How Often Should You Post?

I am probably asked this question more than any other from brand clients? The simple answer is you should post as much as your audience is likely to want to hear from you.

Yes, this answer is somewhat ambiguous, but let’s peal it down a bit. First off, asking this question is not the place to start. Ask yourself, are we jumping to tactics before we have a strategy and plan? Far too many marketers forget marketing fundamentals when establishing a social marketing presence. Consider “Where You Start in Social Media Strategy Defines Where You End Up.”

Next you have to have a rich understanding and empathy for your audience. Social is not about pushing your agenda. It is about your audience, not your product/service. Yes there is a cross section of what your audience values and reinforcing you’re offering. This comes from having a solid message and content strategy. I cannot emphasis enough how important a well thought out content strategy is. Think about providing your audience content that adds value to your offering and reinforces your brand as the knowledge leader in your industry vertical.

So once we have the marketing fundamentals and content strategy in place as described above, we can answer the question of posting numbers, cadence, and timing. If you are producing content that continually provides valuable information and/or compelling entertaining content, you can post more often than if you are simply providing product push. Think about those brands that ask you to subscribe to an email list and then send you a product blast every day. Doesn’t that get tiresome and turn you off to the brand? The same is true for social posting. If you just post product spam, expect your audience to get disenchanted, not engaged, and potentially un-follow your brand.

If you provide valued content, start by posting once a day. See how your audience responds. Examining empirical data to evaluate true audience response is imperative. As an example, I pulled some posting data from Social Bakers for two top notch social brands – Coca-Cola and Starbucks. Starbucks has 34M fans and Coca-Cola 60.5M fans so the magnitude of responses has large variation between the two.

There are three tables for each. I think it is important to look at the number of posts, user engagement (talking about this) and heat maps depicting activity times all together. These three charts help you draw conclusions with regards to the optimal posting for your brand. Yes there are best practices, but each audience reacts differently and you must know your audience behavior and execute accordingly. Notice that responses rates increase with hiring postings. Also, if you witness peak responses as in the case of Starbucks at the end of the month, examine the type of post that produced that spike and take note that the audience responds strongly to that content. It may be worthwhile to do more postings of that particular style.

Also noteworthy – is that postings to different channels should take on different forms. Twitter should be used for quick useful factoids and points of inspiration. Twitter should include a number of curation pieces and RTs from people that reinforce what the brand stands for. FB should be used to engage and extend the conversation and stories of the topics on a brand content hub as well as “tangential” postings of conversations and pieces that the content hub speaks to.

So to answer the question directly, “How Often Should You Post,” start with once a day on Facebook, a couple of times a day on Twitter. Make sure to provide content your target audience will value – not just product promotions. Examine the results (response to types of posts, best times for responses) and modify your posting timing and cadence based on the empirical data.

It is really not rocket science. It is more like the psychology of your audience – understand what makes them tick and play to their emotions.

Make It Happen!
Social Steve

Why Facebook May Not Be Your Brand’s Community

This past week, I participated and presented at a Digital Academy for one of my pharma clients. I took them through best practices and the importance of what it means to have a social mentality to drive winning results. One of the key points that I made (and it is applicable to all brands) is that you need to think about how your audience may and may not use Facebook before you jump on the band wagon. There may, in fact, be better social networks or channels to be used as determined by consumer behavior.

First, let’s talk about healthcare brands and then I’ll dive into a broader perspective. If am a Facebook user and have a certain condition (say diabetes or high blood pressure or anything for that matter), I may not “like” that brand and/or engage with that brand because that is something I do not want visible to my friends. It is just not a topic that I share with old high school friends and the vast number of people I am connected to. Yes, you can say that Facebook has privacy settings to protect this, but in all seriousness, how many people drill into that level of privacy and mess around with privacy settings at that detail. So it is the target audience behavior that dictates such decisions.

But that does not mean that the use of social is a bad idea for pharma companies. There are two other options – run with the pack where they already exist or be the go to community for information and discussion of the topic the brand provides solutions for. I always recommend that social starts by finding the relevant conversations, where they happen, and go there to start discussions (even if you are building your own social network). There are existing communities and discussion forums on just about every topic in the world. Go there and be an active brand voice. Help by providing information and solutions as opposed to being advertorial. The other option (and it takes a strong commitment) is to work like a publisher and be the go to destination for a particular topic. This requires the site to have awesome original content, curation, and places for people to have conversations.

Too many brands assume that Facebook is the most important social channel for them. As explained in the pharma examples, it may not even be a worthwhile channel. The issue that not enough brands are considering is how users behave and act on Facebook. Too many marketers think that the “like” is the end of their effort. They run a sweepstake to capture a like and claim success. The reality is that no user really cares about brand presence on Facebook. That is, unless the brand provides something valuable, engaging, and compelling. And when brands do this successfully, it almost always focuses on user interested topics as opposed to product push.

Whether brands use Facebook, an existing forum or community, or establish their own community, they must focus compelling content that relates to their brand as opposed to being about their brand. A good example of this is “Dove Inspired.” Do you think that any women would actually be compelled to follow a Dove social channel if Dove talked about moisturizing soap … not likely. So instead, Dove established a program and a following for users to highlight women that inspired them. The focus was not on product, but rather an understanding of the target market and developing a topic that would keep the target marketed engaged. This is something I call “associated marketing.” Dove stays top of mind, by keeping their audience engaged with something of importance to them. Dove associates their brand with something relevant to the target market.

