Putting Facebook at the centre of communications strategy including 8 techniques to engage Facebook fans
The brand we're featuring in this case has created the third most engaged Facebook Page in the UK. Although Vets Now is the UK's leading provider of Out Of Hours emergency veterinary care, its not a "megabrand", so it really shows what you can achieve if you get the communications strategy right. In this post I'll review what Vets Now set out to achieve and the lessons they have learnt in their online journey.
Whilst many organisations use social media to prop up, or drive traffic to an existing website, Vets Now took the opposite approach. To build a stand alone community of pet owners (quite literally a MumsNet for pet owners), they and their social media agency Fresh Networks decided to…
6 key management issues to include within all social media strategies
Social media marketing is now a mainstream business activity. The State of Social Report 2011 indicating that almost two-thirds of companies say they are now beyond the experimental phase, and are integrating social media efforts with other marketing channels and across business functions. This compares to just over 50% a year ago.
Given this emphasis on social media marketing, in this post I'll review what I see as some of the most important issues arising from marketplace and technology developments in 2011, that need to be considered as part of planning and implementing a social media strategy in 2012.
1. Outsourcing social media
There was a time last year when businesses were being warned away from outsourcing their social media functions. A number of high profile social media mishaps were attributed to the disconnect that can occur when social profiles are out-of-house social, including Eurostar’s…
Our round-up of the best advice on how marketers should respond to the Google Search plus Your World integration
Most are dubbing the latest changes to Google's search engine as some of the largest since its launch. The integration of Google+ with the the new Search plus Your World certainly has the industry buzzing again. As Google's social network grows beyond 90 million users with 60% engaging daily, its influence on personalised search is growing fast and will bring new dimensions to SEO.
Dave Chaffey covered off the initial launch of Google Search plus Your World here if you're looking for an introduction on how it integrates communities, relationships and people into its mainstream search results.
Recommended posts on how to harness Google Search plus Your World
Since its launch, how companies should respond based on the implications for SEO and PPC have been a hot topic. There's been a lot of great advice, so…
You will have 7 days to update within the next few weeks
Value/Importance: [rating=3]
Recommended link: Facebook blog update from 24/01/2012
About this update
You’ll remember the introduction of the Facebook Timeline feature on personal accounts back in September last year?
Well this alert is just a note to say that it will be mandatory for everyone using Facebook within the next week or two. Watch out for the message at the top of your page alerting you that you have seven days to preview and update. I'll need to give it some thought - of course my daughters have had it setup for ages - embarrassing being a late adopter...
Marketing implications of Timeline feature
This is mainly a personal alert to the pending update to your page. The Timeline won’t directly affect company pages since this feature isn’t being made available to these. It will affect placements of ads and…
8 practical techniques you can apply today to increase your online audience
There's much talk and some great examples, around how to best use social media to grow your reach online. But, how do you tackle boosting the audience you reach in a planned, structured way. We've picked what we feel are the most practical and important techniques to help you do just that. We'll add to and evolve this list throughout this year.
1. Target the most relevant audience segments
The fact is that your audience demographic, all the people that you could market to, vary in their importance in two ways - how commercially relevant they are - are they likely buyers, and also how likely your content is going to motivate them to either share and amplify your brand, or drive them further towards purchase.
Though you could theoretically appeal to lots of people, the reality of time and resources…
What are the implications for posting updates to brand Facebook pages?
Value/Importance: [rating=3]
Recommended link: Edge Rank Checker
And the answer is…
“The average Post Lifetime for a Facebook Brand Page Update is 3 hours and 7 minutes"
This nugget is baed on considering that each individual Post has a “lifetime”. A Post is considered dead when the growth in engagement is less than 10% of the largest growth of engagement between hourly snapshots.
This data was sampled for EdgeRankChecker customers for the month of December, 2011 across 500+ Pages and over 30,000 individual Posts. The average Page size was approximately 140,000. Page size was not found to effect this.
Of course averages, are just well, averages. So the study also looked at individual pages, Average Post Lifetimes for individual Pages were also examined: some Pages averaged a Post Lifetime of approximately 10…
New Global survey reveals variation in Facebook ad clickthrough rates and cost per click
Value/Importance: [rating=4]
Recommended link: TBG Digital UK
TBG Digital are one of the largest agencies managing Facebook advertising campaigns worldwide, so it’s interesting to see their summary of trends in effectiveness in Facebook advertising across different sectors. This new research, released today, is based on 326 billion impressions for 266 clients across 205 countries.
Facebook advertising clickthrough rates
Although we only have an index rather than absolute clickthrough rates, it’s interesting to see that clickthrough varies dramatically across sector:
As would be expected lifestyle-related sectors are highest, but transactional sectors like Retail, Travel and Computer and Electronics aren’t significantly lower. As might be expected Finance is at the base of the league table.
Facebook advertising cost-per-click (CPC) rates
Again it would be good to have…
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…
Currently available on Google.com only
Importance: [rating=5]
Value: [rating=1]
Source: Google Official Blog annoucement
Make no mistake, Google's bold start to 2012, announced this week will have a massive impact on digital marketing in the years ahead if it retains its current form. Although the change has been widely covered, even in the main stream media, you may not have seen it yet since it's not available, in local engines the UK, Europe or elsewhere. We will let you know when it is.
How big a change is this?
If you've seen the Google.com site you'll know it's a big change for the user experience and the way companies gain visibility - so it will have big marketing implications we think. But in our discussions at Smart Insights, we've been arguing about how big the impact will be. It does depend on the type of search…
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…
