Facebook marketing guide

Smarter Facebook Marketing
Author: Marie Page
Published: October 2013

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Introduction
Section6
ENGAGE
Section7
Resources
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CONVERT
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ACT
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REACH
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PLAN
© Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Limited. Please go to www.smartinsights.com to feedback or access our other guides.
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Contents
3  ONE
An introduction to marketing with Facebook
34  TWO
PLAN: Developing a Facebook strategy
51  THREE
REACH: Reaching your audience through Facebook
64  FOUR
ACT: Encouraging interaction with Facebook
93  FIVE
CONVERT: Turning Facebook interaction into leads and sales
97  SIX
ENGAGE: Keeping your audience engaged
111  SEVEN
Resources

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An introduction to marketing with Facebook
What is Facebook?
Does Facebook need introducing, it’s the most trafficked social media site in the world.
Facebook can potentially connect a company to a huge swathe of potential customers. Since
Facebook collects detailed demographic information about its users and offers targeted ads, it
is possible to be very specific about those you attempt to communicate with.
However, Facebook is a social network. It is not a place where old, interruption-based forms
of marketing are effective. Whilst advertising bucks can indeed deliver new customers and
sales, there is a better way and that way is open to smaller niche brands as much as it is the
big players. In this guide we will explore both approaches, but the emphasis on using the
Facebook company page for branded communications.
Facebook facts and figures
You will know Facebook is big, very big. It has well over one billion monthly active users.
The latest Facebook Key Facts1
, last updated on June 2013 show that 819 million of these
are mobile users logging in at least once a month. Of its members, over half are active daily.
Companies have followed their customers to Facebook with 42 million brand Pages with 10
or more ‘Likes’ (Facebook, 2012). With two-thirds of US online adults visiting Facebook each
month and the average social networking American a Fan of about eight brands on Facebook,
the platform is ‘top of the hot list for marketers’ (Forrester 2012). Facebook influences many
purchase decisions in different ways too as this research by Vision Critical (2013) shows.
1 Facebook Key Facts

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Of course Facebook’s users and the brands they interact with vary by country. Take a look at
this Social Bakers live compilation2
if you need the latest for a report or presentation. You can
drill down to see who is using Facebook effectively in your sector too.
Best Practice Tip 1 Use Social Bakers for benchmarking
Although a paid tool, it also has great free information on popular brands and consumer
demographics.
About this Guide
The aim of this Smarter Guide is to get you started using Facebook for marketing, or if you’re
already set up with a company Page, as many are, to help you use it in a smarter way to
boost your engagement rates and increase your Fan numbers. It’s designed to give you lots
of practical ideas for managing your Facebook Page in a way that facilitates engagement but
doesn’t just trot out the same old tired gimmicks.
We have created it as a practical Guide to give ideas and tips to marketers working
‘hands-on’ in-company or at agencies. To support managers at companies or agencies who
aren’t involved ‘hands-on’, we have also highlighted the main strategic issues to consider
when you are planning the role of Facebook in developing your brand and driving sales.
About the author
This Guide is written by Marie Page who you may know as a regular
Expert Commentator contributing to Smart Insights focusing on
social media marketing and in particular Facebook. Keep a look out
for future posts that will update you on this Guide.3
Marie is co-founder of Musicademy, a specialist e-retailer teaching
2 Social Bakers Facebook Statistics.
3 Smart Insights: Marie Page posts.

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contemporary music on DVD and online. She has grown the business partly through social
media and savvy use of digital marketing. You will see that many of the examples she shares
are taken from her real-world experience on this site.
Marie also teaches and examines for the Chartered Institute of Marketing and a number of
private training providers and universities in the UK and North America including: The IDM;
The Marketers Forum; The Australian College of Marketing; MMCLearning; and on the Digital
Marketing MSc at Manchester Metropolitan University.
A note about referencing
Whilst you won’t normally find Harvard-style academic referencing in the Smart Insights
resources, we wanted to properly reference the research we have carried out in putting this
Smarter Guide together. You’ll find the Bibliography containing our source material at the end
of this ebook.
Statistics
Hopefully you will find these helpful in making a business case yourself for investment in
Facebook, and students who access this Guide will also find these and the sources useful.
Examples
Rather than using the big brand examples you’re familiar with, but aren’t so relevant to many
businesses, the examples we’ve selected in this guide are mainly from small, often niche
businesses. Most can readily be applied to other sectors.
Key factors for success in using Facebook marketing
Before we start working through the Steps, it’s worth pausing to look at the big picture of
which marketing techniques work best within Facebook.
If you’re looking to go straight to the campaign tips we suggest you skip this
introduction where we introduce the fundamentals of success in Facebook.
Whilst Facebook is a great channel for advocates to Share brand experiences with others,
in a 2011 report, Forrester claims that ‘most marketers fail to derive value from those
relationships and engagement rates on brand Pages are in decline’. Many brands simply fail
to remotely tap into the interactive potential Facebook holds for them.
Strategy Recommendation 1 Don’t simply treat Facebook as a broadcast medium
While you can treat Facebook as a broadcast channel, to make the most of the
potential facilitating interaction and sharing are key. You will then take advantage of the
‘amplification’ that is built into Facebook.
In the old days before the ‘dot bomb crash’, it was thought that online marketing was all
about e-commerce, but what sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter have shown us is that
for many individuals and organisations, online marketing is actually all about connections and
networking.
Before we begin, it’s important to consider the conversational aspect of social media, the
paradigm of what Stephen Covey called the Giver’s Gain. This is not pushy, hard-sell
marketing. It’s about getting alongside customers, understanding them and providing them
with interesting, stimulating content and conversation. So you might not end up discussing
your own products much at all. Instead you could be facilitating a discussion about issues in
your industry, pulling together a round-up of all the relevant industry blog posts or filming an
interview with a leading guru.

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This concept – that of ‘content marketing’ – has become one of the hot new topics in
digital marketing in recent years. Pulizzi (2012), founder of the Content Marketing Institute,
describes it as ‘A marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable
content to attract, acquire and engage a clearly defined target audience.’
Recommended resource? Content marketing 7 Steps Guide
Use our content marketing strategy guide to define a plan to develop the most relevant
content to grow your audience through sharing (amplification) and brand appeal. Ultimately
your Facebook marketing effectiveness will depend on this.
As explained in Content Rules by Handley & Chapman (2011) promises that ‘if you can
deliver content that your prospects find interesting and informative and entertaining, they’ll
see you as a trusted source of information - an adviser’.
Often content marketing gurus will be encouraging the development of content on a brand’s
‘owned’ website, but the same principles apply to ‘earned’ media, such as Facebook, too. In
Get Content, Keep Customers (2008) Pulizzi & Barrett state that ‘The one who has the more
engaging content wins, because frequent and regular contact builds a relationship.’
Brands that have engaging content on their Facebook Page spend less on advertising
because engaging content has tremendous organic reach. And not only is reach high, that
content engenders trust.
Facebook marketing should be part of a broader social media strategy too, so if you haven’t
checked out our Social Media Strategy guide you may find that useful too.
Recommended resource? Social media marketing strategy 7 Steps Guide
Our Social media marketing strategy guide explains how to set goals for social media to
support your business and to manage social media in an integrated way across different
platforms.
Definitions
We have a glossary on terms relevant to Facebook users at the end of this section. But
from the outset we have to define those terms that all marketers need to understand. Note
that these terms are specific to Facebook compared to the more generic terms used within
marketing including the Smart Insights RACE (Reach-Act-Convert-Engage) Planning
framework.
þþ Reach – the number of people who have seen any content associated with a Page
(InsideFacebook.com, 2011).
þþ Engagement – an activity like posting a Comment or sharing a story (Nelson-Field and
Taylor, 2012).
þþ Engagement – an interactive and integrative participation in the Fan-page community
(Jahn and Kunz, 2012).
þþ Amplification – where friends of Fans have seen content associated with a Page
(Lipsman et al, 2012). Amplification is synonymous with virality.
Engagement has become the Holy Grail for brands, cited as early as 2007 as ‘marketing’s
new key metric’ (Forrester, 2007). Their framework remains relevant today for assessing the
effectiveness of your overall digital marketing, and Facebook marketing in particular.

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‘Engage or die’ is the marketing catchphrase of the social media era (Field and Taylor, 2012).
You can see the reasons behind this hype, an active Fan may participate 30 times and make
10 recommendations. Fans spend an extra $71.84 on the brand, are 28 percent more likely
to continue using a specific brand and 41 percent more likely than non-Fans to recommend a
product they are a Fan of (Gigaom, 2010).
Facebook only displays updates to an average of only 16 percent of Fans in their streams.
This is partly due to the fact that only about half of all users log on every day and partly
thanks to the Edgerank algorithm (which we will look at in detail in the section on ‘“Affinity” on
page 82). Facebook’s solution to this is that brands should pay to ‘boost’ their posts but an
increased reach is possible organically by increasing engagement, posting more of the kind
of content your Fans like and understanding what type of posts Facebook is more likely to
give high visibility to. Understanding what drives Edgerank is key to success in Facebook.
What is it? Edgerank
Edgerank is an algorithm Facebook uses in order to determine what should appear on a
user’s News Feed by looking at your interactions and your interests so that it can show you
what you most want to see. An ‘Edge’ is every interaction you’ve ever had on Facebook,
and when Edgerank filters your News Feed, it’s showing you the people and posts you’ve
shown the most interest in. The Edgerank algorithm is based on three factors – Affinity,
Edge Weight and recency.
The algorithm changed fairly dramatically in late 2012 (just after the publication of the first
edition of this Guide). Posts containing images were downgraded and plain text updates
upgraded.
Outside Facebook no one knows the exact algorithm that is followed, and we suspect minor
tweaks occur regularly.
The benefits of engaging with customers
Multiple bodies of research show relationships between engagement and value with
committed consumers providing five to eight times the value of an average consumer
(Woodcock et al, 2011).
Kim et al (2008) found that online community commitment is a driver for brand commitment
demonstrating that such consumers possess stronger brand commitment than those who are
not community members.

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Citing considerable academic literature, Jahn and Kunz (2012) reflect that customers can
increasingly act as co-creators and multipliers of brand messages which enables enormous
amplification effects creating word-of-mouth marketing. Companies should, therefore,
support as much interactivity as possible.
Average engagement rates for Facebook’s top 200 brands
Nelson-Field and Taylor (2012) surveyed Facebook’s top 200 brands over six weeks to
understand the degree to which brands engage. They found in any given week less than 0.5
percent of Facebook Fans engage with their brands. Only one Page showed engagement
over two percent, and only 10 percent reached one percent.
Amplification
Amplification has been described as perhaps the most important, and least understood,
element of achieving brand reach and resonance on Facebook (Lipsman et al, 2012). It is the
viral potential of the network that can help your content spread to other potential Fans and
customers.
What is it? Amplification
Amplification is the viral effect. The idea behind amplification is that Fans who are reached
with brand messages can also serve as a conduit for brand exposure to Friends within their
respective social networks. Because the average Facebook Fan has hundreds of Friends,
each person has the ability to potentially reach dozens of Friends with earned impressions
through their engagement with brand messages.
Due to factors like Fan Reach, the average brand message from the Top 1,000 brands on
Facebook are able to deliver an actual amplification of 81x if their efforts are maximised.
(Lipsman, Mudd, Aquino, & Kemp, 2012).
Scissons (2011) reviewed engagement data for 300 top brands on Facebook over a year
finding that engagement of leading brands was down 22 percent. He claims marketers
have led to this decline by ‘dissing audiences with bad content, coupons, polls, contests,
and boring filler’. The few brands not in decline (Deutsch, Renault, Hermes, Lowe’s and
Chanel) didn’t necessarily have the most Fans, but daily ‘performed magic’ to keep their
Fans engaged. As Sinha et al (2011) note, to be effective, a brand needs to resonate with
customers.
Who is using Facebook?
Before you (or your boss) suggest that Facebook is only for students (that doesn’t still
happen does it?), did you know that 55–65-year-olds are the fastest growing segment on
Facebook?
A study from the AARP – formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons
– shows that baby boomers in the 50-years-old-or-better age bracket are ‘cool with the
Internet, down with Facebook, hip to the iPad and not just using the web to spy on their kids
and grandkids’. The AARP interviewed 1,360 adults over the phone and found that more
than a quarter (27 percent) of Americans age 50 and older use social networks. Facebook is
the most popular – in fact, 23 percent of all survey respondents said they preferred it to sites
such as MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter. Another study from eMarketer showed that boomers
and seniors were flocking to Facebook.
Managing expectations for the potential of Facebook
While Facebook is clearly the leading social network it has some stiff competition from the

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likes of Google Plus (G+), LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest each of which have particular
features and advantages. People often see it as a domestic social network, using LinkedIn,
G+ and Twitter for business interests. As such, business-to-business (B2B) companies can
struggle to get traction. You probably also noticed the tens of millions of brand Pages on
Facebook in the Introduction; so competition for Fans and engagement is tough too.
In the US Facebook is the number four traffic source to content Pages (Outbrain, 2011).
Social networks ranked fourth on the list of successful acquisition tactics for manufacturers
selling direct to consumer, indicating that this sector is able to leverage social networks to
drive engagement with their brands and promote peer-to-peer sharing (Mulpuru, 2011).
However, her report showed that less than one percent of online transactions in a group of
major US retailers could be directly attributed to social media.4
Other channels like search
and email marketing remain important for sales, indeed they offer great opportunities for
integrating with social media. But Facebook is increasingly popular for the softer goals such
as awareness, trust and buying intent.
Best Practice Tip 2 Review sector use of Facebook by brands in your market
To help set realistic expectations amongst clients it’s useful to sample Facebook pages in
your sector.
Social Bakers can help here again. The next chart takes the example of Kitchen and
Cookware companies registered with Social Bakers. This can be useful for finding some of
the leading adopters in a sector and a country.
However, it’s good to click through to the Pages in order to learn. Approaches that work for
big brands such as these can often be adapted at a more local level. And if you work on
building your Fanbase organically (rather than simply through competitions and advertising),
you are likely to grow a more engaged audience. The aim of this Smarter Guide is to show
you how
Why is Facebook so popular?
Through understanding the reasons behind Facebook’s popularity, we can harness these
driver of its popularity. Research by Dr BJ Fogg, of the Stanford University Persuasive
Technology Lab defines three main reasons for its probable success:
þþ Facebook helps us express identity – we join Groups to express who we are, where we
are from and what we like.
þþ Facebook helps us show support for other people or causes.
4 SmartInsights: Forrester: ‘Facebook and Twitter do almost nothing for sales’.

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þþ Facebook is a place for us to have fun – Groups with crazy titles, campaigns for
ridiculous achievements (Rage Against the Machine for Christmas Number 1 anyone?)
(From Perks & Sedley, Winners & Losers in a Troubled Economy, p 49)
Why do people follow brands on Facebook?
Research by Econsultancy (2011b) found that the most common reason for people to follow
brands on Facebook was to be notified of special offers (70 percent). Other reasons included
shopping (38 percent), to follow events (38 percent) and to leave feedback (29 percent).
Econsultancy’s respondents typically followed between two and five brands, though 35
percent were following more than five brands. Thirteen percent of respondents said they
followed more than 10 brands on Facebook. People typically discover Facebook Pages via
the company website, or having been recommended by a friend. Almost 60 percent of people
have recommended a brand to friends.
People primarily unsubscribe from Pages if they are dull, or not updated frequently enough.
They’ll also bail out if there are too many updates or if they see too many sponsored/boosted
posts and ads. It’s important to find the right balance for your audience.
Strategy Recommendation 2 Define the value you can offer in Facebook that fits your
brand
Research shows that many Facebook users are looking for value, so to maximise Fan
growth you have to go beyond content curation and offer unique value to Facebook which
isn’t available in other channels.
To find effective promotions within your industry use Social Bakers to see which brands have
rapid growth in the last week or the month. For example, we looked at the Health and Beauty
category and found this rather nice cross-channel social media campaign #kissoftheyear.
Research5
about US social media users suggest a similar phenomenon with a focus on
promotions and giveaways.
5 Lab42 survey of 1000 US social media users.

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Assessing whether Facebook investment is right for your brand
As always, decisions to use a particular marketing tactic should not be taken as a knee-jerk
reaction. Just because the boss thinks you should be on Facebook, or because all the
competition are, is not necessarily justification for a lot of investment by your company.
Facebook may be ‘free’, but the time resource can be considerable. And in terms of value for
your brand, it’s arguably better to do nothing than get it wrong – remember that quote about
brands ‘dissing audiences with boring filler’?
How does Facebook ‘sit’ in relation to your brand? Your Facebook Page will need to be an
extension of your brand personality. Is the platform right for that? Do you have the skills-base
to create content delivered in the right tone? Do you have a culture of two-way engagement
with customers, or are most of your communications to date one-way, not really embracing
the opportunities of web 2.0? Do you have the resources to monitor and manage it 24/7?
So talk to customers. Are they on Facebook? How are they using it? Do they follow (Like)
or interact with similar brands on Facebook? Would they like an occasional update in their
newsfeed from you? A simple survey will yield you a lot of information. You can also use the
survey as an opportunity to see what kinds of content customers would like you to publish.
Look at the competition. What are they doing on the platform? How many Fans do they
have? What levels of engagement do they enjoy? What can you learn from them? What can
you do better?
Look at brands in other sectors. Are they delivering the kind of content that you could mimic,
making it relevant for your audience?