Recognize that Facebook is a social network where friends congregate. Sometimes a brand will have a greater success in a different social network where people with similar interests and needs connect. There, members are not necessarily friends, but their concerns create a strong association and/or support network.

And one more note getting back to the question about establishing a brand’s own community. You cannot build the field of dreams and expect the crowd to come. You must ask, “Why would anyone want to come to our community?” The answer to this will come from two areas: deep customer insights; and complete commitment to being the go to destination for the target audience and the topic(s) covered.

So a handful of suggestions in closing:

1) Understand your target audience and what interests them
2) Cover topics that are relevant to your audience and associate your brand with matters that are important to them
3) Be a valuable source
4) Work to establish a friend nature, not a brand broadcast pipe
5) Determine if you can establish a strong presence in an existing community or if there are benefits of establishing your own … if you establish your own community, consider a publisher mentality where you have an editor in chief and support staff.
6) If you do establish your own community, have a strategy that not only motivates conversation between the brand and users, but also creates a platform where users with similar interest engage with each other.

Make It Happen,
Social Steve

4 Posting Considerations to Optimize Social Media Engagement

If you are doing social postings for a brand, do you ever stop to think about what your target audience values or are you just posting a product-push? I am still surprised at the amount of pure and blatant product push brands post on their Facebook and other social channels.

Just stop and think of your own personal use … you are catching up with friends, looking at photos of their night out on town, their family, or something of that nature, and then you see a post in your newsfeed that reads “Doctors report that ___ deodorant keeps you 90% dryer.” That will really motivate you to take action and buy the product, right?

And the sad reality is that “Your Average Facebook Post Only Reaches 12% Of Your Friends.” But all is not that bleak. You can post compelling content AND increase the number of likes that see your posts. Facebook uses edge ranking to determine what posts are seen by what users. One of the key factors of post visibility is whether or not particular users engage with the brand. Engagement is such actions as liking posts, commenting, or posting on the brands page.

Engagement is key to social success – both from a strategy and empirical approach. I have stated this numerous times. But three things happened this week that motivated me to hit this topic again.

First, I read a pretty straightforward article on digiday.com titled, “5 Most-Liked Brand Posts on Facebook.” Second, my article last week about my sister’s strong motivation coming from social engagement as she fights cancer, “Tell Me You Don’t Think Social Connections Matter After Reading This” was read far greater in a week’s time than any other post in the same time period. And the clincher was that someone I work with asked me for examples of compelling posts as we prepare to help one of our existing clients.

There is no “known” formula for good posting (although the edge rank site referenced above does provide strong guidance). But there are things to consider to optimize your audience engagement. Here are four considerations:

1) An inspirational human story – everyone loves a story of the underdog winning. Highlight a customer that deserves kudos.
2) Tap the passion of your target audience – whether it is a sports team, music group, charitable organization, or some other aspect of your market’s passion. Talk about them. Highlight them. Tie your company values or product position to something they stand for.
3) Nostalgia – everyone likes to be taken back to the “good old days” when they remember a show, concert, moment in history. Something that stirs a strong positive feeling. Go back in your history and tie it to an important date.
4) Breaking news – CNN is not the only source for breaking news. You can be too. Try to align it with the interest related to your offerings or your audiences’ interests. Curate pop culture events.

Think about the posts that interest you the most. Are they human interest stories? One that captures your emotions and passions? Something that takes you back in time or gets you in the know first? Think beyond product promotion … social marketing is best for socializing, not promoting.

Make It Happen!
Social Steve

Why Would Anyone Want to be Your Friend? – A Brand Question

The beginning of the school year was blistering hot. The ice cream truck made a regular appearance in front of the grade school at 3pm in the afternoon. On one particular afternoon, Billy and Tommy left school via the front door at the same time. Billy was a popular kid. Tommy was a wanna-be. Tommy offered to buy Billy an ice cream and Billy quickly accepted. After that, Tommy thought he was in … was part of the cool kids and friends with Billy. But that was it … Tommy never reached out to Billy and they never talked. Thus, it was the end of a perceived friendship.

Okay … granted … I am a poor fable writer. But you get the point as it applies to social marketing. The point above seems so childish and everyone can understand the absurdness of Tommy’s expectations. So why do brands expect to run a promotion, get users to like them, and then think they have built a social brand friendship? Aren’t we ready to stop talking about the value of a “like” and talk about the value of continuous engagement with prospects and/or customers?

This past week, I presented at a webinar for a publisher who had a person pull out at the last minute and asked me to fill in. I am always glad to share my social marketing knowledge and perspective (as my schedule allows). The topic was social media ROI … a topic I love to speak about because there is so much misunderstanding in this area. To be honest, I really did not know what the other presenters would say, but was glad to share the methodology behind the Social BrandAction™ Index I have defined.

One of the presenters described how her brand had attracted over 1 million likes on Facebook and at the time of a promotion had almost 20% engagement. So I went to their Facebook page and found that they have 1% engagement. That is poor and given the nature of their brand, it is horrible. Yes, it is easy to get people engaged when you are giving out ice cream or some promotion, but if you really want to keep them as a “friend,” consistent engagement is the only true metric (as shown in the “talking about this” parameter on a Facebook page). You get consistent engagement by provoking two-way conversation as opposed to broadcasting content, asking questions, taking polls, and covering topics that stir lively discussion – just as a few examples.

