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Every time I receive notification of a post in Benny’s Surf Club of Awesomeness, I get a little homesick for the West Coast. My friend, who lives in San Diego, started this group nearly a year ago. It’s a really active, fun group of people who love life, the beach and surfing. How can I not feel a tinge of longing as I am notified of their posts about group BBQs and surf excursions during the frigid months of the East Coast winter? A year or so ago, I would have joined a group and not really followed what was going on. Thanks to the group improvements in 2011, I am now fully aware of what I am missing out on.

Improvements to Groups was just one of the upgrades Facebook made in 2011. In continuing our Top Facebook Moments of 2011 (read Part 1 here), let’s round out the list with several of the changes implemented in conjunction with f8 this year.

Groups
As my personal experience illustrates, unless we were checking in on them constantly, we didn’t have as much of an opportunity to be envious of group activities taking place in Facebook groups of the past. Groups were not as integrated into the home page and users had to make more of an effort to find out about current events. As more “personal” social networks popped into the picture in 2011 ( Google+  and Path), Facebook tailored Groups to better fit the user experience. Facebook’s new product manager, Paul Adams, had been advocating that our online networks should align with our offline networks since he worked at Google . His research keeps Facebook competitive as technology evolves with the user’s experience. The Groups improvements include:

• Groups now have a Wall that summarizes all the recent activities of people within the group and a Publisher that enables members to share content
• Group activities will now be delivered to your News Feed
• Interacting with Groups will become easier since you can follow the links to the content directly from the News Feed stories or make comments on these stories directly from your home page

 Like Button Extension

Changes to the Open Graph related to the Like button were announced at f8 2011. These adjustments made the Like button more relevant to the apps users interact with. Facebook simultaneously launched partnerships with media companies such as Spotify and Netflix to give users the ability to publish activity to their News Feeds, resulting in more sharing capability, as friends will see what media you consume as you click Watched, Listened to and Read.

This addition introduces new permission and privacy issues: “Previously, users had both grant an app initial permissions upon install and fill out a sharing prompt every time they wanted to publish something to Facebook. Now, users will grant a new type of permission that allows an app the ability to instantly publish activity without showing a prompt.”

These app interactions are bringing about enormous opportunities for social media marketers who are now able to target users according to their interaction with content to tailor Facebook ads.

Mobile
Over 350 million active users currently access Facebook through their mobile devices. With the exponential increase of smart phone users, online experiences are rapidly being converted to mobile apps. Savvy businesses know how important mobile is for their online enterprises, and Facebook provided a vehicle for mobile as it increased its mobile functionality this year. Facebook kept good pace this year with announcements around Facebook Messenger and their highly-anticipated iPad app. Facebook Messenger was adorned with the following features https://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=132470183510042:

• Swift messaging: one-click access to messages through your phone; messages update in real time
• Message friends one-on-one or start a group conversation with friends on Facebook or, if you’re using the app on an iPhone or Android, anyone in your mobile contacts
• Location mapping lets you see where the people in your conversation are, so it’s easy to meet up on the go
• Messenger is integrated with your Facebook messages and chats, so you can access all your conversations right in the app
• Ability to personalize and organize your messages by naming and choose a picture for your group conversations

As more and more users employ iPads for business and entertainment, the need for a new interface was eminent. iPad received it’s own app in October.  Some highlights of the app include:

• A fun hands-on navigation approach
• Easy access to games, apps, friend lists and messages
• Chat, games and other features
• Bigger better photos; ability to take photos with the iPad itself

Offering users the opportunity to treat an iPad like a photo album, flipping through big, gorgeous pictures is right inline with another Facebook upgrade: the change in photo view and size.

Photos
Story telling has become a remarkable branding tool. Devising the most creative, engaging brand stories often time takes adding a few compelling images. In preparation of the launch of the Timeline, which utilizes visuals to a greater extent than the previous user profiles, they upgraded the photo-sharing tool.

We examined the refined photo tool in our post A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words: According to the Facebook Blog, the photo sharing tool has been upgraded with an accelerated uploading capability and larger images (720 pixels to 960 pixels), giving users quicker access to more refined pictures. The viewer has also been redesigned to make images pop. This is wonderful news for users and marketers alike. To say photo sharing has skyrocketed in the past few years would be an understatement. Marketers would be wise to be mindful of the magnified role visual content is now playing on Facebook and its associated apps (Instagram recently upgraded their app with the ability to upload full-size photos to Facebook).

