facebook – Tiffany Quach

New Things Coming to Facebook in 2013

By tiffany | January 24, 2013

During my Social Media Marketing class the other night, we talked about the new innovations coming to Facebook. The first being the concept design and the other being Graph Search.

For those who haven’t seen it yet, here’s the link to what Facebook’s layout concept is. Of course, this is a work in progress and the final layout probably won’t look like this or it will have some similar features. It reminds me a lot of Windows 8 and the Metro UI. It’s very clean and sleek. I think this kind of look would benefit business/branded pages because it’ll almost look like another website, and could even pass off as a micro site. Although, from watching the video, it seems like there are multiple pages and I have no idea how you’re going to get to all of them. Maybe by swiping? Or they’ll have different tabs for you to click on that will take you to those desired pages. I know they have the sidebar that takes you to the About Me page so maybe all of the pages like your Wall, Photos, Likes, etc will be listed there as well. The video doesn’t make it very clear where they’re actually clicking to reach these pages so I can only guess it’s through that sidebar. The cool thing is how they have the pop-up window whenever you click on photos. I think it really matches their entire thematic look and feel with the right color schemes and everything.

The one thing I don’t understand is why they’re moving things around in the beginning of the video. Maybe they’re allowing us the ability to feature certain parts of our wall as a collage and we can organize it? Otherwise, it just doesn’t make sense to start moving things around especially if Facebook is still trying to incorporate “Timeline”. Making things out of order in time doesn’t make sense. Other than that part, I think the rest of it looks pretty cool. We also saw what the New MySpace looked like as well and it seems the two social media platforms are following in each others’ footsteps because it doesn’t look much different. Take a look for yourself here: The New MySpace

Facebook is already in the midst of launching this new feature, Graph Search. It’s currently on beta and there is a waiting list involved in order to try it out. This is essentially a search engine within Facebook. You can now get more technical in your searches by inputting things like “People who like surfing” or “Places my friends have visited” and you’ll be given a list of Facebook users who have an interest in surfing and they’ll also list the names and places your friends have traveled to. It’s definitely going to take social media to an even more social level which I think is pretty awesome. You can even get real specific by saying “People who like surfing and are my friends”. That would narrow down the search to an even smaller selection of people.

On the advertising side of things, I think this will definitely help brands target specific audiences. Let’s say we’re Tide (since I’ve done Tide in my blog before), you’d probably want to find people who are athletic because you know that your brand has the power to get rid of tough stains like grass and dirt. By simply searching “People who play sports”, you’d be given a large group of people who could be your potential audience. This would definitely help with advertising on Facebook and make targeting better.

Behind the Scenes Content

By tiffany | June 17, 2012

With the emergence of social media, brands have been searching for new ways to connect with their loyal fans. One way brands have done it is by revealing behind the scenes content. These behind the scenes content could include photos of employees working, photos of events the brand participated in, videos of how a product is made, interviews with brand creators, or just everyday photos that represent who the brand is.

Seeing the different ways that a brand can show their personality and identity impacts their fans’ attitudes towards them. Behind the scenes contents creates brand transparency as fans and consumers are able to look at what goes on behind their brand. It’s a way for brands to engage on a personal level with their fans. This also makes consumers trust the brand more because they see the brand as something more than just a corporate identity. People may think that brands like Microsoft or Sony are filled with stuffy employees who do not do anything but work behind cubicles, coming up with ideas. But by showing some behind the scenes content, brands are showing that their employees are like anyone else and that they care about them, and this could be done by simply sharing photos of the company’s annual Halloween costume contest.