Hear me on this one – Facebook is an engagement platform and if you are going to have a brand presence there, you better think about activities that provoke engagement. Look at your performance metrics. Are you producing results?

And secondly, Facebook is far from being the only social marketing channel. In fact, it may not serve your brand very well. If it is not likely that your brand is apt to produce active conversation and engagement, think about other social marketing platforms that might serve your brand better. There are many more out there, and a gazillion people use other ones everyday. (For example, the most telling metric for Pinterest is “repins” while they do have “likes” and “comments” as well.) I am not saying Facebook is not a strong and important platform. What I am saying is that you should understand Facebook user behavior and use appropriate metrics to determine results. You should also have a full appreciation and knowledge of your target market’s behavior on various platforms and have a strategy optimized for participation and actions.

Far too many are still building the social field of dreams. They think “brand friendship” comes from one promotion causing a “like” and that defines success. If you are really content with this definition of success – have at it. But there are much more efficient ways to produce meaningful and measurable results with social marketing. Each solution should be very particular to the brand of reference. You should expect the people or agencies working your social marketing endeavors to be able to define a social marketing strategy and plan that clearly articulates creative concept, socialization plan, channels, and measurement of success. All of this complete with an integration plan for other online and offline marketing efforts. The only way to define this strategy is based upon target market and customer insights. If you are not getting that, your expectations of success are fantasy.

So ask yourself as a brand manager, “Why would anyone want to be my friend?” You better have a compelling answer from the perspective of the audience you look to attract as opposed to just drinking your own rhetoric.

Make It Happen,
Social Steve

PS – What I have addressed here may seem so simple and a no-brainer. The reality is that I continue to see an over abundance still thinking that buying someone a “social media ice cream cone” defines a brand social marketing effort. I hope you don’t think this will work for you. Drive true measurable success! Make it happen! Now!

Social Media Evolution

Many will say that social media has been around forever. Some would profess that it goes as far back as the days of cavemen when sharing of information was done by writing on cave walls. Yes, as humans, we have found numerous ways to connect, build relationships, and share via many channels as we have evolved as a society. But clearly the emergence of Blogger in 1999, Friendster in 2002, LinkedIn and MySpace in 2003, and Facebook in 2004 defined the age of digital social media. Yes, we have been social animals for centuries, even predating mankind, but social media, using media, does not really predate the Internet.

And now, social media moves from a state of infancy to adolescence. Nice statement to grab a headline, but I will give you four points why we are at a historic point of change for social media.

1) The New Facebook

Facebook is clearly a new company. A public company. This means a new set of rules to play by. As a public company, their number one objective is growth and increasing profits. You can say that is the objective of most companies, but public companies are under a microscope much more than private ones. For example, Facebook has strong pressure to demonstrate revenue from mobile. I am sure this is an issue that they have discussed internally for a while, but now as a public company there is even stronger pressure to deliver a solution that generates mobile revenue given that at least 50% of people access Facebook via mobile.

It will be difficult for Facebook to remain attractive to their three constituent groups: their users, marketers that look to leverage the user base, and Wall Street. As Facebook attempts to stay attractive to the three, I believe the Facebook direction changes. They are a significant part of the entire social media vertical, today. This means that their strategic and tactical direction affects all of social media as they are such a large part of it.

2) Dawn of a new mobile

Yes, for the past ten years we have said this is the year of mobile. And I think it has been true each year as mobile adoption and penetration continues strong growth, year over year. But I think we are at a paramount shift with regards to mobile. It all comes down to a variance of mobile user behavior. This is due to the tablet (basically solely the iPad at this point). We will see the use of tablets to be as ubiquitous as the use of smartphones in the next 12-18 months. And mobile usage patterns and behavior on smartphones versus tablets is dramatic. Just think about it from your own perspective, how you might use a tablet (with a larger screen and maybe not as portable) versus a smartphone (with a small screen, but can fit in your pocket). A telling statistic is something John Arrow stated on The Golden Age of Mobile panel at The Admerica conference in Austin this week … commerce on mobile rates at 4% users for smartphones versus 11% for tablet users. Yes tablets, practice of second screen usage during TV-watching, and other yet-to-come mobile usage patterns define a new mobile chapter.

3) Ad effectiveness on social

I believe that we are going to see more and more analysis and evaluation on the effectiveness of advertisement on social platforms. Think about your usage patterns and mentality when you are on the Internet seeking information versus on a social network. I would venture to say that most people are subconsciously more receptive to ads when seeking information versus socializing. Thus, digital marketers need to think about the placement of digital ads. There are many that question the value of ads in digital. Yet, we have empirical data that shows contribution to leads and acquisition at our agency. And I do think that ads play some role in social, but clearly brands can be more effective using social to build relationships. It is not a question of whether to use digital ads, but rather where and how to use them.

The scrutiny of Facebook ad revenue associated with their IPO has opened the conversation of ad effectiveness on Facebook and social media as a wider topic. I think we are beginning to see rational thinking with regards to how brands use social media to their advantage. And while ads play some role in social media, clearly there are stronger strategies for brands that can drive greater measurable results.

4) Starting to understand the metrics that matter

As I engage with more and more clients and emphasize metrics that represent social media success, I sense that people are finally getting it. I explain it like this …

Social media is not a great way to generate sales. Social media is excellent at teeing up sales. While the sales funnel is dead as I explained in “Know What Successful Social Media Looks Like, we use elements of the “pre-historic” funnel to define what should be measured – specifically awareness, consideration, loyalty, and advocacy. All of these user behaviors effect sales (as defined and detailed in “Know What Successful Social Media Looks Like“) and can be measured. As more people begin to realize this, we will see more and more companies executing winning social media endeavors and less and less social media guru/expert imposters polluting practices.