Honorary Mentions

Subscribe Button
The subscribe button can be likened to following someone on Twitter, however, if you are a business it helps you gain more audience and potential customers while still keeping your personal profile. We’ll see how it evolves this year.

Deals
Facebook deals are designed to help businesses connect with loyal customers, while giving them the benefit of social distribution, as stories about the deal are published to users profiles when they are redeemed. There are currently four types of deals (individual, friend, loyalty and charity); performance has been excellent for small businesses.

New Messages
The old Facebook messages were a little clunky, so it was newsworthy when we welcomed the refined Message format this year. Upgraded features include the ability to:

• View your messages, chats, and texts in one single location
• View related conversations with a contact in one single conversation thread
• Demarcate email messages from sources other than your friends in a separate folder
• Attach Office documents such as Word Excel and PowerPoint
• View Office documents such as Word Excel and PowerPoint

More information related to this article can be found here:

http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-upgrades-2011-12

Post written by Tia Marie Kemp aka @TiaMarieKemp. To learn more from fbadz.com, become a fan!

Remember friendship bracelets? Those colorful, woven (sometimes knotted) bracelets we used to make for our friends in elementary school?

I had forgotten about them until this season of giving, when I’m on alert for gift ideas. A beautiful image caught my eye in my Facebook News Feed one afternoon. I clicked to my friend’s page, where she had posted a link to an Etsy seller who makes friendship bracelets made of swarovski crystal beads. A sudden flood of fun memories came to mind as I reminisced about exchanging the bright bracelets with my best friends in school. VOILA! What a great gift idea for my girl friends!

The Buying Decision Process

Taking into consideration a traditional look of what influences purchase decisions, companies now have a greater opportunity than ever to influence what we buy leveraging social media platforms. The level of influence increases with the strength of their online communities and the strength of word of mouth marketing based on fans’ sharing content to their social graphs (friends recommending products to friends on social networking sites). The Buying Decision Process has five steps:

1. Need Recognition
2. Information Search
3. Evaluation of Alternatives
4. Purchase Decision
5. Post Purchase Behavior

Client:
Leica Camera
“Danny MacAskill Plays Capetown” Interactive Video Series
May 2011

Objective:

• Build anticipation around the V-Lux 30 camera launch
• Raise awareness of the brand to a new audience
• Use an internet celebrity that has a large and dedicated community

Solution:
An Interactive Video Series featuring Danny MacAskill

Key Lessons:
The launch was a success for two reasons:

1. It engaged and enticed viewers with an interactive video series that built anticipation for the new product launch.
2. It leveraged the strong online following of an Internet celebrity  and therefore exposed the Leica brand to a new audience,     increasing the brand exposure and reach  outside of its core community.

Company Background
Leica Camera is a luxury brand used by prestigious photographers around the world. In 1925, Oskar Barnack developed a small format 35 mm camera that would revolutionize photography. His passion for photography and struggle with asthma led him to create the lightweight Leica camera. Since then, Leica has developed innovative instruments that afford a unique seeing experience, and has had a profound influence on our view of the world we live in.

Objective
Leica wanted to build anticipation around the launch of their new V-Lux 30 camera. The camera makes saving and sharing simple for those who love to explore the world. Leica Camera not only wanted to illustrate this but also wanted to use an Internet celebrity who had a large and dedicated community to raise awareness of the brand to a new audience.

The brand chose Danny MacAskill to be the face of the interactive campaign. Danny is professional street trial bicyclist for Inspired Bicycles Ltd. His Internet fame came by chance, when his flat mate posted a video of him doing stunts on YouTube. His videos that followed were extremely popular, attracting hundreds of thousands of views within a couple of days on the site.

The Scottish extreme sportsman would serve as the bridge to connect Leica Camera with a new community of adventurers plugged in to the digital world. Leica Camera came to Sociality Squared to determine how to best leverage an upcoming video shoot of the extreme athlete in Cape Town, South Africa, and how to leverage Danny MacAskill’s online community in a cohesive, cross-platform social media campaign.

