There is something happening on Facebook that you might not have noticed. What you might have overlooked is the fact that a new term “F-Commerce” which is the social business of having your own online store on Facebook is now emerging and becoming a reality and is being embraced by brands both big and small.

If you visit the Facebook pages of the top 10 major music stars on Facebook, six have their own store on Facebook. Also other top brands such as Warner Brothers, JC Penney and Brooks Brothers are planning on setting up a shop on Facebook.

Smaller brands have set up shop on Facebook such as Vintage Marketplace and Grand Social and the opportunity for people to share their online shopping experiences makes the social commerce online store an attractive proposition for business owners.

Is 2011 the social commerce tipping point? Some pundits are predicting that F-commerce on Facebook will reach as high as $1.2 billion in 2011.

What are the 3 synergistic trends that are combining to assist in producing this momentum?

1. Social Web
2. Mobile Internet
3. Online Retail

These are all growing by double digits when bricks and mortar stores are struggling for survival. This diagram below courtesy of SocialTimes Pro in a recent research report shows some of the key emerging elements and players in social commerce

So how can you build your own store on Facebook?

A new Facebook Fanpage Toolkit is being released today at Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco that makes it easy for the small to medium business to set up their own store totally within the Facebook ecosystem.

So what is it?  According to Aaron Friedman the CEO

“Fanpage toolkit is a complete F-commerce platform that empowers its users to create, trend, promote, market and sell products and services within the facebook ecosystem. Fanpage toolkit delivers a full-featured suite of applications for Small Businesses, Brands, Products, Organizations/Non-Profits, Artists, Bands, Public Figures, College Students and Job Seekers to market products and services – to create and manage promotions – to engage Facebook fans and contacts with full messaging and collaboration tools – to a fully integrated “PayPal supported” F-commerce system that allows shoppers to complete transactions “without ever leaving the facebook ecosystem” – complete with a visualization dashboard and full analytics to manage and trend it all”.

There are 3 key steps you will need to take to setup and promote your own F-Commerce store that the Facebook Fanpage toolkit provides without being a programmer .

Step One: Create a Facebook Shop Front

This done using one of the 3 Facebook apps that Aaron and his team have developed called the “Fanpage Creator Application” that will enable you to build either single or multiple landing pages in Facebook without knowing FBML (Facebooks version of HTML) or iFrames.

It comprises the following elements with a wizard-driven system that will walk you through the entire fanpage creation process in four easy steps!

1. Anatomy – The first step in building a fanpage is to select a template or a theme. Choose from many different pre-designed templates.
2. Content – The next step is to fill in the contents to the selected template. Add appropriate images and links for your business page.
3. Customize – Select the sections of the fanpage you would like to customize and change the color, style and font for each section as you wish.
4. Publish – Once a fanpage is built, it will be automatically published in your Facebook account.

You can then manage the Fanpages using the same Facebook app. You will be able to subscribe to this app without actually needing to set up a Facebook store but just use it for  creating Facebook landing pages

Step Two: Setup Your Store

This is done using the “F-Commerce” app from the Fanpage Toolkit which provides a dashboard providing you with a graphical or tabular view of the total number of completed orders, orders in progress and cancelled orders.

This process involves the following 5 features and functions necessary to operate an online store.

1. Merchant App Profiles where F-Commerce merchants are able to build-out their profile with merchant related information such as….

• Shipping Information
• Contact Information
• PayPal Link App (used to map the merchants PayPal account with fanpage toolkit for payment processing)
• Terms and Conditions

2. Create categories and load products

The merchant can choose the fanpage he/she wishes assign products to and the category selection is made from pre-built list created by merchants in category section. Products information such as description, vendor, availability, price and images, features can be configured for each product.

3.  Theme Library

Under this menu, you can select a pre-build color theme for your F-Commerce store.

4. Shipping

Shipping selection can be setup with carriers and integration to the US Postal Service, UPS and FedEx.

5. Manage Orders

All orders place via the system are stored in this section for logistics. The system allows for processing and handling of all open, closed and shipped orders. Sales information is then able to be exported for use in third party applications.

You also have a suite of analytics tool provided with the toolkit that allow you to measure statistics such as Fanpage views, promotion views and e-commerce views.