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Using an agency
If you don’t have the skills mix or time in-house, outsourcing your Facebook Page to a
specialist agency or consultant is one option. Not only will they be able to deliver content
that requires specialist know-how (such as a Welcome Page or apps to run competitions)
but should be able to coach your staff with a view to ultimately passing responsibility back
in-house. Some agencies will offer a weekend cover service so that your Page is monitored,
and Comments replied to 24/7.
Pages such as the hugely popular Park Bench and Scratching Post from Vets-Now were set
up by agency Fresh Networks working closely with Vets-Now’s in-house team. Together they
are responsible for content strategy and monitoring day-to-day activity on the Pages. As their
success on Facebook has grown, the organisation has employed a Community Manager
and also branched out to develop a standalone community outside of (but still fed on a daily
basis) by Facebook.
Tools to help manage your Facebook Page
Managing Facebook, particularly alongside other social media networks is time consuming.
While good practice is to post directly to each network, to review and report on each works
best with an integrated set of tools.
Strategy Recommendation 3 Invest in tools to help reduce time in posting, interacting and
reviewing in Facebook and across other social media networks.
A modest outlay in social network management tools will save you time, while more
sophisticated community building tools can help engage your audience and run promotional
campaigns across different networks.
Social network management tools enable companies to regularly interact with their audience
on the main social networks and track the results of these interactions.
What is it? Social network management tool
Software or services to post, schedule and track the response to social media updates
across multiple platforms. Sprout Social is an excellent example of such a tool and you can
get a month’s free trial to experiment with what it has to offer.

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Key functions of these social network management tools include the capability to use these
across the different social networks:
þþ Post the same status updates to multiple channels at the same time (although we’d
normally recommend tailoring updates by channel).
þþ Reply to Comments and questions for delivering customer service and pre-sales support.
þþ Tracking and reporting on sharing and click-through from these updates.
þþ Review updates from publishers and other influencers.
þþ Review Comments from named competitors or hashtag topics (basic social listening
features).
Best Practice Tip 3 Consider Hootsuite as a free tool for updating your company page
Hootsuite is another option for this functionality and has good support for Facebook pages.
To see which tools are available it’s useful to see which brands are using some of the other
tools available and their popularity – see this post for a review of the most popular.6
Online platforms are becoming increasingly available that publish interactive campaign
features too as well as status updates. For more information on these tools including an
in-depth review see this Expert member’s Guide.7
What is it? Social campaign or community management platform
Services which enable marketers to use different types of engagement devices within social
networks. They can also be considered to be community-building tools.
The main advantage of these tools is that you do not have to develop an application in-house
or use an agency. Key functions of social campaign management platforms:
þþ Enable interactive engagement devices to be deployed to run campaigns particularly
within Facebook, i.e. they go beyond posting text, images and videos.
þþ Examples of engagement devices include promotions, surveys, quizzes, coupons and
sweepstakes.
Why should you be using Facebook? Business benefits
Here is a checklist of reasons that you may find useful to build into your business case for
6 Smart Insights: The post popular social media management tools.
7 Smart Insights Expert members report: services for managing Facebook campaigns.

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more investment in Facebook.
þþ To give your brand/organisation a presence on a site that your customers know and trust.
þþ You’re a lot more likely to connect with the billion people that use Facebook if you have
a Page than if you don’t. Facebook provides an opportunity to find consumers you may
have not otherwise discovered.
þþ Reach the people you can’t get to on other platforms – Facebook is a great place for
generating brand awareness and is increasingly being used by a very wide variety of age
demographics.
þþ Customer engagement and two-way communications.
þþ To make a brand more accessible and personal.
þþ To foster customer-to-customer (word of mouth) engagement.
þþ To utilise the potential of viral marketing – when someone becomes a Fan (by ‘Liking’
your page), that shows up on their Facebook Wall which is visible to all their friends, and
is also reported as an action on their Friends’ Walls. It’s also likely that your Fans will
want to Share good content with their Friends.
þþ To encourage creation of user-generated content. Fans can even upload images to
Comments on your Wall now.
þþ To improve your search engine optimisation (albeit with limited impact).
þþ You can use the Page to listen to customers, to get feedback and ideas. It’s a neutral
space where real relationship marketing can take place.
þþ You can use the page to develop your brand personality, communicate promotions,
contests and events.
þþ The Page may also be a helpful customer retention tool.
þþ You can communicate with segments of your Fans. Updates can be targeted by age,
gender and location (click the ‘gunsight’ icon with the human figures on next to the ‘Share’
button).
þþ Facebook can act as a portal point for driving traffic to your website.
þþ Reviewing potential prospects’ profiles may help you build a relationship with your
prospects and aid in the lead generation qualifying process.

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So what specifically does Facebook offer for brands?
First, Facebook will drive traffic to your website. Take a look at these statistics from one
of the leading enterprise social sharing tools, Gigya. This research8
shows the ongoing
importance of Facebook.
However, many brands are realising that the purpose of their Facebook Page is far beyond
one of driving traffic to their own website. Facebook is the place where people connect. They
want to stay there rather than being distracted to other sites.
Forty-two percent of US online consumers follow a retailer proactively on Facebook, Twitter
or a retailer’s blog (ShopOrg, 2011).
For many, Facebook, rather than websites, is the preferred platform to engage with brands
(WebTrends, 2011). Pages now routinely outpace their corresponding brand websites
(Lipsman et al, 2012). People are spending increasing amounts of time on social networks as
the graphic below demonstrates.
In the past brands focused on driving traffic to their websites or micro sites but as customer
behaviour has changed and social networking dominates time spent online, those tactics
have also moved on. Writing in 2008, Dave Chaffey said ‘Despite a wide choice customers
are consolidating their preferred websites.’ Mark Stuart puts it well in this CIM Shape
the Agenda paper. ‘People tend to stick to the same five or six sites that they know and
trust. Within these small “villages” the marketer is replacing the shopkeeper – offering the
customer things they might not spot themselves…. With people self-selecting the villages
they inhabit, marketers need to ensure they have a presence in those places, rather than
trying to drive customers to their own sites, which is increasingly a much harder proposition.’
(Stuart, 2010)
8 Social sharing preferences - Gigya enterprise social sharing tool

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Facebook has changed brand and consumer behaviour
‘What started as a means to an end of drawing people to websites is becoming an end in
itself. Facebook is gaining tremendous popularity as a destination to connect with brands
online, and is increasingly chosen over websites. Surviving online is no longer about
all-in-one websites, but measuring & improving performance in all the social, mobile & web
entities.’ (WebTrends, 2011)
Facebook will allow you to build up a closer relationship with existing customers who use it
and allow you to understand their preferences better. It will also help you harness the viral
effect of the platform in helping you reach out to new customers and show off your brand
values (see graphic below showing how Facebook leads sharing). It can help by driving web
traffic, build links and can be used for showcasing.
How will you benefit?
There are a great deal of benefits to gain from Facebook as long as you are willing to put
time and effort into it. You will be able to extend your reach to new and existing customers,
build up your web presence, drive web traffic and increase sales. You will also benefit by
finding out what your customers like and be able to build better profiles for your target
audience and therefore be able to engage with them on a closer level.
The limitations of Facebook
Facebook certainly has its faults. In most cases it will not be the primary driver of new
business. It is not a cheap, quick or easy fix to other more fundamental problems with a
brand. It is also no longer on the same growth trajectory that it was in previous years. But
let’s start with the biggest limitation first:
þþ Visibility of updates. Widman (2011) found that less than 10 percent of Fans see a
brand’s updates (other studies have put this at 16 percent). Comments and Likes to the
new (Oct 2011) Timeline version of Facebook only appear in the ticker so viral spread is
more limited than previously.
þþ Reducing consumer engagement. Gartner (2011) reported signs of social media fatigue
particularly with the 18–29-year-old Generation Y segment. Whilst this demographic were
early adopters of social networking, boredom and concerns about privacy appear to be
turning as many as a quarter of them away from the platforms.
þþ Limited interaction with brand pages. MarketSentinal (2011) has found that the vast
majority of Fans don’t interact with a brand’s Page. This poses a real challenge for brands
since under the Edgerank Algorithm unless someone has actively interacted with a Page,
they will rarely see updates.
þþ Relatively poor driver of customer acquisition or retention in comparison with
other channels. Forrester Research found that ‘Facebook excels neither at acquiring
new, nor retaining existing, customers’ and Social networks ranked last on a list of 10
customer acquisition tactics for retailers surveyed in 2010 (Mulpuru, 2011).
Facebook advertising
The value of Facebook based on its advertising potential has been much discussed since its
IPO in 2012. Globally, companies are now spending more than $1 billion each quarter
on advertising with Facebook.
Facebook advertising certainly has its critics and even as a PR tool its role can be misrepre-
sented
Even with the ability to target the user closely to determine how and to whom an ad is
served with great demographic accuracy, Facebook ads have low click-through rates of only

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0.011–0.165 percent, compared to Google’s 0.4–0.7 percent (MarketSentinel, 2011). Whilst
tracking click-throughs is easy, tracking conversions to sale is more challenging. Whilst you
can now set up conversion tracking pixels on your site triggered by Facebook ads, these
will only pick up immediate, direct sales. And do not take into account anything beyond the
‘last click’ referrer. Research undertaken by my colleague Jon Paget for Tui Travel showed
that there was a significant difference in measuring ROI resulting from Facebook activity
depending on the way sales success was measured.
Jon’s research, carried out on a 12-month data set, showed that Facebook appeared as
the first point in the path to conversion 30 percent of the time, in the middle of the path
67 percent of the time, and only at the end of the path (traditional last click), around three
percent of the time. If we use what is now becoming a common classification across
attribution modelling, this shows Facebook as primarily an influencing channel, a significant
introducing channel and a poorly converting channel. More background on this research will
be available in a Smart Insights blog post.
Do you really still want to measure your Facebook ROI with last click?
Whilst many marketers have believed this to be the case, Jon’s research and others like it
are only now starting to prove this relationship and that Facebook and other social channels
can be greatly undervalued when measured with a last click model. The research suggests
Facebook certainly helps convert sales even when it’s involvement is not at the final stages.
A user might see an advert or read an article about a brand, then find it on Facebook, then
interact with a few more channels which eventually leads to a sale. But crucially the user has
engaged with the brand and its content on Facebook throughout.
People are generally not in ‘search mode’ on Facebook and many ads are not seen or are
ignored as a result of banner blindness.
Deciding to advertise on Facebook is a key strategic decision. You should carefully establish
the returns you get from Fans. Remember that in 2012, General Motors pulled an annual $10
million Facebook ad budget because they felt they could get better returns from other media.9
A smart move?
We know that many companies aren’t convinced by the value of Facebook advertising
and would rather spend their paid media budgets elsewhere, so in this Guide we focus on
methods of growing engagement organically, by adding free updates to a Page. We will take
another, more detailed, look at advertising in Step 2 Reach.
Strategy Recommendation 4 Don’t invest in Facebook ads unless you’re clear on the
returns it gives.
Organic growth or using giveaways will often give a better ROI than advertising.
The most savvy brands are also not using the straightforward ad options (boost post
and marketplace ads). They are using ‘dark posts’ and newsfeed ads which dramatically
increase effectiveness.
You shouldn’t use paid advertising for the vanity value of the Like. The problem is that some
marketers are now judged on the number of Likes they generate, and some are even lured
into ‘Like and Share’ competitions that break Facebook’s Terms of Service, or black hat
agencies that sell you fake Fans. Case studies show that advertising is one of the most
effective methods in generating Fan growth. You should build up a picture like this one
9 Arstechnica: report on GM Facebook decision.

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from B2B services provider Eloqua10
that shows the importance of paid advertising to their
promotional mix.
Facebook Glossary
Not every marketer uses Facebook, maybe you prefer LinkedIn or Twitter. If so, this section
is for you!
þþ Page. The place where organisations, brands and celebrities ‘live’ on Facebook. The
Page is the organisation’s equivalent of a Profile. This is where an organisation Shares
information and interact with Fans.
þþ Profile. The place where individuals ‘live’ on Facebook. This is where individuals Share
information and interact with friends.
þþ Group. A collection of Facebook users that have a common interest – a Group is a little
like a Page but there are some key differences. In some cases a Group may be more
appropriate for you than a Page.
þþ Fan. A Facebook user who signs up to follow a Page by clicking ‘Like’ on it.
þþ Friend. Someone you are connected to on Facebook via your personal Profile. It is also
used as a verb when you add someone as a Friend (to Friend).
þþ Network. A collection of Facebook users identifying with a particular region, school or
workplace – you can join up to five Networks on Facebook.
þþ News Feed. The content posted on your Wall which includes the aggregation of your
Friends’ individual News Feeds via the ‘ticker’ in the top right hand corner.
þþ Wall. The main element of your Profile or Page that shows content, Comment and
actions.
Facebook Profiles v Pages v Groups
As we’ve said above, Facebook Profiles are used for individuals, and Pages (formerly called
Fan Pages) are used for businesses. So you don’t create a Profile for your business, instead
create a Page. Facebook Pages ‘allow entities such as public figures and organizations
to broadcast information to their Fans’. If you are looking to set up your company’s ‘official
Facebook presence’ you would opt for Facebook Pages.
Simply put, Facebook Pages are a tool for companies and public figures to engage their
Fans and customers.
Here are some technical detail about Pages:
10 Smart Insights: Eloqua case study.

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þþ Pages allow you to designate multiple administrators so that other people in your
company can manage the account.
þþ Pages segment your company into the right category (brand, local business, organisation,
etc) which means you get listed in the relevant lists.
þþ Pages are public (although you can change this) and so will start ranking in Facebook
and search results.
þþ Anyone can then become a Fan of your page (they click ‘Like’) whereas on a personal
profile you have to additionally become a mutual Friend.
þþ Facebook’s suggestion feature as well as the paid for Sponsored Stories advertising
option is a further way of spreading your brand profile to the Friends of your Fans ‘if you
liked this you may like this’.
þþ If you are an individual who’s incredibly popular, you might find that you have more than
5,000 people trying to befriend you. 5,000 is Facebook’s limit so you might be best setting
up a Page instead of your Profile. Often individuals this popular are actually celebrities of
some sort in which case they should convert their Profile to a Page.
Facebook has these roles for editing a brand page.
þþ Page Admin Roles
þþ Insights Analyst: View Insights
þþ Advertiser: View Insights and create ads
þþ Moderator: All of the above, plus send messages as the Page and respond to and delete
Comments
þþ Content Creator: All of the above, plus create posts as the Page, edit the Page
What are Facebook Groups?
With the focus on Facebook Business Pages, Groups tend to be discussed less often,
but they are great for some purposes. Facebook describes the purpose of Groups as ‘for
members of groups to connect, Share and even collaborate on a given topic or idea’. Options
for using Groups include:
þþ Groups can serve as an extremely effective marketing tool. Most importantly, Groups
serve as a tool for building awareness around various ideas.
þþ Many users use Facebook Pages for the same purpose, but this is what Groups were
initially intended for.
þþ The key feature behind Facebook Groups is the ability to make them ‘invite only’ or
limited to specific networks.
þþ Groups can be open, closed or secret. Membership to closed or secret Groups is by
approval by the Group administrator.
Groups can be a really useful option, particularly for membership-type uses. The author of
this Guide (Marie Page) co-runs a private, highly active Group called Digiterati, comprising
digital marketing practitioners connected with Manchester Metropolitan University’s Digital
Marketing MSc course. The closed nature of the Group is part of its appeal – it’s a ‘safe’
place to engage, make recommendations, ask questions and also to have fun. One upside is
the ability to email or Facebook Message any members of the Group regardless of whether
you are a personal friend of them. One downside is the lack of Insights into Group activity
which makes tracking effectiveness more challenging.
Is a Facebook Group more suitable for you than a Page?
þþ Groups offer a sense of a smaller, more engaged community.
þþ Groups include privacy controls and three types of settings: Open, Closed, and Secret.
þþ Closed Groups are visible to anyone on Facebook who can ask to join the Group, but

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only members can read posts.
þþ Group administrators are responsible for approving and removing members and
monitoring the Group for rude or inappropriate posts.
þþ Posts are not subject to Edgerank. The post with the most recent interaction is at the top
of the pile. Members can adjust notifications to get alerted to every new message posted
at the start of a thread.
þþ Great for people with similar interests.
þþ Can feel like a user-friendly forum/support group.
þþ Not great for archiving and searching past posts.
þþ Any member can upload files to a file folder.
þþ Polls are still an option.
þþ No Insights.
þþ Choose the name/vanity URL carefully as it can’t be changed again.
Many businesses would use LinkedIn groups for a similar purpose. Look at the tab options to
upload/download photos and files. Note too that ‘Ask Questions’ is still an option for Groups.
Setting up or improving your Facebook business page
Along with many things on Facebook, the layout of business pages changes from time
to time. One such change was in March 2012 where we defined 10 tactics for effective
Facebook pages.11
It’s still worth taking a look at the examples in this post if you’re reviewing
your page.
Here, we’re going to take a single example, looking at the brand Page for Marie’s company,
Musicademy:
11 Smart Insights: 10 Tactics to improve your business Facebook business page.

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Scrolling down the Page you will see some further options to the right of the screen:
Cover photos
The cover photo is an instant way to make an impact and many brands update their cover
picture regularly.

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Here is one cover photo used by Park Bench:
It’s pretty obvious from this image that the Page is all about dogs. And more than that, it’s
about different breeds of dog.
Change your cover photo regularly. The change itself will be tagged in many of your Fans’
News Feeds (don’t believe the reach reporting that Facebook gives on this, it seems to be
buggy). Change your photo to draw attention to competitions, giveaways, news, new product
launches or to showcase different aspects of your business.
Dyson has chosen an arty image that reinforces their OVP (online value proposition) as kings
of design.
Facebook guru Mari Smith has chosen to draw attention to a sale of one of her books (note,
too, the consistency in styling with the profile picture).
Fashion brand Cavan have created an eye-catching sale cover image.

