Create A Facebook Strategy

Just finished another great bonus session from Social Media Success Summit. This one was called "Picking the right Facebook Strategy".
I just absolutely loved this session. A part of the reason why I keep consuming these sessions like I consume water every day is because it just makes so much sense. I'm all for sense making stuff, practical useful current things.
Jay Baer is the author of one of the best Social Media books I have ever read, The Now Revolution

I keep raving about this book and if I had to say one single reason it'd be the constant repetition throughout the book about creating the strategy BEFORE focusing on the tools.

That makes so much sense for me. Facebook and Twitter is what Jay calls "Rented Land". Do you as a company have any control if Facebook disappears for whatever reason? This is another reason why I always say the HOME base of your digital campaigns should be your website.

By the way, Jay also has a great blog http://www.convinceandconvert.com.

Anyway, lets get down to business here and talk Facebook strategy.

The biggest misconception of the world is that Facebook is free. Social Media is free, let's put an intern on handling our online property (because that's what it is, company property, although on rented land).
Is not free. It takes time. Time is money.
It takes time to plan, build and execute. It takes money to hire 3rd party consultants, create customized apps, responding to people and analyze the results.
How often do you update your company website? Not so often right? Now think about how often you are (or should) update and interact on Facebook.

So let's create a strategy!

Top 5 Tips from Jay:

• Know why you are on FB!
• Decide on a scoreboard. What is success to us?
• Focus first on "Likes" and custom tabs
• Create more content and more often
• Activate fans, don't collect them. Give people assignments, vote, buy, do a market research, answer a question...

Further more we should ask ourselves the following questions:

• Why are we doing this? How is having a Facebook page helping our company?

• Who is our audience? Who do we want to talk to? Is it customers, media, prospective or previous customers, competitors?

• What do we want them to do? What action are we trying to cause and how does that benefit the organization?

• How will we know if its working? If the CEO of your company asks you "So Jenny, how is this Facebook thing going?" What should I answer him?  What numbers do we use to make the case? THIS is something we need to establish BEFORE we get started. Because if not, how can we compare the results?

There are different strategies. Like I've mentioned in previous blog posts usually Sales, Awareness or Loyalty are the main points for your over all social media strategy.
When we look at creating a Facebook strategy we look at the following options:

1. Create awareness


Important:


- Newsfeed
-Ads

To create awareness on Facebook is to be in the Social Public Relations-business. The Like button is the most important thing simply because of the massive viral effect it gives you.
Creating a custom landing tab can double like rate according to many social media professionals.

Keep in mind that 95% of Facebook users use the Top New, not the Recent Post option.
The Top News is decided by the edge rank which takes in consideration things like:
Recency, The weight of the post, if someone comments or like on it, and then the score between you and the creator (how much have you interacted with the creator).
Your goal is to win the newsfeed. How? By the frequency of your publications, by thinking about the timing, spreading the posts out on nights and weekends, and most importantly create CONTENT that engages.
If you wanna post on weekends you can use tools like Hootsuite, SocialOomph, Objective Marketer. I have tried all three and personally prefer Hootsuite.

Use the like button on your webpage. For individual posts as well as on the top of the main page.

What metrics can we implement for the Facebook awareness strategy?

* How many monthly or daily active users do we have
* New likes
* Daily story feedback
* Daily Page activity (number of people interacting with your tabs and content)
* Visits from Facebook to your website/blog (use Google analytics)


2. Increase Sales

Important:

- Mix up calls to action and special offers into your newsfeed updates
- Use Fan-Only Offers ( one program you can use is Fanreveal look here to see how to use this program: How To Install Fan Reveal
- Add Direct Response and E-commerce options to your page (program Shoptab.net)
- Create a tab with signing up to newsletter This site provides you apps to do just that: http://northsocial.com

What metrics can we implement for the Facebook Sales Success Metric strategy?

* Sales and redemptions of offers
* Leads (how many filled out a form...)
* Conversation Rate (total fans divided in number of fans that took action)


3. Market research and Insight Generation

Almost all people on your fan page have already experienced your brand so this is a focused group of people that are already interested in your brand. Also keep in mind people love to share their opinion. Use this for your benefit.

You need to mix research with promotion. Don't over sell.
Remember that only 30% of consumers believe clicking the like button means "this company is allowed to market to me." Don't miss-use peoples newsfeed, it's very easy to Unlike your brand.

Important:
- Exclusive content and feedback.
- Engagement and Insight Apps
- Idea factory. Let your fans suggest ideas to the company for example.
- Gather feedback elsewhere and promote it on Facebook.

What metrics can we implement for the Facebook Market Research Success strategy?

* Daily story feedback for research questions
* Participation rate for polls/ apps
* Quality of ideas and insights
* Market research cost savings

4. Customer Service

Twitter is more well-known for CS but that doesnt mean you can't use Facebook for the same purpose.
Important here is to set customer service expectations. Tell them what hours you are there to answer, create possible discussion boards, Q&A tabs e.t.c
You can listen proactively. Kurrently is a tool that combines Facebook and Twitter listening, it's free and easy to use.

Something that not many companies do is to plan for worst-case scenario BEFORE the scenario actually takes place. Let's discuss openly about what we consider "The Crisis Of The Day" before it happens and what do we do when it happens, cus it will happen sooner or later. Maybe people gang up on your page and trash your content or a specific action for example.
Be clear about ground rules and communicate them on your Facebook page. Tell people what is OK and what is not. Then you can always go back and refer to the rules.
Provide a discussion outlet, maybe a specific tab. Then you can take angry wall-conversations off the wall and deal with them in the discussion tab instead.
If you delete posts, say so and explain why. Facebook has an option under edit page and moderation block-list where you can black list certain words and posts including those automatically get moved to the spam filter.

What metrics can we implement for the Facebook Customer Service strategy?

* Questions Answered/Resolved. How many problems did we solve?
* Customer Satisfaction Surveys. By phone or by email create a survey-follow up, what do people prefer?
* Customer Service Cost Savings

5. Increase Context & Relevancy

This is a bit more complicated and needs a bit of programming but it's totally do-able and will probably be done more and more.
Use Facebook's Rich Open Graph API to improve Experience on your other content
This is what we call: Influence Mining, Data Mining and Customization.
Amazon is a great example. You can actually connect your Facebook page with your amazon account and then get great birthday present tips for your friends based on what they have bought on Amazon.

Another interesting website is Likebutton.me which shows you your friends on Facebook and what content these friends have liked.

How can you use Facebook Data to Improve your content?
Here are some ideas. Blog Post Recommendations. If someone comes to your blog, can you program that based on what that person like on Facebook it automatically recommends 2 posts?
can we send out more relevant emails by using the same principle? Can we suggest How-To-Videos based on the specific interests of one client?

This sums up the session today and what I've gathered from it.
Have a good Tuesday folks!


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