How to Drive Sales Through Social Media

In this special feature of 'Ask Entrepreneur,' Facebook fan Amy Clark Braden from Austin, Texas, asks: Which social network is better for converting followers into customers? So far we haven't had much luck with Facebook. What about Twitter or Google+?

Converting customers through social channels is not as cut-and-dried as most business owners think is should be. Put yourself in your customer's shoes and ask, "Why would I engage with this brand on Facebook?" Often, the answer is not, "So I can buy stuff from them."

Perhaps a better question to ask is, "Where would I buy things from a brand?" Chances are, Facebook is not going to be the first answer for many.

Your Chance to 'Ask Entrepreneur'

We enlisted our Facebook fans to ask their most pressing questions about starting and running a business. Over the next several weeks, our special panel of experts will offer their answers and discuss more in online chats. Mark your calendar and stay tuned for details on these future events:

•  Nov. 15: Gary Vaynerchuk on Connecting with Customers
•  Nov. 20: Jason Falls on Social media
•  Dec. 5: Grant Cardone on Sales
•  Dec. 19: Angela Jia Kim on Growing a Business

Consumers see the social layer around a brand as one that supports their buying decision in providing engagement and information pre-purchase, then supports them after the purchase when they have questions.

There's a disconnect when brands say, "We want to use Facebook to engage our audience," but then expect the result to be purchases. It's also misleading to think that your Facebook fans are the same type of captive, opt-in audience that you might find in, say, your email marketing list. They clicked a like button. It's a virtual high-five. The barrier to entry there isn't much of an obstacle.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/224898?cam=Dev&ctp=Carousel&cdt=14&cdn=224898

Sheryl Sandberg And Other Facebook Execs Have Started Selling Stock

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and two other executives at the social networking company sold millions of dollars worth of stock this week as restrictions on insider trading expired.

Sandberg netted about $7.44 million by selling roughly 353,000 Facebook shares on Wednesday, according to a filing with the SEC on Friday. Sandberg still owns roughly 20 million vested shares of Facebook stock, including shares held in her trusts, according to the filing.
Facebook General Counsel Theodore Ullyot and Chief Accounting Officer David Spillane also sold millions of dollars worth of shares this week, according to filings. All the Facebook executives' sales were part of pre-arranged stock trading plans.
The sales are the first by Facebook's senior management following the company's high-profile initial public offering in May.
The world's No.1 online social network became the only U.S. company to debut with a market value of more than $100 billion, but has seen its value plunge more than 40 percent since then on concerns about its long-term money-making prospects.
Shares of Facebook, which were priced at $38 in the IPO, closed Friday's regular session down 3 cents at $21.18.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/sheryl-sandberg-and-facebook-execs-sell-stock-2012-11#ixzz2BCjQ5fIZ

Facebook Makes Another Loss, But Investors Cheer 'Remarkable' Turnaround

Facebook has reported a loss for the third quarter of 2012 - but its stocks have risen on stronger than expected revenue.
The social network lost $59m in the three months to September, even as its revenues rose by 32% in the same period to $1.26bn.
Their results compare to $157m lost in the second quarter.
Overall advertising revenue rose 36%, and mobile revenue hit $152m, or 14% of its total sales, the company said.
Facebook added that it now has 1.01 billion users around the world, and that 604 million access the site with a mobile device.
Investors seemed pleased by the news, and its shares rose slightly by around 1% to $19.50 at the close of markets in New York before soaring 14% in late trading.
Improving its mobile performance has been a key issue for Facebook, after its weakness in that area was identified as a key cause of its shares underperforming after the company went public in July.
Initially Facebook's shares were valued at $38, but have lingered at around half that level since the initial public offering.
"People who use our mobile products are more engaged, and we believe we can increase engagement even further as we continue to introduce new products and improve our platform," said CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in a statement.
Analysts said Facebook may have turned a crucial corner on mobile.
"Mobile problem? What mobile problem?" said Brian Wieser at Pivotal Research Group. "It's nothing short of remarkable"

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/10/24/facebook-makes-another-loss_n_2007915.html?utm_hp_ref=social-life

Social Marketing: Right Idea for the Times

If you had a way to do all kinds of searches at once, you could turn up signs of people interested in a solution or a product category, people looking for help and people upset with something related to your business and much more. To get there, you need analytics -- and not just one kind, but several.

You might be tempted to consider social marketing just another idea in an endless stream of things dreamed up by the software industry -- and pundits like me -- to generate more business. Well, you'd be right about some of that, but I'd like to argue that the idea is more than hype and is, in fact, in sync with the times.

Conceptually, marketing and sales have not changed for a very long time. It's all about finding someone with a problem to solve and budget for the purpose. It doesn't matter if the situation is business to business or business to an end consumer, it's all about finding a need and filling it. I can agree with that, but at the same time I know that if this is as far as you take it, you'll starve.
Look at what's going on in the marketplace......

To continue reading click link below....

http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/76462.html

How an entrepreneur became 'the Bill Gates of Ghana

Herman Chinery-Hesse left America to return to his parents' country with only a computer and some big ideas

He was born in Ireland, studied in America and worked in Britain. But when Ghanaian Herman Chinery-Hesse decided to build a software company, he was determined that it would be in Africa.
"I didn't have an option in America," he says. "I was a black African there; until Obama, we didn't have a track record of leadership. It would be an uphill battle, whereas in Ghana the sky was the limit. Also I'm African: we need development here and it's Africans who are going to develop Africa. I felt a sense of responsibility, apart from the fact that I thought I'd have a brighter future here."
Moving to Ghana in 1990, Chinery-Hesse had no money but did own a computer. With a friend, he began writing programs and selling them, eventually moving from a bedroom to a garage to an office. Today, he is dubbed the "Bill Gates of Ghana". SOFTtribe is the country's leading software developer, providing management systems to dozens of companies, including Guinness and Unilever, and products to thousands of consumers. One of its most popular programs allows a user whose house is being attacked to text their GPS co-ordinates to police, neighbours and local radio.
Landlines and PCs remain scarce in Africa, but the mobile phone is changing lives in countless ways; there are reportedly 695 million subscribers among the continent's 1 billion population. "Our rural populations were in a black hole," he says. "You couldn't speak to them. You had to go on a screwed-up road and cross a river and so on but today they all have mobile phones. Suddenly they're part of a mobile community and that's 50% of our population. It's boom time, you can sell them all kinds of things from shoes to cement to building materials… it's made things efficient. Even if you have to drive to the village, you don't go there blind; you make sure Kofi is home first.
"I'm optimistic about the future," he adds. "We haven't turned the corner yet but we're rapidly approaching it. In terms of the poverty and being disconnected, it's not because people are stupid or not creative, they just didn't have a chance, they weren't at the table. Now they have mobiles, some have internet and suddenly people are getting educated online, trading online, and this is the future."
The west's misconceptions about Africa matter less too, he says. "The perception of Africa is wrong. But the Chinese are busy investing here, the Nigerians are busy investing in Ghana. Some populations are misinformed; at this stage it's their loss rather than ours. We need to be concerned about it as Africans less and less.
"No matter how much money comes to us from outside aid and so on, our real investments are coming from within Africa, Brazil, China, India. They don't think there's anything wrong with Africa."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/aug/26/new-africa-ghana-software-chinery-hessehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/aug/26/new-africa-ghana-software-chinery-hesse