Step Three: Promote Your Facebook Store

The “Promotions Dashboard” will provide you with a graphical or tabular view of the total number of promotional messages. FANvites sent, accepted and declined, as well as the number of coupons generated.

Creating a promotion is five simple steps:

1. Select a template for the promotion landing page.
2. Fill in the contents to the selected fanpage. Add appropriate names, contents and images for the promotion
3. Choose a theme – Select a theme from three available designs and color schemes
4. Customize – Select the sections of the promotion you would like to customize for color, style and font
5. Publish – Once a promotion design is complete, add start and end dates for your promotion and the status of the promotion

You can even create your own coupons with unique codes for your promotions. Social media promotions can announce announce a promotion across any or all of your social media accounts including Facebook and twitter.

FANvite is a invitation tool to invite your customers and fans to participate in an event, program or a promotion. You can send an ’Invite’ to your fans and customers of the current Fanpage.

The reality of this in the continuing evolution of the social web and social commerce is that small and medium businesses will now have the opportunity to design and build their own stores in Facebook without requiring the experience and skills of a programmer and the deep pockets of a major brand.

The democratization of the web continues to unfold.

F-Commerce is a word you will hear more of over the next few months as Facebook commerce or online stores embedded within Facebook become popular and widespread.

F-Commerce will become another online channel for businesses to sell products and services with all the marketing power that Facebook provides.

Facebook’s ecosystem evolution is naturally extending to online shopping where you can buy your favorite brands products and services while using Facebook. As outlined in a previous article F-Commerce: Is Facebook The New Shop of the Future? the revolution has commenced whether you have noticed it or not.

Pampers Facebook Shop is integrated into it’s Facebook fan page using Amazon’s web store which keeps you within the Facebook environment right up until checkout where you are then taken offsite to Amazon’s shopping cart system, breaking the Facebook experience.

Why Set up a Shop In Facebook?

Well here are the compelling facts and figures if you haven’t already heard them before

• 600 million users
• Average of 130 friends each to share your latest shopping experiences especially how much you have saved
• 14 minutes per day on-site (the average total time on Facebook now exceeds Google)
• 40% of people use social networking sites when shopping online
• 68% of fans visit retailer pages to keep up to date with sales and promotions
• Fans are 41% more likely to recommend a product
• For some businesses 20% of sales are through their Facebook store
• Cart values are 7-10% higher via Facebook
• The number of transactions in Facebook stores is increasing 10% per month

If you have all these advantages then it is only natural that F-Commerce is set to transform retail.

So what would a great F-Commerce store application(s) require to make it a success?

10  Tips For A Successful Facebook Store

1. Choose a shop application that is easy to set-up and you can customize your Facebook shop store
2. Tell your customers where to find your store and how it works
3. Import your email into your promotions app
4. Actively promote your products, promotions and discounts using email, Twitter and Facebook
5. Use great high definition photos and images
6. Use your wall like it’s your shop window
7. Reward your fans with exclusive discounts and promotions
8. You stay within the Facebook ecosystem from  product browsing to checkout
9. You can measure with inbuilt analytics and tools but also be able to add Google analytics and Facebook Insights to your toolkit analytics tools.
10. You don’t have to be computer programmer so you can make your own changes quickly and efficiently to your design and F-Commerce landing page

These will all be available with a new Facebook Fan Page Toolkit soon to be announced that will provide 3 Facebook apps that allow you to set up and run your Facebook store without having to know programming or computer coding.

Fanpage App:

• Design and set up your Fanpage Facebook store front window without being a programmer or designer

Promotion App:

• Promote your store by allowing importing of emails and integrating Twitter and Facebook messaging to take full advantage of Facebook and social media’s marketing leverage.

F-Commerce App:

• Setup your store with products and images with many features and functions including inbuilt analytics, which will assist you in making changes to your marketing tactics so that you can improve your stores performance

Here is a sample screen shot of what is coming.

Is that something that might excite you?

I will keep you posted with this total “Facebook Fanpage Toolkit”  being launched and available in the next few weeks for you to set up your own F-Commerce store on Facebook.

This will be game changer for small to medium businesses that want to set up a shop online but thought it was too hard.

What do you think? Could you use this for your business?

