Business Branding on Facebook-The Right Way
Today’s most popular social networking site has been suffering from growing pains, mostly surrounding the idea of how to monetize their audience of one half billion members. That’s about 5,000 times the number of people who watch the Superbowl, so you would think that capitalizing on that audience share through advertising would work, but it doesn’t–at least not for the kind of ads Facebook displays and the kind of money advertisers are willing to pay.
Instead, Facebook hopes to build the same sort of success with businesses that they have had with people’s personal pages. They want to be the one place where people go to look for, learn about, and engage with businesses. To accomplish this goal they need to encourage businesses to join Facebook, and that is why they created the Fan Page.
Facebook doesn’t even call them Fan Pages anymore. Instead, they are simply called Pages. Your page lets you build a presence on Facebook, engage with your audience, spread your message, connect with Facebook users on your website, and encourage conversations. Custom tabs can be created to feature coupons, promote specials, share videos, and set up events. It’s a full palette of features, and it’s just for businesses, brands, and non-profit agencies.
The dangerous side of your business presence comes in the way customers perceive your presence. When they are connecting with your business, they may think they are connecting with you. If they have a bad experience with one of your representatives, they may take their complaints to your Facebook Page because they expect this to be the online equivalent of asking to speak to the owner.
To add another complication, what if the person they are complaining about also happens to be one of your Facebook page administrators? That complaint could be deleted and you wouldn’t know about it unless there was an even bigger backlash because of it. Large businesses have marketing, public relations, or customer care groups to handle these situations. But for smaller businesses, there are only two courses I see to this situation. You either need to be your own Facebook Page administrator, or you need to bring in help from outside. This is where the social marketing experts come in.
Social marketing experts can set up your page for you, develop guidelines for Facebook engagement, monitor your presence, promote your brand, and provide a direct channel of communication to the top when there is a problem that needs your attention. This service isn’t free, but in the context of a marketing budget, you should be able to identify a level of service that suits any business.
How is Facebook going to make money with Pages? Nobody knows at this point, but you can be certain that once businesses are engaging with their customers on Facebook, they will not want to stop. In the future, a Facebook Page will likely come with a price tag. But for now, the time is right to add your business to the mix and start connecting with your customers.
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Tags: brand ambassadors > Facebook > social marketing > social media
How Low Does the Bar Go?
I was browsing my Facebook account on my iPhone over my morning espresso and spotted a video that a friend had linked to. My thought was “wow, this is really viral worthy”. I’m sure you’ve done that, too. You see something and it hits that sweet spot between amazing and delightful.
I switched over to the laptop and checked GoDaddy for viralworthy.com and it was available. I grabbed it. I mean, why not? If I could easily post the stuff that I think is really worthy of attention, I become a filter for others. If people happen to like the way I filter, maybe they’ll pay attention to my website.
A few weeks ago I had stumbled upon a site called waxinandmilkin.com that was very simple, just great pictures and comments. It was elegant, simple, and engaging. I liked their taste. I liked it so much that I poked into their source code and saw they used a site called Tumblr to create their blog. I made a mental note–must do something with Tumblr.
You see where this is going, right? In less than 1 hour, http://viralworthy.com went live. I plugged in a few quick favorite videos, a quote about advertising, and set up my Twitter, Gmail, Disqus, and Facebook feeds. I downloaded the Tumblr iPhone app, scheduled a few posts for later release, and I’m rolling. Easy Peasy. Too easy.
The experience has left me with a number of unanswerable questions that can be distilled to this: When creating a web destination is so easy, does it diminish value or enhance value of the web community? I’m glad it’s easy. But I’m also glad that I don’t make my living designing web pages anymore. Both web design and programming have become a commodity. And when the bar is lowered, the noise floor rises exponentially. It becomes increasingly more difficult to find the quality among the rubbish.
The more the bar is lowered, the more filtering we need. The best filters will always be people that you trust and respect. Brands who engage in social media should take notice. The more noise in your channel, the more people will tune you out. Understand what your social media priorities are and keep them in focus. Be dynamic, be personal, but don’t make noise for its own sake. We have enough of that already, thank you.
