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The Place for Internet Marketing

Facebook has finally filed for an IPO with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. What will this mean for the users of the world’s most popular social network?

The company, which was private so far, was rather secretive about their financial dealings. Most of these details will now have to be made public, as they will be answerable to their shareholders.

Facebook has filed for an IPO worth $5 billion. This means that they hope to be able to raise that amount of money from the sale of their shares. However, they have not yet clarified how many shares they will be selling and what the price of each share will be.

Analysts are speculating that the total valuation of the company is around $75 to $100 billion.

It is also too early to know exactly how Facebook will utilise the money generated from the IPO. Speculations are rife that among other things they may choose to buy over Zynga the manufacturer of the popular social game FarmVille. Rumours about Facebook manufacturing their own mobile phone are also doing the rounds.

Additionally, it is certain that the IPO will help the local economy of Silicon Valley where their headquarters are situated. The cash generated from the IPO will also help Facebook to steal a chunk of Google’s display ad revenue as advertisers reallocate budgets to the place where most users are.

None of these possibilities matter too much to Facebook’s end users though. Their experience and loyalty to the network should theoretically remain the same.

Going Public Changes Companies

Whatever Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and CEO may say, once the company goes public, they will be answerable to their shareholders and they will have to change the way some things are done.

For one, there is bound to be a push to monetise the network further and further. While a lot of this growth could come from international expansion and uptake of their advertising services, analysts will expect to see growth in the US and Europe as well.

In-Stream and Mobile Ads

Growth and monetisation will mean the need to sell more advertising. While the right-hand column on Facebook already contain a lot of ads, the news feed has remained relatively free of advertising. This is likely to change with the introduction of sponsored stories in the ticker in the near future, and surely will result in the placement of ads within or at the top of the main news feed eventually.

Mobile is another area that is currently free of advertising, but is also very likely to start seeing the infusion of ads.

What other changes do you expect to see once Facebook goes public?

For a long time it was believed that users are less likely to make expensive purchases from their mobiles than from their desktop computers. This belief has been shown to be wrong.

According to reports from Dell Inc. the value of purchases made by people through their mobile phones has now exceeded the average order value of purchases being made by users online.

Dell Inc. launched their complete mobile store applications for Android devices and iPhones some time ago and they have found that the average amount being spent on purchases through mobile is 25% higher than it is for online purchases.

The fastest selling item, the Inspiron 15R laptop is the most popular model for both mobile as well as online sales. This laptop ranges in price from $550 to $800, showing that users are not unwilling to make high value purchases from their mobile phones.

Brandon McGee, Director of Global Mobile at Dell says, “From a download and revenue perspective, the Android app is performing extremely well and reaching its goals. The iPhone app is performing twice as well as Android.”

In order to further strengthen mobile online sales, Dell suggests that in order to develop a successful mobile commerce site entrepreneurs should offer a secure site with prominently displayed lock icons on check out buttons, have a clean and easy to use interface that contains all technical and other specifications about the product being sold and also includes user reviews and provide tools to help users select products, such as the Compare feature and the Shop Assist tool used by Dell.

Promoting the mobile commerce site on popular networks such as Facebook, Twitter and on third party blogs and even via email has proved to be very helpful to Dell.

Success levels of these apps have been high enough to warrant Dell to invest in tablet apps, which are likely to be launched soon in order to further enhance their mobile commerce offering.

Facebook has finally filed for an IPO with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. What will this mean for the users of the world’s most popular social network?

The company, which was private so far, was rather secretive about their financial dealings. Most of these details will now have to be made public, as they will be answerable to their shareholders.

Facebook has filed for an IPO worth $5 billion. This means that they hope to be able to raise that amount of money from the sale of their shares. However, they have not yet clarified how many shares they will be selling and what the price of each share will be.

Analysts are speculating that the total valuation of the company is around $75 to $100 billion.

It is also too early to know exactly how Facebook will utilise the money generated from the IPO. Speculations are rife that among other things they may choose to buy over Zynga the manufacturer of the popular social game FarmVille. Rumours about Facebook manufacturing their own mobile phone are also doing the rounds.

Additionally, it is certain that the IPO will help the local economy of Silicon Valley where their headquarters are situated. The cash generated from the IPO will also help Facebook to steal a chunk of Google’s display ad revenue as advertisers reallocate budgets to the place where most users are.

None of these possibilities matter too much to Facebook’s end users though. Their experience and loyalty to the network should theoretically remain the same.

Going Public Changes Companies

Whatever Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and CEO may say, once the company goes public, they will be answerable to their shareholders and they will have to change the way some things are done.

For one, there is bound to be a push to monetise the network further and further. While a lot of this growth could come from international expansion and uptake of their advertising services, analysts will expect to see growth in the US and Europe as well.

In-Stream and Mobile Ads

Growth and monetisation will mean the need to sell more advertising. While the right-hand column on Facebook already contain a lot of ads, the news feed has remained relatively free of advertising. This is likely to change with the introduction of sponsored stories in the ticker in the near future, and surely will result in the placement of ads within or at the top of the main news feed eventually.

Mobile is another area that is currently free of advertising, but is also very likely to start seeing the infusion of ads.

What other changes do you expect to see once Facebook goes public?

For a long time it was believed that users are less likely to make expensive purchases from their mobiles than from their desktop computers. This belief has been shown to be wrong.

According to reports from Dell Inc. the value of purchases made by people through their mobile phones has now exceeded the average order value of purchases being made by users online.