So yes, social media has reached a definitive new chapter for the reasons I defined. Social media is evolving quickly. If I can give you one word of advice that has worked for me, it is as follows: I have never considered myself a social media expert. I am a perpetual student always hungering to experience and learn more. I have been successful with social media for two reasons:

• Keen examination and awareness of user behavior and actions, and

• Consistently seeking information, new emergence of platforms/technologies, and evaluation of successful and ineffective social initiatives.

I love what I do and am thrilled to be in such a dynamic industry. I love to …

Make It Happen!
Social Steve

The Facebook Issue No One Wants To Discuss

So, you are tired of reading about Facebook this past week. From the controversy with GM pulling its $10M Facebook ad program early in the week to the Facebook IPO on Friday. And then the surprise wedding of Zuckerberg to his long time girlfriend on Saturday. And in all this coverage, no one put the real Facebook issue on the table.

Everyone is asking if Facebook ads provide a winning ROI and frankly that is the wrong question. Facebook should not be your social media program. It should be part of your social media program, but social media is bigger. And for that matter, social media is only a part of marketing (and other important business functions as well like customer support). To look at every single slice of a marketing program and see if there is an ROI does not make sense, at all. I’ll explain shortly.

Before I explain the ROI issue, let me first rewind the tape from this past week. I was asked to provide comments and answer some questions for a number of publications. As is always the case, my comments were taken out of context. I was asked about GM publicizing that they were pulling their Facebook ads and my thoughts on that. Here was my complete response …

“WSJ reports that General Motors plans to stop advertising on Facebook as GM marketing chief Joel Ewanick said the auto maker ‘is definitely reassessing our advertising on Facebook, although the content is effective and important.’

The news could not come at a worse time for Facebook, but states some strong commentary on both Facebook and GM.

First GM … this is the same company that went before Congress looking for hand-outs to save their fledging company. Was Ford in front of Congress? No. Is it a coincidence that Ford has an extremely productive social media program that is fully integrated into other marketing programs? No. What Ford does, that is absent from GMs social media effort, is that they have a strategy, plan, execution, and metrics that integrate ALL owned, earned, and PAID media endeavors. They do not have an isolated Facebook paid media program. Furthermore, I question if Ewanick understands that, on average, only 16% of brand postings on Facebook reach their ‘like’s’ newsfeed as revealed at the fMC on 2/29/11. He should look at Facebook’s reach generator (paid offering from Facebook) with regards to “content (being) effective and important.” The fact is that GM does not know how to integrate social media into a winning business strategy. The issue is not Facebook ads.

As for Facebook … this news is very detrimental for Facebook right before their IPO. It paints a picture that a struggling company cannot rely on Facebook to help turn them around, but the same could be said about any pure-play marketing advertisement program. The reality is that Facebook advertisement, by itself, is not a great use of precious marketing dollars. Facebook has done a poor job positioning and describing how their platform drives quantifiable business results. Facebook is not the equivalent of having a social media strategy and it is time for Facebook to communicate how they are PART of a winning solution and stop making ill-advised marketers believe they are THE social media solution.”

I was also asked what I thought Facebook going public would mean to the company and marketers using Facebook as one of their marketing channels. I provided some bullet comments as I will have an article in eContentMag.com (http://www.econtentmag.com/default.aspx) this coming week covering this topic. Here are the snippets I provided:

* As Forrester’s Josh Bernoff SVP, Idea Development tweeted this past week, “Buying Facebook shares? The original investors took their risks & will now get their rewards. Now the risk is passed on to you.” But investors are not the only ones taking on risk; marketers now have added risk with Facebook if they put all their social eggs solely in the Facebook basket.
* The fact that Facebook is now a public company means Zuckerberg and team need to answer to quarterly results.
* While Mark may continue to talk about the importance of sharing what’s going on with your connections, there will be deeper focus on revenue generation. The real question is whether Facebook can carry off both sides successfully.
* As Facebook feels increased revenue pressure, I see a potential user conflict.
* As Facebook introduces more ad and revenue tactics (such as the recently announced reach generator) it will be interesting to see how users react. It will be a delicate balance for Facebook to keep usage high while introducing greater revenue generation.
* Keeping Wall Street, brand advertisers, and users all happy and content at the same time will be one massive effort.

Here are the various places that published edited versions of my perspective and POV (point of view):

* USA Today – GM to stop buying ads on Facebook
* Media Post – Facebook Ads Need Traditional Measurement Tools To Determine ROI
* Media Bistro – GM’s Decision Not to Advertise On Facebook Not Such a Big Deal After All
* Business Insider – What Everyone On Madison Avenue Is Saying About Facebook
* New York Post – Social downshift: GM slashes $10M in Facebook ads

The real issues facing marketers is not Facebook ROI. Let’s start by looking at consumer buying behavior. Today, there are many components and influences that in totality lead to a purchase. For a moment, let’s just concentrate on digital use. We need to understand the plight of the consumer. They may hear about a product from a friend on a social community or in an email. They may look for the product or product category on Google or other search platforms. Seeing an ad on Facebook or other websites may work to remind them of their consideration. They may look for reviews online. A promotional ad may trigger an action. All of these things contribute to the purchase path and are important elements. Are we simply going to give “the last click” the credit for the conversion? Can we measure other contributing factors?