Approach
The solution was an interactive video series “Danny MacAskill Plays Capetown”. Over 10 days leading up to the V-Lux 30 camera launch, three short video clips of Danny MacAskill riding and doing stunts through Cape Town were released. At the end of each video there was a cliffhanger and viewers were asked to vote on Danny’s next move. Questions included: “Where should he go next?” “How should he jump the containers?” and “How should he jump the empty pool?” The videos were uploaded on Vimeo and officially released with the voting mechanism on The Leica Camera Blog. As an incentive to vote, one participate for each voting period won the new V-Lux 30 Camera. The series was also promoted to Leica Camera’s communities on Facebook and Twitter. Fans enjoyed seeing Cape Town through the eyes of a street trials pro rider and voting on Danny’s next move for a chance to win the new mystery Leica Camera. At the conclusion of the video series, the V-Lux 30 was announced, and three lucky participants won new Leica product. The clips that the fans voted on were incorporated into the complete video, which Leica used as their official commercial for the product.

Results

• Leica Camera was successful in meeting its objectives of  building anticipation around the V-Lux 30 camera launch, raising awareness of the brand to a new audience, and using an internet celebrity that has a large and dedicated community
• The corporate website traffic increased 14% compared to the previous month, peaking at 435,000 single unique visitors to the site.
• Blog traffic increased by 24% compared to April .
• The four Danny MacAskill video entries attracted over 38,000 views.
• The video blog posts were shared on Facebook more than 2,400 times.
• 4,718 people voted on Danny’s next move.
• The Danny MacAskill video is Leica Camera’s most popular video on YouTube, with nearly 370,000 views as of September 2011.
• The final video was selected as a “Video we like” by Vimeo and featured on the Vimeo homepage.
• The final video was also listed on the favorites, entertainment favorites and list as  number 19 on the best noted YouTube videos on May 30.

Paul Adams is a user experience expert currently working on advertising products at Facebook. Having previously worked on Google’s social strategy, he gave a simple, yet richly insightful presentation about his research on social circles at UX Week in San Francisco this past summer. I highly recommend you watch the video when you have the time. Read on for the key takeaways.

UX Week 2011 | Paul Adams | How Our Social Circles Influence What We Do, Where We Go, and How We Decide from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Paul began his presentation by illustrating the fact that people are social by design, and have been since the beginning of time. That hasn’t changed in thousands of years, and is not likely to change anytime soon. Technology, however, seems to be evolving at the speed of light. As technology more aligns with human behavior, it becomes more valuable for people and businesses, which is Paul’s first theme:

The web is being rebuilt around people 

Why are we rebuilding the web around people? Because social networks are not new! The Internet is twenty years old, which is still quite young, and it’s been catching up to us being social by nature.

Technology changes really fast. Our behavior does not. It changes really, really slowly. Up to the past few years, technology has not really been very social. Social Networks entered the picture when tech savvy folks created sites like Facebook, which then gave us the ability to connect socially via technology. The marriage of technology and social networks gives us the opportunity for socially connecting to businesses.

Last summer, Ticketmaster launched interactive seat maps that can be linked to your Facebook account. This allows people to be more social when buying tickets. They can check themselves in and see which shows their friends are going to, and even purchase tickets near their friends. Mashable explains, “Ticketmaster’s research suggests that every time a ticket buyer shares his purchase with friends online, the activity converts to $5 in additional ticket sales. The hope, says Levin, is that Facebook seat-tagging will encourage ticket buyers to more frequently share that they’re attending events and drive up ticket sales as a result.”

Paul goes on to give other examples of how businesses are becoming more social by leveraging technology and social networks to connect people “the old fashioned way”, yet through technology. You can see gift ideas for friends on Etsy, or connect with someone about a trip you are planning on TripAdvisor. In essence, focusing on technology will not help as much as understanding behavior. We need to understand what makes people behave the way they do.

People live in networks 

People have sets of relationships that multiply in groups. Each person has multiple independent groups of friends that are built by life experience, shared experiences and hobbies. Paul illustrated this by posing a question: Have you ever had to make a dinner seating plan for your wedding? It is easy to see how one person is part of a diverse mix of groups (and at a wedding, sometimes you don’t want them to mix too closely, such as sitting your conservative aunt next to your college frat buddy). Obviously, people have different types of relationships among their groups of friends. The people who connect groups are not special. They are not “influencers”. They are average people connecting on social networks; they are you and I.