Fans and consumers react favorably to behind the scenes materials because the brand now seems like a person, a close friend. The brands share who they are and hopefully their identity matches their fans’ perceived identity of themselves and of the brand. Another reason why fans are impacted by behind the scenes is because it’s intimate. Brands are revealing parts of themselves that they may not have otherwise done if they didn’t have a social media outlet, where they can openly communicate with their fans. Brand could also create brand identity through their behind the scenes content that could affect fans’ responses. For example, Zappos’s Facebook fanpage features videos of their employees doing silly things and having fun company events like their Halloween parties. This coincides with what customers already perceived Zappos as – a laid back work environment, care for their employees, and having one of the best customer services out there. They have carried that image with them into their Facebook with their behind the scenes contents which consumers notice. This, in turn, leads to good customer-brand relationship.

Brands and Facebook Timeline

By tiffany | May 16, 2012

On March 30, 2012, all brand pages were switched over to Facebook’s new interface, Timeline. The Facebook Timeline comes with a couple of new features. The big thing that Facebook pushed was the “history” or “timeline” feature where it accumulates information on the user or brand throughout the years until birth, as well as all the content that was posted since the user or brand started Facebook. There’s also the ability to pin a post to the top of the page for a week. Another aspect of Timeline is their cover images. Cover images are a large feature of Timeline because it’s supposed to represent who the user or brand is. When creating a post, users have the option to use larger images, which is great for getting consumers’ attention. Likes are now listed on the top right of the page and all the apps are above it in a large thumbnail format. Sadly, users can only show four apps at a time while the rest are hidden under an arrow drop down menu. This would be a disadvantage for brands who are promoting more than one thing at a time because they wouldn’t have the space to show everything. Timeline also states milestones each month and overall. This is great for brands to be able to see their reach. There’s also the ability to send direct private messages to users, only if they have contacted the brand first, which is a new way to do customer service. Lastly, there’s a toolbar at the top of the page that all have drop down menus. The “Timeline” tab shows all the apps and the “Highlights” tab allows users to control what types of posts they want to see on the page.

All of these features will help brands engage with their fans, but there are some that are very effective. Seeing the brand’s history helps build trust because fans will see the longevity of the brand. They understand that the brand has been around for a long time time and that they were able to survive in such competitive markets and bad economies. Fans can see how their brand had evolved over the years to be where they are today. Another effective feature is being able to see only the brand’s content. Consumers are more than likely uninterested in other consumers’ comments, especially since most of them fall under the lines of “I love your brand”. To be able to see what they want to see, their favorite brand, it keeps the page clean and consumers are more likely to stay of the page without the additional noise and clutter. Of course, if consumers would like to see everything, they do have the option to do so by clicking on the “Highlights” tab at the top. The flexibility of how consumers can “manage” what they see makes them more engaged because they are given the choice to see what they want to see. Cover images are an effective way for brands to make additional branding efforts or promotions. They can put promotional codes or hashtags from their integrated marketing campaigns into the cover image. This would work well because it’s the largest image that consumers see when they first go to the brand’s fanpage. If the cover image is designed in such a way that it’s appealing, consumers’ eyes would be drawn to look at it. The use of pins and large images are also good tools to use to bring awareness to photos and news. Brands can pin one post that they think would generate the most traffic in terms of likes, shares, and comments.