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Google Gone Viral
Google spent in the neighborhood of $2.5 million to run a commercial during this year’s Super Bowl. Google doesn’t need to advertise, despite the marketing dollars being spent on Microsoft’s Bing. Google gets more brand impressions than anyone. Their logo turns up every single time a Google ad is viewed on a website. Why then, did Google run a Super Bowl ad?
The answer is simple. They knew it would be a touchdown. It had already run on YouTube for months prior to the Super Bowl, and garnered more than 1 million views. People liked it, and shared their feedback. Smart advertisers test before they spend their budget on placement. One million voices said “run it”.
The real genius behind Google’s Parisian Love commercial is that it’s incredibly easy to riff on. By this time next year, Parisian Love may prove to be the most parodied and imitated commercial of all time. You don’t need actors, animation chops, or even Photoshop. With a few basic software tools, wit, humor, and a tendency toward the subversive, you can create your own version of Parisian Love in an afternoon. And when you do, it will most likely end up on YouTube, another Google property. They really can’t lose.
Let’s see what delightfully deviant ideas spring out of Parisian Love, and see if we can measure the “viral-ness” of Google’s Super Bowl investment.
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Texting Acronym Glossary
Online chat has been around for a long time, even longer than you might think. Chat was popular on BBS systems and online services that pre-date the web by as much as a decade, and many shorthand acronyms came from that time. ROFL was one of those puzzling responses a “newbie” might come across. It made no sense if you didn’t see it in context. But if it immediately followed something outrageously funny that someone posted, you might figure out that it was shorthand for “rolling on the floor, laughing”.
With Facebook, massively multiplayer online games, Twitter and Skype, chat remains a popular means of communication, though it’s usually referred to as “texting” now. If you’re new to text messaging, you might be confused by some of the acronyms you encounter. Here’s a glossary that will get you started on the right foot. Read more
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Apple’s Next Big Thing
The rumor mill is churning about an impending tablet computer from Apple. Referred to as the iSlate by those who like to step out on a limb, the device is supposed to have many iPhone-like features including gesture navigation and a touch-sensitive screen. If you have faith in Apple as a technology innovator, you may think it’s going to be the greatest gadget of 2010, or you might think that it will be just another tablet-PC flop. I think the former is true, and here’s why. Read more
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Is a Content Management System in Your Future?
Websites are going through a transition, but when haven’t they? Sites used to be coded in HTML, then evolved through Flash applications, style sheet layouts, and Javascript interactivity. The best way to build changes almost as quickly as popular fashion. If your site is at least three years old, there’s a good chance that it’s out of fashion. Read more
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Standing Out is Good, Resonating is Much Better
Driving to work yesterday I noticed a billboard that was hung upside-down. I glanced at it out of the corner of my eye and wondered if the outdoor advertising company hired idiots to hang their boards. Later that day, I saw the same billboard in another location, also upside-down. I felt sorry for the guys who had to hang it, because they probably have more sense than the people who told them how to do their job. Read more
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To Flash or Not To Flash?
Advertising agencies love Flash sites because you can create a visually rich presentation experience that is unique and fresh. Many brands love Flash for the same reasons. But Flash has come under fire in recent years for a variety of reasons. From a workflow perspective, Flash is such a controlled environment that it is much more difficult to add content and new navigation items than is possible with a content managed HTML site. And from a search engine perspective, Flash doesn’t help your efforts to be discovered. Read more
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Activating Social Change Through Social Media
Do you believe computers can change the world? In 1992 I fell into a debate with my then-girlfriend about computer technology and online communities. To her, computers were a waste of time, a distraction from things that really mattered. She was a writer. She wrote with pen and pad. I was a computer junkie, desktop publisher, and online forum moderator. I wrote too, but my writing was conversational and with people I only knew through my screen and keyboard. Read more
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Learn to Recognize the Conversation Killer
Have you ever come across a conversation like this, either on line or in person?
Person 1: I’d like to know what people think about the color Red. Red is used frequently, but is it the best color? Can Red be improved? Let’s talk about it. Read more
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