Networks determine how people are influenced 

 Celebrities make us aware, but they don’t influence behavior. We are most influenced by our networks, environment and experiences. The stronger tie we have with someone, the more influence they will have on us.

The amount of information we must process when making a decision has exponentially increased in the Digital Era. Building our social network gives us more brainpower for making decisions. Paul gave another excellent example about someone who was in the market for a new car. This guy spent hours online researching and finally had a sense of what he wanted. He found a car he was interested in and asked a friend to come along for the test drive. He wanted his friend’s opinion; buying a car is a big purchase. As soon as they get to the dealership, the guy’s friend says, “I don’t like it. One of my co-workers has that car, and I really don’t like him. You can’t get this car.” And there you have it the car buyer has made his decision. We ask our close friends for their opinions. They are more likely to influence us over anything else because we trust them.

In this world of exponentially increasing information, our strong ties influence us the most. Which means the wave of influence is strong through our social networks. We don’t share facts; we share feelings. Sharing is a means to an end; we want input from those we trust and we want to help those close to us. In the next two to five years the social network will disrupt vertical business. Who is best positioned to help businesses adapt? User experience designers.

Paul’s final recommendation for business owners: You need to reorient your business around people. If you don’t, someone else will.

More information related to this article can be found here:

http://vimeo.com/29576241

Post written by Tia Marie Kemp aka @TiaMarieKemp. To learn more from fbadz.com, become a fan!

I grew up watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade each year as my Mom set about preparing our dinner. I looked forward to watching the bright and fun festivities. This year, my family will be flying to the east coast to attend the parade in person. The six-year-old in me is super excited, while my adult self is thinking, is it really that time of year already?

As marketers, we should plan our holiday campaigns far before those big balloons make their way down Broadway. It’s becoming second nature for consumers to turn to social media to find promotions, comparison shop and find gift ideas during the holiday season. Facebook holiday shopping trends indicate:

●      Social networking sites experienced a 17% increase in unique visitors during holiday 2010

●      Social visitors to a retail site are twice as likely to convert as the average visitor

●      20% of survey respondents said Facebook was “influential” or “extremely influential” when making purchase decisions

A prime case is my sister’s recent Facebook post:

My sister wants to buy her nearly two-year-old daughter a special baby doll for Christmas. Even after doing research, she is unsure of which doll to purchase, so she extended the question to her friends on her blog and Facebook. This is an ideal example of how social media has the opportunity to influence her decision before she buys – and illustrates the many roles it can play in the buying decision process:

●      Need recognition – Tysha may have decided long ago that she wanted to buy a baby doll, but it’s quite possible she recognized the need from a Wall Post (from the brand or a friend’s post or album), Facebook Ad, blog post from a mommy blogger, photo on Pinterest, newsletter from the company or maybe in a store window. Now that she’s blogged about it and shared it with her friends on Facebook, another young mom may have become aware of the need to buy a Christmas gift in the form of a doll.

●      Information Search – Tysha, being a natural researcher, has probably scoured the web to find information from websites, review sites and social networking sites related to baby dolls. Tweets, blog posts and Facebook pages are sources of information consumers look to when researching products.

●      Evaluation of Alternatives- In this example, Tysha is weighing the alternatives but making the decision social by asking her blog readers and friends and family on Facebook for their input. Here you can see that social media plays a critical role in her actual purchase decision.

●      Purchase – Knowing Tysha, she may announce right away what doll she’s purchased, but she’ll definitely thank everyone for their input and share what doll she decided on (which may also make it easier for her friends to decide which doll to purchase too if the need arises).

●      Post-Purchase - Tysha’s pretty active online with her blog so she’ll probably take pictures of when her daughter opens the present and share those photos on her blog and on Facebook too. She may even share them on the doll company’s page or write reviews on the doll. Or she may simply read another couple of reviews or blog posts about the doll she chose to reinforce the decision she made. If the brand is smart, she’ll be compelled to engage on their Facebook page and stay engaged for when the next holiday rolls around and Tysha needs another gift for her daughter.

When you begin to plan your holiday campaign, the first thing to think about is timing. This question above was posted in mid-October, as my sister wants to finish her holiday shopping by December 1. Obviously, not everyone is such an early bird, however it is important to be mindful of key dates when planning your holiday promotions. Below is a chart based on CPC trends from 2010 to guide you in your planning as suggested by Facebook.

