Facebook Marketing – Getting the Most out of Facebook – The Circuit Cincinnati
A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of presenting to the Circuit – an IT Networking Group based in Cincinnati.
I presented on Facebook Marketing – how to get more out of Facebook.
Most of the people in the room were on Facebook, but few were using it as a marketing tool. Facebook can be difficult for marketers – figuring out the right ways to interact with potential audiences can be tough. Facebook was created to facilitate social connections – not as a marketing platform.
Facebook is the #1 global social network and has over 300 million active users – 50% of whom logon to the site every day. The Facebook audience is both active and committed to the network.
Prior to engaging in marketing your brand or company on Facebook:
- Don’t be a dirty spammer. Be relevant. Use channels appropriately. Don’t annoy people.
- Real world networking principles apply. Don’t immediately sell people. Don’t get in their face. Like in the real world you will have no friends.
- Give your audience something of value. People do you the honor of following you. Repay them by giving them value. It doesn’t have to be financial value either.
- Know your target. Know who your target audience is. If you fan page is comprised of your family and friends it probably isn’t very effective. Come up with creative ways to engage with your target.
- Focus on business value, not activity. It is easy to get caught up with tracking your activity – # of posts, # of fans friends and followers, etc. The real question is what is the actual business value?
We then covered 4 key ways that brands can leverage Facebook as a part of their marketing strategy.
1. Create a Fan Page. This is the most popular way brands and companies are using Facebook.
- When you create a fan page build a content plan (what you will post when)
- Use photos and videos to engage – post yourself and encourage fans to post
- Provide valuable information
- Be a resource for questions
- Run a contest
- Integrate Facebook as a syndication and engagement platform for offline campaigns
- Use insights and analytics to track effectiveness and value
2. Create a Group – Create a group about something related to your product that people are interested in and passionate about. Also, participate in relevant groups to get your brand out there.
3. Create an Event – Facebook events can be a great way to engage with your audience. If you are having an event, creating a Facebook event increases your exposure and lets attendees see who else is going.
4. Facebook Ads – Facebook ads work best when they are targeted. Target your ads as specifically as possible and you can get great results.
Any other thoughts or comments?
News: Most Popular Facebook Fan Pages
Ever curious which Facebook Fan Pages are the most popular?
Wonder no more – AllFacebook publishes a list of the most popular Facebook Fan Pages. While it is easy to jump to conclusions from these numbers and congratulate the winners, there are a number of questions to be answered first.
Were the fans added organically? Many big brands run Facebook ads to acquire fans – getting a ton of fans through ads is not as valuable as fans who seek you out to join.
Are you driving value from your fans? Having a bunch of fans is great, but so what? How are you engaging with your fans and continuing to drive value – for them, not you. How do you provide value to your fans?
Anyone else have thoughts on this list?
10 Ways to get More from your Facebook Fan Page
We talk about Facebook a lot – it is the largest (over 300 million registered users) and quickest growing social networks. Marketers are interested in Facebook not only because of the sheer size and growth, but because the user base is extremely active – 50% of Facebook users login every single day.
The Fan Page is one of the most popular ways to market brands online – but just creating a fan page isn’t enough. You have to have a plan for your fan page to actually add value. There are currently over 1.4 million Facebook Pages and they collect over 10 million fans every day.
Here are some tips to get more out of your Facebook Fan Page.
1. Create a content plan
Don’t just create a fan page and forget it. Create a plan of what content you will add and how frequently you will add it. Remember that your fan page updates show up in the newsfeeds of your fans. This can be a great way to reach your fans with relevant content. Create a content calendar that consists of multimedia (ie. links, text, photos and videos) to maximize your fan page and keep your fans engaged. Remember – provide them with something interesting or useful – don’t just update for the sake of it.
2. Extend your Fanpage
There are a lot of different plugins for Facebook Fan Pages. Plugins will allow you to do more with your fan page. If you are active on other social networks (twitter, Flickr, Youtube) you can set your fanpage to automatically pull that content in. To add to your Fan Page look in the administrator options under applications. You can add things like polls, contests, and many other fun things to engage your fans.
3. It isn’t Just about Selling
While direct marketers will be tempted to use Facebook to drive sales immediately, Facebook often works best with an indirect sales pitch. Rather than talking about your brand and product (which people may not care about), talk about the things related to your product that they are passionate about.
4. Provide Unique Value
The Dell Social Media for Small Business fan page is one of a number of fan pages from Dell. This page is a resource on Social Media for Small Business Owners. It features a guide to social media. This Fan Page has almost 35,000 fans and a lot of activity on the wall and discussion forums. By adding value you can engage with your fan base.
5. Refine with Analytics
One of the most powerful things about Facebook Fan Pages vs. Groups is that you have access to analytics. Facebook analytics allow you to track information about your fan base including – interactions, demographics, engagement, etc. Regularly looking at your analytics will help you to understand how engaged your fan base is. You can also use this to refine over time based on what works and what doesn’t work.
6. Integrate with Multi-Media
The Coca-Cola Facebook fan page has almost 4 million fans who are extremely active. The wall is full of Coke fans posting their own photos of coke. There are over 3,500 photos posted by fans on the fan page. By Coke fan page is engaging because it encourages fans to actively participate.
7. Run a Contest
The Tide fan page provides unique value to fans through coupons and contests. When you become a fan you get a $1 off coupon for a Tide Stain Pen. They also have weekly contests where you can win by uploading photos and engaging on Facebook or Twitter. This drives value and engagement for fans. The Tide Fan Page has over 100,ooo fans and hundreds of “likes” and “comments” – not bad for a laundry detergent…..
