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How Businesses Should Respond to the New Facebook Platform

September 22, 2011 by Susan Hanshaw Leave a Comment

President Obama and Mark Zuckerberg talk before a private meeting with technology business leaders in Woodside, CA Feb.17, 2011. (Also pictured, from left: Art Levinson of Genentech, Steve Westly of The Westly Group, and Eric Schmidt of Google.)

Today set in motion a game changer in the world of social networking as we know it. In its F8 news conference, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other key players announced some significant changes to the platform that we see as revolutionizing the concept of social networking and will greatly impact the role of Facebook in user’s lives.

Change #1: The Timeline

Up until now a Facebook profile has been used to share updates, photos, links, etc. that go into a stream that goes back as far as anyone has the energy to click deeper into. It has been simply a stream of content you have shared since the time you began participating on Facebook.

Today Facebook announced the “Timeline”. The Timeline puts order to the shared content in a way that chronicles your life. For example, you can click on a link to a particular year where you will see the photos you shared, status updates describing what you were doing or where you went.

The Timeline is a game changer because the Timeline changes what Facebook is. Facebook has grown from being a social sharing service to a service that chronicles your life for you and anyone else who wants to get to know you.

Change #2: Heavy Emphasis on Social Apps

Facebook’s social graph has fostered a mentality where we look to the content we see from our friends and trust their recommendations more than advertising or algorithms. Expect to see a volume of apps that are designed to enable consumers to share what they are reading, listening to, cooking, buying, etc. so that friends can be introduced from a trusted source.

What this Means for Businesses

There has been no mention of business pages in the last 48 hours since Facebook began unveiling the new platform, yet our instincts are tied to the implications that Facebook is becoming a more personally meaningful platform in the user’s eye.

We have always seen that Facebook fans are not very different than fans of fan clubs from back in the day. While fans may like your products or services, they are probably more interested in learning about the people that make it all happen. As the Timeline becomes a chronicle for your fans’ lives, consider adjusting your page content to align with that vision. Increase the content you share about your key players and team, activities and missions you’re involved with.

To succeed in this revolution, you’ll need to think of Facebook not as a place to focus on your products and services, but rather a focus on who the people are that make it all happen. What do you see that I have missed?

Filed Under: facebook Tagged With: f8 2011, Facebook timeline, Mark Zuckerberg, social apps

2 Key Prospecting Strategies for Facebook Pages

May 10, 2011 by Susan Hanshaw Leave a Comment

Facebook is so much more than just a community management platform. Not only does the world’s largest social network enable you to stay top of mind with clients and prospects and build loyalty, it now provides brands with a rich environment for prospecting.

Changes released mid-February 2011 opened up the platform to enable pages to engage with other pages. This powerful new feature inspired 2 new Facebook marketing strategies which have produced some exciting results for our clients’ visibility and page growth:

Strategy #1: Network with other pages to gain visibility

Think of Facebook prospecting like identifying lists that reach your target customer. Instead of email or postal lists, identify Facebook pages that your target customers like. Then go to those pages, like them on behalf of the brand and engage with the page and its fans. Your comments and likes will drive viewers of the page back to your page, providing you with the opportunity to convert the visitor into a new fan.

Strategy #2: Test custom landing pages to inspire new visitors to like your page

There are numerous third party apps which enable you to create custom landing pages that will help you to convert fans at a higher rate than the wall itself. Growing up in the magazine industry, I learned how subtle changes in copy, offers and packages can make a significant difference in response. I encourage you to develop an ongoing program of testing landing pages to determine what works best for your brand.

Photo credit: digitalart

Filed Under: facebook Tagged With: Facebook custom landing pages, Facebook page engagement, facebook prospecting

Is Your Facebook Copy Working For You?

June 16, 2010 by Susan Hanshaw Leave a Comment

In the couple of years that I have been involved with social media marketing, I have seen much correlation between what what works for driving engagement and what works to drive a direct marketing response. I have become convinced that there is one area of focus that is sorely overlooked by brands seeking to build a vibrant and constantly growing Facebook community. There lacks an attention to the influence of copy.

Over the years I have pushed hundreds of millions of offers out to consumers and learned that what drives response holds true to the old folk wisdom—

“It’s not what you say, but how you say it.”

I have seen numerous tests where a different set of words or something else said or not said can produce a variance that can amount to a huge pile of cash to the bottom line.

Translating this idea to today’s social media world, most Facebook marketers haven’t quite realized that the Wall is a vehicle for generating response and that post copy should be formulated with care. Don’t let the real-time nature of the platform fool you into thinking that your messages should not require some planning.