Consumers are scouring the web for deals, gift ideas and suggestions. Here are a few tips from Facebook to meet your marketing objectives. Remember that content is key as you plan the creative components of your campaign and the News Feed remains at the heart of a successful presence on Facebook.

Objective 1: Increase traffic and sales

Create viral holiday promotional events and publicize special offers. Every time fans RSVP, click, or check-in, that action gets shared with all of their friends.

Tips:

●      Decide on a sales goal and the promotional activities that will help you get there

●      Offer valuable check-in deals to increase foot traffic (promote the deal with ads before it goes live)

●      Spread the word about your promotion through Standard Like Ads, Sponsored Stories and Page publishing

Objective 2: Generate Awareness

You can leverage Facebook’s tremendous reach and targeting capabilities with ads and Sponsored Stories to generate awareness about your promotions.

Tips:

●      Integrate Social Plugins such as the Like Button into your website, which will allow actions people take off of Facebook to show up in the News Feed and be amplified through Sponsored Stories

●      Post interesting content to your Page with clear calls to action that encourage fan interaction and sharing

●      Boost stories about friends who have engaged with your business

Objective 3: Drive Differentiation

Think of your Facebook Page as a key customer touch point to bring your brand to life. Drive differentiation by creating highly customized and personalized experiences for fans.

Tips:

●      Use the graph API to enable people to shop based on what their friends like

●      Use Applications to bring your brand to life (Ex: create a wish list app for fans to select their favorite items and share with their friends)

●      Build an eCommerce store through an app on your Facebook Page so users don’t have to leave Facebook to make a purchase

Objective 4: Build loyalty and deepen relationships

The people who like your page are saying they want a relationship with you. Show them you appreciate their loyalty with special rewards.

Tips:

●      Listen and respond to customer feedback and inquiries to show fans that they can trust and rely on your business

●      Provide exclusive holiday promotions, merchandise sneak peeks and early access to Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales for fans

Facebook Advertising: Holiday Best Practices

Ad Units

●      Utilize event ads to generate awareness around holiday sale events

●      Run App Shared and App Used Sponsored Stories to boost stories about friends who have interacted with your holiday application

●      Run Standard Like Ads to drive traffic to specific promotions or alert fans of upcoming check-in deals

●      Use Page Post Ads to enhance distribution of Page posts that mention special offers and promotions

Copy

●      Incorporate words such as free, discount and promotions whenever applicable

●      Include a strong call to action that incentivizes fans to share their interactions with your brand to all their friends

●      Include Facebook specific discount codes to give users a sense of exclusivity

●      Identify promotional periods and emphasize end dates on special offers

Targeting

●      Expand your targeting parameters over the holidays to include those making purchases for your target audience

●      Get more impressions and potentially more clicks by utilizing broad age match targeting and broad category targeting

Bidding

●      Due to increased competition, expect CPCs to increase during the holiday season

●      Monitor bids closely to ensure that bids are still competitive enough to win the auction

●      Bid what you’re comfortable paying for your ads

A big thank you to Facebook for providing all of these holiday marketing tips. At publishing time, my sister is leaning toward the American Girl doll for her daughter. Her Facebook friends let her know that they had just opened a big American Girl store in Seattle, so she is already thinking about the great memories to be made there. She invited me to come have lunch with my niece and her new doll at the American Girl bistro.

May you all be so successful in making your brand part of someone’s story.

More information related to this article can be found here:

*This post is based on Facebook’s 2011 Holiday Kit

Post written by Tia Marie Kemp aka @TiaMarieKemp. To learn more from fbadz.com, becomeafan!

What does product placement have to do with Facebook? Plenty! Don’t think of it as product placement, but rather product integration. The new timeline, scheduled to be rolled out by the end of the year, will dramatically change the look of brand pages on Facebook.  An example of what a brand page could look like can be seen on this mock-up sample page for the New York Yankees.

As you can see, pages will likely be much more visual. The role of storytelling and images as marketing tools will continue to increase as brand pages shift to the timeline. A few keys to adapting to the timeline include:

●      Tell a visual tale: Adding images that pop to your storytelling will help draw your audience in to your brand story.

●      Sparkling content: To graduate from the new ticker status, content needs to be something special. News Feed will still remain at the heart of Facebook success for brands.

●      Tabs: We suspect that custom tabs will remain for brand pages so continue to use fan-gated and custom welcome tabs to introduce your brand to new users.

