you usually Tweet about.  Maybe you’ve been on vacation or selebrating a recent life changing event, or you’re talking about the plane crash on the Hudson.  People would have to scroll through a page or more of your history to figure out what you do and what you Tweet.

Our Twitter profiles don’t help much, either – they give us only a handful of characters to describe ourselves, and sometimes that’s not enough.

My Twitter Sidebar
The fix is to make your own Twitter background image that tells visitors more about who you are and what you do. Included a few lines about what you Tweet, easy ways to contact you and your QR Code.

You can choose whether or not to tile your picture, and what color your page background is. A QR Code is awesome, becuase it instantly makes your twitter background interactive with end users. Now people that want to know more about you can scan your QR Code and get relevant real estate information, your listings, contact info and social networking links, etc.. .

Before QR Codes A drawback to just having an image of your self or company logo is that it was just an image, not interactive(like a QR Code), so if people click on it or tried taking a picture of it nothing happens. Since Companies like RealtyGo, now you can have a fully interactive image that initiates a call to action from the viewer, giving them all the information they could possibly need to know to interact with you in the future. And remember your in control of the information behind the QR Code, you can Add, Edit, Update, Delete and promote new ideas and real estae listings all the time by simply editing your account within RealtyGo.

Twitter OH is an Abbreviation for OverHeard

If you hear something funny or insightful with your ears (as opposed to reading it on Twitter) and you want to repeat it, you can prefix it with OH. Generally, this is used anonymously, not for quoting people, so you tend to read things that might be personally embarrassing to whoever actually said it.

“This is slang, not a system function. Twitter doesn’t do anything special if you put in the OH.”

Using Twitter Through Your Company Firewall

If your company doesn’t allow access to Twitter through their web filtering systems, check out NutshellMail. It’s a free service that sends you a periodic “highlight reel” of your Twitter, Facebook or MySpace activity via an email. You can reply to the email and update your status or reply to tweets.

Even if your company DOES allow Twitter, it’s not a bad idea to try out NutshellMail just so when they run web reports it doesn’t look like you’ve been sitting around tweeting all day. Plus it helps you confine your Twitter use to short bursts, because you can pick exactly when you want the emails to come in. I get mine at noon (just before I break for lunch) and at 3:30pm, just after the busiest part of the day, on Twitter.

How to delete messages from Twitter

You can only delete your own tweets – things that you’ve posted, not things that someone else has posted. When you’re on Twitter.com, and you’re looking at one of your own tweets, you’ll see a trash can icon when you hover your mouse over the tweet, and/or select delete.

Twitter isn’t like email where you have to worry about cleaning out your in-box. The list of Tweets you get will always keep coming, and they’re always archived on your Twitter home page. It’s like trying to drink from a firehose: you have to stop trying to drink it all in, and stop trying to “keep up”. You won’t be able to do it.

Instead of deleting your old tweets or your read tweets, you’ll want to learn to use the tabs in Twitter’s web page, OR use a Twitter program that runs on your desktop to help you filter it all. If you’re using the web page Twitter.com to read your tweets, then check out the @Replies tab. That gives you a recap of anyone who’s started a tweet with your name, even if you’re not following them. Which reminds me….

How to Send a Message To Someone Who Isn’t Following You

Want to tell someone a secret, but they’re not following you? Well, uh, you can’t, because you can only direct message people if they’re following you.

Instead, send them a reply – this works even if they haven’t sent you anything first. Just start a message with @”their-name”, like @RealtyGo, and ask them to follow you so that you can send them a direct message.

Another method is to send them a reply and say, “Please direct message me your email address so I can send you something private.” Since you’re following THEM, they can direct message you with their email address without the entire internet seeing it.

Twitter Manners for Following and Followers

When someone follows you, you don’t have to follow them back. Don’t feel guilty. Take a look at their Twitter page, see if what they’re saying interests you and decide whether or not to follow them back. There’s no rules on Twitter, and don’t worry if someone gets offended because you don’t follow them back – they’re probably not the kind of friend you want anyway!

I like to think of it as newscasters: I watch the news on TV, so I’m kind of “following” the newscaster. However, the newscaster wouldn’t bother following me, because I’m not doing anything newsworthy. (At least, I hope I don’t end up on the news!) I’m not offended that the newscaster isn’t following me back, and you shouldn’t be offended if you follow someone who doesn’t turn around and follow you back. Spammers take advantage of guilty feelings.