5 tips for writing effective Facebook updates:

Speak to your fans in a style that makes them feel like you are addressing them individually. Develop the message to read like you were speaking 1:1.
Keep it short. No more than 4 lines in the post wherever possible. Make every word play a role in the message. Eliminate those that don’t.
Say something designed to inspire enthusiasm or emotion. Keep in mind that many Facebook users are hunting for posts to like and comment. Give them a reason to stop at yours.
Create sentences that flow smoothly. Awkward wording can lead to abandoned eyes.
Always have a photo or a link with an image attached to the post. Pictures are more engaging and heart-inspiring than flat text.

I’d love to hear any tips you have to add!

Filed Under: facebook Tagged With: Dean Guadagni, direct marketing social media, facebook, inner architect, napa social media, San Rafael social media, social media, social media marketing, social media strategies, Susan Hanshaw

How to Measure Your Facebook Marketing Efforts

December 6, 2009 by Susan Hanshaw 1 Comment

Multi-ethnic businesspeople having meeting

One thing I have learned in managing Facebook business pages is that you can’t judge what’s really going on from the surface. The real story lies within your Insights. If you are not using these Facebook metrics, you are not taking your marketing efforts seriously.

Unfortunately, getting a clear understanding of what efforts are producing what results is not something you can do in a snap. It takes time to put all the pieces together, but that is the reality in effectively measuring any marketing campaign. If you don’t spend the time to understand what’s working, you miss the opportunity to get as much as possible from your Facebook investment.

What you need to piece together your results:

Facebook Insights
History of messages
Knowledge of what other efforts were influencing traffic to your page

What you should look for depends on what your Facebook goals are. If your business sells products or services directly to consumers, then page views are an important metric as you should be including product or service offers in your messaging strategy. The more times each fan visits your page, the more times they are exposed to your offers.

Certainly comments and likes are important as they influence Facebook’s perception of your page’s importance to a fan, and ultimately your place in their news feed. But don’t assume that no likes or comments means that nobody is visiting your page. Studying your Insights will show you otherwise.

If you would like some help with learning how to measure your own Facebook efforts, we offer training and ongoing page management. Please contact me for more information.

Filed Under: facebook Tagged With: Dean Guadagni, facebook, facebook page marketing, facebook page measurement, facebook roi, inner architect, napa social media, San Rafael social media, social media marketing, social media ROI, social media strategies, Susan Hanshaw, winery direct to consumer, winery marketing, winery social media

Facebook Blog Widgets Provide Powerful Viral Marketing Opportunities

November 9, 2009 by Dean Guadagni Leave a Comment

Social media Marketing Directors often concentrate their efforts on building brand awareness through blogging, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. One strategy is often forgotten: becoming a fan of a prominent company or blogger’s Facebook page.

Done strategically on Facebook pages, the simple act of becoming a Facebook fan could produce great viral opportunities for your products and services.

Become a Fan of a Prominent Facebook Page:

Many blogs with massive traffic (Mashable), have Facebook fan page widgets. These Facebook widgets, sitting in a prime area of the blog, display pictures of each new registered fan (or logo) as well as the link to that fan’s own blog or website.

New blog readers, who come to these blogs, can simply roll their cursor over a picture, within the Facebook widget, to find the name and link back to that person or company’s blog. This becomes a pathway to content providing instant viral marketing possibilities.

Mashable.com: Viral Marketing Dreams Are Made

See the shot below of the Mashable Facebook widget:

With over 60,000 Facebook fans and an Alexa ranking of 483, Mashable.com is one of the most well read sites in the world according to the statistical sampling done by Alexa. Likewise, Dan Schawbel is one of the most prominent social media writers in the blogosphere today.

The Results

Our CEO Inner Architect’s Susan Hanshaw was displayed in the Facebook fan page widget on the Mashable page for Dan Schwabel’s article. This placement helped bring an additional 40 readers to our blog the day the article was posted.

We also found on the Mashable widget friend and associate Pat Kitano principle of Domus Consulting Group and former workshop attendee Ellen Richman.

Filed Under: facebook Tagged With: blogging and facebook strategies, Dean Guadagni, facebook strategies, Facebook viral marketing, Facebook widget, innerarchitect, Susan Hanshaw

What Marketers Need to Know About the Facebook News Feed

October 27, 2009 by Susan Hanshaw Leave a Comment

Over the past few days, Facebook has unleashed an overhaul of their news feed that I believe has implications for marketers that go deeper than the surface. With hundreds of thousands of Facebook users revolting, only time will tell how long this particular feature will remain in its current design. In any event, one trend does seem clear. Like the sidebar Highlights that proceeded this particular redesign, Facebook seems to be in favor of delivering content that is based on a user’s prior engagement history.