In addition to this, fans of your brand will also be able to better share your brand’s story too. Facebook is amping up page’s social proof with a new feature. Now any content fans provide about your brand could show up when their friends visit your brand page making your brand more relevant to a smaller circle of friends. This is seen in the Friends activity tab. Have you noticed the box that pops up asking if you would like to recommend a page recently? These recommendations will be tied to the consumer’s connections and help endorse your brand too.

The bottom line is that this interaction between brand and consumer will help both parties know each other better. This means unlimited possibilities for the future of marketing and advertising. As consumer insights are delivered by the consumer, brands will be able to better meet their wants and needs. The nostalgia provided through the timeline will propel brands into the future.

More information related to this article can be found here:

http://mashable.com/2011/09/27/facebook-timeline-pages/#27451The-New-York-Yankees

http://mashable.com/2011/09/22/facebooks-changes-marketers/

Post written by Tia Marie Kemp aka @TiaMarieKemp. To learn more from fbadz.com, become a fan!

Earlier this week, Buddy Media released a whitepaper entitled “Strategies for Effective Facebook Wall Posts: A Statistical Review”. For a two-week period, the company studied Facebook Wall Posts that were published by 200 clients (mostly large brands) that use the Buddy Media Platform. They examined a variety of factors: verbiage, post length, time and date of posts, engagement with each post. I read through the white paper, which you can download on the Buddy Media website and wanted to share the top three takeaways with you.

1. Size Matters!

People these days are notorious for having the attention span of a goldfish. Twitter maxes out single messages at 140 characters, SMS/text messages can only be sent 160 characters at a time. Facebook, however, allows for slightly more long-form communication. The texts of Wall Posts can be up to 420 characters long, but at about half of that Facebook clips the message and forces you to click “see more” before reading the full post.

Buddy Media suggests an alarmingly short post length, just 80 characters. They state that posts between one and 80 characters long had a 27% higher engagement rate. Now this isn’t an excuse to start removing vowels, throwing grammar out the window and using leetspeak. Your messages should be coherent and easy for your audience to read, but try to get your message across using as few words as possible.

2. Want an answer? Ask a question!

This seems like such a simple solution, but it is surprisingly underutilized. If all you’re doing is sharing information (making statements, broadcasting messages, posting content) then your audience may consume it, but they probably won’t engage with it. Your audience doesn’t know that you want their feedback unless you tell them or ask them for it. Additionally, placing the call to action or question at the end of the post will, according  to their research, receive a 15% higher engagement rate. If you place the question/call to action anywhere but the end, in the few seconds it takes to read the rest of the post that request will get lost and forgotten about. What are other techniques you use to increase engagement on your Facebook Page? (see what I did there)

3. Facebook isn’t a 9-5.

A great portion of the report discussed the best times and dates to post content on Facebook. This is something I’ve discussed here on FBadz before. Buddy Media even broke down the information by industry. While I certainly don’t agree with a one-size fits all solution, the goal of determining optimal times to post content is a valuable one. The report stated that 60% of Posts were published between 10 am and 4 pm (EST), but posting outside of business hours garnered 20% higher engagement rates. Your job maybe to sit at your computer posting content on Facebook, but chances are your audience is off doing their job and they probably don’t have Facebook up on their screens.

There are several tools that allow you to schedule posts to publish outside of business hours including CoTweet, HootSuite and many others. By posting various types of content (text, photos and videos) at different times you can get an idea of what resonates with your audience most. This can be especially tricky if you have an international audience so you can either publish content at one specific time that works for most of your audience or you can target posts per country/region.

Did any of these techniques help you increase engagement? Leave us a comment and let us know.

Post written by Biana Bakman aka @bianalog. To learn more from fbadz.com, connect with us on Facebook!

Facebook Users Like Official Pages

The average user on Facebook “likes” 4-6 pages a month and has an average of 130 friends (Facebook). This statistic presents an enormous opportunity to companies who want to connect with their customers. Why? A customer is opting in to see, like and comment on a company’s wall posts in the user’s sacred News Feed, which more or less serves as their personal stream of communication based on what and who they want to hear from. Entering into this sacred stream of information is pretty powerful—at its essence, it’s the heart of Facebook and where people are connecting and engaging with their family and friends. As a business, you have an opportunity to enter this prime real estate and go to where your customers are spending an exuberant amount of time (remember the average Facebook user spends 45 minutes a day on Facebook).