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In 2013 Facebook quietly loosened the restrictions on the amount of text allowed in cover
images. It used to be just 20 percent which would have got rejections for two of these
pictures.
Cover photo good practice:
þþ Cover photos can look very different on mobile as they are often cropped.
þþ Suggested Page ads also crop the content (see below).
þþ Dimensions are 851 pixels wide and 315 pixels tall.
þþ Keep important content away from the edges.
þþ Have key text in the right hand area (ideally towards the top).
þþ Include a call to action, give a reason to ‘Like’ the page, include social proof.
þþ It’s incredibly difficult to balance all the options. A recent Musicademy image had the
following criteria in mind:
rr Text in the right hand side towards the top.
rr Incorporation of a call to action with an arrow pointing towards the ‘Like’ button and the
Likegate app (even this can backfire as the image can surface in a place where the arrow
direction makes no sense – hence the arrow is fairly muted).
rr Design integration with the website (colours and Windows 8 theme).
rr Highly professional look and feel.
rr Clear communication of the product range.
rr Integration of social proof (industry awards).
rr Selection of Views/Apps most relevant to the brand.
rr About text carefully written and including the URL.
rr Call to action.
rr List of benefits (as well as a product listing of sorts).
Autographer has a good balance between their product, the cover photo, profile image and
their apps. Elements of the product feature in the cover photo, the profile picture and the
current photo album cover. There is a consistent colour theme (which should also ideally be
continued in any landing pages or corresponding website). Photographs taken by the device
are showcased in the picture. And, lastly, simple calls to action describe the three apps
available.

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Social Identities has a similar approach to apps. Founder Hugh Briss also features
prominently. This makes perfect sense once you read through the posts. Hugh himself posts
all the content, and engages regularly with Fans of the Page.
Do be aware that cover photos can look very different on desktop PCs, tablets and smart
phones. Photos will normally be cropped for the more square size requirements of mobile.
Suggested Page ads (which pull in content from the Page) also crop the content. Key things
to bear in mind when designing your cover image include:
þþ Dimensions are 851 pixels wide and 315 pixels tall.
þþ Keep important content away from the edges.
þþ Have key text in the right hand area (ideally towards the top).
þþ Include a call to action, give a reason to Like the page, include social proof.
Here is Musicademy’s implementation following the above rules.
Note the benefits to encourage visitors to ‘Like’ the Page. (this also points to ‘Likegate’ app
offering free content).
At some times we also use social proof with industry awards. This design was developed at
the time of the launch of a Windows 8-style webstore.

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The tone and messaging on this MetaFit cover image nicely communicates brand personality.
The same is true for the Red Bull home page.
What should you do to get started?
Setting up a Facebook Page is pretty straightforward and Facebook itself publishes helpful
Guidelines. Go to this Facebook Page to create a Page and learn more about the options.12
You can also get further. You’ll find a simple wizard which will help you create the Page.
If you need some help, or want to review your existing approach, simply follow these steps:
1. Go to any brand Page and hit ‘Create Page’.
2. Select the category of Page.
rr Local Business or Place – bricks and mortar places where people can visit.
(If you have more than one location then ‘Organisation’ may be a better classification.)
rr Company Organisation or Institution.
12 Facebook Pages resources.

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rr Brand or Product.
rr Artist, Band or Public Figure.
rr Entertainment.
rr Cause or Community.
The ‘Local Business or Place’ Page type gives extra info Page options for you to fill out,
including your open hours, parking options and the ability for people to ‘check in’ using
Facebook Places when they visit you in person. A count of people who have checked in will
appear on your page next to your Like (Fan) count.
You can always change category later as explained here.
This is an excellent post explaining the differences between categories .
3. Select a sector, choose a name and agree to the terms.
4. Complete the About info.
5. Add a photo.
6. Add to Favourites.
7. Start adding to the Page, inviting friends, giving more info
More help is available from Facebook’s Help page on Page creation.
Review the options for the company information you write. Options include showcasing
your online value proposition, a strapline, including sub brands or keywords or even a very
simple description of your Page and the benefits it brings Fans. Remember to check how it
looks after you have published it. It’s good practice to include your URL. See Musicademy’s
example:
The ‘About’ text
The short ‘About’ text copy will surface in your Page Like ads. The business/page type
(category) surfaces.
The second bit that appears in ads (desktop News Feed only) is the first few words of the
description. There are two descriptions available on pages, a short and long description.
Facebook pulls the text from whichever one it determines to be the best (in other words

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there’s no fixed pattern!) so we recommend to always suggest to start both descriptions with
exactly the same copy. You have about 15–20 words to play with.
Best practice for the ‘About’ text:
þþ Include key words and hashtags.
þþ Make sure the text fits to the three-line description on your profile Page.
þþ Include your URL.
þþ Provide a snapshot of your brand.
þþ Make sure it fits to Marketplace ads.
Here are three examples of well written ‘About’ text:
Apps
The four little boxes that appear under your Page cover Image are known as ‘apps’. The
Photo app is fixed in the far left and can’t be moved. It will show the most recent photo you
have uploaded to the Page. Then you have another 11 app spaces to play with (four show
on the top and users click down to access the others). By default the number of Fans (Likes)
will show up and possibly other info such as your location, Facebook Videos and events
depending on how the brand has used Facebook in the past. Other apps (such as in the
example below) are either custom built or off-the-shelf from integration with platforms such as
YouTube, Pinterest or Mailchimp.
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tabs. If the functionality you want for your Facebook Page isn’t yet available via an existing
application, you can build your own. Third-party developers can also use tabs. Since each
tab has its own URL, you can choose any of them as the Landing Page for your Facebook
ads and off-site promotion. You can also choose which tab to set as the default when users
who aren’t yet Fans organically navigate to your Facebook Page from within Facebook.
The important thing to realise is that you are not stuck with the default positioning of these
apps. You can move them around (see the example below). We’d suggest demoting the Fan
count app (this number is shown elsewhere on the cover anyway) and choose to showcase
the most important apps for your brand.
There are thousands of Facebook Platform applications built by third-party developers
available for use on your Facebook Page. Do a bit of research and find out what works for
you. Be aware that you MUST use an app to run a competition on Facebook. Those ‘Like
and Share’ competitions actually break Facebook’s Terms of Service (and due to privacy
settings, the identity of most users who have Shared the post will not actually be visible to the
Page in question – so no way to award the competition prize).
DON’T fill your page with loads of tedious stuff about your products. Make it fun, intriguing
and with lots of industry relevant stuff too. Think about what your customers are likely to want
to click through. And make sure you have plenty of content before promoting the Page.
The vanity URL
Nowadays the creation process for a Page allows you to set a vanity URL. Let’s check you
have that in place. When you access your company page, do you see this in the address bar:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/yourpagename/12345678910 or this:
http://www.facebook.com/yourpagename
If the former, you need to register your Facebook username which gives you a friendly
URL featuring your brand name (a ‘vanity’ URL). Marie’s business Musicademy uses www.
facebook.com/musicademy for the Facebook Fan page. @musicademy is also the brand’s
Twitter name and the login used normally use when Commenting on blogs. Consistency here
is important.
To select a vanity URL for your page go to the Admin settings and Edit Page > Update Page,
Info > Select the right Page and put in your chosen user name. Assuming the user name is
available you can click to confirm It. Be aware that you can only change the name once.

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Summary checklist – 10 key techniques to improve the marketing effectiveness of your Face-
book Page
A. Brand essence and value proposition
This is communicated through…
rr 1. The cover photo.
The signature feature of consumer Timelines, this will need special commissioning to be
consistent with the brand as Tiffany & Co. have in the next example:
As we’ve already found, a lot of restrictions on cover images have been lifted. You CAN now
include sales promotion text and calls to action, you can include URLs, requests to Like the
Page pretty much everything you would put on a standard landing page.
rr 2. The brand ident
This is straightforward – this is the box on the bottom left of the cover photo. It’s 160 x 160
pixels. Some brands foolishly try and upload a rectangular logo into this box. Don’t because it
will get cropped. Get your designer to work up something square. Autographer started with a
simple ‘A’ and are more recently using an image associated with their wearable camera – it’s
part of the start-up process on the device (we’ve given five examples here of how the ident
surfaces in different places/on different devices on Facebook):
Remember that this is the image that will surface in sponsored story ads:
rr 3. The page summary box
It’s important to explain your proposition given you can’t add text to the main image. Options

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are limited according to the type of company.
Facebook says:
‘You can edit the information that appears in your Page’s About section summary box below
its profile picture, but you can’t choose which fields display there. The types of information
that appear in the summary box are specific to your Page’s category. For example, Pages
for restaurants show price range, address, phone number and hours of operation in
the summary box, while artist/musician Pages show the About field of the Page’s basic
information.
You can change your Page’s category at any time.’
This example for a hairdressing salon shows how small companies can feature maps and
other local information:
rr 4. Direct link to website
This is a simple trick, but we find it’s not used so often.
Best Practice Tip 4 Use a hyperlink in the About box to give a call to action to your site
This is a trick we’ve used – feature www.domain.com in the summary and it will be
displayed as a hyperlink. Give a reason to click if possible...

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B. Customer journeys
Access to different content are available through ‘Views and Apps’ which appear on the
right below the cover image. The Facebook Marketing solutions page gives one of the
best examples of these – it’s the best example of a B2B page – you can see here they are
expanded:
rr 5. Views
In addition to Photos, three more Views/Apps can be highlighted. Developing appealing icons
may help here and using relevant text below each View such as ‘Free’ in the example above.
rr 6. Apps
Apps are important for encouraging interactions and data capture. They are included within
the Views.
The Facebook Marketing Solutions Page for the UK has a range of apps or tabs with different
purposes. Unfortunately, the call to action in Facebook to expand to show apps isn’t strong,
so it’s best to feature your three main views.

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C. Editorial and merchandising features
There are several editorial options to position your most popular content more prominently. I
noticed around half the featured sites weren’t using these so make sure you take advantage
of these.
rr 8. Pinned posts
This example on the next page shows how key campaign offers and content marketing
assets can be pinned top left.
Best Practice Tip 5 Use pinned posts
Pinned posts give your offers prominence for seven days. They’re another under-used
Facebook merchandising technique.
rr 9. Starred posts
By starring a post it will appear full-width – great for campaign offers.
rr 10. Timeline
Last, and probably least, you can add images for earlier in a brand’s history. Full-width
imagery works well here.
Our final example in this section is taken from the case studies for an Expert member
company Scribblers.13
This uses an app positioned in Views to enable email sign-up, at the
top of Scribblers’s Facebook page and given Pinned Facebook status update so it appears in
the all-important position, top left, remaining there for a week.
A customised version of Constant Contacts Social Campaigns platform featured in our Guide
to campaign management tools14
was created to give people access to the PDF in exchange
13 Smart Insights: In-depth case studies - Scribblers.
14 Smart Insights: Social media campaign management tools.

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for a Like.
A promotional code is included within the ebook to encourage purchase from the site. Great
joined-up marketing!

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TWO
PLAN: Developing a Facebook strategy
rr Q. Has a Facebook plan been created?
To get the most out of Facebook, you should build a strategy that will allow you to plan
and manage your resources to make best use of the platform for marketing. It’s just the
same as for other online communications platforms. You can damage your brand and miss
opportunities if you don’t have the strategy in place to manage communications.
Strategy Recommendation 5 Outline a Facebook communications strategy
The communications strategy for Facebook should outline the types of content you will
Share, the frequency and, most importantly, what you’re looking to achieve. Thinking about
who your target audience is a good place to start when considering content type, time of
posting and tone of posts.
rr Q. Has competitor use of Facebook been reviewed?
An obvious starting point is to review competitor use, but what should you look for? We
recommend you check:
þþ How many Fans do they have?
þþ What is their PTAT (people talking about this) score like?
þþ What kind of content are they posting? How often do they post? When do they post?
(Lots of brands miss the important weekend slot.)
þþ Who is Commenting? What is being said? How good are they at responding to Fan
questions and Comments? How are they driving Likes? Are they overly reliant on
competitions and advertising?
Best Practice Tip 6 Assess competitor use of Facebook for communications
Use competitors (and other brands you admire) to inform your use of social media. Set
targets based on their success and use them to review the frequency and type of updates.
What is it? People Talking About This metric (PTAT)
PTAT is the number of unique people who have created a story about your Page in the
last week. A story is created when someone Likes the Page, Comments on or Shares a
post, answers a question, responds to an event, mentions or tags the Page, checks in or
recommends your Place. Be aware that engaging with a Facebook ad will also drive up the
PTAT score so brands that do a lot of advertising appear to be somewhat more engaged
than they really are organically.
rr Q. Has a communications plan for your Page been created?
Whilst the phrase ‘If you build it they will come’ has some truth in it, the likelihood is that
many potential Fans will remain ignorant of your new Facebook presence until you tell them.
Even then you may need to incentivise or cajole them to Like the Page.
Strategy Recommendation 6 Invest in a communications plan to drive people to your Page

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Profile your Facebook Page in all your communications such as your website, newsletter,
emails, signage and print ads. Consider investing in Facebook advertising to drive new
visitors to your page. You will also want to consider advertising to enable more of your
posts to be seen even by existing Fans. Thanks to Edgerank and the fact that probably
half your Fans will not be on Facebook in any given day, only a very small percentage (on
average 16 percent) will see any given update.
rr Q. Have good practices been considered and incorporated?
Take a look at the Pages of effective Facebook Pages like the ones we have showcased
here.
Best Practice Tip 7 Review how best practice interaction can increase page engagement
levels
Whilst the average Page engagement rate for big brands is often under one percent
(Nelson-Field & Taylor, 2012), many smaller brands such as those showcased here
regularly enjoy PTAT scores in excess of 10 percent. What are they doing right that you can
copy for your Page?
How should you use Facebook to grow your business?
An obvious starting point for creating your Facebook strategy is to think how it will support
generation of leads and sales. We have specific ideas for this in the Convert section, but
there are other goals. Brands are currently using Facebook for many different reasons. You
should decide what you want to gain out of Facebook and use this to determine how you will
use it. It might be one or all of the following:
þþ Drive web traffic – post status updates with links to your website, blog articles and
products. This will encourage Fans to follow links to your website or web store so that
they can access the material or product. Links alone do not provide a great call to action
and so you will need to still encourage this on your website with appropriate landing
pages. You can also develop specific apps that will drive traffic to your website.
þþ Grow awareness, build brand image or reputation – use images to demonstrate
what makes your company special. You could allow behind the scenes access, show
personnel, product images or colours that represent your business. Facilitate User
Generated Content that delivers social proof.
þþ Showcase products – Facebook is an opportunity to really show off your products.
Photograph detailed images and use the opportunity to show different angles and
highlight what makes the product special. You can ask Fans to Comment and add
testimonials too. Beware not to be too pushy in terms of product-related posts. The
most engaged Pages that we have considered here are those which minimise the
product pushing, and post relevant interesting content for Fans. Seth Godin has written
extensively on the subject of permission marketing. He states that ‘interruption marketing’
simply doesn’t work any more and brands must earn the right to communicate with
potential customers about products. So make sure any sales-focused updates are
liberally interwoven with other valuable, relevant content.
þþ Offer incentives – as well as driving web traffic you can use Facebook to boost sales by
giving discount coupons, video clips and other useful content to Fans. Facebook can also
be used to launch products and run competitions or promotions.
þþ Get to know customers better – the more you interact with Fans, the better you will

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get at understanding what they are looking for, what makes them tick and what they
think about your products. Encourage dialogue by asking open questions. Post polls
and surveys. Ask for their opinions. Thank Fans for their responses, ‘Like’ the odd Fan
Comment.
þþ Identify influencers for outreach – organisations such as Social Bakers or Fangager
will help you identify your most influential Fans. You can choose to reward such Fans,
although often they will be easily incentivised simply by the personal engagement that
you offer them.
The singer Paloma Faith gives a name check each week to her top five Fans:
Here is an indication of the basic capabilities of FanGager:

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What should be included in a Facebook communications strategy?
Since Facebook is only a single channel, this strategy doesn’t have to be too involved.
It should be based around key communications issues and resourcing to keep your
content fresh and relevant. It should reference content creation strategies, resourcing and
communications to build awareness of Facebook.
Your goals for Facebook?
rr Q. Have our goals been defined for Facebook?
Before building your Page, you should think about how you want people to see your
company and think about what content represents your company best and what content
you can utilise to drive engagement (see the later section on Edgerank). Facebook gives an
opportunity to link your digital and offline marketing strategy with social media and so the
image you present must represent your company.
You should think about and ask yourself the following questions:
rr Q. Which communications goals can you support by using Facebook?
This may be measures such as increased brand awareness, increased interaction with
customers, reach out to new customers, build a brand identity, humanise your brand,
increase traffic to your website, increased sales, or showing your core values.
We explained in the Introduction how it is dangerous to use ‘Likes’ as a vanity metric and
other metrics are preferable. Later in this section we will show how you can measure
influence of Facebook on levels of leads and sales using the Social Reports feature of
Google Analytics.
Strategy Recommendation 7 Set goals for online brand metrics and review them
Social listening tools like Radian6 can report on measures such as brand Share of voice
and sentiment polarity (positive or negative) compared to a set of competitors.
rr Q. Who will be responsible for managing Facebook and how much time can be dedicated
to it?
You can assign multiple contributors to save time and so have multiple administrators
although they will each need to have their own Facebook profile. It is worth spending time on
Facebook as it can support SEO and drive traffic but it is also easy to get caught up with it
and lose track of time so manage this carefully.
With the introduction of Scheduled Posts in June 2012, it is possible to plan your content
several months in advance, however newsworthy posts will inevitably surface which might
challenge the planned programme. Even if you set up a schedule of updates you will need to
be on hand to respond to Comments and questions that may arise.
rr Q. How will we measure success?
You need to know that it is working so decide what methods outlined later on you will use to
track your success.
rr Q. How does Facebook add value to your company to change customer perceptions?
Facebook can add depth and build on company values and image. Make sure that it is not
only successful but also showing the company in a positive light.
How will Facebook support lifecycle communications?
We will cover the details of setting the best communications for Facebook in the later steps

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in this Guide, but you should sketch out your initial thoughts here, by answering these
questions:
1. Method for generating awareness (covered in Reach section)
How will you encourage people to visit your Facebook Page, for example through outreach,
embedding, content types, Facebook specific campaigns? Here are some ideas to review:
þþ Using existing content assets such as your blog.
þþ Sourcing popular, interesting content from other sources such as guest content or links to
other sites and Pages.
þþ Running Facebook-specific competitions or promotions and then featuring them in your
other social sites and email.
þþ Specifically developing interesting content that encourages users to Share.
þþ Linking to Facebook from your website, blogs and social presence.
þþ Including a ‘This Week on Facebook’ section to your regular e-newsletter.
þþ Adding ‘Like Us On Facebook’ buttons in your online and offline content.
þþ Commenting on or ‘Liking’ other Pages.
þþ Using Facebook’s ‘Grow Audience’ tool as well as the various advertising options.
2. Content types that will encourage engagement with the brand (covered in Act section)
These will form the areas of different boards, some will lead to lead generation or sale.
Sketch out additional ideas here, for example, products, team, promotions, etc.
þþ Asking questions/opinions.
þþ Asking Fans to upload photos to the Comments.
þþ Posting relevant quotes (quotes seem to enjoy disproportionately high numbers of Likes
and Shares).
þþ Fill-in-the-gaps status updates (be aware, however, that these have become
commonplace and somewhat tired. Many now seem something of a desperate attempt at
engagment.
þþ Caption ‘competitions’ (so long as a real prize isn’t offered these can be run as a bit of fun
without using an app).
þþ Special offers/promotions/voucher codes/offers (the old offers feature is still available
when using Power Editor).
þþ Behind the scenes at a company, e.g. ‘meet the team’. Dyson does this very well.
þþ Close up of products, e.g. different angle, inside shots, things you wouldn’t normally
see in an advert or on the web. Again, Dyson uses this strategy to highlight their design
engineering expertise.
þþ Controversial content (people can’t resist responding and the Fan to Fan engagement
can really soar too).
þþ Polls (although you will now need to use an off-site app to facilitate this since Facebook
withdrew the Polls tool).
þþ Competitions. Do make sure you use an app for any competition in order to comply with
Facebook’s Terms of Service.
3. Lead generation and sales strategy (covered in Conversion section)
How will your content lead to leads and sales, directly and indirectly? For example integration
with new product launches, campaigns, etc.
þþ Drive web traffic.
þþ Showcase products/launches.