You see this gets complicated in the digital world we live in. I did not even mention offline marketing activities. They contribute to the purchase decision as well and make this ROI discussion even more difficult.

Thus, it is not an issue whether Facebook ads have an ROI for marketers, but rather there is a need for marketers to use digital display ads (Facebook and others) INTEGRATED in digital strategy. A digital strategy that includes owned, earned, and paid media. If you look at consumer digital behavior, they do not just go one place and make a purchase decision. They are using different tools (search, ads, social, reviews, etc) to make purchase decisions.

“Marketing ROI” is what should be measured. We should not try to place an ROI on each element of marketing. Yes, we should measure variables that show success or lack there of, but ROI is not a realistic measurement of Facebook ads. There are KPIs (key performance indicators) that should be measured such as click-throughs and impressions. Once again, these are attributes that “build up” to a sales conversion, but they should not be specific to the ROI equation.

It is time for marketers to have a much greater degree of knowledge and understanding of customer behavior and how they are using digital in their purchase decisions. Marketers must develop a marketing strategy and plan that INTEGRATES the digital channels their target market uses. Marketers must determine how they will measure each of the piece of their strategy, but ROI should be left as a metric for evaluation of the entire marketing program.

Make It Happen!
Social Steve

Making Facebook Work for Your Brand

Last week, I explained the new Facebook and its importance (challenges and opportunities) for brands. This week, I would like to take this one step further.

The question to ask is “how will people appreciate, engage, and interact with your brand’s Facebook page?” If you have a brand Facebook page, are you going to be happy with building the “Field of Dreams?” Build it and they will come? Or is the answer that you need to understand your target audience and their behaviors?

A while back, I wrote an article “The Most Important Word for Marketing.” I stated that empathy was imperative because nothing topped having the knowledge of your target audience. Empathy makes it much easier to define your product/service, story, position, and message for your potential customers.

I will add one more important factor as it relates to having a successful Facebook brand page and interactivity. That would be understanding your potential and existing audience’s behavior. As marketers, we want to change behavior to our brand’s benefit and ultimately drive transactions. To best understand your audience’s behavior, simple – talk to them. Next step, collect data and evaluate. What types of posts do the best? What day and time of day works best for reaction and correspondence? The information is there, it is just that so many do not bother to look at it.

Recognize that digital behavior varies by people (demographic and psycho-demographic groupings) and vertical industries. A good source for understanding digital behavior is Forrester’s Social Technographics. Check out both Forrester’s post and Forrester’s slides.

When planning your strategy and communication plan on Facebook, think about engagement and interactions. Nothing could be more important. Do you know why? Why your CEO might think this is important? Because “engaged customers spend 30% more” (according to a Bain and Company report). Pretty powerful!

Now let’s talk about Facebook engagement for a minute. So many people are transfixed on the number of likes for their brand. Well you know what? I can get you one million likes, no problem. We’ll just give away a brand new iPad to every new fan. Yeah – I know this sounds crazy. But it’s just as crazy for so many brands to worry about the number of likes they have and not pay equal or more attention to how they are going to get those fans to interact.

So I always tell all my clients that the number of fans is important, but not the end all. It represents the magnitude of people that “could” engage with the brand. So pay attention to building up that number. But let’s pay equal, if not more, attention to getting our fans (or “likes”) engaged. And now Facebook puts this number out front and center for us.

It is called “talking about this.” So in the example above, Starbucks has almost 30 million likes, and about 300K talking about them. This is about one percent of their likes. I suggest brands work to get at least five percent.

The “Talking About This” number is the unique users that have interacted with the brand on Facebook. This includes:

• liking a page
• posting on the page wall
• liking a post
• commenting on a post
• sharing a post
• answering a question
• RSVPing to a page’s event
• mentioning the page in a post
• tagging the page in a photo
• checking in at a place
• sharing a check-in deal
• liking a check-in deal
• writing a recommendation

All of these activities are very important. When a Facebook user “talks about this” (the brand), the action shows up as a post on their friends’ news feed. Thus the action and exposure of the brand is shared … the brand is shared with a larger audience. In the article I wrote last week, I talked about the mere exposure brands got on users’ Facebook page. Just 16 percent. The new Facebook (paid) reach generator increases likelihood the posts will be seen on fans’ news feed.

Yes, getting your post viewed is extremely important. But you should also be building a plan to increase the value Facebook plays for your brand and your audience. Anyone can put up a Facebook page. Be the brand that designs a Facebook page AND interaction strategy and plan that yields measurable results.

If I were to give one suggestion how to go about a winning Facebook mentality it would be to think like the producers of “American Idol.” Why is American Idol so appealing? I think it really comes down to three factors:

1) To begin with, American Idol has really good, compelling owned media. The contestants they present are talented and provide something that most people enjoy.
2) They make the audience part or their product. You, as a viewer have an active and important role in their product offering.
3) Even if you are not one that votes on contestants (review Forrester’s Social Technodemographics for participation levels), the fact that so many do interact adds validity and value to the product. The American Idol is selected by the target audience. Not some executives that are removed from pop culture.

Think about what it means to proactively give your audience some important function, aspect, or voice for your brand. Don’t be afraid … it is likely to happen without your involvement. So given this is the reality of the social world we live in, influence that participation to your benefit.