What has changed?

Prior to this redesign, users would log on and see their home page streaming the most recent updates from all their friends and all the pages they are fans of in reverse chronological order. Now Facebook has changed this landing page to include only the stories they believe the user will be most interested in based on an algorithm that looks at the user’s prior engagement history.

A number of my Facebook friends today were passing on tips on how to configure their settings to see all their updates on their home page proves that there are users who dislike the filtering enough to learn how to disable it. Yet these types of users are not the majority, so any business using Facebook as a channel for delivering marketing messages to customers must understand the implications of the new feed.

Marketing implications of the new feed

The bottom line is that Facebook’s algorithm is determining what level of importance your message is to your fan. Facebook decides whether your message should be included in the landing page News Feed, or whether your fan will need to click on the Live Feed option to find your message with all the others from their friends and pages which didn’t make the cut of importance.

In order for your Facebook messages to be effective, they first need to be seen. You can increase the chances of your messages getting seen by increasing your chances of getting them picked by the Facebook algorithm as important or relevant stories.

Clues to what Facebook deems important or relevant

I will not pretend to be an expert on Facebook algorithms, but observations I have made from studying the updates selected for my own News Feed give me some insight about how updates get chosen.

Criteria I have observed:

Updates from people I have sent direct messages to recently
Updates from people I have commented on the most
Exact keyword match with another status update I commented on

How to use this information

Once you understand a bit about what Facebook looks at, you can then begin to incorporate this knowledge into your messaging strategy.

Do you have more observations to add from your experience? I’d love to learn and pass them along here.

Filed Under: facebook Tagged With: Dean Guadagni, direct marketing social media, facebook marketing strategies, facebook page, inner architect, napa social media, San Rafael social media, social media, social media marketing, social media strategies, Susan Hanshaw, web 2.0, wine club marketing, wine marketing, winery social media, winery social media marketing

3 Basic Keys to Direct Marketing on Facebook

October 20, 2009 by Susan Hanshaw 2 Comments

Those of us who have been marketing directly to consumers since the 1980′s or before have experienced the evolution of channels from mailbox to internet and email. My work now involves encouraging clients to begin to look at Facebook as another prime environment for managing communications with customers and prospects.

While thousands of companies have hopped on board Facebook from pure instinct that they need to be there, few really understand Facebook well enough to be able to design a contact strategy that is effective.

What follows is a primer meant to help you to relate the old ways to the new.

Key #1: Think of Facebook as a public online environment for building your “house” lists. In days past, we’ve referred to this process as acquiring names and addresses. We can thank Facebook for adding a human element by introducing the term “fan”.

Your fans will include:

Current or past customers
People who are becoming familiar with your company

Key #2: Think of Facebook as a public online environment for broadcasting messages to your fans and visitors to your page who are not fans.

These messages are:

Broadcast on your page wall
Streamed into your fans’ news feed

Key #3: Think of Facebook as a private online environment for sending messages to your fans.

Messages are delivered to your fans’ inbox as status updates
Updates can be sent to all fans
Updates can be targeted

Questions? I’m happy to answer them.

Filed Under: facebook Tagged With: Dean Guadagni, direct marketing social media, direct to consumer marketing, facebook business strategies, facebook marketing strategies, facebook page, inner architect, social media marketing, social media strategies, Susan Hanshaw, web 2.0, wine club marketing, wine marketing, winery social media

5 Steps to an Effective Facebook Page Marketing Strategy

June 30, 2009 by Susan Hanshaw 3 Comments

Having come from the world of direct marketing, the importance of a strategy is well ingrained in me. Yet I recognize that the world of social media is very different. Our goal as social media marketers is to create relationships that are mutually beneficial, not convert individuals to buyers in one single action.

It seems we are evolving as a species. We’ve got sales marketing down to a science, and now we are just beginning to understand the art of reaching out to individuals for the pure sake of building a relationship.

Consider these 5 Steps for building an effective marketing strategy for your Facebook Business Page:

1. Create awareness. How?

Provide links to guide traffic to and from your web/blog site
Create content that people will share. This is where the viral power of Facebook kicks in.

2. Educate your audience about who you are

Connect with individuals on a personal level to give them an understanding of the human factor behind the business
Let your audience know what service you have to offer them
Deliver content that motivates viewers to become fans
Work on building your fan base to enhance the credibility of your page

3. Create opportunities for engagement to strengthen your relationships.

The deeper that your fans engage with you, the stronger the relationship becomes.
Deliver a high volume of content that will inspire comments and participation.