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þþ Support campaigns.
þþ Discount codes.
þþ Reach new customers or make new ones more aware.
þþ Reminder tool to purchase.
þþ How are you tracking this?
4. Frequency/target for updating (covered in Engage section)
For example, once a day, several times a day, once a week?
þþ Status updates – several times a week at intervals.
þþ Timing your status updates to when your Fans are on Facebook and the competition is
quiet.
þþ Spacing out updates throughout the week so as not to bombard at some times while
missing others.
þþ Responding to questions and Comments. Some 95 percent of brands are lagging in this
very basic customer service requirement.
þþ What time of day? Which days of the week?
Dyson regularly introduces members of staff on their Facebook Page.
Sometimes they also include beautiful imagery showcasing unusual product images.
How much time should you dedicate to Facebook?
It is important to dedicate enough time to Facebook. You will need to allow time to add new
posts, Comment on content and find new Fans. This shouldn’t take too long if time is allotted
daily or per week. You can also add administrators in order to Share the workload. Do make

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sure that updates are dispersed throughout the week though. No one wants a deluge of
posts from the same company all at once.
Strategy Recommendation 8 Resourcing your Page to keep it active
Ensure there is always a defined person who will post quality content from your site and
other sites onto your Facebook Page and follow up with relevant Comments and links.
Ideally this needs to happen daily or several times a week.
Measurement and tracking
As with all communications, it is important to track and monitor Facebook to ensure the
gains outweigh the effort. Using social media should be of benefit and used correctly you will
see the rewards. Facebook provides one of the best tools amongst the social networks for
reviewing the effectiveness of your communications.
Facebook Insights
Facebook provides an analytics service called Facebook Insights. As well as emailing you
a weekly summary of your Page’s progress, you can access the service and download a
multitude of reports. As always, these are somewhat limited and larger brands often pay for
additional reporting using third-party services such as Social Bakers or Sprout Social.
As an administrator, you will see this whenever you open your Page.
Click on See All in the Insights panel to get further Insights:
Facebook describes the current (July 2013) Insights update this way:
‘Historically, Page Insights has reported on posts’ performance, reach, and engagement
in three distinct places. In the new Page Insights, we aggregate all these metrics into a
post-specific score card, so marketers can evaluate positive and negative metrics together.
This will help Page admins better identify content people interact with, produce more of it,
and enjoy increased reach and impact on Facebook.’
This section is intended as a brief introduction and tutorial to the new Insights including some
of the most useful new data – you can work through it comparing to yours. I’ve used mainly
Musicademy Insights but also some clips from a client for comparison.

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1. Overview Tab
Firstly you get what Facebook is calling an ‘Overview’. It’s a dashboard of sorts showing key
data from the last seven days (you can, of course, select a different date range for specific
reports and you can click and drag to select as well as inserting dates into the calendar). One
of the first things you’ll notice is how visual it is. A nice combination of tables and graphics
gives you an instant overview:
Facebook defines engagement as including all clicks, not only Comments, Likes and Shares
so you can see from the graphic below that we had 1,005 of our 5,771 audience engaged in
the last week. But note how this additional dashboard data now shows how many clicks you
received that were not Likes, Comments or Shares.
2. Page tab
Now click on the ‘Page’ tab and you get three further options to drill down to – Page Likes,
Post Reach and Page Visits.
Here I’ve screen clipped the data from a client page because I wanted to draw your attention
to the huge impact that Facebook advertising has on Fan numbers. With not a lot of money

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(but some cleverly targeted ads) we went from 3,000 to over 7,000 Fans in just two months:
You’ll also see a breakdown of organic and paid Likes together with the crucial ‘Unlike’
numbers. The final graphic shows a breakdown of where Likes come from – look at the
impact of mobile (pale blue), especially in mid June where we were testing mobile ads.

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Back to the Musicademy Page to look at the Post Reach data. Here you can see the split
between organic and paid Post Reach. Below that the number of Likes, Comments and
Shares:
On my client’s Page you can see the more negative impact that advertising can have (we’ve
been doing a number of News Feed Page Post ads to multiple new target audiences)
with posts being hidden, reported as spam or the Page being Unliked. This is going to be
inevitable with significant ad spend but the numbers here are still relatively low:

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Next you’ll come to Page visits. At the top is an analysis of your Tabs activity. Now my client
has a number of apps here (mailing list sign-ups, free downloads, etc) so you get to see how
each are working:
Benchmarks
Another neat addition here is the ability to benchmark your performance over time. Here’s my
client’s benchmark data for Unlikes and Page Likes:
Then other Page activity (you’ll note that I’m changing the time frame in these screen grabs
in order to bring you items of interest). Back in May Musicademy did a Facebook Offer –
that’s the big spike.
Below that is the external referrers to your Facebook Page. No surprise that Musicademy’s
website, our newsletter and Smart Insights (where I write extensively about Facebook) all
figure here:

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3. Posts tab
Clicking through further you find data on your Posts. The first option is a drilldown of
individual posts as per the overview page. Here you can further refine to look at types of
engagement and reach.
Click on any one of these posts for a further drilldown of data:

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The above is one of the most controversial pieces of content we have posted recently. It’s a
spoof on a worship song and therefore a subject some of our Fans might be rather prickly
about. Certainly amongst the many Likes on both the Page and the Blog we had some critical
feedback but what was the actual impact in terms of Hides? This graphic shows that five
people hid the post and one decided to hide all our posts – I wish people would simply Unlike
the Page – it’s impossible at the moment to tell how many of our so-called Fans have actually
opted out of seeing our content.
So what?
Now we are onto one of my Insights elements partly because I’m asked the question ‘When
is the best time to post?’ all the time. This Insight shows When Your Fans Are Online. You
can see for Musicademy that mid to end of week is best, and that Saturday is also busy.
For my client, their data showed a significant increase in Fans being on Facebook over the
weekend (a time when many companies and agencies fail to post due to the necessity to
monitor responses and reply to Comments).
Over the years I’ve had to figure out the above information for myself via customer survey,
now Facebook tells me the day and time of day our Fans are most online. The above profile
is typical of a Page with Fans in the UK and US. I typically post at about 4pm in order to
maximise my exposure to both audiences, but if I was simply focusing on getting to the
highest number of Fans I would need to be posting at 10pm.

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Next is the option to look at what types of post perform best. This has always been possible
in Insights but previously it was a case of trudging through a downloadable spreadsheet with
scary quantities of data. (Old style Exports are still available and are currently unchanged.)
Now you can see performance at a glance:
A few things to note here:
There’s no date range given for this analysis – I suspect it is over several months (partly as
we’ve not posted any offers since June – and Facebook has removed that facility now in any
case).
This is HUGELY affected by Edgerank. Different post types don’t enjoy an average playing
field to begin with as nowadays Facebook will more naturally give exposure to plan status
updates over other post types.
I am judicious about my use of photos. They occupy serious real estate, especially on mobile
but given they will get less exposure than status updates they need to work in their own right
so be very engaging, funny, provocative, etc in order to further drive engagement and virality.
The level of information is not as great as it could be. For instance, you can see how many
people have clicked on a link post but not the link itself.
4. People tab
Finally we look at the People Insights.
Let’s compare the Musicademy audience with my client’s:
Musicademy has marginally more male than female Fans but my client has a much bigger
gender divide (it’s a tech client so no major surprise there).

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You’ll also see a breakdown of Fans by country, city and language. Unlike Google Analytics,
Facebook can show you the gender, age and country of origin of your Fans thanks to its
huge database of member profiles.
There are further options including an analysis of people reached (as opposed to the Fans
you have – many of these may be dormant, have hidden your Page or simply not seeing your
content due to Edgerank).
I like the Engagement metric. Generally on Facebook women engage more but on the
Musicademy Page the men are disproportionately more active.

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Best Practice Tip 8 Use Facebook Insights regularly
Take time out regularly, say once a day, week, month according to the scale of your
Facebook efforts to review some of the details in Facebook such as which content is
most Shared and what is determining the growth of Likes. It’s also a good idea to monitor
content which results in ‘Negative Feedback’ such as Unlikes, Hides or spam reporting.
Whilst the top level Insights available are very helpful, it’s also worth downloading the data
into a spreadsheet and doing some detailed analysis. www.jonloomer.com is an excellent
source of advice in this area.
What is it? The Virality metric
The Virality metric is the percentage of people that created a story from the Post out of the
number of unique people who saw it.
You’ll probably find that photos and videos have the most virality. But be aware that (probably
partly due to their popularity), these content types do not enjoy high Egderank. Gone are
the days when including a photo to your text update would bump your Reach. A photo today
needs to work to earn its place. Photos will enjoy far more real estate in the News Feed
(particularly on mobile) but they are compromised due to lower Weight than an image-free
text update.
Using Google Analytics
Although these tools may give you detailed insights about activity within Facebook, it is also
useful to look at the analytics data on your own website to see the visitor volume, quality and
value you derive from traffic referred from Facebook. Google’s new Social Reports accessed
from the ‘Traffic Sources’ menu are most relevant. An example of a brand that views
Facebook as its key social platform is below.
Strategy Recommendation 9 Use Google Analytics to show value of Facebook marketing
The social reports go beyond ‘Last click’ sales reporting to show you the ‘Assists’ where
social media encourages visits which don’t immediately cause a lead or sale, but potentially
influence it since a later visit from another channel directly leads to sales.
Additionally, the Social Reports can also show you the number of Likes from different pages
and types of content on your site if you have implemented Facebook sharing buttons.15
15 Google Analytics: Setting up social interaction reporting.

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The Google Analytics All Traffic report shows traffic from non-social referrals. You can see
how important Facebook is to Musicademy. If you are running an e-commerce site you will
also be able to see the number and value of sales from the desktop Facebook site (#4) and
the mobile site (#6).
When you create Facebook ads you are asked if you want to create a tracking pixel to
embed on your website. Clearly this is an essential part of monitoring the effectiveness of
ads, particularly for an e-commerce site with a sales goal in mind.
Best Practice Tip 9 Check mobile Facebook referrers too
If you’re reviewing Google’s Traffic reports note that mobile Facebook referrers are from a
separate domain (http://m.facbook.com) so are shown separately.

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THREE
REACH: Reaching your audience through Facebook
Facebook is a platform for engaging with customers and potential customers and sharing a
whole variety of content. So, to expand awareness and Reach for your brand, the quality of
your content is the key to success on Facebook. By making sure your content is imaginative,
eye catching, interesting and useful, you will be able to reach out to expand your audience
and keep them interested.
In this section and the next we will talk about developing the type of content to achieve this,
but first we cover some basics of managing integration with other channels and search
engine optimisation (SEO) that we will cover which are the foundation of expanding reach.
How should you integrate Facebook with your website?
Make the most out of your Facebook presence by linking it all up; this will help your followers
find you on other platforms. To best integrate your social presence whether it’s Facebook or
other platforms you should review these basics:
þþ Q. Are social network icons featured on every page of site (run of site)?
þþ Q. Are social network icons featured above the fold (the top part of the page)?
þþ Q. Are there social sharing buttons for product, newsletter or blog content?
þþ Q. Have the benefits of joining a social presence been explained (e.g. type of content or
promotions)?
þþ Q. Have additional visuals been developed to explain benefits?
þþ Q. Is there a social hub linking through to a different social network?
The visual prominence of these ‘signposts’ will vary according to your objectives. This
example of a ‘Fat Footer’ from the Debenhams home page shows that although it may be
ideal to feature social sharing buttons above the fold, it is more natural to group them with
footer information and other marketing messages like promotion, delivery and returns.
Sharing buttons arguably work best above the fold in the context of the individual products
where there is a better reason to Share and this is certainly true of Facebook.
You can also add social media buttons next to content on your blog that include the option to
have a count of times the content has been Shared on social media sites. Adding these will
encourage your visitors to Share your content by showing that you wish them to do so, and
will act as a reminder tool.

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Set up a blog or content hub
rr Q. Has a blog or other content hub been set up for sharing?
A blog is a natural hub for sharing content via a social network. It’s suited to sharing content
via Facebook since you can easily add a link to your Facebook Page from your blog or other
Pages on your website. Facebook will normally also pull in a variety of images from the
page that you can select to illustrate the article. While you don’t have to have a blog to use
Facebook, we’d say it’s the ‘way-to-go’ as Marie explains on this blog post for Smart Insights.
Strategy Recommendation 10 Use a blog as a platform to Share content to Facebook and
drive visits
Posting a link to a blog post is a great way of driving traffic to your website. It will also really
help your SEO.
We’d also suggest that occasionally you link to other relevant websites. By doing this your
Facebook page becomes a hub of where to go for relevant links to your industry.
There are exceptions to this rule of thumb where you may not want to drive visits to your
blog, but closer to the point of conversion. So, for example, a link to a product or promotion
page works better. Alternatively, you may have other forms of content hub like an online
magazine or marketplace of new products, this is the approach used by ASOS.16
If you don’t have an existing blog and want a low cost, low maintenance way of setting up a
blog to Share images, consider Tumblr. This is simpler to set up and post to than some of the
better established blogging systems like WordPress.
You can post into categories that are mirrored on Facebook to provide regular interest, for
example ASOS have a ‘Look of the Day’ category both on their blog and Facebook.
16 ASOS Marketplace Hub https://marketplace.asos.com/community.

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How should you integrate Facebook with other channels?
It is important to make sure your web presence is fully integrated and other social media
platforms and other digital channels can also be used as feeders to Facebook.
Strategy Recommendation 11 Maximise awareness of Facebook through integration
Consider options to feature Facebook on your site, blogs, social networks and email
marketing. Demonstrate the benefits for prospects and customers to visit Facebook and
become followers.
We recommend you consider your integration options for Facebook in these four areas:
þþ Website, blog and online store.
þþ Other social networks.
þþ Email marketing.
þþ Offline integration.
Here are some examples of the integration from Musicademy.
Other social networks and communication channels
Cross-promotion of different social networks can help increase followers. You’ll need to take
a view of which content is exclusive to a particular platform. In our experience, social network
users tend to have a preferred platform and access content there. So for Musicademy all the
content on the blog is made available on Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus. A weekly email
will also provide links to the stories on the blog and some of the additional Facebook-only
content that has been created.
As well as links to fairly weighty blog posts, Musicademy will pepper its Facebook content
with relevant links from elsewhere in the industry. It will also ask questions, post quotes,
photos and videos and all manner of other Facebook-first material. Those that are the most
popular will also make it into a ‘This Week On Facebook’ section in the weekly e-newsletter.
Whilst Pinterest and Google Plus are not core communications channels for Musicademy, it
will upload key Facebook and blog images to Pinterest and also create Google Plus posts
with relevant articles and links.
Of course you can link your Facebook and Twitter accounts but we would suggest that
you write these updates specifically with the specific platform’s target audience in mind.
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on Facebook you have the option of adding photographs and considerably more text.
Occasionally you might want to link to a Facebook post from Twitter – for instance a funny
photograph or a video.
Best Practice Tip 10 Use cross-promotion on social networks to increase followers
Share your Facebook Page and individual posts into other social networks. Don’t overdo it.
It generally makes more sense to drive visitors to your blog or site.
Sharing Pinterest via Facebook
You can use the Woobox (http://woobox.com/pinterest) app to install a Pinterest tab on your
Facebook which allows you to show your boards or pins in a separate stream. You can even
select just one board to show if you prefer. Woobox also has the benefit of analytical tools.
Email marketing
Email also offers an excellent option for recruiting followers on Facebook to Share your
content. A high proportion of your email list are likely customers or Fans of your brands,
so are a good source of advocates who may be using Facebook already and will become
Facebook Fans and Like and Share your content.
We’d suggest launching a new page with a New Facebook Page launch email. If you are
planning on offering some Facebook-only coupons in the future then bait them with those. Be
very careful to comply with Facebook’s rules on competitions and Like baiting though – see
section on competitions below.
Every email you send thereafter can include a ‘Find us on Facebook button’ and other
featured content:
“Also on Facebook” section to each newsletter:
Competitions
Facebook has quite strict rules governing the use of competitions and likes to drive new Fans
and engagement.17
Best Practice Tip 11 Ensure competitions comply with promotion rules
Check Facebook Page Guidelines and country regulations on how to run promotions. Do
make sure you fully understand these rules before creating a campaign. Those prevalent
‘Like and Share’ competitions actually break Facebook’s Terms of Service unless they are
run through an app. Facebook can close your Page down without warning for such actions.
Competitions must be administered via apps. You must not condition registration or entry
upon the user taking any action using any Facebook features or functionality other than
17 Facebook Page Guidelines. E. Promotions.