Make It Happen!
Social Steve

New Facebook – Interpretation for Brands

Do you know how to use Facebook to optimize your INTEGRATED social media/marketing strategy and plan? Are your driving MEASURABLE results? I have some recommendations.

There was no shortage of coverage on Facebook’s changes for brands as of February 29, 2012. I won’t go through the announcements (as so many have done already), but I’ll give you the highlights before I explain “why you should care” and “what you should think about.”
First here is a summary of Facebook changes:
• By default, both fans and non-fans will be directed to a brand’s timeline tab when visiting their Facebook page. Timeline also means that there are new or changing features and navigation:
- New cover photo (at the top of the page) in addition to the small existing profile picture,
- Fan engagement is separated and not integrated in with brand’s postings as shown on timeline,
- Splash pages and “like gates” are no longer an optional landing page, and
- More admin control on look and display of posts
• Page administrators have the ability to “pin” content at the top of their page for one week such that it does not scroll down as new content is posted.
• Reach Generator – guarantees brand posts will be viewed on more fans’ news feeds (more detail below)
• New premium ad formats (sponsored stories, page posts) – Photo, Video, Question, Status, Event, and Link
• Offers – postings of a discount or promotion from brands to their fans

And just one more thing before we get into the new Facebook and its social media marketing ramifications. Let’s not forget about the objective of social media and how success is measured. Social media is about building relationships. Social media success is about being able to measure an objective.

Building relationships in social media is defined in the A-Path model I have presented numerous times. The A-Path of relationships as a brand to your target segment’s individuals is Attention > Attraction > Affinity > Audience > Advocacy. The way we measure social media success is to measure Awareness, Consideration, Loyalty, and Advocacy. The intersection of social media relationship building and social media measurement is described in the article “Social Media Model that Defines the End of the World as we Know It.”

Got the foundation? OK, let’s talk Facebook. Go through the next few sections and stop to think about how Facebook can (now) be used for your marketing efforts. Based on the new features and information Facebook unveiled at the 2/29/12 fMC, we all need to start to think about Facebook marketing differently – for better and worse.

Facebook Brand Page – A Destination Site
Facebook timeline is impressive. The new look is aesthetically pleasing. This is a positive move by Facebook. Yes, there will be those that rant and rave because people do not accept change so well, but in the long run (and maybe not so long) I think most will come to accept and appreciate the new look for brand pages. I like the new feature set – especially the ability to “pin” content or a promotion at the top of a brand page for a week and keeps it from scrolling below as you place new posts on your brand timeline.

Let’s be clear here. Facebook is working to make your Facebook brand page a destination site where dynamic content resides. Think of this from two perspectives. 1) How do you leverage the Facebook brand page changes and is that destination now more compelling than your static website. 2) Prior to timeline, most people’s Facebook brand experience was on their news feed as opposed to specifically going to the brands’ Facebook page – just think of your own experience as a user rather than your role as marketer.

Facebook is NOT a Brand’s Community
Facebook is a great place to build attraction and affinity for your brand once you have gotten someone’s attention. It is NOT your community and there are better platforms where you should build your audience. One of the biggest issues with thinking Facebook is YOUR community is that you do not have access to or own the data of your “Facebook likes.” Thus, if you do not have these users’ data, they are not your true audience. Rather the people that like you on Facebook are just potential passers in the night. Having customer data is key for any and all marketing efforts.

This is not to say that Facebook serves no value – hardly the case. It is a starting point; not an ending point. You want to use Facebook for attraction and build affinity with your target segment. And as you do this and the individual feels a stronger relationship with your brand, you want to collect their data. Point them to content in your OWN community and invite them to join YOUR community. I always ask my clients a rhetorical question … Would you rather have 25K Facebook likes or 25K members of your community? Where do you think you can monetize better?

Facebook Freeium Model
The next point is that in essence, Facebook is not free. It really is a freeium model for brands. You get some functionality for free, but if you really want the key benefits, you need to pay. Up until the fMC on February 29, 2012, brands were led to believe that they collect likes for their Facebook presence and their posts would be directed to the news feeds of the people that liked them. In reality, this is NOT really the case. The reality that Facebook unveiled is that, on average, only 16% of fans saw brands’ posts. (This is due to their edge ranking algorithm that determines which post shows up on an individual’s news feed.) Facebook now offers “reach generator” to up the view percentage on news feed to a guaranteed 75% and as high as 95% for delivered posts. So now brands have to assess whether their Facebook strategy makes sense without “paid media” or if they are willing to foot the bill ($0.30 per like for a 3 month period). What are the measured results a brand is likely to get with and without reach generator – work your metrics.

Additional Paid Facebook Features
Facebook did announce new premium ads (in addition to their existing non-premium Marketplace ads). One of the biggest change users will see is that premium ads will appear in brands’ timeline and users’ news feeds if the user or one of their friends liked or interacted with the brand’s Facebook page. The ads will look like status updates. Facebook hopes this will generate more user interest.

Now what happens if brands want to reach other people with their advertisement – not just their fans? These premium ads have the opportunity to be displayed in non-fan news feeds if the user’s friend has liked the ad. The premium ad can also be displayed on the right side of the page for users that have not liked the brand and there is no interaction with the brand from their friends. These “stories” are really premium advertisements targeted to non-likes based on brand-selected demographics and other data people share on the social network.