For H&M’s Facebook fanpage, I would recommend changing their cover image whenever a new campaign starts. It’s best to keep it fresh and not use the same cover image for too long, because frequent consumers will then turn away from what the cover image is depicting if they’ve already seen it so many times. If there’s a new fashion line coming out, the photo should be representative of it. And if they’re doing a promotion on Twitter, for example, #SummerContest, it could be added into the cover image in an artistic way. This is a great way to promote across multiple channels, especially since the cover image is the first thing consumers see. H&M should also continue to “like” pages that illustrate what their brand stands for, who the brand is, and what they believe their fans are like. For example, any affiliates or collaborators that they work with should be liked because it builds brand relationships and could also build trust with consumers if H&M likes something that they also like. There’s an advantage to using the pinning option on Timeline as well. H&M should use it to pin the latest trends, promote an event or promotional campaign, or specific articles of clothing. Since it’s always the first post, consumers are more likely to look at it and engage with it, so choosing the right post to pin is important. Lastly, H&M should use the large images feature for photo albums, fashion trends, and/or behind the scenes content to drive engagement and attention to those specific posts. For example, a company blogger can attend events and post photos from the event that are large and eye catching, then link the post to the actual blog to drive traffic on both ends. However, H&M has to understand not to clutter their profile with too many large images. Going overboard could turn users’ attention away because it all looks the same. There should be a variety of things to look at, with different sized posts. Use smaller image posts to reiterate a previously larger image post, that way the page is just filled with the same content, that would surely turn consumers away from the page. For example, if there’s two posts about the summer contest, make one large image and make the other posts smaller. After a week, reposting the summer contest as a large image would be okay because those smaller posts are no longer on the same page. Having too many large image posts is also a problem because it takes longer to load additional posts under the “see more recent stories” tab. Consumers are not keen on load times, so minimizing the amount of time a page has to load is important to understand, thus limiting large image posts is a must, since more content can be added onto one page at a time. However, there’s also a negative to using small image posts. H&M has to be smart about how they make their content because there’s the chance that these small image posts could get lost in a group of large images. They should plan their content accordingly so that it’s easy on the user to navigate and read their page.

Advertising on Facebook: Now and the Future

By tiffany | February 21, 2012

Facebook is a perfect place for businesses to advertise. With many consumers spending time online nowadays, especially on social media networks, what better way to get noticed than to engage with your consumers where they spend most of their time?

Advertising on Facebook allows your businesses to reach the right people at the right time. It allows for your business to connect with your consumers directly because they are showing interest in the product you produce by “liking”, commenting, sharing, answering polls, and participating in any sweepstakes or contests available on your business’s fan page. Creating ads on Facebook can be set up quickly and is easy to do and is cost-effective. There are many ways to manage your budget – by cost per click (CPC), by clicks per impression (CPM), by a daily budget, or by bidding on a price.

Facebook is incredible in the sense that it creates positive return-on-investment (ROI) for your business. By creating fan pages or events, your ad message can be referred to users who share it with their friends. It’s also a good opportunity to advertise on Facebook because your brand or business can reach over 800 million potential customers. You are even able to target your consumers based on their location, age, and interests that they share to the public.

When your business creates their ads, you can use it to build awareness, drive sales, and grow your fan base. By creating pages, it allows you to connect with potential customers and hopefully it’ll direct traffic to your page. As a business with a fan page, you should constantly talk to your customers whenever they post comments or share exclusive information to them. By doing so, consumers would be more likely to return to your page for additional material or even better, share it with their friends and their friend’s friends. This chain reaction would get your page more attention and it could potentially lead to a sale. Consumers respond positively when their favorite brand shows interest and are willing to answer their questions. It builds more brand loyalty and they can tell their friends that your business/brand has good customer service. It is also easier to track the number of impressions you make than on traditional media. Also, being transparent allows you to share your business with your consumers, by showing them the inner workings of your work with behind the scenes videos, blogs, etc. It also lets you own up to any mistakes or success that you’ve made.

As stated earlier, having ads on Facebook allow you to target the right people. You can select criteria based on the consumers you’re trying to reach by what they’re interested in. You can target them by:

Location
Language
Education
Work
Age & gender
Birthday
Relationship status
Likes & interests
Friends of Connections
Connections

The last two, Friends of Connections and Connections, are fairly new to Facebook. Friends of Connections allows you to target friends of users who are already fans of your page or app. Connections allows for your business to target your ad to current fans with promotional offers in order to gain customer loyalty.