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Liking a Page, checking in to a Place, or connecting to your app. For example, you must not
condition registration or entry upon the user Liking a Wall post, or Commenting or uploading
a photo on a Wall. You must not use Facebook features or functionality as a promotion’s
registration or entry mechanism. For example, the act of Liking a Page or checking in to
a Place cannot automatically register or enter a promotion participant. You must not use
Facebook features or functionality, such as the Like button, as a voting mechanism for a
promotion. For reference, these are the Facebook promotion Guidelines when this Guide
was created. Be sure to check for more recent amendments.
Facebook Page Guidelines e-promotions
If you use Facebook to communicate about or administer a promotion (such as a contest or
sweepstakes), you are responsible for the lawful operation of that promotion, including the
official rules, offer terms and eligibility requirements (e.g., age and residency restrictions),
and compliance with regulations governing the promotion and all prizes offered in connection
with the promotion (e.g., registration and obtaining necessary regulatory approvals). Please
note that compliance with these Guidelines does not constitute the lawfulness of a promotion.
Promotions are subject to many regulations and if you are not certain that your promotion
complies with applicable law, please consult with an expert.
i. Promotions on Facebook must be administered within Apps on Facebook.com, either on
a Canvas Page or a Page App.
ii. Promotions on Facebook must include the following:
a. A complete release of Facebook by each entrant or participant.
b. Acknowledgment that the promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered
by, or associated with, Facebook.
c. Disclosure that the participant is providing information to [disclose recipient(s) of
information] and not to Facebook.
iii. You must not condition registration or entry upon the user taking any action using
any Facebook features or functionality other than liking a Page, checking in to a Place, or
connecting to your app. For example, you must not condition registration or entry upon the
user liking a Wall post, or Commenting or uploading a photo on a Wall.
iv. You must not use Facebook features or functionality as a promotion’s registration or
entry mechanism. For example, the act of liking a Page or checking in to a Place cannot
automatically register or enter a promotion participant.
v. You must not use Facebook features or functionality, such as the Like button, as a voting
mechanism for a promotion.
vi. You must not notify winners through Facebook, such as through Facebook messages,
chat, or posts on profiles (Timelines) or Pages.
vii. Definitions:
a. By “administration” we mean the operation of any element of the promotion, such as
collecting entries, conducting a drawing, judging entries, or notifying winners.
b. By “communication” we mean promoting, advertising or referencing a promotion in any
way on Facebook, e.g., in ads, on a Page, or in a Wall post.
Once you have an understanding of these rules you will be shocked by how many big brands
violate them to increase their Fan numbers and levels of engagement.
Here’s a nice example of a competition run on Paloma Faith’s Facebook Page:

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Florence and the Machine use a similar approach with their ‘Fan art’ invitation. The top five
pieces are showcased on the Page and as you can see from the Likes, Comments and
Shares, they are pretty popular with Fans too:

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Targeting on Facebook
Ads can be very tightly targeted on Facebook but what of organic updates?
You can target these relatively broadly – by country, region/state or city as the example
below shows. Musicademy had a UK event to promote but given over half its Facebook Fans
are in the US, the update was of no relevance to them.
Hit the little ‘gunsight’ icon to add targeting.
Advertising on Facebook
We introduced the potential importance of Facebook advertising in the Introduction. Certainly
there are many advertising with Facebook now attracting $1 billion a quarter in advertising
revenue (with over 40 percent of that being spent on mobile).
Facebook ads need not be expensive and it’s straightforward to run
a trial to initially understand their effectiveness. These need not be
expensive and you can drilldown on the demographics so that your
ad is only seen by the target groups you select.
For instance, in selling throat sprays for singers, you might select
those in the UK, over 30 who state that they like singing.
To create an ad go to http://www.facebook.com/advertising and
click ‘Get Started’ (remember to be logged in first). There is a really
simple wizard to use, and you can cap your daily expenditure if you are concerned about
budget. Facebook ads work rather like Google Adwords so if you’re familiar with those it will
be a doddle.
You get two options for payment – ‘pay for clicks’ and ‘pay for views’. You can experiment
with what works for you. Facebook will recommend a bid amount – play around with this. I’ve
often set my payment thresholds far lower and still had plenty of impressions and clicks. One
approach is to start high and then once the ad has some traction reduce the bid.
You’ll be able to access some useful analytics to track ad performance. And if you have

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e-commerce on your website, you can even embed some code so that you can track the
amount of money spent on your site by people that found you via Facebook.
Do experiment with different ads – change the copy and the image as well as the bid
amounts to see what effects they have. If your target group is relatively small it’s good to
refresh these elements anyway so as to not fatigue the same customers.
Also experiment with News Feed v marketplace (right hand side) ads. Reports suggest that
these radically outperform marketplace ads.
It’s also worth noting that Facebook ads can be a very effective way of driving traffic to your
website. The link in the ad above goes to our Facebook page but we’ve also had success
with targeted ads that go to a landing page on our website.
Facebook Boosted (Promoted) Posts – Musicademy case study
‘Boosting’ Posts are a simple way of extending the reach of a piece of content. Page admins
are offered the opportunity to boost each post both when they create it and also in the days
afterwards. Facebook will recommend a sum of money and estimate the number of extra
people that will see the content. Doing this via the ‘self serve’ ad platform is simple but
very much for beginners. More experienced advertisers will use Power Editor (a Chrome
plug in) which will enable you to better control both your ad spend and your target market.
For instance, Facebook will naturally promote your post to whichever Fans and friends of
Fans it chooses, but in Power Editor you can refine this to Fans only, or further segment by
demographics or interest.
What is it? Boosting a post (formerly known as promoted posts)
A pay per click method of increasing the visibility of status updates within Fans’ News
Feeds.
An example of testing Facebook promoted posts
The next example below is a test promoted (or boosted) post where $10 was paid. This has
hit 44 percent of the Fanbase so appears to have been a reasonable investment. You can’t
split test of course, so you’ll need to test with a variety of posts over time and look at the
general success curve. And, of course, this also raises the question as to what an acceptable
ROI is. Is it good enough that more people have seen it? Does it need to drive sales? Would
it be better to invest that budget in advertising instead?

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The next post example below is an interesting one. It’s one of those rare pieces that went
viral. At the time of clipping this, the post had enjoyed 1,394 likes, 2,079 Shares and 279
Comments. It, together with another hysterically funny post (go on – click through – you won’t
be disappointed), published the week before resulted in stratospheric page engagement
rates. The Page was rocking a 178 percent page engagement rate (a recent study of
Facebook’s top 200 brands showed that on average only one percent of Fans are engaging
with brands). So for that week at least, Musicademy was (according to one metric at least)
one of the most successful pages on the platform.
This success meant that there were more people talking about this (Facebook’s PTAT metric)
than the Page actually has Fans due to the virality of the content. This accounts for the PTAT
score being over 100 percent. Despite this post clearly being (proportionately) one of the
most liked items on Facebook this week, Facebook has only presented it to 33 percent of the
Page’s Fans, and that was with us paying $5 to promote the post. Somewhat disappointing
given that it was clearly content of interest to large numbers.
Friends of Fans
For many brands it makes sense that friends of Fans might well be interested in their
products. Young parents, for example, interested in children’s toys, are likely to have plenty
of friends interested in similar things. Choosing to advertise to friends of Fans can therefore
make a lot of sense, particularly if your ad is a ‘sponsored story’ and so seemingly carries a
recommendation from the friend. But be aware of the backlash from people that you end up
targeting that simply are not interested. They might see the advertising as highly intrusive.
Look at this example from Teacher Tax Rebate who seem to have a very broad targeting
approach:
An alternative approach to friends of Fans is Facebook’s Lookalike targeting option as
explained in an article Marie wrote for Smart Insights.
Using hashtags
There was a lot of excitement in the summer of 2013 when Facebook finally caught up with
Twitter and introduced clickable hashtags to posts. These are great for marketers not only for
market research purposes but also to further promote your brand.
þþ Hashtags are clickable and doing so will bring together all public mentions (leading to
more reach for your content).
þþ Use them to find people interested in niche topics.

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þþ They help to categorise your posts and make them more findable.
þþ It enables consistent messaging across platforms (Facebook finally having caught up with
Twitter’s use of hashtags).
þþ Use hashtags to add value.
They are also helpful to research what people are saying about your brand on Facebook but
remember that as the majority of users have their privacy settings pretty high you won’t be
able to see that many.
We would suggest listing a few relevant hashtags at the end of the post, or perhaps sparingly
within the text itself.
Some Hashtag Do’s and Don’ts:
þþ Hashtags must be all one word (only the #H is clickable in Lewis Hamilton’s update)
Special characters (apart from _) don’t work.
þþ Capitalisation doesn’t matter.
þþ Make up whatever you want but make it memorable.
þþ Research your hashtag before you use it e.g.
https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/FacebookMarketing
þþ Keep them short
þþ Use hashtags for differentiation and fun. Do create a unique hashtag relevant to your
brand e.g. #strawsome
þþ Choose a hashtag for a special event e.g. #slurpeedance

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Facebook Graph Search
Introduced In March 2013, Graph Search is a semantic search engine (searching based on
intended meaning) designed to give answers to user natural language queries rather than a
list of links. It combines the big data acquired from Facebook’s users based on their interests
and Likes, and external data into a search engine providing user-specific search results. The
algorithm finds information from within a user’s network of friends with results provided by
Microsoft’s Bing search engine.
An example is:
‘People who live in London, UK and who like Photography and who like Wearable
Technology.’
Searches start with one of four options:
rr People.
rr Photos.
rr Places.
rr Pages for businesses.
Graph search can be very helpful for brands to learn more about who their Fans are and
what other things they like. Marketers can use this information in writing marketing messages
as well as target advertising based on these other interests.
So we could search for:
‘Pages liked by people who like Musicademy’ or even drilldown to more than one interest
‘Pages liked by people who like Musicademy and Worship Together’.
This is great for targeting ads. You may well find some common interests Shared by your
Fanbase which will give you a bunch of new targeting criteria.
You can even filter by occupation:
‘Pages liked by Worship Leaders who like Musicademy’.
You can add in age and gender ‘Pages liked by women who like Smart Insights and are over
30’.

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SEO for Facebook
There are two main SEO issues to consider for Facebook. First, how to improve visibility of
your Facebook page(s) within the search engine listings. Second, how to use Facebook to
improve the visibility of your website pages within Google and the other search engines.
Strategy Recommendation 12 Set expectations for the SEO impact of Facebook
For the reasons given in this section, be straight with others on the impact of Facebook on
SEO... It’s limited compared to SEO activity in your site and traditional PR and influencer
outreach. So Facebook activity should be justified in other ways.
Before we look at each, a word of warning, don’t expect Facebook or any other social
network to transform your SEO. You will know that backlinks from other sites are important
ranking factors within the search engines and ideally they will be relevant links from
authoritative (popular) sites containing hyperlink anchor text from a relevant page to inform
the search engine what your page is about. However, if you’re not a search specialist, you
may not know that Facebook, like the other social networks, use NoFollow tags on the links
on their pages to deter spammers. This means that NO DIRECT search benefit occurs from
posting links to Facebook.
Facebook and Google are not exactly the best of friends. Facebook content is not terribly
well indexed on Google (and Facebook’s own search facility excepting Graph Search, is
pretty poor).
Improve the visibility of your Facebook page(s) within the search engine listings
Firstly let’s consider how to optimise your Facebook Page for search. What you want to do is
maximise visibility so that Facebook ranks highly for a brand search as shown here.
Note, the example above is set up as a ‘Verbatim’ search so that the results are not
influenced by your personalised search history.
Getting a good position for your brand terms has the benefits that you may generate some
visits to your Facebook page when people search on your brand and also it can displace
competitors and other sites down.

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To achieve this ensure you link to your Facebook page from all sites you own and partner or
media sites where possible. Of course, to gain on-page relevance you should include your
company name in your Facebook Page name and the About section which tends to happen
naturally.
It is unlikely you will get much visibility for your Facebook Page from people looking for
generic, non-brand searches. Think how rare it is for Facebook results to show up in search
other than for brand searches. This is because generally site owners don’t link to specific
Facebook Pages and it’s rare to link to individual status updates.
If you’re a less well-known brand it may be worth adding the services you offer to your
Facebook name so that gives visibility.
Distilled have a nice visual Guide of SEO for Facebook.18
Improve the visibility of your website Pages using Facebook
Although we have said there is no direct benefit of sharing within Facebook, there are indirect
benefits for SEO. First, through social sharing, other site owners can become aware of your
content and may link to your site if more detailed content is hosted on your blog or site. So
you should consider how you use Facebook to encourage linking. Second, Google does take
into account the degree of social sharing or ‘social signals’ as a measure of the importance of
your brand.19
However, Google Plus is, not surprisingly, a far more significant driver of SEO
than Facebook.
Gaining visibility in Facebook’s search results
As far as we know, Facebook has never provided any insight on the volume of searches
within Facebook, but we could assume that most people are searching for named people
or brands rather than looking for generic products or services. Facebook makes the Pages
rather than individual status updates most prominent. This is where it could help to have a
generic service included in your product name.
18 Distilled: SEO for Facebook.
19 Smart Insights: Social Signals and SEO.

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FOUR
ACT: Encouraging interaction with Facebook
It’s essential your content is interesting, engaging and appealing since this will encourage
Likes, Shares and new Fans.
Best Practice Tip 12 Deliver great content. Give Fans reasons to continue to like you!
The goal of a Facebook Page is to engage, integrate and immerse users in a vivid and
active community which delivers ‘interesting, entertaining and innovative content to Fans’
(Jahn and Kunz 2012).
In this section we’ll look at more ideas for different types of content you can Share via your
Facebook Page. In the final section on engagement, we will look at the bigger picture of
creating a communications strategy to engage Fans.
Ideas for different types of posts
To help give you inspiration for each type of content, I will use a range of examples from
brands of different sizes to show you how different content has worked for my company,
Musicademy.
Showcase products
Facebook can be used to show off your products or reveal a new product. You can include
different angles, interior shots or anything that will help to sell the product that you may
not use on an advert or web store. This could be particularly useful if you have a signature
product or range. Make sure that your content links back to somewhere the consumer can
purchase the product and think about including both Comments and images. Don’t add too
much information; use it as a teaser to encourage the user to follow the link to find out more
information.
Show people what they can do with your products and ask Fans to Share their own stories.
One of the ways that Musicademy showcases products is to tell stories about the new
product development process. A series of posts tell the story of filming a new guitar DVD:
These posts and the tone that they are written in show that Musicademy doesn’t take itself

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too seriously, and we enjoy a fair degree of light hearted banter with our Fanbase. This is all
part of the image we strive to create as a friendly, accessible brand. You’ll also notice from
the degree of interaction that we consider it important to reply to customer Comments in a
timely fashion.
We will have previously canvassed opinion via Facebook about this new product. We will
have asked what new songs customers would like us to feature on the products and asked
them what they thought of the DVD’s predecessor. As the DVDs move into editing and
launch, updates on progress are provided. These act both as teasers of the new product
launch (anticipation drives desire) but also to generate awareness and engagement on zero
budget.
Showcase your company
Small businesses can include a content that shows off where you work, what your office
looks like or perhaps what your stockroom looks like. Make sure it does your business credit.
If your office isn’t very exciting, perhaps upload images of your staff or show production
methods of your products. This will help to show who you are, but will also make you more
approachable. Another idea is to show the region you are based in, or images from any
import locations or perhaps areas you export to.
Build brand image
Think about how you want to be seen – fun and friendly or more professional and serious?
Think about colour palettes, images, your mission and values. Also think about what might
appeal to your customers.
The Timeline
You can use the Timeline feature to tell your story, or ‘brand heritage’. The band Coldplay
(http://www.facebook.com/coldplay) have used their Timeline to showcase new album
releases and newspaper coverage.
British retailer Marks and Spencer (http://www.facebook.com/MarksandSpencer) have
showcased their brand heritage on their Timeline with images from across the years showing
the original store, old ads and products from different periods.