Spammers On Twitter

Spammers will try to take advantage of you by following you, then hoping you follow them back. If you get a new follower, and their only tweet says something like “Get a Free Macbook Air!” or “Lose Weight Fast!” then they’re probably a spammer. They have automated systems that go out and follow thousands of people in the hope that a few will follow ‘em back just out of guilt. Don’t get suckered into it – all they’re trying to do is push advertising tweets into your Twitter stream.

Over time, Twitter has gotten better at trying to catch these types of spammers before they get too far. There’s a limit now that you can’t follow more than 2,000 people because the spammers were just trying to follow everybody, and taking the Twitter server down. Speaking of which…

What’s the Fail Whale?

When Twitter’s servers get overloaded, they show a cute picture of a bunch of birds trying to lift a whale out of the water. This is more load than the birds can handle, obviously, so they’re going to fail.

When you see the Fail Whale, it’s time to take a break from Twitter for an hour or two. Something big is happening, and Twitter’s going to take a little while to recover from the pressure. This seems to happen during major events like earthquakes or when Twitter gets mentioned on TV.

The Fail Whale was created by artist Yiying Lu.

Using Twitter to Update Facebook

If you use FaceBook, you can have Twitter automatically update your status on Facebook whenever you post a tweet. It’s free – just go to the Facebook Twitter application setup page, log in, and give it your Twitter information. Facebook will ask if you want to update your status automatically whenever you post a tweet, and you’re all set!

If you use more social networking services like Flickr, LinkedIn, MySpace, Friendster and so on, then consider using Ping.fm to update your status. When you post a message on Ping.fm, it automatically posts that message across all of your social networking sites.

Ping is only used for posting, not for reading, so it may not make sense at first. Here’s how I use it: when I sit down at my computer in the morning, I post a message on Ping.fm saying what I’m up to today. That way, the message goes across all my social networks. Then I go into Twitter, and I use Twitter as I normally would. When something really big happens, like if I get news that I want to share with everybody on all my networks, then I’ll go back into Ping.fm and post another message, but otherwise I only go there when I’ve got something important to say and need to spread it to all my social network links with ease.

How to Search Twitter

To search Twitter, go to http://search.twitter.com and type in what you’re looking for. It does more than just search, too: it stays on top of hot Twitter topics, things that a lot of people are mentioning.

Twitter Hash Tags (#)

Hash tags or pound signs (#) help to designate topics that people might search for – especially when they want to distinguish the word from a common phrase. In the example above, BrentO (me) tweeted about a conference in Seattle. The problem is that the name of the conference is PASS, which is a very common word. If people just searched for PASS, they’d get results about passing a test, passing a football, passing a policeman at high speed, yadda yadda yadda. That’s why we start certain terms with # tags.

Anytime someone uses the phrase #PASS in their tweet, it will be much easier to find in search.twitter.com than if you just searched for PASS, because the word PASS will bring back all types of match topics – like football passes or people saying they’ll take a pass, etc.. .

Advanced Tip: at search.twitter.com, you can set up an RSS feed for any given search phrase. This helps you stay on top of news when you’re interested in a specific topic. You can also find hot hash tag topics at Hashtags.org, or look up hash tag definitions at Tagref.

“This is slang, not a system function. Twitter doesn’t do anything special if you put in a # phrase.”

#FollowFriday – A Twitter Tradition

On Fridays, people post a tweet that includes a list of other people they think you should follow. If you like following one person, and if they list other people on #FollowFriday, then you might like following those people too. It’s like book recommendations from a friend. Here’s an example:

#TCOT – Top Conservatives On Twitter

Tweets that have #TCOT in them are politically conservative. The #TCOT Report is a web site styled to look like the conservative pundit Drudge Report site, but it’s driven by people who tweet with #TCOT.

Twitter HT means Heard Through

If you found out about something through a Twitter user, and you want to name ‘em by name, you Heard it Through them. This is different than RT, because it usually means you heard it in real life, not over Twitter.

