Author: Cate Owen

Facebook have released a best practice guide to Facebook marketing. It’s in-depth and useful, but also involved, so I thought I’d summerise for you.

Here’s the key points.

Facebook say there are five guiding principles to great social marketing:

1. Build a strategy that is first and foremost social, and integrated into broader marketing and business objectives
2. Create an authentic brand voice by being straightforward and consistent.
3. Make it interactive – always engage in two-way conversations and create content that people will be excited to pass along.
4. Nurture relationships. Stay in touch, reward loyalty and keep content easy to consume. Think long-term.
5. Get feedback in real time and use reporting tools to learn about your fans.

They then expand upon these areas – I’ve left my thoughts under their points.

Foster product development and innovation

“Facebook allows you to learn about your audience… For this reason, Facebook can be used to generate new product ideas and innovation.”

Know your audience, and allow the conversaion to be led by them – albeit in keeping with your guidelines. I’ve found doing this gives your fans page ownership and the freedom to make some interesting and insightful suggestions!

Generate Awareness

“Once you have created a Facebook page, it is time to generate awareness.”

In a nutshell, Facebook want you to buy their ads. They are cheap, effective, and can be highly targeted. It’s a shame they don’t let you book in $NZD or access non-standard ad types without an agency, but it’s still a cost-effective way to build your brand.

Don’t forget to put links to your Facebook page throughout your website – turn your visitors into subscribers with a click of a button.

Drive preference and differentiation

“On Facebook, people discover your brand through trusted referrals from their friends.”

This is one of the big positives social media has over traditional – personal endorsement much more public, and users are much more likely to engage with brands their friends have recommended. Keep sharability in mind when writing status updates.

Facebook have got a lot of social plug-ins you can use to socialise your website and brand. Use them where appropriate.

Increase traffic and sales

“A combination of word of mouth and your ability to deepen engagement with your customers at the point of purchase is incredibly powerful at driving traffic and sales.”

Facebook recommend putting like buttons on products, and integrating post-purchase sharing to consumer’s walls. The same could be said for like buttons on articles if you’re a blogger. Facebook also recommends buying Facebook ads to push directly to the point of sale.

Build loyalty and deepen relationships

“Because of the information people share about themselves on Facebook, you can create highly custom and personalized experiences to drive engagement and loyalty.”

Ask questions, listen to the answers, and be responsive. Thank people. Provide exclusive information for Facebook fans. If you’re a multi-national, target updates to users in various countries. I hope that feature will soon extend to cities, but in the meanwhile, try to not alienate users by overwhelming them with information that they can’t act upon.

Amplify recommendation and word of mouth

“Everything you do on Facebook is viral. People expect to discover things on Facebook through their friends.”

Encourage people to like your page – and your status updates. Put the like button on your website. Have fresh, sharable content on your Facebook page. Make everything clickable, shareable, hyperlinked and tidy (check how your links appear in Facebook when put into the URL feature… Is it clean or does it need editing?)

Gain Insights

“Insights can help improve your business by helping you stay aligned with the people you serve.”

Insights: Where would you be without them? Probably shouting into a dark room. Use Facebook ad campaign reports. Use Facebook insights – both on your page and for web. Read your Facebook wall… And when I say “read” I mean “read between the lines.” Sometimes what people don’t say says more than what they do.

Finally, use these tools:

Guide to Facebook ads: facebook.com/adsmarketing
Guide to running competitions on Facebook: facebook.com/promotions_guidelines.php
Social plugins for your site: developers.facebook.com/plugins
Facebook insights: facebook.com/insights

There’s a lot of talk online about the strategy behind brands using social media outlets, but not a lot of leadership.

In fact, many of the companies who are charging the earth for social strategy don’t seem to have that great of a strategy themselves – you know, the smoke and mirrors types.

If you don’t have the basics right, throwing money at marketing and promotion is not going to help you a hell of a lot.

A social media strategy must be bespoke to the brand. It has to take into account the time and money available, the rules of the platforms, best practice, and local culture. It must also fit into an over-arching marketing strategy that’s not just about social.

Brands hoping to pick up an overseas stategy and impliment it into a new culture may find themselves in trouble, just as a brand who flaunts a “she’ll be right” attitude would.

So lets focus on Facebook. As a person who oversees around 130 Facebook pages with members ranging in size from the hundreds to the hundreds of thousands, there’s some basic points I’ve found will help you get it right.

Know your brand, and know what you want from the platform. Are you on Facebook to build brand awareness? Gain insights into your fans? Crowd source? Get hits to your website? Make sales? Without these very basic questions answered – and weighted – you’ll be directionless.

Focus on user engagement, not “like” numbers. Facebook provide brilliant insights. Use them to see your engagement levels, reach, and who your audience actually is. The better your engagment, the “stickier” your updates will be – meaning more people will see them. It’s pretty easy to look at a page with 10,000 fans and be envious, but is anyone actually reading and interacting with status updates? If you’re not getting any likes, wall posts, click throughs or feedback, you’re in trouble.

Keep your hide rate low, and find out why users are hiding your feed. This comes back to using Facebook insights well. If you lost a large number of subscribers one day, follow that day back on your feed. Did you update too often? Were you abrasive or overly advertorial? Once a subscriber hides your feed, it’s hard to win them back. Stay on top of your hide – and unlike – rates.

Keep tabs on what works for your subscribers. Do they ‘like’ pictures or links? Do images of faces work better than logos? At what time of day is posting most effective? Find out what works with your audience, and deliver. Track click throughs and adjust your updates according to which times, words, and link types work best with your audience.

Landing pages explicitly encouraging viewers to “like” your page. It works and it’s worth the time investment to make it happen. Add an extra like button at the bottom, especially if your landing page is long. Keep an eye on which pages are being hit. If you’re getting thousands to your landing page and few on your wall, fix your landing page.

You have a spam filter. Use it wisely. Same goes for tagging users from your status update, and writing on walls as your brand. Tread very, very carefully. Train your audience in acceptable ways to interact with your brand. Set the profanity filter if necessary.

Tips for status updates:

• Keep them brief, and don’t update too often!
• Listen to what your audience is talking about, and use their subjects, phrases and trends as appropriate.
• Users are seeing the update amongst their friend’s updates, so it is easy to appear advertorial. Keep this in mind when posting a status or link.
• Think community building first, promotion second.
• Give subscribers a reason to interact with your update. The more they interact, the better you rank in their algorhythm, and the higher you’ll appear in their sticky feed.

Naturally there are a truckload of things you learn with experience. But you can fast-track your knowledge by correctly using Facebook insights and by paying attention to what works for your audience. Don’t be afraid to experiment, and once you’re familiar with what works, and have a happy wee community, invest some serious money in a campaign or Facebook ads.

Also – and I can’t say this enough – read Facebook’s Terms and Conditions, especially around running competitions, and what is and isn’t acceptable conduct on the Facebook platform.

Even with these few tips and tricks, I think you’ll be able to make some impact with your brands on Facebook. I’d love to hear your insights, please share what’s worked – or not worked – for you.

Follow @CateOwen