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Using controversial content
Your content should represent you as a brand, so make sure you do not post anything that
could be deemed offensive. At Musicademy we have stepped pretty close to this line at times
(with a large chunk of our audience being evangelical Christians, that’s quite easy to do, for
instance in these posts20
).
We include this story here not as an example of what to do or what not to do, but to Share
our lessons:
þþ The controversial content hugely increased engagement – this will have had a positive
effect on our Edgerank.
þþ The content provoked a number of Fans to come out strongly in support of what we’d
said.
þþ However, we did upset a number of people. We looked at the negative feedback score
on our Facebook Insights to see the net impact of people hiding our content or unliking
the Page. The net result was an increase in the number of Fans (of course we could not
monitor the impact the articles had on brand perceptions).
þþ It gave us an opportunity to talk to Fans about the importance of interacting with us
on Facebook (see this post ) The result of that was a significant increase in Likes and
Shares in the following weeks.
Of course, you need to think very carefully about posting controversial content, and also
make sure you do so with the blessing of your senior managers.
Highlight web content
Facebook can be used as an opportunity to reuse any content you may have produced
for reports, blogs or your website. Make sure they link back to the relevant article. This
‘repurposing’ of content gives it an extra life and again contributes to SEO.
Similarly videos you have on YouTube or Vimeo can be shown on your Facebook Wall.
Infographics
Infographics are very popular in social media and have great amplification potential. They’re
20 Musicademy - example of controversial Facebook update and posts.

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particularly suited for business-to-business, but can be of interest to consumers too. These
are graphics showing the latest trends – anything from social media demographics to the
health benefits of different food groups. It is important to remember that whilst these are nice
to look at, the information and statistics aren’t always that reliable (or sometimes from less
than reliable sources), so check the sources before using any data from them.
You could also use the Infographic style to create your own visual content. Infographics have
a very high rate of Sharing so, as long as the content is interesting and relevant, you should
find that they have good virality.
Copyright
Be aware of copyright laws, use symbols where necessary and credit any sources that are
not your own. If you find that your content has been used without credit, ask that this is
amended.
Polls
If you are running a Facebook Group, Facebook provides a handy little widget which enables
you to create a quick opinion poll (go to update your status and select ‘Event, Milestone +’.
Type in your question and some suggested answers. You can opt to let users add their own
suggestions too).
Here’s an example from Park Bench (from back in time when Pages had polls) asking dog
owners how they cleaned their dog’s teeth. The research results can then be published
(great PR). For a brand like Vets Now, the research can even be sponsored by a brand of
dental chews – one great way of monetising your Page.
Jumping on a meme
Funny content really spreads and internet memes can provide endless opportunities for
brands to show their sense of humour and ride the wave of Likes and Shares. Here’s an
example of Marie’s. The ‘What People Think I Do’ meme was in full swing. Rather than
simply Share an existing (relevant) Image, she created her own, highly appropriate graphic
for Musicademy’s target audience and made certain to brand the graphic too.
Below the same graphic was used in a blog post. You’ll see that the website has social Share
buttons there too and a good number of people ‘Liked’ the image there so spreading the viral
potential to their friends.

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Caption competitions
Typically these don’t need a real prize – it’s just a chance for Fans to Share their witticisms. A
humorous image helps:
Humour
Funny, relevant content really works well in driving engagement. People love to Like,
Comment on and Share funny stuff. It’s important not to just Share the same stuff as
everyone else, so avoid repeating content on, for instance, Huffington Post and The Poke,
and instead dig out funnies that people won’t have seen.
It’s important to keep the topic of the humour to that which is relevant to your market –
something illustrated below by Andertons’s selections:
Cute
We all know that the Internet is already awash with pictures of LOLkatz and kittens, but Park
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regular posting of cute pics of furry animals. The example below includes a photo sent in by a
Fan:
Fill-in-the-gaps
Simple, short fill-in-the-gaps status updates are normally very effective in encouraging
engagement: but use them sparingly.
Brands are often too banal in their search for Likes, so be careful not to make your posts too
trite. For a great reminder subscribe to this Page which features too many examples like this:
21
Best Practice Tip 13 Don’t be crass
There are many examples of companies being crass – check whether your update is right
for your brand and audience. And if you do go for this ‘quick win’ type of posts, use them
sparingly.
Seven percent of blog posts are considered spam (http://allfacebook.com/study-7-percent-
of-facebook-brand-page-posts-are-considered-spam_b123199). Posts and Pages that
attract high spam scores are punished with low reach.
21 Condescending corporate brand page.

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Asking questions
Try asking simple questions, relevant to the Fanbase. In this first example, Musicademy
asked about in-ear monitoring, a subject that typically fiercely divides opinion. The wealth
of Comments were so valuable that they then turned the feedback into a blog post. Marie
quoted from the various Fan Comments in the piece so neatly rewarding users for their
interactions.
PAI Skincare frequently ask users about their beauty regimes:
The University of Southampton Catering Page enjoys a fun and informal style with its mainly
student Fanbase. This example was from a day of pictures of possible foodstuffs to ‘wok or
not?’
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As ever taking every seasonal opportunity to engage with Fans, Park Bench ask whether
Fans’ dogs are affected by the clock change.
Musicademy turn questions into a regular feature with its Friday Facebook Question.
Asking opinion
Musicademy often reflects the current day’s thinking in the office with a status update. These
have the effect of personalising the brand and also offer Fans the chance to Comment.
Occasionally such musings on strategic developments give rise to useful business leads.
In the example below, an email to the office resulted in an interesting discussion about the
use of subtitles on DVDs. You’ll see how Musicademy keeps the conversation flowing by
responding to Comments.
In another example we (with permission) published an email that had been sent in asking us
a question.

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The result was one very happy Fan and a mass of engagement (with advice offered far
beyond anything we could have come up with internally).
Video clips
Of course you can create your own videos and upload them to YouTube, Vimeo or directly to
Facebook. Here’s an example from Andertons Music Store where they put an amp through
various extreme tests.
The advantage of creating your own videos is that of virality where other bloggers and
Facebook Pages will find and embed them directly themselves. Obviously do make sure the
footage is branded.
Whilst YouTube can be an awesome platform in its own right for extending Reach of your
video, it can be worth additionally uploading video to Facebook (rather than simply providing
a YouTube link). Look at the real estate the example below occupies in comparison to the

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YouTube link above. Facebook videos must be under 10 minutes in length. You will also find
that they surface in a View/App on the home Page (just like photos do).
The example below is of a ‘found’ (or ‘curated’) video, relevant to the Page’s Fan base.
Newsworthy stories
Ride what’s in the news with your own opinion or questions as in the examples below.

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A six month plan of posts should incorporate whatever seasonal content you can think of but
do make sure there is plenty of flexibility for news stories as they appear as in these.
Free stuff! Try-before-you-buy content
Musicademy tries hard to distance itself from a brand associated with endless discounts and
couponing, however it does like to reward customers and Fans with the odd bit of free stuff.
This is an example of two free video lessons (both of which are taken from paid-for DVDs so
a good way of showcasing the content).
The example below is a piece of software developed by a Musicademy customer. He was
keen to give the software away for free and Musicademy was delighted to be associated.
Links to blog posts
You should be able to re-package content across multiple social media platforms. If you have
a vibrant blog then trail the content on your Facebook page as these examples show:

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Guest content and interviews
Guest posts are common in blogging. Why not try something similar on your Facebook
Page? If your guest is influential online then they will generate plenty of interest to the post in
their own right.
Similarly you could conduct a quick interview with an industry figure. Write up the interview
on Facebook but also link to a podcast or video of the interview in order to give people
different options for engagement.
Links to other relevant sites
Whilst some brands will take the decision never to include any off-brand content on their
Facebook Pages, being seen as a portal to a wealth of other interesting content can be a real
advantage as these examples show.

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Ask the expert
In a Musicademy customer survey, its Ask the Expert posts were considered some of the
most popular. Kick off with a couple of questions that you know will interest your Fan base
and then ask them to submit their own questions.
Of course you can also feature a guest expert (perhaps in a live online event) and use the
questions and answers generated in a series of posts.
Sometimes Musicademy simply turns the question around and asks its Fans to be the
experts. This highly relevant question generated lots of varied suggestions and great reach.
In this sense Musicademy is using Facebook more like a customer forum.

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Product profiles and launches
It’s wise not to overly promote your own stuff on your Facebook Page but you do earn the
right occasionally to talk about your own brand as in these examples:
Andertons Music Store even asked their Fans what they thought about sharing offers on the
Page:

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News coverage
Post clippings of your brand being featured in newspapers, magazines and other websites.
Coupons and offers
Fans love to get in on some bargains so make sure they know about your offers through your
Facebook Page. You can even encourage them to Share the news.
Charity work
Has the brand or any of its staff been involved in charity work recently? Profile it on the Page.
Customer stories and testimonials
Share stories of customers using your product. In this example, the Muscular Dystrophy
Campaign tells the story of a young girl with the condition.

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Jokes
Because plain text updates are already favoured by Edgerank they will already enjoy good
reach. Mix in a dollop of humour or sage advice and you’ll watch virality soar.
Quotes
Photographs
Adding photos to an Album works well in fashion retail. Do make sure that you highlight key
images to add visual interest. Also choose your strongest image as the album cover.

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‘Highlighting’ a post on the Page will cause it to occupy the full Page width.
Cartoons
Cartoons can be used for many types of businesses. Note in this example that Musicademy
were asking viewers to ‘Like’ the Page in order to see more similar content in future (this
would only be done on an ad or in a piece likely to go viral and actually reach people outside
the existing Fan base). Research shows that users do follow instructions to Like or Share
but also be aware that users are increasingly tired of being told what to do by brands on
Facebook. They are becoming increasingly cynical about such practices.

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Infographics
The infographics style works well for sharing.
The Edgerank Algorithm
As we mentioned earlier in this guide, improving your Edgerank is a key task for any
Facebook Page manager. Edgerank is the name given to Facebook’s optimisation algorithm.
Unlike Twitter, which presents tweets strictly in chronological order, Facebook applies an
algorithm which presents posts according to what it thinks the Fan or friend is most likely to
want to see.
It’s called Edgerank because activity on a newsfeed such as posts, clicks, likes, photo
uploads, Comments and Shares are known in Facebook-speak as ‘Edges’. Even listening to
a song (using the Spotify app) or reading a newspaper article in Facebook is an Edge. The
News Feed isn’t really a feed of news, instead it’s a chart of what Facebook considers the
most important Edges.

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There are three elements to Edgerank:
þþ Affinity x Weight x Time Decay = Edgerank
We will now look at each in a little more detail.
Affinity
Facebook gathers Affinity data based on the clicks you have made in the past to that page/
friend’s feed plus the number of Likes, Shares and Comments you have made.
What is it? Facebook’s Affinity measure
Affinity refers to how interested you are in a brand’s page or how much of an online friend
you are.
If you regularly Share or like the content of a particular page (or post type), you’ll see that
page’s posts (or posts types like it, e.g. video) appearing more regularly in your News Feed.
Likewise, in theory, updates from friends that you generally ignore online, should start to
disappear. Facebook’s August 2013 algorithm announcement puts particular emphasis on
your last 50 interactions. Called ‘Last Actor Signal’ Facebook tracks the last 50 actions of
each user and now gives slightly higher value to those people and Pages you have recently
interacted with.
You can get an idea about which friends Facebook thinks you have most Affinity with by
looking at the friends list to the right of your News Feed. I find that, sure enough, those listed
do tend to be those I chat with on Facebook, Comment on feeds and like content. This can
be slightly skewed by those who are currently online which will often suddenly appear in this
list even if you’ve not interacted with them in a long time.
Affinity is a one-way street. This means you visiting a profile doesn’t increase the likelihood of
you appearing in their News Feed. That’s a relief for all those ex-boyfriend/girlfriend stalkers
out there...
The big flaw with Affinity is its potential to create a “filter bubble”. If all you see is the content
from a small percentage of your friends and brands, how do you break out of the bubble to
start re-engaging with your other friends and brands? Individual users can take matters into
their own hands. Click in the right hand corner of any of your friends’ status updates and you
can select to see all, most or only important updates. Really useful to minimise the stream of
‘what I had for breakfast’ updates that come from some of your friends.

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The same is not so versatile with brand Pages however. Here you just have the option to hide the
story, report it or alternatively hide all. But in 2012, Facebook did introduce the option to subscribe
to a brand’s updates. So you should encourage that in the language you use when referring to
your Page updates.
BBC Good Food is a Page I follow. This is a simple way of Unliking the Page in a couple of clicks.
If you click ‘Follow Post’ you will get notified whenever someone Comments on the story.
Suggested posts give you the same options. If you click through to ‘I don’t want to see this’ you
get some options and to give some feedback:
With a sponsored ad you simply get the following option:

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Be aware that according to research by ExactTarget and CoTweet ‘ only’ 43 percent of your Fans
will actively Unlike a brand. They are more likely to do nothing or click the ‘Hide’ button.
þþ 55 percent of Facebook users have ‘liked’ a company and later decided they no longer
wanted to see the company’s posts.
þþ 51 percent Fans said they rarely or never visit a company’s page after liking it.
Given that 41 percent of Fans like a page in order to receive discounts and special offers it is no
surprise that so many messages are ignored or hidden.
Weight
Each person’s Edge Weight is different, i.e. someone who likes browsing photographs is
more likely to have them in their feed than someone who rarely clicks on them.
What is it? Facebook’s Weight measure
Weight refers to the type of information Facebook deems is more valuable. Edges with
higher Weight include plain text updates.
However, Weight will also accumulate, so if a photo gets a lot of Comments, Likes and
Shares, it may well be given more Weight so will overtake a plain text update.
Decay
With Facebook recency is a key driver. Posts Decay incredibly quickly over time so new
Edges are favoured over older ones. Just as search engines are attracted to fresh new
content, so too is Edgerank.
What is it? Facebook’s Decay measure
A measure of recency of posting within Facebook.
In August 2013 an update to the Edgerank algorithm was announced. ‘Story bumping’ was

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introduced. This update decreases the effect of time Decay. Normally stories (Edges) more
than three hours old fall off the Timeline, but popular stories are now bumped into your feed if
you missed the update.
Of course one way to increase the visibility of your posts is to pay. You can do this via ads,
Facebook’s Sponsored Stories, Post Boost and Reach Generator (for large advertisers only
which claims to reach up to 75 percent of Fans). The pattern of squeezing revenue from
page owners looks set to continue. As users Share more and connect with more Open Graph
applications, there are more stories competing for News Feed prominence. Increasingly,
page owners will have to support their content efforts with paid media.
Improving Edgerank by increasing Affinity and Weight, and by optimising Decay
Improving Affinity
As explained above, Affinity refers to how interested a Fan is in a brand’s page or how much
of an online friend you are. Facebook gathers this data based on the clicks you have made in
the past to that page/friend’s feed plus the number of likes, Shares and Comments you have
made.
Affinity can drop off relatively quickly so the challenge is to continually be building Affinity
with your Fans. Think about posts more like a dripping tap than a single big splash. Kelvin
Newman says:
‘If you haven’t had the dripping tap in the lead-up to a big splash, then most of your Fans are
likely to miss the splash, no matter how big it is.’
What Kelvin is getting at is the idea that you create a highly engaging post immediately before a
crucial update. The sticky post will mean that the crucial post gets seen.
What kind of content is most likely to build Affinity? Here are some ideas. We’ve given examples
of many in this section:
þþ Status updates that ask questions – people are far more likely to Comment if asked than
if not.
þþ Fill in the gaps status updates e.g. ‘Today I am mostly ________.’
þþ ‘Sticky’ content such as funny photos and videos that people will want to Share.
þþ Controversial content – there’s nothing like a provocative statement to get your Fans up
in arms – but make sure that you’re not damaging the brand in the process. Whenever
we publish controversial content we see our negative feedback numbers rise in our
Facebook Insights data – these are the number of people who are Unliking the page or
hiding the story as a result of our post.
þþ Use of celebrities – they both catch the eye and so many Fans are keen to Like and
Share celebrity-related content.
þþ Giveaways and freebies.
þþ Links to other great content on the web.
þþ Jump on a meme – see this ‘Think I do’ graphic I created a few months ago and the viral
effect it had.
þþ Tell people why they should Like, Comment or Share your content. I did this as part
of a blog post on why we publish controversial content and saw a noticeable rise in
engagement in the following days.
And despite Affinity being one-way, you Commenting on a photo or status update which then
triggers your Fan or friend to Comment back would lead to them having a greater Affinity to

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you (and clearly they will also have seen the Page content too).
Improving Weight
Usually it’s losing weight… Weight refers to the type of information Facebook deems is more
valuable. Edges with higher Weight include videos, photos and links. Each person’s Edge
Weight is different, i.e. someone who likes browsing photographs is more likely to have them
in their feed than someone who rarely clicks on them.
However, Weight will also accumulate, so if a photo update gets a lot of Comments, Likes
and Shares, it may well be given more Weight so will overtake a text update.
To build Weight it’s worth focusing on increasing the number of plain text Edges you publish
and also using occasional highly Shareable content such as funny pictures or worthy quotes.
Park Bench and Scratching Post use photos really well, regularly uploading cute pictures of
cats and dogs. Not only do these get lots of Likes and Shares, but they also encourage Fans
to upload their pictures of their own pets.
Can you think of a series of photographs you could upload over time?
Apart from anything else, photos are really useful in that they significantly increase the
amount of space on a screen (especially mobile screens) that your update occupies in
comparison to short text-only status updates. Photos draw the eye and used well can be a
significant marketing tool.
Do also think of combining approaches. So add a location to your updates, post a video with
a link or add a photo to a question as in this example below.
Links and photos have similar Edge Weight. When you use a link in an update you can
now choose to change the image that is displayed. It may be that you have an image more
suitable than the one Facebook pulls in from the link. It’s worth always having a photo
alongside a link as it won’t reduce Edge Weight any further.
Reducing Decay
With Facebook, recency is a key driver. Posts Decay incredibly quickly over time (three hours
is about optimum), so new Edges are favoured over older ones. Just as search engines are
attracted to fresh new content, so too is Edgerank.
The challenge with Decay is to find a time for posting that best fits with your audience. That’s
fine if you have a pretty homogenous target market, much more of a struggle if you are
working across international time zones.