More Reading:

• F-Commerce: Is Facebook The New Shop Of The Future
• 30 Fascinating Facts To Tell Your Friends
• How To Increase Your Facebook Page Fans by 1,000%
• How Effective Are Facebook Ads?

Facebook ads are offering an alternative to other digital advertising and in 2010 the number of  display ads served up by Facebook  passed the 1 trillion milestone for the first time in history passing Yahoo with 529 billion ads according to recent report by Comscore.

The question is though are they as effective as the industry benchmarks? According to a recent survey by Webtrends of 11,000 Facebook campaigns Ads on Facebook performed about half as well as traditional banner ads and are cost more in 2010 than they did in 2009 as competition increases.

Webtrends accessed a large database of Facebook campaign results including.

• 4.5 billion impressions
• 2.2 million clicks
• 11,200 ads

So here are some stats to digest to assist you in calculating the benefits of Facebook advertising for your organisation in comparing them to your current digital and online marketing campaigns.

1. From 2009 to 2010 the average CTR dropped from 0.063% to 0.051%

2. Cost per click increased from 27 cents to 49 cents

3.  The older you are the more you click until you reach 65, with 55-64 year old women having the highest click through rate (CTR) at nearly 0.06%

4. Social Brands perform better because most people are on Facebook for fun so it makes logical sense that industries such as tabloids and blogs top the list for (CTR) at 0.165% followed by

• Media and Entertainment (0.154%)
• E-commerce (0.89%)
• Travel (0.86%)
• Automotive (o.82%)
• Nonprofits (0.77%)
• Start ups (0.74%)
• Cosmetics (0.072%)
• Retailer (0.70%)
• Restaurants (0.66%)

5. Facebook rewards social brands with cheaper prices with the lowest rate being tabloids and blogs at 12 cents per click

6. Everyone clicks more if a friend likes an ad with the CTR nearly doubling if friends are targeted

7. Fans that didn’t attend college click on more ads with non college at 0.043% compared to college at 0.023%

8. Social ads have a short shelf life with interest targeted ads burning out after 3-5 days (successful search ads can be run for months without any changes)

So the takeaway from this is that despite the lower click-throughs for Facebook display ads, the power of the word of mouth through friends recommendations makes Facebook ads last longer and that reveals the leverage of social media.

Social media was all hype when I registered on Twitter in 2008 and Facebook was still just a platform for connecting friends and family. Now major brands are embracing it with a speed that makes the PC revolution in the 80′s look slow and ponderous.

Social Media Command Center

To provide some context to the social business trend Dell recently opened a Social Media Command Center which follows Gatorade’s earlier launch of a very similar looking facility. Dell will be using the Radian6 as its platform to  power its data collection and  The center will track on average more than 22,000 daily topic posts related to Dell, as well as mentions of Dell on Twitter. The information can be sliced and diced based on topics and subjects of conversation, sentiment, share of voice, geography and trends.

For major brands this makes sense, with the noise that they generate online, the ability to listen, engage and then act upon the 22,000 plus conversations daily is vital.

Is It Necessary?

For other companies that level of  investment in becoming a social business is not justified but there a lot of ways you can start to make your business more social so that you can not only respond to your customers in real time but also leverage the power of the social web to promote your brands message and content.

So what are the major areas you need to look at to make your company a more social business?

20 Brainstorming Ideas To Create A Social Business

The Website

Brochureware sites are still in the majority with a lot of brands still having a static website that quite often provides nothing more than a boring catalog style site with a contact us form being the lonely interaction point with their customers. So here are some ideas  to push some boundaries and to start you thinking.

• Highlight your people and let them be contacted via other channels such as company Twitter account and not just email. Promote their expertise via a link to their LinkedIn profile or even a link to their blog.
• Put Retweet and Facebook share buttons everywhere there is great content in various media  formats that you want people to share with their friends and colleagues
• Install a forum so your customers can start providing crowd sourced answers to problems that your technical people would normally have to answer
• Add a YouTube channel (online video) that allows people to comment and like so that they share your multimedia assets
• Add a Slideshare account that embeds company PowerPoint presentations in your website and allows other people to spread your brands expertise

More reading:

10 Key Strategies To Make Your Website an Online Marketing Machine

The Blog

Company blogs are often just a place to put an article once a week and allow comments. How can you make your blog more social?