8. Get Found
Search engines are working to integrate Facebook into their search results. By using keywords in your profile and status updates you can enhance your SEO efforts both on Facebook and in regular Search Engines. Search Engine Optimization is often an unintended yet powerful result of effective social media marketing.
9. Integrate it with Other Campaigns
The Victoria’s Secret fan page integrated videos from a model casting into their Facebook Fan page. The result? They have over 2 million fans and their video about their model search has over 2400 likes and 200 comments.
They also use their fan page to promote their iphone app – the post on the iphone app has over 1400 likes and 80 comments. The engagement (liking or commenting) is especially powerful since it shows up in the news stream of the fan.
10. Be a Resource for your Community
The Toyota Prius facebook page includes an “ask an Expert” section where users can ask experts questions about Prius. The result? They have over 45,000 fans and an active discussion board. By being a valuable resource you can increase engagement with your fans.
Want to learn more? One great resource to check out is this list of 100 Resources for Facebook Marketing, organized by subject area.
What fan pages do you like? Which ones engage with you?
7 Mistakes Companies Make on FaceBook and how to Avoid Them
Facebook is big and getting bigger with over 300 million active users of which over 50% are active every day.
While Facebook is clearly an engaging platform for users to connect with friends, marketers have struggled with how to use the massive audience on Facebook to build their businesses.
Here are the top mistakes that companies are making on Facebook.
1. Not Starting with a Strategy
Where most people go wrong with Facebook is not starting strategically. Like many social media tools (and any kind of marketing for that matter), a solid strategy at the outset is key to success. Who are you trying to target, what is your message, how will you reach them and what is in it for them?
To Overcome This: Take time before starting the page to understand exactly who you are targeting and what your message is.
2. Focusing on the Number of Fans/Friends/Followers
Despite its lack of real relevance, many people focus on the number of fans or group members that they have. Get over it. I have met with a number of clients who have said “we need to get on Facebook because our competitor has X number of fans and we hardly have any”. The number of fans doesn’t matter – it is how you engage them.
How to avoid this: Don’t let your manager use numbers as a key metric. It isn’t difficult to get fans or followers, but it isn’t relevant. Explain that a balanced approach helps measure what really matters based on your strategy.
3. Lack of Creativity
It isn’t just about creating the asset – the page, the event, the ad campaign. It is about the creative execution. To engage on Facebook you need to have a strong creative execution. What is the content for the page? How does it ad value? What is exciting or interesting for your fans/friends/followers?
A successful Facebook strategy requires a great creative execution – run contests, communicate with members, share photos and videos, do something interesting.
A great example of this is the Petcentric fan page – they have photo contests with voting that keeps fans coming back for more.
How to avoid it: Do creative brainstorming. Spend some time and energy coming up with an exciting creative plan for your Facebook assets. Build a content plan. Create promotions.
4. No Fan Engagement
Lack of creativity leads into the next point – no fan engagement. Many companies create a fan page, invite their friends or buy ads and then forget about the page. An effective Facebook strategy actively engages fans.
To Avoid This: Build a content plan that is relevant and engaging to your audience. What will you post when? How will you engage and encourage your fans to post? What is in it for them. Build an engagement plan, not just a page.
5. Not Monitoring Discussions
Nothing looks worse than fan pages where the company is not active and responding to their fans. Monitor your fan page for activity and respond to relevant questions or comments.
I was once on a fanpage where fans were questioning the company policy. The company didn’t respond and looked weak.
How to Avoid This: Monitor your facebook page regularly and have someone who is empowered to respond on behalf of your organization.
6. Not Owning Your Fan Page
A number of companies have issues where their fan page is created and administered by an actual fan, and not the company. The issue is that fans assume that fan pages are run by the company, and expect the company to play an active role.
While having a real fan own your page may not immediately present issues, you can’t predict when, why or how issues will arise.
How to Avoid This: Contact the fan who created the fan page and try to get the page back. You can always work through Facebook, but that may upset the original owner (who is your biggest fan afterall).
7. Not looking at Analytics
Facebook fan pages now have insights and analytics. You can see how engaging your page is. This is a great tool to understand what is effective and to continuously refine and improve your Facebook fan page.
Analytics will help you understand what is working and what isn’t.
How to Avoid this: Look at analytics and make changes based on them.
Where We’ll be This Month
Bootcamp Digital attends and participates in a wide variety of industry events. We wanted to share with you where we’ll be in the coming month.
Come out, meet us and say hello!
PRSA Media Day October 19, Cincinnati- This looks like a great event with lots of interesting speakers. Krista will be speaking on a panel about Social Media with Jory Des Jardins, Co-Founder of BlogHer, Jon Cronin, Director of Digital Marketing Strategy at DeVries and Michelle Lentz, Blogger.
Ad:techNY November 4 – 6, NY- Ad:tech is one of the premier conferences (and a client) in the advertising and marketing industries. We’ll be at ad:tech tweeting, learning, networking, photographing, video interviewing…… Come out and say hello!
PubCon November 10 – 13, Las Vegas - Pubcon is one of my favorite conferences and has a wide variety of programming for internet marketing people. Great panels on Social Media, SEO, Site Optimization and much much more. Krista will be at pubcon speaking and moderating a number of panels. Join us in Vegas for a fun time and great learning and networking.
The Circuit November 20, Cincinnati- Krista will be presenting to the “IT Association of the Cincinnati Region” about how to use Facebook for marketing. This morning meeting will help marketers understand how to better leverage Facebook as a marketing tool.
November promises to be a busy month for Bootcamp Digital. Drop us a line and let us know if you’ll be at any of these upcoming events.