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PageLever ran a limited study of 20 posts from five Facebook Pages with over 1 million
Fans. It found that average life span of a Page post in the News Feed was 22 hours and 51
minutes. The median life span was 19 hours and 30 minutes. These figures were based on
when posts ceased to receive Likes and Comments. Posts continued to receive impressions
for a slightly longer period of time, but the bulk of feedback occurs within the first 20 hours
of a post’s Life Span. The first hour, and even the first few minutes seem to be crucial to
Edgerank.
From our experience, of simply observing brand posts in our own Timelines, we’d suggest
that these longer numbers very much represent the long tail (and on the Musicademy Page
we know that posts often receive an organic boost when they are referenced in a newsletter
that is perhaps emailed several days after the post went live). We work on the basis of
having perhaps as few as three hours to make an impression – hence why the time of
posting is so crucial to success. We recently looked at one highly engaged UK brand page
using their Edgerank Checker account (see below) and this showed their average lifetime as
a little under four hours.
The other issue to consider is the impact of competition. When are your Fans likely to be
having busy News Feeds?
Best Practice Tip 14 Post updates and advertise during relatively quiet times
Consider experimenting with posting during the quiet periods. Brands often don’t post at
the weekends as they don’t have staff in place to manage the account. Many surveys have
shown that traffic from commercial sources is quiet at the weekends.
A benefit is that as there is less going on during these times, your content is more likely to
stay high up in the News Feeds. This is a strategy that can pay dividends with pay per click
campaigns so potentially worth considering.

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Of course you can also use the new Insights data to discover when most of your Fans are
using Facebook. It makes sense to post at these times.
Fans v Engagement
There’s an old adage in business that ‘Turnover is vanity. Profit is sanity’. In terms of
websites, blogs and Facebook Pages that saying becomes ‘Likes are vanity. Engagement is
sanity’. How many brands, celebrities and organisations have you ‘Liked’ on Facebook in the
last year? How many of their pages do you ever actually visit now? You probably don’t even
see status updates from most of them. Research from Pagelever.com suggests that less than
10 percent of Fans ever see brand updates to their Wall. And the ‘Edgerank’ means that you
are only really likely to see brand page updates if you have recently interacted with the page
(i.e. by liking a status update, sharing it or making a Comment).
Best Practice Tip 15 Fan numbers alone are a vanity metric
Most of the brands with an active Facebook presence have focused early efforts on
accumulating Facebook Fans, recognising that there is a long-term value associated with
being able to continuously communicate with and market to these brand followers.
While the vast majority of large brands today have an active social media presence,
there continues to be an over-reliance on simple counting of Facebook Fans as a key
performance metric. (Lipsman, Mudd, Aquino, & Kemp, 2012).
A joint report, The Power of Like 2: How Social Marketing Works produced by comScore and
Facebook has been published that further stresses the effectiveness of engaged Fans to a
brand’s ROI. It states:
‘While the vast majority of large brands today have an active social media presence, there
continues to be an over-reliance on simple counting of Facebook Fans as a key performance
metric.’
Whilst rightly sceptical of any report funded by a platform which stands to benefit financially
from many of the activities it recommends, there are some genuinely useful data and insights
in this report. It also digs a little deeper into Facebook’s Insights data – available to any Page
owner and specifically references the metrics that make up the PTAT score.
A high PTAT is significantly more valuable than tens of thousands of Fans. So what makes
up this metric? PTAT measures Fan engagement by counting any type of direct interaction
with a Page such as initial Liking, Liking specific content, posting to a Wall, Commenting,
sharing content, answering a question or checking in. Be aware that the PTAT score showing
on each brand page also adds in any newly acquired Page Likes (i.e. new Fans) and many
studies into PTAT exclude these new Fan numbers as they may skew the underlying data.

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So far then, we have two possible metrics for measuring a Page’s effectiveness in terms of
communications effectiveness for generating engagement:
þþ Fan numbers.
þþ PTAT.
What else is possible? The paper suggests two further metrics to consider:
þþ Fan reach.
þþ Amplification.
Let’s review what these KPIs mean and their relevance:
þþ Reach comprises a number of segments – Organic Reach is the number of people who
have seen any content associated with your Page. This may be on your Wall, on their
Timeline (if they are a Fan and if the algorithm is such that they see the content), or on
their ticker. It comes as no surprise that Reach can be significantly increased by paying
Facebook for Ads, Promoted Posts, Sponsored Stories. This Paid Reach is when an
individual sees your content via an ad. Each of these metrics (and many more besides)
are available post-by-post in Facebook Insights.
þþ Amplification is probably more commonly understood in terms of viral marketing (and
indeed Facebook Insights generally refers to amplification metrics as viral metrics). The
new research shows that for the top 10 corporate brands in the US, the average
Amplification Ratio average was 1.05 (Range: 0.42 to 2.18). ComScore describes this
as ‘a metric that divides the number of Friends of Fans reached by the number of Fans
reached with earned media, or the number of impressions reaching each of these
segments’.
þþ Viral Reach occurs when someone sees that content via a Friend’s activity (such
as a Share or Comment). When designing ads for Facebook, you can even select to
only advertise to Friends of your existing Fans. Not only is there a proven uplift in the
Sponsored Stories type ad (where an individual is more likely to click on an ad because
their friend is named as liking the Page or Content), but it stands to reason that your
social circle has a higher propensity to like similar things to you than the rest of the
population – that’s one of the reason you are friends in the first place.
So brands are using their Fans as a conduit for brand exposure to their Friends. Because the

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average Facebook Fan has hundreds of Friends, each person has the ability to potentially
reach dozens of Friends with earned impressions through their engagement with brand
messages. According to comScore and Facebook, the average brand message from the
Top 1,000 brands on Facebook is able to deliver an actual amplification of 81x if Fan Reach
efforts are maximised (although the ratios shown in the graph above suggest it’s a long way
short of this on average).
ROI of amplification
The research carried out by comScore and Facebook examined the social media presence
of four leading retailers – Amazon, Best Buy, Target and Walmart – to determine how their
social assets were leveraged to engage, and hopefully influence, customers during American
‘holiday’ seasons such as Black Friday.
The results showed significantly higher rates of purchase among Fans. Amazon Fans
spent more than twice as much at Amazon as the average Internet user while Friends of
Fans exposed to Facebook messaging spent eight percent more. For Best Buy, Target
and Walmart similarly strong spending indices were evident among Fans, but the brands
also had stronger spending indices among Friends of Fans (perhaps reflecting the strong
promotional efforts of these three brands during the holiday season). This empirical
evidence that exposed Fans and Friends of Fans have higher spending behaviour strongly
supports the importance of reaching these buyer segments. They are substantially more
valuable consumers in terms of actual purchase behaviour whether or not earned media
exposure actually influenced their purchase decisions (and of course this research does not
categorically prove the link).
Summary case study – eight techniques to engage Facebook Fans
The brand featured 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, it’s not a megabrand, so it really shows what you can achieve if you get the
communications strategy right. This case study reviews 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 begin on Facebook.
Facebook’s huge reach and unique ability to target users by interest were key, and their
innovative use of the platform has informed their decisions in the development of the recently
launched PetNet360 website.
Park Bench (for dog owners) and Scratching Post (for cat owners) have been live on
Facebook since May 2010. Not only does the page allow a great route to interact with the
audience, it has also driven over 10,000 registrations to the ‘My Pet Profile’ Facebook app,

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where owners can create a profile for their pet. The conversion rate from people moving from
merely liking the Facebook Page through to creating a profile in the app is staggering. Some
17 percent of Fans convert to the app where they can Share stories, follow other pets and
meet other pet owners like them.
Early research showed that pet owners did not want to get together online and talk about pets.
Instead dog owners wanted to talk dog and cat owners wanted to talk cat. So segmenting both
the customer base and the communications by pet type were essential to the success of the
online presence.
Likes v engagement – what really matters?
The engagement level of the 47,000 Facebook Fans has been held at a steady 17 percent
on Park Bench and at over 23 percent for Scratching Post. Other competitor pages, which
while they may enjoy large numbers of Fans, are struggling to achieve the magic objective of
engagement. With the way Facebook’s Edgerank algorithm works, posts to your Facebook
page are highly unlikely to actually be seen on your Fans’ Walls unless they have engaged
with you in some way. This is even more relevant now with the changes to Facebook and the
presence of the ‘ticker’.
Over the nine months the Facebook Pages have been running the team have learnt what
works and doesn’t work. When they started, the page included lots of links to videos and
images as well as fairly lengthy status updates. Six months in the pages show a diverse mix
of content including:
þþ Short status updates typically asking pet owners questions that they can answer in
two or three words such as ‘Have you walked your dog today?’ And ‘Is your dog a fussy
eater?’
þþ Status updates that invite Fans to ‘fill in the blanks’. For example, ‘I know my dog
loves me when __________’ or ‘The most adorable thing my dog ever did is ________’.
þþ Photo galleries. These are done by breed so the Vets Now team will upload three cute
photos of say Jack Russells and watch the Likes and Comments flood in as well as
uploads of users’ own dogs.
þþ Longer updates uploaded in the form of Notes. These have been great for sharing.
Health updates such as warnings about poison mushrooms work well here as people
Share the updates on their own Walls.
þþ Weekly ‘Ask a Vet’ sessions (more detail on these in a future Smart Insights post).
These are promoted as a Facebook Event in order to keep the online questions and
responses manageable. Events allow the team to track attendees but don’t count towards
the engagement statistics (with events included Park Bench would probably be topping
the UK leaderboard). Some 100 people attend each live session and up to 70 questions
are asked at each event.
þþ Facebook Polls have been great for engagement and viral spread but also superb
as a customer research tool. The question ‘Where does your dog sleep?’ got 1,500
responses which was helpful for some research that the team were carrying out. Polls
will also be useful in future for sponsor organisations who wish to research the lives and
opinions of dog and cat owners. So, for instance, a pet food company might ask ‘Do you
want to see calories information displayed on dog food?’ It seems as though PetNet360 is
poised to become the Club Card data equivalent of Tesco with its instant access to such
an engaged customer group.
þþ The Wall is open to Fans to post their own updates and photos. Even the occasional
critical Comment has often been addressed first by the community. They also find that
posts with minimal engagement soon slip down the Wall so are rarely seen.

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þþ A competition neatly spread the Park Bench brand name as dog owners were asked
to upload photos of their dogs sitting on a park bench.
Facebook advertising
With a relatively small budget for advertising, the team decided to phase its Facebook ads,
however in retrospect they would advise a faster approach with a larger budget. They have
found through testing which ads work best to keep people on the Page and, crucially, which
deliver an engaged Fan. Their ad-acquired Fans are still converting to the app at the same
rate as organic acquisitions. They have also found that advertising produces an exponential
increase in Fans (a ‘halo’ effect) where an increase in ad spend also produces an increase
in organic likes due to the viral spread of Likes on individual users’ Walls.
Community management
The budget for the Vets Now Facebook page and apps was relatively small in comparison
to the essential role that good community management plays. The Facebook Pages are
managed by a team of three at Fresh Networks with input from the Vets Now team. An
editorial plan is agreed a month in advance and as the agency team has better understood
the world of cat and dog ownership, so they have been able to take on more of the
day-to-day running of posting updates and managing the Page.

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FIVE
CONVERT: Turning Facebook interaction into leads
and sales
People will become aware of your Page via a number of methods – they might see an ad
or see that a friend Likes the Page, they might even have seen a piece of your content and
‘Liked’ it. Be aware that nowadays, liking a piece of content does not result in someone
becoming a Fan of the Page – they actually have to click to ‘Like’ the Page itself – something
that is probably worth you strongly encouraging if you use a welcome Tab for new visitors/
non-Fans.
Once they become a Fan your challenge is then to keep them engaged, to develop an
emotional connection that could ultimately lead to sale. We know that due to Edgerank
you need to encourage as much interaction as possible so keep on sharing great content.
Ultimately, though, most organisations will also want to sell to these Fans. Let’s see how
we can manage that. First we will look at direct and indirect methods to turn new Fans into
customers and then we will look at the emerging options for sale within Facebook.
Techniques to convert Fans into consumers?
In this section we will review a number of techniques to help convert to lead and sale.
Strategy Recommendation 13 Review the options to increase sales via Facebook
Start by referring to the Social Reports in Google Analytics introduced in Step 1. Find out
which types of content are effective in creating sales. Next review competitor activity for
ideas to balance promotional against informative updates.
We will review both indirect promotion based on understanding branding and the psychology
of persuasion and more direct sales approaches. Some we have mentioned previously, but

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here we are grouping them together for reference.
Indirect Facebook sales promotion techniques
Brian Solis (2012a) states that unlike the traditional Web, social media is a very emotional
landscape where people are at the centre of their own egosystem. Brands must design an
experience that captivates the mind or feeds likely emotions to affect desirable behaviour.
The ‘emotional’ revolution that has engulfed the marketing world is undeniable: brands
are constantly seeking to win our wallets by way of our hearts. The brand that makes
a connection with the consumer wins their confidence and their business. Emotionally
connecting consumers to a brand is essential. Without it, relationships are not formed,
and loyalty can never develop, as the consumer has to be touched emotionally more than
intellectually.
Review how you use these indirect sales techniques including:
rr Q. Do we provide excellent content that drives trust and loyalty? You need to earn the
right to sell to your Fans. By providing excellent free content you are far more likely to
convince them that they can trust the things they need to pay for from you.
rr Q. Do we use Cialdini’s Weapons of Influence? Robert Cialdini has written widely on his
six principles of influence,22
six areas of influence you can use to persuade people to
buy. The weapon of Reciprocity is used when people feel obliged to return a favour. So
providing free content on your Facebook Wall leaves the Fan obligated to you. Another
Cialdini concept, social proof, is also helpful here – Comments and testimonials from
other happy customers will help drive conversion. You can also use Authority. Find
someone with authority in your field to write guest content on your Page, or have them
endorse you. Facebook makes the act of Liking really simple. People are more easily
persuaded by people that they like. So encourage ‘Forward to a Friend’ options, the
Facebook Like button, as well as images of attractive people on your Page. Perceived
Scarcity will generate demand. Drip stories into your feed about how few items are
remaining in the sale, or how the first 100 to buy get a special price.
rr Q. Do we tell customer stories? Tell the stories of how other customers benefit from your
products. Try to match them to the demographics of your target market.
rr Q. Do we Share positive feedback? The occasional sharing of a positive email thanking
the brand for some aspect of their product/service will normally generate a lot of Likes
and reinforce positive feelings about the brand (don’t do this if you actually have a
significant number of disgruntled customers though as it would be a red rag to a bull).
rr Q. Do we showcase physical stores? If you have a physical presence then you can show
these or highlight events that you are attending.
rr Q. Do we capture email addresses? Whilst Facebook can most certainly deliver sales,
the backbone of most effective B2C and B2B marketing campaigns remains as email
marketing. Can you use Facebook to drive people to your website and collect their email
address? Perhaps you could let them download a whitepaper or access a free sample
in return? Apps are a great way of doing this. There are plenty of options for Like Gating
and Refer a Friend apps.
Direct techniques to influence sales in Facebook
These are tactics you can use within your social media marketing and on your website to
improve the signposting and customer journeys to prompt sales:
22 Cialdini: Weapons of Influence.

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rr Q. Do we link directly back to the site where possible in our page updates?
By providing links back to your blog articles or product links you are giving Fans the
opportunity to explore your website and the various buying opportunities. You could also
use suggestion software once on site to make more relevant recommendations.
rr Q. Our are key landing pages customised? Don’t just rely on your home page to convert
Fans to customers. Create a Facebook-specific landing page with appropriate content
to encourage registration or offers to convert to sale. Remind users of the benefits they
have derived from your Facebook Page and provide opportunities to buy.
rr Q. Are we incentivising sales? Many Fans follow brands on Facebook hoping for coupons
and discounts. It’s important to get the Sell-Inform-Entertain balance right. It is possible to
undersell. Don’t disappoint. Provide the occasional Fan-only offer.
rr Q. Are we featuring products in updates? Products can be showcased in interesting ways
for example through customers using them or the team reviewing them or advising on
how to use. Upload photographs of products taken from unusual angles.
rr Q. Have relevant landing pages been optimised? Of course, Facebook alone will not
increase your sales and leads, you need to make sure your website is user-optimised
and friendly. This is particularly the case for the landing pages for visits referred from
Facebook. How effective are these in generating leads or sales? A particular issue with
Facebook is that it often links through to blogs. Blogs are often poorly integrated with the
main site where lead or sale occurs, so these need to clearly show your value proposition
and link to a page for sale or sign-up.
Strategy Recommendation 14 Check links from Facebook lead to conversion paths
Do product shots link through to product pages or just the blog? If they go to the blog are
there product images and links available in the post, or perhaps in a side bar?
Your website should also have clear call to actions so you can deepen engagement with
subscribers and step them towards engaging with your products or services and ensure
that there’s clear information about how to buy. There is little point in generating traffic if it is
unclear what to do when you get to the website.
Selling within Facebook (F-commerce)
rr Have our options to offer products for sale within Facebook been reviewed?
In 2011 there was a lot of hype about Facebook commerce with many large companies
announcing the launch of F-commerce stores. In 2013 we have not seen any case studies
or spoken to any retailers of emerging success in Facebook commerce. Research23
does
suggest there is some willingness from consumers to purchase on Facebook:
‘6.1 percent of online purchases over the next 3 years will be made via Facebook. Although
only 4 percent of GB consumers have purchased goods from Facebook, the research
showed that 40 percent would be happy to buy goods from Facebook if it delivered a similar
shopping experience to an online store.’
Strategy Recommendation 15 Consider the relevance of Facebook commerce services
23 Smart Insights: How important is F-commerce?