Dell Inc. launched their complete mobile store applications for Android devices and iPhones some time ago and they have found that the average amount being spent on purchases through mobile is 25% higher than it is for online purchases.

The fastest selling item, the Inspiron 15R laptop is the most popular model for both mobile as well as online sales. This laptop ranges in price from $550 to $800, showing that users are not unwilling to make high value purchases from their mobile phones.

Brandon McGee, Director of Global Mobile at Dell says, “From a download and revenue perspective, the Android app is performing extremely well and reaching its goals. The iPhone app is performing twice as well as Android.”

In order to further strengthen mobile online sales, Dell suggests that in order to develop a successful mobile commerce site entrepreneurs should offer a secure site with prominently displayed lock icons on check out buttons, have a clean and easy to use interface that contains all technical and other specifications about the product being sold and also includes user reviews and provide tools to help users select products, such as the Compare feature and the Shop Assist tool used by Dell.

Promoting the mobile commerce site on popular networks such as Facebook, Twitter and on third party blogs and even via email has proved to be very helpful to Dell.

Success levels of these apps have been high enough to warrant Dell to invest in tablet apps, which are likely to be launched soon in order to further enhance their mobile commerce offering.

Google Search Plus Your World builds organic search traffic, big-time. Say what you want about the evil-ness of the whole thing. It’s a huge opportunity, and you need to capitalize on it now.

The background

I’ve been working for several weeks, researching what seems to get your Plus profile showing up in organic search results—also known as Google Search Plus Your World.

Yes, that actually translates to Google SPY World. Sergey, Larry, did you guys pay someone to come up with that?

Along the way, I’ve measured the traffic generated by Plus Your World results. The answer: It’s big.

My Google Plus profile occasionally appears in SPY World results for ‘online marketing’ and ‘Internet Marketing’. Not often, but now and then. That’s fine. It gives my parents bragging rights:

Whoa. My traffic went up!

But then I looked at traffic. There’s more than bragging rights at stake here. I’ve never gotten clicks or impressions for ‘online marketing’ or ‘Internet Marketing’. When Google Search Plus Your World showed up, I started getting both:

My Google search impressions on 'online marketing'

My rankings haven’t improved. The only change: My Plus profile, showing up in organic search results.

A strong Google+ profile = organic search traffic

Get a strong Google Plus profile, and you’ll see stronger Google organic traffic. Google’s showing Search Plus Your World blended right into the organic results of folks who put you in their circles:

Google Plus result from someone I follow, inserted right into the search results

And, as I showed above, Google’s pushing Adwords results down the page, taking over the top-right corner of some search results with relevant Plus profiles/pages.

Even better, there’s a lot less competition on Google Plus than in the organic Google results. So, you can get real estate in the top 10 SERPs, for super-competitive terms, by staking out territory in Google Plus.

You need to get a Google Plus profile, and start growing it:

1. Put influential people from your industry/profession/likes/dislikes in your circles.
2. Curate content on Google Plus.
3. If folks comment on your Plus posts, reply.
4. Comment on, +1 and reshare cool stuff you find on Plus.

Gogogogogogo. Unless you’re in Internet Marketing. In that case, give me a few minutes to print my ranking so my parents can hang it on their fridge.

For all the folks who helped me by filling out the Google+ ranking factors survey: I haven’t forgotten it. I’m not ignoring you. Just digging up lots of other data so I can pull together something useful. Please put away the rotten tomatoes.

All I ask in exchange is your soul.

Well.

Actually just your e-mail address, if you don’t mind.

Click here to sign up and watch the video of the first webinar, ‘Internet Marketing 101′.

I won’t spam you.

Much.

This article in a series on PPC advertising features paid search expert Melissa Mackey, who explains what Quality Score is, why it dramatically affects the cost and placement of your ads, and steps you can take to improve low Quality Scores.

In this video interview, social media expert Krista Neher offers some tips for small business fan pages on Facebook, where businesses want to get in front of 800 million Facebook users. She sees Facebook as better at increasing loyalty of existing customers than gaining new customers.

This week we see a number of articles on Google’s new “Search Plus Your World,” which promises to change search significantly as Google+ cranks up.

While it has been discussed for a long time that Facebook will go public, it now looks as though that is finally about to happen.

According to a report in the BBC, Facebook will file papers for the IPO with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Wednesday.

The company will be valued between $75 billion to $100 billion. They hope to be able to raise about $10 billion through the public offering.

If they manage to achieve this target it could be one of the largest share offerings to take place on Wall Street, making Facebook one of the largest companies in the world, by market capitalization. Google had raised $1.9 billion through their public offering in 2004.

It is being suggested that Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs will be involved with this public issue.

Most of Facebook’s monetization occurs through advertising and is believed to be around $5 billion. Since Facebook is a private company so far, they have not been required to publish their accounts.

Ironically, the upcoming IPO has made the executives at Facebook extremely conscious about their own privacy. Web Pro News has reported that before a recent news conference, attending journalists were initially asked to sign a non-disclosure contract. It is a different matter that the contract was eventually called off when they objected about such a contract infringing their right to free speech and code of journalism.

Facebook has not yet made an official announcement, but the indications are all there that this announcement will happen, and the possibility of such an announcement has got the press and investors very excited.

Possibly the worst kept secret in the industry at present, this IPO filing could be what the U.S. economy and stock markets need. However, a lot of analysts and investors are also worried that such an ambitious floatation could flop just like the recent IPOs from Groupon and Zynga.