How to Shorten Your Links for Twitter

Twitter posts can only be 140 characters long, and sometimes we want to post longer URLs or post URLs along with a long description. You can shorten long URLs with a service like TinyURL.com or Bit.ly. People aren’t trying to hide or obfuscate their links (usually, anyway) – they’re just trying to cram more info into 140 character “Tweet”

Marking a Tweet as a Favorite

When you hover your mouse over a tweet on Twitter.com, you’ll see a star icon. Click it, and the star will light up, indicating that this tweet is one of your favorites.

Dont let your Real Estate listings be as complicated as your Twitter activities! RealtyGo takes care of all the heavy lifting, by organizing, promoting, categorizing, and offering an easy to use system for the lister of real estate and the end user requesting real estate information and more!

If you have some interesting twitter trivia, please leave a post and share with the rest of the readers. Thank You
RealtyGo _ Your Real Estate Listings Best Friend!

The Smartphone User

Slightly more males than females are getting smartphones (53% versus 47%) which is what we would expect for technical early adopter products. In terms of demographics, Hispanic Americans and Asians are slightly more likely to have a smartphone than what their share of population would indicate, which is a trend we see in the adoption of other mobile data services. While smartphones started out in the business segment, two-third of today’s buyers of smartphones are personal users.

Loyalty

In the last six months, roughly 77% of new smartphone buyers remained loyal to their wireless operator, while 18% switched to a new provider to get their new smartphone with the remaining percentage made up of first-time smartphone buyers. Interestingly enough, the percentage of people who switched carriers and got a new smartphone is not higher than that of the average wireless subscriber.

This indicates that the portfolio of the wireless carriers in general is robust enough to prevent any wide-spread smartphone flight from one carrier to the other, with very few exceptions. The added bonus for wireless carriers is that smartphone owners are significantly more satisfied (81%) with their device than feature phone owners (66%).

Features, features, features

Smartphones show higher application usage than feature phones even at the basic built-in application level. During Nielsen’s Mobile Insights survey we asked the respondents about features they’ve used in the last 30 days. The good news for the smartphone market is that people are actually taking advantage of the device capabilities.

The percentage of people who use their phone for only voice communications drops from 14% among new feature phone owners to 3% of smartphone owners. The use of the built-in camera and video capability jumps by almost 20% for both categories, due to the generally better quality and user friendliness of the features. Smartphones also often have a better speaker which translates into more frequent usage from about half of feature phone owners to about two-thirds of smartphone owners. Not surprisingly the use of Wi-Fi increases 10-fold from 5% for feature phone owners to 50% for smartphone users to satisfy the need for fast downloads.

RealtyGo supports both QR Code real estate information retrievel and SMS/MMS Text Messaging.

via Smartphones to Overtake Feature Phones in U.S. by 2011 | Nielsen Wire.

In their most recent effort to achieve total global internet dominance, Facebook recently released further details on its “Deals” feature.  Similar in concept to Groupon, Facebook Deals allows users to purchase daily-deal vouchers through Facebook.com.  Currently, Facebook is differentiating itself from other group buying sites by only offering deals that provide social interaction. On their website, Facebook states, “Deals gives your business the opportunity to offer people unique social experiences that they can do with their friends. This encourages people to share their excitement about the experience you’re providing, not just the discount you’re offering. For example, some businesses may offer people a 5-course tasting menu, a rock climbing lesson, or a concert package.”

Facebook Deals: The Basics

Once you have made the decision that Facebook Deals is right for your business, contact Facebook through the Deals signup section of their website. Facebook may ask you to provide two pictures for your business.  As with Groupon, you will need to enter information such as the product offered, the discount, and any other relevant information.  With this information, Facebook will list your deal in a format attractive to Facebook users (your potential customers, there are many of them).

Once created, your deals will reach Facebook users through the following mediums:

In short, Facebook Deals will get your business’s name out in front of many Facebook users within your geographic area.  The deal you create will attract current and new customers to your business, while Facebook’s social networking platform will encourage these customers to share the discount offers with their friends.

We believe Facebook Deals will present significant competition to Groupon, LivingSocial, and other group buying sites.  Although late to the game in social commerce arena, Facebook is famous for perfecting an idea, executing, and taking over the market.  For example, look at the outcome of the Facebook/MySpace battle.  What gives Facebook a leg-up over Groupon is their already enormous user-base as well as their social network platform, which is the most advanced in the world.  When a consumer makes a purchase through Facebook Deals, potentially hundreds of their friends will be notified of this, usually not the case with Groupon.

RealtyGo