• Add social share buttons for Facebook and Twitter this is vital as blog posts are typically interesting and newsworthy and you need to remove and minimize any friction for sharing on the web.
• Include a Tab or section that links to your YouTube Video Channel
• Include buttons that allow people to follow your company on Twitter, Facebook and email
• Add a Facebook social plugin

More reading:

How To Increase Your Blog Traffic With Just One Button

The Online Store

Online stores are a great place to integrate and optimize for social media as specials and great deals need to be made easy to share.

• Your marketing email offering specials should provide email to a friend and a feature to share on Facebook and twitter
• YouTube video reviews should be  available for your top products
• Make it easy for people to follow your online store with Facebook and twitter buttons on multiple pages especially your homepage
• Allow comments and reviews as part of your stores feature set customers want to read other people’s feedback

More reading:

How Zappos Plans To Use 50,000 Online Videos

The Social Media Channels

This is social media 101 but there are still many companies who are not participating on the top 4 social media channels or even have an initial presence. You are holding back the growth of your brand if this is overlooked. Here are the social media accounts you should start using today.

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• YouTube

More reading:

Facebook hits 500 million Users: 5 Predictions For The Future

The Marketing

Start thinking about using traditional marketing less, especially where it is costly and increasingly ineffective and start utilizing the power of social media to market your brand.

• Advertise on Facebook with banner ads that can tightly target your vertical markets demographically and geographically
• Advertise on LinkedIn especially if you have a highly technical product used by professionals
• Market test  Twitter for a sponsored tweet promotion

More Reading

How To Advertise On Facebook In Ten Minutes For Less Than $10 A Day

So how else can you weave the social into your business? Like to hear your thoughts.

Image by toettoet

When it comes to doing business online trust is vital as people are handing over their hard earned cash and are taking a risk by dealing with you whether that be for services or products.

Are you forgetting to market your website and online store to billions of people on a platform that is growing faster than the web itself? The mobile internet is a trend that cannot be ignored.

The Apple iPad is the fastest selling technology product in history and it is projected by 2015 that over 10 billion mobile devices that are web enabled will be in the hands and pockets of people around the world according to Morgan Stanley Research.

The drivers of this growth are the spread of 3G networks (which allow you to surf the web and download data) and intuitive smart phones like the Apple iPhone.

Global 3G network penetration is expected to hit 21% this year globally and have reached penetration levels of 46% in the USA. In Western Europe the penetration is 54% and the worlds leading market is Japan with a penetration coverage of  96%.  Japan is where the U.S.  and the world looks to find its mobile roadmap for the future.

Finally, mobile e-commerce is ramping up faster than online e-commerce, now making up 4% of total retail sales. In certain categories, such as computers, consumer electronics, music, movies, tickets, video games and books, online sales account for between 45% and 20% of the total retail market. Japan’s Rakuten shows how the mobile share of e-commerce is growing as well, from 10% of e-commerce in 2006 to nearly 20% now!

At our digital agency Infinity we have just designed and developed an iPhone app for one of our customers that will enable them to take advantage of having their online store on their customers mobile so they can buy easily anywhere, anytime . They are the first of what will be many Magento iPhone apps that will place two of his online stores Toys Paradise and Games Paradise on people’s iPhones

Here are the apps ready to download if you want to check them out on your iPhone or iPad.

1. Toys Paradise
2. Games Paradise

So here are 5 way to get your app out there and people buying your products from their Apple iPhone

1. Tweet about it – Let your customers know that you just released an app and where they can download it
2. Post a link on social networking sites such as Facebook or Myspace
3. Talk about it  – “Have an iPhone? Download my iPhone App!”
4. Email it out to your customers and embed the link in your email ready for them to just to click and download.
5. Have the download link on your website and Blog (make sure your blog is mobile optimized for viewing)

Mobile according to Morgan Stanley will be a “Share Gain Accelerator“. So are you ready to increase your market share or are you sitting back and waiting for your competitor to go to market first?

So what are some other ways to market your company’s iPhone app?