Having a Facebook fan page opens a lot of opportunities like expanding your reach by telling in-store customers to “like” your page, putting a “like” button on your website, run Sponsored Stories and Facebook Ads, and set up check-in deals to offer incentive. You can also utilize social context which is influences consumers’ interests and buying decisions. Social context highlights a user’s friends’ connection with a brand/business, which can be placed alongside their ads. Sponsored Stories is basically word of mouth. Whenever one of your users “likes” your page, interacts with your app, or checks-in to one of your locations, it will show up on their friends’ News Feeds. Using Sponsored Stories is a good advertising format because your consumers’ friends are most likely to enjoy the same things they do and so it increases your business’s awareness and can increase consumer engagement on your page. There are also Sponsored Ads that are also placed on the right side of the users’ News Feed. The ads are synched with any information the users place on their info section of their profile.

When you create an ad, for example, Calphalon pots and pans, you can target based on precise interests or by broad category targeting. A precise interest is as previously stated – targeting your audience by the information they share on their profiles. If you use a “#” in front of any word, it allows you to target any user whose interests are closely related to the word we use, for example, “cooking” will also target “cooking tips”, “cooking and eating”, etc. If you don’t use the “#”, it will only target the word “cooking”. Broad category targeting, on the other hand, targets groups of people who share similar interests related to “cooking”.

Brand awareness and stimulating a purchase is also a plus to Facebook advertising. By being on Facebook, your brand/business is more transparent and open to consumers because there are so many users online and on Facebook that you can build brand awareness. Also, users feel engaged when they can communicate with their favorite brand and that too stimulates brand awareness and loyalty. Advertising on Facebook can also help push consumers to make a purchase. When you post deals, discounts, sales, and other promotions, it gives consumers the incentive to buy a product before the promotions end.

Facebook also had their own analytics platform which allows you to track and optimize the performance of your campaigns in real time. This is a great strength for Facebook because brands and businesses can gain valuable insight on which ads were displayed and which were clicked on. By having this, you can adjust your campaign in order to receive maximum results.

A new advertising format that Facebook could implement is monitoring the number of times a specific user “likes” and comments on your fan page or mentions your brand/business in a post. The more times they participate, they move up a “social ladder” and gain new titles such as “fan”, “obsessed”, “super fan”, etc. The higher their title, you can offer them incentives based on their title status. These titles would also be placed onto their user profile, under a section called “certifications” which would include the brand logo, so that their friends can see that they’re, for example, a “super fan” of Target. Social check-in sites like Yelp and Foursquare have already proven that the social aspect of showing appreciation for a product can be very successful, and by incentivizing the process it can lead to greater returns.

By utilizing this new advertising format, you can garner more traffic to your page because your consumers see a reason to return, the incentives of “leveling up” and gaining new titles. Some of the rewards could be discounts, coupons, prizes, gift cards, or invitations to exclusive events. In order to make sure that the incentives reach the right consumer, your brand/business would have to “gift” them to the consumer.

In a hypothetical campaign for Target, they would be able to implement this new format by posting relevant material on their page. For example, they could put in their status update, “Target is celebrating Easter Sunday!” and include a behind the scenes video of their employees enjoying Easter together. As a consumer, you “liked” the post and commented with a video of your family celebrating Easter. Each “like” and comment is worth one point and in this situation, those were your 100th “like” and comment, which makes you an “official obsessed fan of Target”. As Target uses the Facebook analytics platform, they understand that you are now an obsessed fan and so they make another post on their profile stating “Congratulations Tiffany! We appreciate your love for Target and would love to reward you with a $10 gift card!” Once this is posted, Target would have to “gift” the $10 gift card, which can be a promotional code or printable voucher, to Tiffany and she would also have Target’s photo on her profile page that says she’s an obsessed fan of Target with a number below telling her how many more comments and “likes” she has to give to receive another reward.

By posting that publically on their profile, it makes consumers feel as though they have a relationship with the brand, in this case, Target, because Target acknowledged their consumers. This creates transparency as well as builds brand loyalty because consumers feel special.

References:

http://www.facebook.com/advertising

http://www.facebook.com/business

United States. Securities and Exchange Commission. Facebook, Inc. . Washington D.C. , 2012. Web.