Brian Reilly

Why Facebook's 'Graph Search' Is a gamechanger

Facebook, of all platforms, has revolutionized search as we know it. Yesterday, Facebook announced 'Graph Search', a new feature that helps us find people, places and things—and explore Facebook in a whole new way.

'Graph Search' pushes Facebook well beyond the social networking realm. It's a place to socialize and manage connections.

Eliminate the newsfeed, the goofy photos, snarky comments, and over-use of the 'Like Button', and it's all about connections.

Now, smart search will allow us to traverse connections, allow us to sort connections, and allow us to connect with a greater amount of people in different types of ways.

by Brian Reilly 16 January 2013 19:14pm 6 comments

Ibotta Takes Mobile Couponing and Engagement to the Next Level

Mobile couponing has been gaining more and more speed over the last year. According to a recent eMarketer study, rising food and gas prices in the United States has lead 74% of US consumers to use more coupons this year.

In particular, the use of mobile coupon is on the rise: mobile coupons or app usage increased by over 100% in 2011, and 100% again in 2012. Furthermore, 79% of US internet users were using more mobile coupons this year—on par with print coupons and circulars.

Mobile coupling is great, but wouldn't it be even better if you could poll your mobile audience? Ask users 'how many times have you purchased this product?' and 'how did you first hear of this product?', etc. Want to have the consumer watch a video about your brand? For many brands, awareness is key - couponing is only one piece of the puzzle.

by Brian Reilly 30 October 2012 15:32pm 4 comments

Lowe's mobile app is worth writing home about

Lowe's understands mobile. They don't just 'talk the talk', but they have an app that can be used to 'walk the walk' through all of their store aisles that allows users to comparison shop, read reviews, etc.

Lowe's, a U.S.-based chain of retail home improvement and appliance stores that has retail stores in the United States, Canada, and Mexico serves more than 14 million customers a week in its 1,710 stores in the United States and 20 in Canada.

Before diving into the mobile app, let's take a look at a few mobile stats:

1 in 5 smartphone users scan product barcodes, and nearly 1 in 8 compare prices on their phone while in a store. (Source: comScore)
39% of instances where a consumer walks out of a store without buying were influenced by smartphones. (Source: Mobile Commerce Daily)

With more and more consumers having mobile lifelines that can share competitors' prices with them in a matter of seconds, the power is truly in the hands of the consumer.

by Brian Reilly 13 September 2012 14:09pm 1 comment

Re-targeting and paid search coming to Facebook. Will you be ready?

Facebook has been making great strides in further monetizing their platform. With stock prices down and a few recent acquisitions under their belt, it’s becoming increasingly more necessary to build onto the already pre-established advertising capabilities.

With much focus being on ‘organic growth’ and ‘engagement’ stemming from their Sponsored Story Ad Units, it only makes sense to compliment the organic with Paid Search. Many users utilize Facebook Search to navigate to brand pages – Facebook is now making it easier to have a specific brand page bubble to the top for keywords, and also brand terms.

by Brian Reilly 11 September 2012 14:03pm 7 comments

Facebook iOS app is better than ever

Thank goodness it's Friday - and thank goodness Facebook updated their Mobile Application for the iOS. If there is anything worth doing before this weekend, it's making sure you have updated/downloaded version 5.0.

“We’ve rebuilt the app from the ground up, so now the app opens much faster and your news feed and notifications load right when you open Facebook,” the company’s product manager, Mick Johnson, wrote in a blog post on Thursday.

The iPhone (and iPad]) application has been notoriously slow for quite some time now. Uploading your own status updates and images was slow - trying to scroll through the newsfeed and view several hours of status updates was a sub-standard experience as well. Supposedly, the iOS Facebook App is two times faster because it’s built on Objective-C not HTML5. The navigation is mostly the same, with the exception of being able to side-swipe out of the newsfeed and into menu options.

by Brian Reilly 24 August 2012 13:57pm 3 comments

Targeting Facebook Posts: The Good, Bad, and Intrusive

Although the news is only a few days old at this point, mentions of Facebook’s Enhanced Post Targeting, outlined in yesterday's Econsultancy post, and briefly below, is a feature that has been on my wishlist (yes, I have a running Facebook Innovation Wishlist!) for quite some time - and I am glad to see it taking shape.

The Enhanced Targeting feature hasn't been rolled out, and still is not 100% announced yet, however, it looks promising that the feature will come to fruition and will be available to Page Admins. We have the ability to target self-serve ad units the same way - so the tools and data sets are there to make this happen.

by Brian Reilly 03 August 2012 16:16pm 7 comments

Facebook enhancements wishlist: custom data capture with posts

Having been an Admin for a number of Facebook Pages since 2008, I’ve had a lot of time to think about enhancements to the Admin Portal and how my user experience could be optimized.

Being an Admin of a Page means different things to different people – for me, it means that I am able to provide a reading of the ‘overall health’ of a Page at a quick glance at the metrics.

More recently, it’s become necessary to spend more and more time in the Admin Portal, not only monitoring the ‘overall health’, but also monitoring how well (or not well) each post is doing.

by Brian Reilly 16 July 2012 14:14pm 4 comments

Expecting more from mobile in 2012

Why should we expect more from our usual social media mobile platforms? Well, why not?

Without feedback, preferences, and usage patterns, companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare wouldn’t be connecting us on a daily basis.

In 2012 however, we should expect a contextual experience from these sites – desktop and mobile alike.

by Brian Reilly 09 July 2012 14:48pm 0 comments

How to use Facebook Message to drive fan engagement

Facebook has made it even easier for fans to interact with brands - at least the brands that are willing, staffed to handle the increased engagement, and of course have the feature enabled and turned on.

Message, a feature that was introduced to the world immediately following fMC in NYC on February 29th, provides a way for brands to engage in one-to-one conversation with the consumer.

The brand is able to surrender the megaphone and in turn, receives the consumer’s attention and honesty with trust being the desired outcome.

by Brian Reilly 28 June 2012 19:33pm 5 comments