It’s been quite a year. Facebook passed Google to become the most popular website for the first time in History. Social media became even more integrated into our lives. The spread of the Apple iPhone and other smart phones continued to change our web viewing habits. Mobile eCommerce  continues to grow as apps make buying online easy and secure. The  iPad became the fastest selling technology device in history and Twitter added over 100 million registered users in just 12 months.

After pouring through the data mountain of the 25 billion tweets in 2010 Twitter has just released the list of the 10 most powerful Tweets for 2010.

1. Anne Curry

After the massive 7.0 earthquake in Haiti, Doctors Without Borders flew in a team of physicians to assist the wounded, but they were unable to get clearance to land the plane. Reporter Ann Curry used Twitter to convince the U.S. Air Force to allow the flight to land.

2. The Whitehouse

When Russian President joined Twitter, the White House immediately reached out to welcome him to the Twitterverse. Obama’s quote: Red phones no longer required.

3. Leigh Fazzina

Twitter to the rescue: When she crashed her bike in a forest with no cell phone reception, a gravely injured triathlete saved her own life when she tweeted out a desperate call for help.

4. BP Global PR

After the Deepwater Horizon oil platform exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, causing one of the largest in oil spills in history, it was a parody account, not BP’s official Twitter account, that defined the discussion–spoofing the company’s attempts to improve its public image. “Gulf Oil Spill” was the #1 Trend on Twitter in 2010

5. President Of Ecuador

In late September, civil unrest in Ecuador increased dramatically after a new law cut benefits for public servants. President Rafael Correa accused opposition and military forces of a coup attempt, and used Twitter to declare a state of emergency in a Tweet. Leaders across Latin America and the world tweeted in response to show their support for the people of Ecuador

6. Clarence House

In a royal first, Clarence House, the Prince of Wales’ private office, created a Twitter account to announce Prince William’s engagement to Kate Middleton. Not how Henry VIII did it

7.  Johnathan Schwartz

When the CEO of one of the most high-profile technology companies in the world announced he was stepping down, he kept his resignation letter to 140 characters. Jonathan Schwartz left Sun Microsystems with this simple message

8. John M Foster

Twitter was a powerful campaign tool during the 2010 U.S. Midterm Elections, and Election Night results often broke first on Twitter. Demonstrating how quickly the world of political communications is changing, Idaho incumbent Walt Minnick’s campaign manager issued a concession Tweet

9. FIFA World Cup

The FIFA World Cup final represented the largest period of sustained activity for an event in Twitter’s history: during the final game, people from 172 countries tweeted in 27 different languages. Twitter put fans in direct touch with teams, players and commentators–and when Spain celebrated its big win in the Final, defender Carles Puyol captured the zeal with a Twitpic of the scene from his perch at the victory ceremony

10. Conan O’Brien

After his departure from the Tonight Show, Conan O’Brien used Twitter to announce that he was hitting the road for two-month-long comedy tour, called “Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television.” Fans jumped at the chance to see Conan live: shows were almost sold out in a matter of hours.

Do you agree with Twitter on the 10 most powerful Tweets of 2010 or are there others that have created more impact? Would love to hear your comments.

I am in the middle of a project of re-designing my blog . I started this blog just over a year ago because I found social media fascinating and also a touch obsessive and it was started from a passion. The online audience seems to agree, with my  blog traffic approaching nearly 100,000 hits per month, so I must be doing something right.

Facebook the social media monster has gone from “Mainstream” to “Madstream” and almost daily is mentioned in the mass media for all the right and wrong reasons, from its manic growth to the latest privacy concerns.

Twitter has grown from 8 million visitors per month to over 180 million in 12 months. So where there is obsession and growth there is power, so how do you tap that in a credible and ethical manner?

I recently ran an online survey which  asked the question “Should Bloggers Get Paid?” and 79% said yes. This wasn’t surprising as almost everyone wants to make money and a lot of my readers have a blog so this result  was a bit of a no-brainer.

On the other hand there are a lot of people who blog because they just want a voice and want to change the world.

At the other end of the spectrum there are bloggers who have perfected the art of scamming without offering any value except to rip people off with get rich quick schemes. So how do you monetize a blog and maintain your tribe, subscribers and followers.

So I have started to research how to monetize this blog. The challenge is?