One other change for these premium ads … Facebook looks to change the digital advertising model. These premium ads will not be priced like other typical CTR (click through rate) ads. Click-through rates for Facebook ads have been very low and Facebook’s position is that CTRs are a poor measure ad performance. Thus Facebook has partnered with Nielsen to implement a gross rating point (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_rating_point) model.

Facebook Position for Brands
Facebook is positioning brands to be more true to the intended use of a Facebook user experience. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO said, “People do not expect to be talked at – they want to be a full part of the conversation.” The new premium ads (“sponsored stories”) are meant to be delivered like other “normal” Facebook status posts. This means that brands must be creative and provide valuable information or entertainment in their paid premium ad and sponsored story posts. No user is going to want to see a blatant ad in their news feed from a brand. This could disenchant users and backfire on brands. Be careful how you craft your premium paid posts. Facebook is putting some spin on their new premium ad position. They are careful to call these posts “stories” – not ”ads.” Brands must follow suit and execute these “stories” as well, stories – not ads.

One Additional Facebook Payoff
As Facebook prepares for their IPO, one of the significant hurdles that they faced was not having a mobile ad play. They did not have this functionality in their mobile app. Everyone questioned their ability to generate revenue from mobile users. This segment represents a substantial portion of Facebook use … approximately 50 % of Facebook use is via mobile. Now the problem is solved. Facebook is now simply delivering “ads” in the news feed. Tell the investors it is “ads” in the news feed; tell the rest of the world it is a brand story in the news feed. I think this is called poetic justice based on the crowd you are playing to.

Summary – Facebook Part of an INTEGRATED Social Media Strategy
It remains to be seen how users react to seeing brand stories/ads in their news feed. Now don’t get me wrong. Social implementations must have an integration of both organic social and paid social. But given the reality that brand posts only reach 16% of the intended audience without the fee-based reach generator, Facebook is now primarily a paid media channel. Yes, you can use their new timeline feature set to build a beautiful, dynamic destination site, but Facebook’s new position should definitely make you rethink your brand’s Facebook use.

There are great opportunities to use Facebook in the early parts of you’re A-Path relationship building, but all brands should make strategic decisions with regards to where they want to shape and build their audience. My recommendation is that Facebook is NOT a place to build audience. Think about the behavior you want to change in your target segment. Think about the steps and channels used to build strong relationships. This will lead to the appropriate use of Facebook in your integrated plan and this is likely not the same way you thought about Facebook yesterday.

Make It Happen,
Social Steve

Unifying Loyalty, Rewards, and Social Media

A little over a week ago, eMarketer ran a very interesting story, “What Do Facebook Users Expect from Brands?” that speaks loud to social media affect on rewards programs. The article examined an ExactTarget study and “found that 58% of US Facebook users expect to gain access to exclusive content, events or sales after ‘liking’ a company, while 58% also expect to receive discounts or promotions.”

So let’s think about this for a moment. What this is basically saying is that consumers expect special considerations for liking a brand from the start. In other words, they expect rewards (something the “general public” does not get) right from the get-go … possibly even before they start purchasing anything. And yet loyalty programs are typical designed to reward the best shoppers of the brand.

Once again, this demonstrates how social media is changing the way brands are required to market and sell to consumers and smart brands will view this as an opportunity. Let me outline how this can be achieved by modeling a hypothetical rewards program that leverages social media and rallies around the reality as supported by empirical data in the ExactTarget study.

I suggest formulating a tiered loyalty program around two social media channels and then taking it one step further. Our objective here is to create incremental consumer commitment to the brand.

Tier 1

Do exactly what the survey states users are looking for. Create a Facebook fanpage for users to like and give them exclusive content, events, and small discounts and promotions for liking your brand. (Do be aware that Facebook “Like” will change soon … users will soon specify varying degrees of “Like.” You may “like” one brand, but “really, really like” another.) I am not sure of the future classifications for “likes,” but there will be some variance.

The value here is to get users to “opt-in” to a brand and stay engaged with the brand. The shortcoming in using Facebook for “community” is that Facebook does not provide enough user data for companies to do strong marketing campaigns. Still I see positive steps as this is an “introduction” to the brands loyalty program.

Tier 2

Create a brand community accessible from the brand’s home site. A community that requires people to provide their email address to enter and join the community. A community that delivers great content, allows users to engage with the brand and other users, and contains a compelling feature set typically provided by community software vendors such as Jive Software and SaaS companies like OneSite.

Brands must provide some incremental benefit for users “opting-in” to the community sign-up over a Facebook Like. In this scenario, the user is giving you more information about them (you need to have a plan of collecting richer data on the user over time), thus allowing the creation of target marketing programs. The value here is having that users data and targeted marketing programs increases monetization likelihood.

You cannot just “build the field of dreams and they will come.” The same is true for online communities. You have to have an awesome reason for them to come. Focus on great content, an easy to navigate user interface, a high level of engagement, and ability for users to provide their own voice. There are numerous articles available about considerations for great online communities. Here are a couple … “Where Audience Fits in Social Media” and “How 7 Startups Are Building Their Online Communities.”

Tier 3

Now we move off of social media (yes I can do that ) and move to even greater brand commitment from users. The highest degree of commitment comes if your consumer is willing to pay an annual fee for their loyalty. In return they get great benefits – assuming they are truly loyal to the brand. Membership has its rewards and American Express is a great example. Starting at $40 per year, you can sign up and earn points for great products, travel accommodations, concerts, and much more. The benefits are extremely rewarding if you use the card often and the fact that you paid is psychological motivation.

