Category Archives: Social Networking

Expectations of Facebook Marketing

February 10, 2009 – 5:19 pm

[digg=http://digg.com/business_finance/Expectations_of_Facebook_Marketing]Clients interested in social media marketing are almost always interested in what they can do on Facebook. And it’s understandable why; users spend hours each week looking at pictures and interacting with friends. When discussing Facebook marketing, it is important to have reasonable expectations about what is possible and what is most likely to happen, given your client’s requests. When putting together a Facebook marketing plan, below are a few things you should and shouldn’t expect.Expect:

  • Expect to do a lot of audience research if you want good results building an application.
  • Expect negative reactions if you decide to send out mass messages to random people or you are making a lot of random friend requests. Facebook could suspend your account if you do this. Conversely, you should try posting videos, notes and pictures and allow people to look at what they find most interesting.
  • If you build an application, expect to have to put in some time promoting it before it promotes itself.
  • Expect a lot to your application usage growth to come from friends inviting other friends and news feed notices going out showing that someone has added or utilized part of an application.
  • Expect that you should to utilize other social media sites like YouTube, Twitter, Digg, and blogs to achieve the greatest results.

Don’t expect:

  • Don’t expect people to become fans of your brand or business, just because you created a page.
  • Don’t expect people to put a great deal of time and effort into conversation with your brand, unless they are uniquely touched or are passionate about your company.
  • Don’t expect great results, if you aren’t doing anything that brings value or entertainment to the end user.
  • Don’t expect a lot of people to click on your ads if you are simply looking for brand awareness. Offering an incentive or posting a low price for a product will most of the time increase your click through rate.
  • If you build an application, don’t expect users to tell friends on their own. It’s best to have sharing built into the application.
  • Don’t expect a great campaign to last forever.

Please feel free share any tips or advice if you think I may have forgot any. Additionally, here are some more great resources to check out:The Top Five Viral Facebook Techniques – AllFacebook.comFacebook Developers Network – Facebook.comA Failed Facebook Marketing Campaign (About Walmart) – Social Media Optimization BlogFacebook Marketing Stunt Backfires – Marketing Pilgrim

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Facebook Grader is Hilarious

January 19, 2009 – 10:00 pm

From the makers of Website Grader, comes Facebook Grader – an application that measures your reach and authority on Facebook. Not that I scored horribly, but I think this is a hilarious measurement made for older social media marketers who want to see how popular they think they are.A Facebook power user doesn’t care about their reach and authority within a group of fake friends. Most power users care about keeping in touch with real friends, sharing real things and of course snooping on other people’s business.I’m actually a fan of HubSpot’s Website Grader, but I don’t necessarily see the point of Facebook Grader as a measurement of a user’s authority. I would however take it more seriously if it measured the reach and authority of a Facebook Application.Now that I’ve bashed Facebook Grader from the 25-year-old Male perspective, it’s actually a really smart marketing idea for Hubspot. The application is good link bait and will attract the older marketers who are clueless enough about social media marketing that they will actually use it and perhaps consult with HubSpot. Mashable didn’t think it was so bad either. What do you think?BTW: I got a 77.

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Where to start with Social Media Marketing Strategy?

January 11, 2009 – 9:53 pm

Where to start with all these social media sites?

Where to start with all these social media sites?

It’s tough to be successful marketing with social media tools without a strategic plan. I ran across a method of helping marketing professionals decide where start their social media marketing plans. It’s called the POST Method. It was derived by social media analysts at Forrester.POST is an acronym, which stands for People, Objectives, Strategy and Technology. To break it down further, below is a list of questions within each category that should help you think about starting a social media marketing plan.People: Who is your audience? Are they online? What do they do online? What influences their decision making? Are they producers, readers, or both? Are there existing communities within your industry?Objectives: What are your goals? Do you want to gain exposure? Do you want to create brand evangelists who will promote your product to passers by? How will you measureyour results?Strategy: What are your key messages? What do you want evangelists to tell passersby? How do you want to change or improve relationships with customers? How can you get the most out new relationships forged?Technology: What resources do you need to connect with customers? Do you want to create an entire community? Do you want to create an application to interact with customers in existing communities? Does your audience listen to podcasts? Watch videos? Read blogs? Or watch presentations?Lots of questions of here to get you started thinking about creating a social media marketing strategy. If you find yourself unable to answer a lot of these questions, support numerous social media relationships and/or execute social media development, it may be best to contact an agency. If you are entirely new to the social media and are a bit overwhelmed or uncomfortable, they best way to learn is to indulge yourself, explore and listen.If you need some more advanced tips, check out this post by Rohit Bhargava.

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