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For small and medium businesses with active Facebook pages, standard e-commerce tools
can be embedded. You can initially use these to test the appeal of F-commerce for your
audience.
We think these figures look optimistic and can only really recommend reviewing the
F-commerce option for smaller businesses with a limited range of products that could sell
products through a service such as Ecwid or Payvment. Each of these Facebook tools
services has a different payment model with Ecwid offering a monthly fee and no transaction
costs and Payvment no hosting fee, but a transaction based fee. Both offer to option to easily
include promotions such as this within stream.
If you fit in this category of interest in F-commerce then it’s worth taking a look at the costs
and examples of features available which include integration of deals into your Facebook
Page stream.
.

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SIX
ENGAGE: Keeping your audience engaged
Managing publishing schedules for your Facebook profile
Gaining a good level of visibility for your posts on a Fan’s Wall is half the battle for ongoing
Fan engagement. ‘Playing’ the Edgerank algorithm will help here by including the kind of
content favoured by Edgerank. Also learning what kind of content your Fans engage with
(photos, quotes, questions, videos, etc) and using more of those.
It’s easy to set up an update into the future. Create a post as usual but instead of hitting
‘Post’ select the clockface on the bottom left of box and click through to schedule a time and
day in the future. You can always undo this later using the Activity log.
Using a range of content types or formats to engage
rr Q. Have we reviewed our range of effective content types?
We gave a lot of examples of different types of Shareable content to inspire in Step 4. Let’s
look at content formats to engage in a different way here. This research from Dan Zarrella24
is based on data on more than 1.3 million posts published on the top 10,000 pages. It clearly
shows the value of mixing up your different content types when posting and, in particular,
using Photos to encourage interaction and sharing.
24 Dan Zarrella: Data on Facebook sharing.

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Of course, this data is across all industries, so some sectors and audiences may exhibit other
behaviour. Looking specifically at retail status updates, Buddymedia (2011) found in contrast
that simple text posts could be most effective (in this case text updates would typically be in
contrast to product photos or promotions).
The ‘Double Whammy’ approach
Marie has also completed similar research based on a year of Musicademy posts. It clearly
shows an increase in reach, amplification and engagement where multiple content types
Share a single post, a ‘Double Whammy’.
Our research into another dozen Facebook pages tells the same story. The Double Whammy
almost always wins out over a single post type.

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Do be aware that this research was conducted at a time when photos carried far more Edge
Weight.
Using humour
We’ve discussed the use of humour in posts already but here is some quantitative proof that
humour works. We found a big increase in Reach, Amplification and Engagement with posts
classified as funny against those that were more sombre.
People clearly like to identify with funny content but what of the science behind it? Knowing a
little about the psychology can help you engage your audience better.
Muntinga et al (2011) identify a number of motivations for use of social media –
Entertainment, Integration and Social Interaction, Personal Identity, Information,
Remuneration and Empowerment. Funny content works on many of these levels. It clearly
entertains but it also enables social interaction and helps present a favourable image of the

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self.
It is thought that a ‘Like’ communicates a social signal (Jahn & Kunz, 2012; Muntinga et al,
2011) to an individual’s friends since in sharing a funny post, they communicate that they,
too, have a sense of humour. Liking such content helps them clearly identify with the brand
(Holbrook & Hirschman, 1982).
Using ‘Relational’ content posts
Marie classified each of 820 Musicademy posts from a 12-month period. Using a
classification adapted from Ahuja and Medury (2010), she found that ‘Relational’ posts which
ask questions and encourage engagement do indeed enjoy high levels of reach, amplification
and engagement.
The same research into the Facebook Pages of Andertons, Scratching Post and Park Bench
showed that content that is relevant to the consumer in terms of striking an emotional chord
attracts more visitors and Comments.
In their research into content types in corporate blogs, Ahuja and Medury (2010) found that
Relational content is able to induce greater volumes of consumer engagement than any other
content typology.
Relational posts appear to induce a higher degree of consumer engagement, as measured
by volume of comments on the posts, thereby indicating that organisations should host
greater volume of Relational posts. The content attractiveness of the Relational posts
appears to strike an emotional chord with the consumer enticing him to engage with
the organisation, thereby showing that corporates can achieve success in these e-CRM
endeavours (Ahuja and Medury, 2010).
Note as well how popular posts are that are highly relevant to the fan base and how even
promotional posts are tolerated.
Encourage fans to upload photographs and video
Go to your Settings and make sure that everyone has the ability to post both new posts
and add photos and videos to the timeline. This is particularly important for a photography
brand such as Autographer (see below) who want to encourage User Generated Content to
showcase the amazing images the Autographer can capture.

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When Fans post, you will see their activity in the right hand side. Here are a couple of posts I
made to the Point, Shoot, Publish Facebook Group:
This will not appear in News Feed unless you as the Page Admin decide to Share it which
the manager of this Group decided to do with one of my photographs. Unfortunately the
clickable hashtag does not survive sharing and whilst clickable in the initial post they don’t
show up in a hashtag search either way.

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Consider services for running regular interactive campaigns
Throughout this guide we have focused on how companies can engage consumers through
their brand pages by providing relevant post using text, image and video posts. We have also
mentioned how some Facebook features like Polls can be used.
We are now seeing the next generation of platforms emerging which are starting to engage
social network users far more. As opposed to generic content posting capabilities through
tools such as Sprout Social, HootSuite and Tweetdeck, online platforms are becoming
increasingly available that publish interactive campaign features. For more information on
these tools including an in-depth review see this Expert members guide.25
What is it? Social campaign or community management platform
Services which enable marketers to use different types of engagement devices within social
networks. They can also be considered to be community-building tools.
The main advantage is that you do not have to develop an application in-house or use an
agency.
Key functions of social campaign management platforms include:
þþ Enable interactive engagement devices to be deployed to run campaigns particularly
within Facebook, i.e. they go beyond posting text, images and videos.
þþ Examples of engagement devices include promotions, surveys, quizzes, coupons and
sweepstakes.
Using these services can reduce the need for companies and their agencies to deploy and
manage their own elements. One success story we’re aware of is AVG which has used
Wildfire (one of the campaign apps featured in the Guide mentioned on the previous page) to
create a community of more than 1 million Fans. We asked Jasdev Dhaliwal, the AVG Head
of Communities when their Facebook Page passed one million to understand the reasons
behind their success.
25 Smart Insights Expert members report: services for managing Facebook campaigns.

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Jas outlined his four Cs for success:26
þþ 1. Content. We produce content that our community loves to engage with. Whether it is
a blog post, a video or picture, we work hard on producing content that resonates with
our users and deploy this using Wildfire. We often experiment to see what the audience
engages with and listen to their feedback. As well as publishing our own content, we also
curate relevant third-party content with our audience. Measuring content on the success
of its engagement value gives us a really refined idea as to what content works and
doesn’t work with our audience.
þþ 2. Community. We put the AVG Community at the heart of everything we do. It’s the
voice of the customer and we take their feedback very seriously. We are always listening
and we use their responses to build better products and provide a better service. We
reward our biggest advocates with recognition.
þþ 3. Customer service. Our Facebook page attracts its fair share of people looking
for help. As such, we offer a dedicated customer support channel on Facebook and
encourage fans with problems to log a ticket with our customer support team. As well as
this, we have in incredibly diligent and active group of our community volunteers who
actively help other users. Both channels are incredibly important to us and add tangible
value to our community.
þþ 4. Collaboration. The social media team at AVG is global. We are a passionate
and dedicated team that strive on putting the user first. We work hard on building an
environment where people enjoy visiting and keep on coming back because they are
presented with real value, whether it is through content, conversation or a chance to
connect with like-minded others. Having the right blend of people in your team is very
important and our successes are due to the continuous hard work and expertise of
everyone involved.
Profile important posts by ‘pinning’ or highlighting them.
You can ‘pin’ a welcome message or an important post to the top of the Page.
Highlighting posts enable them to spread across the Page such as in this example by Dyson:
26 Smart Insights: Growing a successful Facebook presence: the AVG example.

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Managing publishing for your Facebook Page
rr Q. Has a regular communications schedule for Facebook been defined?
You must manage your Facebook Page as you would for any other social network. You
will build and maintain engagement by posting content regularly and interacting with users.
However it’s unlikely that you will be posting hourly. Indeed, depending on the fit of Facebook
to your company, it may only be necessary to post once or twice a week. This infrequent
use of Facebook could lead to the problem that your use of it will lapse, so try to identify
or schedule fixed times to use Facebook. Set a daily or weekly email alert on your desktop
calendar as a reminder.
Strategy Recommendation 16 Define an agreed pattern of updates
You don’t have to post every day, but you do need to keep your Facebook active, so find a
way to schedule your activity amongst other priorities.
Likewise, make sure you respond to comments as appropriate. A simple thank you for
commenting something particularly insightful (especially at the beginning of our presence on
the platform) will suffice, or you could engage in conversation however do not forget to reply!
Make sure the content is positive and reflective of your company. Decide on a tone of voice
– a friendly and conversational tone is more likely to encourage responses than a formal
business-like tone.
To conclude this section review this visual of reviewing options to engage Facebook fans.27
27 SocialMediaOnlineClasses.com post introducing the infographic.

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An outline communications plan
rr Q. Do we have a content calendar in place?
To keep your use of Facebook on track you should have a plan of topics and frequency. A
formal plan will be ‘over-the-top’ for some but an outline annual plan which takes into account
seasonality (Christmas offers, Black Friday, Industry events, etc) is helpful.
Best Practice Tip 16 Create an editorial or content calendar
Find a way to blend planned updates around your product and campaign activities with
more topical content.
Try to develop an overview of proposed content and frequency of use. The more frequently
Fans see you, the more likely they are to engage with you, however keep the content varied
and don’t post repetitive content ‘all-at-once’ since users will not appreciate their News Feed
being flooded. The best advice is to mix it up so a typical flow of content could look like this:
þþ 1. Link to meaty article from the blog.
þþ 2. Ask a question.
þþ 3. Photo and caption – ‘behind the scenes at brand xxx’.
þþ 4. Quote/words of wisdom relevant to market and Fanbase.
þþ 5. Seeding a new product launch.
þþ 6. Funny photo/quip.
þþ 7. Seasonally relevant update (bank holiday, bad weather, sporting fixture, etc).
þþ 8. Link to another relevant website.
þþ 9. Profile a member of staff.
þþ 10. Fill-in-the-gaps style status update.
þþ 11. Customer story.

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þþ 12. Caption competition (to funny photo).
þþ 13. Video clip.
þþ 14. Comment on something newsworthy and relevant.
Depending on your brand this might be enough for a week or a month. Start slow and begin
to build up the frequency of posts. Watch your Insights data and learn what works. Ask Fans
what they think of the frequency.
Frequency
rr Q. Has suitable frequency been defined?
Here are some ideas on frequency that you could define:
þþ Adding new content – at least once a week to perhaps a maximum of three times a day.
þþ Space out content throughout the day and week so as not to bombard at some times
while missing others.
þþ Respond to questions and comments – as quickly as you can.
þþ Vary your content – as per the content flow proposed above, don’t repeat the same type
of content all the time – mix it up. Have some long posts, some short, some videos, some
photos.
More research suggesting best practices in social media marketing
BuddyMedia (2011) carried out a comprehensive review of effective Facebook posts. For two
weeks 200 client Pages were assessed for Comment, Like and engagement rates testing
time/day of posting, length and language. Here is a summary of their findings.
1. Shorter posts work best
There is a strong negative correlation between post length and engagement, indicating the
longer the post length, the less engaging fans find it. This finding supports the traditional best
practice that concise copy increases readability and consumption. Posts between one and 80
characters had, on average, a 27 percent higher engagement rate, yet only accounted for 19
percent of all Posts.
2. Full URLs can still engage
Despite the popularity of URL shorteners, BuddyMedia’s research revealed that engagement
rates were three times higher for Posts that used a full-length URL.
3. Post when your customers are engaged
Brands that posted outside of business hours (early morning, at the finish of the work day
and late at night) had engagement rates approximately 20 percent higher than average.
This reflects the importance of having a Post appear at the top of Fans’ News Feeds during
the times of day they are most likely checking their Facebook Pages.
The best time of the week to post for a retail audience is mid-week and at the weekend.
Fan engagement rockets up on Sunday, but brand Posts account for only five percent of all

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Posts on Sunday.
4. Retailers should limit posts to two per day on average
It’s quality not quantity that counts. Two posts is a good daily average.
5. Ask questions
Posts that end with a question (rather than having it at the beginning or middle) have a 15
percent higher engagement rate. Don’t Ask Why; Ask Where, When, Would and Should. It’s
perhaps no surprise that comments double when you ask a question.
Despite the fact that they drove the highest engagement rates, ‘where’, ‘when’, ‘would’ and
‘should’ as question keywords were under-used in Posts. Brands can look to use these
keywords to drive higher engagement rates.
The use of ‘would’ drives a spike in ‘Likes’ in particular. This is most likely due to Fans using
‘Like’ as a way to vote ‘yes’ on the question rather than posting ‘yes’ to a Wall.
‘How’, ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘did’ and ‘why’ had the lowest engagement rates, with ‘what’ being used
in a large number of Posts.
Encouraging engagement
No one wants a Facebook Page that looks like a ghost town. Ideally you want a vibrant Page
that contains plenty of Likes, Shares and Comments. But how do you achieve that?
Firstly, there is no shame in occasionally asking people to Comment, Like or Share. And

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once they’ve done that, don’t forget to thank them!
You may need a little more gentle encouragement so perhaps ask some of your ‘real’ friends
or colleagues to comment to give the impression of a busy Page.
Post content that stimulates engagement. Questions, asking for opinions and feedback,
fill-in-the-gaps status updates, cute photos and anything really funny will all facilitate
engagement.
Competitions are the single most effective way of encouraging engagement. Plenty of
brands do this very effectively. See for example these posts. Do make sure you stay within
Facebook’s guidelines though.
PA Skincare asks and thanks
Like to win from Nationwide Vehicle contracts
An integrated online-offline approach
Encourage interaction
By encouraging people to contribute to your Page you will make customers feel involved in
your brand, and hold some level of responsibility and power. Make sure your Page is open
for comments. Encourage people to upload photographs and submit testimonials which
provide new customers with reassurance of the product. You could have regular Ask the
Expert posts. And don’t be afraid to ask Fans’ their opinions. All this helps people become
more engaged and more likely to convert, and share with their followers.
Building relationships
Always keep in mind that the purpose of social media is to build relationships, so remember
this and be friendly and interactive whilst maintaining your chosen tone of voice and a

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positive attitude. Focus on the customer experience – make conversation and respond to
comments and help the customer feel involved in your brand. It is also useful to monitor what
your competitors are saying, the more knowledge you have the better position you will be in.
Think also about who will influence your customers and engage with them. You could target
specific people who may be interested in your brand, such as bloggers and build relations
with them and over time they will help by spreading their influence to your customers.
How to promote your Facebook Page to existing customers
rr Q. Have our options to encourage Facebook activity to existing customers been
reviewed?
Your Page will need some active promotion if you are looking to grow your Fans in line
with others who are advertising. We covered advertising in more detail in the Reach
section describing how to reach new audiences. However, Facebook advertising and other
techniques we mentioned in Step 2, particularly email marketing and embedded features on
a site are effective in getting existing customers to act as advocates.
Strategy Recommendation 17 Select the best technique for encouraging Fan growth
When selecting the best techniques, don’t forget the returns. Organic growth or using
giveaways will give a better ROI than advertising.
As we discussed in the Introduction, you shouldn’t use paid advertising for the vanity of the
Like.
So, think about all the ways in which you communicate with your customers and prospects
that we introduced in Step 2. Use those communications to introduce the Facebook Page –
in your email signature (and that of all your staff), an announcement on your blog, a link on
your Contact Us page, a badge on your home page, an article in your newsletter, etc.
1. Send an email and/or a Facebook request to all your own friends, and ask them to ‘Like’
the Page. Whilst these may not be target audience for you, it will give a bit of momentum to
the Page, and you can always explain that you are asking them to do you a favour. Similarly
ask your staff to do the same thing.
2. Next send a brief email out to your customer/prospects mailing list with a link to the Page.
Explain the benefits of liking the Page – you could even put a coupon up on the Page by way
of a thank you or link a useful white paper download to one of your posts.
3. Make sure your blog is publicly searchable – it will be by default but you can check in Edit
Page and Settings. Like this it can get indexed by search engines so that organic traffic is
driven to the page.
If you have less than 5,000 Fans on your Page you can use Facebook’s Build Audience tool.
You upload your email address to Facebook and it will send an email to your users who are

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not yet Fans suggesting that they Like your Page28
.
28 See Facebook Help for an explanation

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SEVEN
Resources
Facebook support resources
þþ Facebook Key Facts Page
þþ Social Bakers Facebook Statistics
þþ AllFacebook
þþ Facebook Pages Resources (and creation option)
þþ The Facebook Marketing Solutions Page
Facebook-specific tracking tools
þþ Fangager
þþ Social Bakers
F-commerce tools
We discussed two tools at the end of Step 5:
þþ Ecwid
þþ Payvment
Integration tools
þþ Services for managing Facebook campaigns – This report for Smart Insights members
by Stuart Turnbull shows how other tools are available to make running more interactive
campaigns easier.
þþ Woobox – a free Pinterest tab for Facebook Pages.

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References
Editor’s note: We don’t usually provide full Harvard reference in Smart Insights guides,
instead we link to relevant blog posts inline within the text for convenience. Since this guide
is extensively referenced, which we know will be particularly useful to our student readers,
we have grouped all references here
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dbm.2011.7

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