• I don’t want to be spammy,
• I want to offer real valuable information
• I want to help other bloggers be successful
• I want to help companies optimize their website to drive leads, enquiries and sales and consequently make great revenue from their website whether that be an eCommerce site or a dynamic and content rich online presence that is compelling and keeps their sales teams so busy, productive and successful that the CEO looks forward to waking up each day.

So if I am able to make this fly then the next step is to help you have fun and monetize “your” blog or website.

So here are just 10 initial ways ways that I could monetize my blog. (this is what I would call an open discussion on possibilities)

1. Affiliate marketing: This is done on a Cost Per action (CPA) basis meaning the customers have to take some kind of action from signing up to a newsletter to actually buying a product. This where you can sell other people’s products that you trust and know that offer great value to potential buyers.

2. Write Sponsored Reviews: This where you can write a review about a product, site or service and you are paid per review. John Chow says that this is his blog’s biggest money maker and uses ReviewMe. ReviewMe allows advertisers to buy sponsored reviews on your blog. Review prices are based on your blog’s Alexa, Technorati and estimated RSS numbers. The only requirement is that a review post must be at least 200 words long. Below is an example of a sponsored review from JohnChow.com

3. Kontera Content Link: Kontera ContentLink allows you to make money from advertising without giving up any current advertsing spots. Their technology reads your posts and turns certain words into an ad. The highlighted are double underlinesand an ad pops up when you hover over it.

4.Text Link Ads: This is done by selling text links you see under “Featured Sites” . The links offer advertisers traffic and search engine benfits and readers don’t seem to mind because they are not intrusive.

6. Google Adsense: Google Adsense displays simple text and and image ads on your blog and they are targeted  to what you are writing about.

7. Create Your own premium content whether that be online training and courses and sell it on my blog. The upside to this is that you increase your margin and have much more control. TimothySykes.com provides an example of how this is done with his high quality learning systems and DVD’s.

8.Selling Banner Advertising on my blog: This can be banners that generally measure 125 x 125 . It can provide a recurring source of income month after month.

9. Selling Monthly Memberships to  to premium content: TimothySykes.com provides an example of how this is done. Tim is well known for turning his $12,415 in Bar Mitzvah gift money into $2 million and starteda hedge fund during his senior year at high school. Timothy’s site shows how to invest in the stock market by following what he is doing.   Membership rates range from $49.95 per month to $1,497 per month

10. Promote My Presentations to obtain more keynote speaking bookings.

How do you think I should monetize my blog without compromising the content?

Playing in the school yard when you were five or six quite often involved comparing how many friends you had which was helpful in calculating how much influence you had and how important you were in the schoolyard pecking order.

Forward 20, 30 or 40 years and now in 2010 you can quantify your influence and attention through social media metrics.

Netprospex have taken it a step further and have quantified the top 50 companies that have the most connected employees.

So if you are curious to find who is the most connected company on the planet then here are a few numbers that provide interesting reading.

NetProspex titled their findings the NPSI Score or “NetProspex Social Index” to score social network activity .

The score is based on the average number of

• Friends or connections across major social networks (friendliness)
• Average number of tweets,
• Number of users following
• Number of followers per employee (twitter score).

The numbers were taken from across 9 major networks

1. Facebook
2. Linkedin
3. Twitter
4. MySpace
5. Friendster
6. Flickr
7. LiveJournal
8. hi5
9. Flixster

Microsoft’s employees emerged with the top score with the NetProspex Social Index (NPSI) score of 306 the next companies were

Rank 2: eBay with a score of  208

Rank 3: Amazon.com with 202

Rank 4: Walt Disney 181

Rank 5: Google with 172

Rank 6: Electronic Arts with 164

Rank 7: Intuit scoring 163

Rank 8: Raytheon with 157

Rank 9: Best Buy on 155

Rank 10: Apple with 153

What was interesting was Coca Cola coming in at number 50.. to see the rest of the rankings visit NetProspex. The other observation from the findings was the high percentage of companies that are either in the eCommerce or technology industry sectors.

Another another key finding was that membership of LinkedIn was by far the largest social network channel at 43%.

Note: NetProspex analyzed social media use within a sample of a database of 12 million business contacts, leveraging Rapleaf’s capabilities as the largest provider of online social data to take a snapshot of social media activity among the nation’s largest corporations.

So is your company on the list?