Update relevant to Facebook advertisers
Value/Importance: [rating=3]
Recommended link: ReadWriteWeb reporting - describing change on 10th January
This is a relatively minor change within Facebook unless you’re actively advertising since it will affect your reach and costs. The main difference is that sponsored stories are now featured in each users news feed, so giving more chance to increase visibility.
The importance of Sponsored Stories is that they are like recommendations to friends of your fans - they appear in the ad. They can appear for apps and checkins, but the two most common types are:
Page Like. One of your fans liked one of your Page posts in the last seven days.
Page post Like. Someone liked your Page directly from Facebook or from the Like Box on your website at any point in time.
Marketing implications of the update
If you’re not using Sponsored Stories this is another argument…
New infographic showing the top 12 countries worldwide
We all know the importance of Facebook to our own lives and in our country, but what about international usage?
We found there were some surprises in this data that Michele Caivano, the creator of this infographic, alerted us to. Did you realise the importance of Facebook in Indonesia and Latin America or how the male/female popularity varies?
Source: http://www.fortunecat.it using Facebook Advertising figures…
5 Examples of Facebook Brand Pages to learn from
As marketers constantly look for better ways to use social media to engage with customers and generate positive word-of-mouth and sentiment, a well-designed, thought-out Facebook page is a key platform to target consumers. Facebook brand pages can offer businesses, both large and small, an excellent opportunity to create a presence and a brand experience, but only if this experience is well planned and executed.
In this post I'll look at some examples of companies that I think have created a great experience on Facebook that fits their brand well. I hope these "best practices" give some ideas of improvements that could work for your Facebook presence. These examples all show these key ingredients of a great Facebook brand page including:
A clear objective and raison d'être for the page
A good, professional design which is consistent with all other marketing communications
An impactful welcome page with a clear…
A B2B case study (with learnings for B2C too)
Here's an interesting case study about how Eloqua ran a project on Facebook company page optimisation.
We've summarised some tips based on this project run by BrandGlue, which grew the Eloqua Fan page by 2,500 percent, increased Facebook-referred traffic by 150% and increased Fan engagement to about 3x industry averages. The creative was executed by JESS3 and PageLever supplied the data. These are main learnings we took from the case:
1. Know Facebook's "Golden ratio"
The overall Facebook ratio for status updates is:
27% have a comment
73% have a like
The study show the breakdown for B2B and B2C; they're similar:
2. Start by stopping.
If you fall behind this target avoid:
Declarative status updates
Text-only status updates
Inconsistent posts
Repetitive topics
Back-to-back frequency
Don't forget referral sources - 92% of referrals within Facebook…
How NOT to use social media to communicate
It's confession time. At some stage or other I have probably committed most of these crimes while posting to social media. Some I still do on a nearly daily basis, although am trying to unlearn them. How do you score?
1. Using social media as a one-way broadcast communication medium. Not listening, engaging or responding.
2. Endlessly discussing what you had for breakfast and other minutiae. It gives social media a bad name.
3. Not having a profile pic. Signals newbie, spammer or Grandad.
4. Not thinking twice before you post/tweet. It's there forever. Ditto posting when drunk.
5. Jumping into conversations where you're unknown rather than listening first. Especially if your first contribution is to recommend your own product.
6. Blatant selling.
7. Emoticons. How old are you?
8. Posting a link with no explanatory text. Do you really want people to click on it or are you a spammer?
9.…
Facebook releases new marketing advice for businesses
Value: [rating=4]
Recommended link: http://www.facebook.com/business
Our commentary: In the first week of August, Facebook announced "Facebook for Business". While this sounds like an attempt to compete with LinkedIn or Google+, in fact it’s just an update to their guidance notes which had been lacking for quite a while.
The most useful guide is this practical download that works for small and large business.
Download "Building your Business with Facebook Pages"
24/11/2011 update - New Facebook Insights features and learning course
Facebook have announced a microsite, www.learnpageinsights.com which steps you through how to use the new features. If you're short on time and who isn't I recommend the "Quick Reference" feature, where you can hover over and see what's what:
Alternatively, Hubspot has a step-by-step guide that's worth a scan if you're a Facebook Admin.
10/10/2011…
Six examples of how to use Facebook company pages for B2B marketing
In my previous post on B2B Facebook page marketing, I outlined the emerging and evolving case for adding Facebook to your B2B marketing arsenal and offered some advice on the type of strategies you might adopt. Here, I'll run through a number of current Facebook sites which show how B2B companies might use the platform to promote their business.
Solid B2B success stories in social media remain few and far between - especially when it comes to Facebook. So, by way of follow up, I wanted to showcase some B2B examples. Despite all the talk of Facebook becoming more mainstream in business, successful B2B case studies are actually pretty thin on the ground. Not surprisingly there is an abundance of consumer examples to choice from. The top five Facebook sites (based on likes) include Coca Cola, Starbucks, Oreo, Red Bull and…
Facebook releases new marketing advice for businesses
Value: [rating=4]
Recommended link: http://www.facebook.com/business
Our commentary: In the first week of August, Facebook announced "Facebook for Business". While this sounds like an attempt to compete with LinkedIn or Google+, in fact it’s just an update to their guidance notes which has been lacking for quite a while.
10/10/2011 update - New Facebook Page Insights guide
We advised last week that Facebook that was introducing two new features and it hasn't taken long for Facebook to roll these out. The main change is that Facebook Page admins will see a new "People Talking About This" measure on the page and in Facebook Insights:
This measure gives you an overall idea of conversations about a brand within the past 7 days. Facebook have introduced a new guide on Page Insights (below) which explains this measure and how…
Facebook announcements at Advertising Week, 02/10/2011
There were a couple of new features trailed for Facebook this week that this alert covers. They're in the "coming real soon" category and the only info that others are reporting on is this post on the Official Facebook Studio site. Details are a bit "thin on the ground right now", so we will look at them in more detail once full access is live.
#1 New Page Insights
A new suite of metrics are to be opened up by Facebook in the "coming weeks", the two metrics are focussed around the extended reach of your page / content, giving you insights into how friends of fans interact with your content as well as metrics such as virality & engagement to each post. The aim is to empower businesses / page owners to further undertand…
6 reasons why B2B marketing can succeed on Facebook
There is a growing premise in business marketing that whilst your website is your shop window to the world, you increasingly need to promote yourself and engage with your audience where your audience congregates. AKA "Swim with the Fishes". So, with well over 600 million users, where better than Facebook?
The case for using Facebook for B2B marketing
1. You just can’t argue with the numbers. Whether it's 600 or 700 million, Facebook is the perfect place to cast the net wide. It is reasonable to assume that some of your target customers will be using the site in some way, shape or form. Mostly, though, for real time information and recommendations - which proves the continued importance of good relationships and word of mouth.
2. Facebook is viral by design. You want your content to spread, get it on Facebook. If it is any…