4. Produce ongoing efforts to inspire a call to action. New fans are not likely to make a huge commitment out the gate. Make a habit of offering low-risk steps they can take to get more involved with you such as discount coupons, a newsletter subscription, free downloads of value

5. Repeat engagement and call-to-action efforts. Think of your Facebook page as an opportunity to build relationships, not generating one-time sales or actions. You will be successful in generating valuable long-term customer relationships through repeated engagement.

Filed Under: facebook Tagged With: Dean Guadagni, engaging strategies, facebook business page, facebook business strategies, facebook marketing, relationship marketing, social media, social media marketing, Susan Hanshaw

Facebook Advanced Search Application Delivers Drilled Down Targeting Power

June 5, 2009 by Susan Hanshaw Leave a Comment

Having spent 12 years in a former life as a list broker, I probably have a very different perspective on how to find targeted prospects than the average social media marketer. Having had to identify the most likely buyers for offers than ranged from Soviet-inspired gifts to incontinence products to patio spas, one thing I’ve learned is that razor sharp targeting requires digging. And it’s in the digging that you find the gold.

Facebook Groups: A Marketing Opportunity

Facebook Groups offer the ability to reach numbers of people who gather around a particular affinity. As social media marketers, these Groups provide us with the opportunity to engage and create relationships with people who are likely to have an interest in what we have to offer. We just need to identify the right Groups. It sounds easy, right? Well it is if you have the patience of a saint. Or if you have discovered the Advanced Search Application for Facebook.

Advanced Search Application: Dig for Your Gold

The problem with using the standard Facebook search to locate Groups is Facebook’s limited options for filtering a vast number of results. You’re either stuck wading through hundreds of Groups that match a broad search, or you can tighten your search so much that nothing shows up. The Advanced Search Application is powered by Google and drills down into the Group contributor content searching for matches. This enables you to uncover golden networking opportunities that would never have matched on Facebook’s standard search.

This application has 33,427 monthly users as I write this, with a 1.9 rating out of 5. I guess that means most people don’t think it’s so great, but there’s that unique targeting perspective I mentioned earlier. You’ve got to dig to find your best customers and this tool certainly does that!

Have you tried it? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Filed Under: facebook Tagged With: Dean Guadagni, faceboogle, facebook advanced search, facebook applications, facebook business strategies, facebook groups, facebook strategies for business, social media marketing, social media strategies, Susan Hanshaw

Target’s Facebook Campaign: Crowdsourcing for Charity

May 13, 2009 by Dean Guadagni 4 Comments

Target , the low cost retailer, bills itself with the tag line “Expect More, Pay Less.” Target is taking this concept one step further in their bid to be the number one social media branded value retailer in the country. Target’s latest social media campaign utilizes Facebook to crowdsource, build their brand, create cause marketing exposure, engage with their audience, and mold their public perception one facebook fan at a time. Here is how they are doing it:

Target’s “Bullseye Gives” Campaign on Facebook

Target, currently allocates 5% of their revenue to charities, is going to give $3 million per week for next few weeks to charities chosen by their fans on Facebook. Here is how it works:

Target’s Facebook fans vote for any of 10 charities to receive donations on the Target Facebook page
Target tallies up the votes and allocates funds on a percentage basis. The example used by Mashable’s Adam Ostrow fits best “if 10 percent of users vote for Salvation Army, that organization will receive 10 percent of the total donations.”

Target’s 10 Charities

Benefits of “Bullseye Gives”

Cause Marketing: provides Target with great perception as humanitarian, caring, and giving
Branding: further strengthens the Target brand as family oriented product provider
Audience: engages their audience by crowdsourcing, providing their audience a voice
Publish: each time you vote you are given the option to “publish” your vote back to your personal Facebook page or your corporate Facebook page.
Viral Marketing: by publishing your choice of charity, the branded (logo) message on your wall places Target top of mind to your network of friends and it provides the potential for your friends to become fans of the Target Facebook page
Tone: the tone is not a hard sell message. Instead it is a participatory campaign, informative campaign, and a gentle message focused on the charities and NOT on Target’s actions

Filed Under: facebook Tagged With: Adam Ostrow, Cause marketing Facebook, Charity and facebook, crowdsourcing, Dean Guadagni, Facebook and Target, facebook strategies, facebook strategies and tips, facebook tips, inner architect, innerarchitect, Mashable Target, social media, social media case study, social media marketing on facebook, Susan Hanshaw, Target, Target Bullseye Gives, viral marketing facebook

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Facebook Blog Widgets Provide Powerful Viral Marketing Opportunities

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