The loyalty tiering model I have laid out highlights two very important facts:

1) Unequivocally, social media is a game changer. It is changing the way people do business and the way they make purchase decisions. Those companies that do not adapt will be trumped by those companies that do.
2) Social media is not a stand alone function. It must go beyond integration with other marketing endeavors and be unified.

Where do you see other opportunities for unifying social media with existing programs?

Make It Happen,
Social Steve

Facebook and Audience Behavior

Nothing is more important than understanding your audience and their behavior. The best marketers start there and then create strategies to build awareness, consideration, sales, loyalty, and advocates for their brand (in that order).

Technology does not matter. How people use technology matters. Social media does not matter. How people use social media matters. Facebook does not matter. How people use Facebook matters.

How many times have we heard the proclamation “We need a Facebook page” without the deliverer having any insight as to how their audience will use the platform? What would provoke someone to “Like” their brand and even more important, stay engaged with the brand.

I can guarantee you I can get you one million fans/likes in a very short time … offer a free iPad to anyone that “likes” your Facebook page. So once you have one million fans, is that success, or is success getting as many “likes” as possible that stay engaged with your brand? Engaged fans – that is the audience behavior we want for success.

So how do you keep fans engaged? Well, the first thing is to keep the content fresh and continuously changing. You should try to change out content daily and let your fans know of the new content mentioning it on your wall posts. “Fan gating“ is a good way to increase your fans and keep them viewing your content on your Facebook tab. The tab should have exclusive content and is only viewable if a person “likes” your brand. Exclusive content can include unique articles, photos, polls, quizzes, videos, sweepstakes, image galleries, and other things of that sort.

The cadence (how often and when) of your postings has ramifications on your audience engaging with your brand. Other things that drive fan engagement is making sure you manage, moderate, and respond to comments on your wall, and prompting fans for their own UGC (user generated content) and letting fans decide on some aspects of your content by giving them choices. Buddy Media put out a good report titled “Strategies for Effective Facebook Wall Posts: A Statistical Review” which you can download to get some guidance.

At the end of the day, no one strategy fits all brands. You need to measure responses of your audience. You can use Facebook Insights to track fans and interactions over a period of time as well as some other parameters. (See “A Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Insights”) What Facebook Insights does not give you is Interactions per Fans. This is the most important number to track. Everyone wants to see a high number of fans, but this number is only important when looking at interactions/fans at the same time. Yes, you want to grow your fans, but grow with fans that engage with you. Another useful source is “How to Measure Facebook Page Engagement.”

Something else to think about is how users “experience” your brand on Facebook. The Facebook experience is very different than a website experience and understanding this is key. The main issue is that users typically experience your brand presence or are alerted to your new content on your Facebook tab from their newsfeed as opposed to going to the brand Facebook page wall. Thus, it is important to recognize that the individuals that “like” your brand may not go to your fan page. You either need to deliver compelling content on your wall (so it hits the individuals’ newsfeed) or alert your fan base of new content on your Facebook tab by mentioning it on your wall. You need to spark a reason why your fans should visit your Facebook page by posting compelling content on your tab. The tab can include exclusive content or interactive features such as polls or quizzes. You must be conscious to keep the contents fresh and updated on a regular basis if you have a Facebook tab.

There are a number of companies that can assist in the development of these tabs either as a service or providing tools for easy do-it-yourself implementation. Some companies worth checking out include Buddy Media, Shoutlet, North Social, and Involver.

You also need to integrate Facebook widgets on your content that appears on your website and/or blog. Hopefully you are aware of the Facebook “Like” button. By including this button on individual content posts you allow your readers to virtually broadcast that they enjoyed and “liked” the particular content piece to all their Facebook friends. So if someone reads your article, “likes it”, and has 150 friends on Facebook, they are referencing it to 150 peoples … nice advocacy.

Facebook also recently launched a “Send” button. The Facebook “send” makes it easier to notify your friends or family than email as you don’t have to remember email addresses, but simply look from a list of people in your social network.

Now, once again, I want to emphasize the importance of understanding audience behavior when they use these two buttons embedded in their content. When someone “likes” something, it is an expression and subconscious statement of who they are. “I like this band, movie, TV show, book, etc.” These declarations are personal bumper stickers. It is a broadcast and part of the formulation of one’s personal brand. As a brand, you need to determine how you play into this mix and entice someone to label themselves as “liking” your brand. Yes, you can get their attention and attraction by doing a sweepstake to get them to “like” you, but what will you do to provide continuous value to get them to build affinity for you, be part of your audience and ultimately become one of your advocates?

Use of “send” is a direct person to person, or person to group communication. When someone uses Facebook “send”, they are telling the recipient(s) “I thought of you and I think you will value this.”

While “like” may be viewed by more of the originator’s social graph, “send” is a stronger endorsement. Point is you need to understand how both can be used.

The Facebook scenarios I have walked through here are just one example of the imperativeness of understanding your audience, what they value, their behavior, and how they might use specific social media platforms. Yes, social media should be an extremely important part of your overall business and marketing strategy, planning, and execution, but you must understand your audiences’ behavior and how they will use the various social platforms you launch. You must measure response and continuously make tweaks in your execution to maximize key performance indicators.

So go ahead – kick some butt with your social implementations – but don’t just do it – think it, then do it, then measure it, then refine it. Continue the cycle.

Make it Happen!
Social Steve