When Facebook users like a page, it presents a chance for that brand to engage with its customers and build stronger relationships, in turn growing more loyal customers (click here for research that supports this statement). Considering your average user is only connecting with 4-6 pages a month, that’s less competition for your company when vying for that prime News Feed visibility. The action to “like” your brand is significant. Out of the millions of Facebook Pages that exist, you made it as one of four for the month. Congrats—that’s a feat. Don’t waste this opportunity to engage with your customers.

Concern for Facebook Like Saturation

But what happens when, over the course of a year, a user’s number of likes has grown from 4 to potentially 46? That’s a lot more competition in that user’s News Feed that you now have to take into consideration. Is it something to be worried about? Will Facebook marketing become less effective as “liking” a Page becomes more prevalent among Facebook users?

It’s a legitimate concern. As someone who is part of the Facebook economy and has built a business around Facebook Pages, it’s an important question for me as much as it is for the readers of this blog. From a personal standpoint, I’m also not your average Facebook user. I’ve connected with over 800 pages on Facebook (mostly for market research of course). Has page number 744 wasted its time in recruiting me? Is it just another link lost in my 800+ list of pages in my profile?

If page number 744 that I “liked” understands the benefits of Facebook, then the answer is “no.” No, page saturation isn’t something to worry about for the time being or near future; however, it does have implications and Facebook marketers should be aware of them. Here are some thoughts as to why you shouldn’t be worried:

10 Reasons How Brands Benefit from Pages (without needing to worry about like saturation)

1. Every user on Facebook experiences his or her News Feed differently, depending on whether he or she prefers the Top News or Most Recent News.

2. If a user prefers Most Recent News, then your Wall Posts are guaranteed to be visible here. As a person connects with more Pages and Friends who are active on Facebook, the Wall Posts on Most Recent won’t have as long of a shelf life, and they will be pushed farther down the page faster.

3. If a user prefers Top News, then your Wall Posts potentially have a chance to be visible here regardless of the amount of friends or Pages a user has connected with. The Top News relies on an algorithm to determine what Wall Posts show up in this stream. Many things factor into this algorithm, but the short of it is, a user is telling Facebook what is most relevant to them based on their activity on the site; therefore, their Top News is the most relevant news to that person. This means that if a Page can actively engage and sustain being relevant to a user who’s liked it, then the Page’s Wall Posts will have a higher likelihood of having Most Recent News visibility.

4. You can still target Facebook Ads to “fans” …even if they’ve hidden your page from either of their News Feeds!

5. You can still target Facebook Ads to friends of your currents “fans”.

6. You can still send “fans” Updates that show up in their message area (which has some value but pales in comparison to News Feed visibility).

7. When a user clicks “like,” that action is broadcasted to that user’s friends. A page is still benefitting from Facebook’s inherently viral platform and that user’s social graph.

8. Having a large number of “likes” on a page is still useful, even if not all of the fans see the wall posts from that page in their personal Top News. Social proof and the bandwagon effect is still used to the Page’s advantage (I may not see the Wall Street Journal’s posts anymore, but when a friend of mine visits their website and sees the Like Box, my picture will be there showing my endorsement of the Wall Steet Journal and indirectly affecting my friends’ decision-making process in evaluating the page and consuming content. Even if someone who didn’t have any friends connected to the Wall Street Journal, that person would see thousands of people endorsing the brand through the total number of Page likes).

9. Even if a user never even “likes” your page, a company can still benefit from having a Facebook presence. Refer to point number 7 to understand the bandwagon effect. There are other benefits too:

a. People can still gather information in the same way that 2% of Yelp users contribute content, yet the majority of the site’s traffic consumes it. I may not “like” a page titled “Tampons for Strong Women,” but that doesn’t mean I still won’t use it as a resource.

b. Aside from building a community around your brand, there are other benefits to a Facebook page: it helps send traffic to your website, captures information in forms (users don’t actually have to be connected to you for this), and improves SEO (and what will be more increasingly important: Facebook Search Optimization).

10. A company can also benefit from having a Facebook page as an easier and more manageable way than even a blog to publish fresh content on a regular basis. This content can be featured on the company’s website through the Like Box so the Facebook page still serves an important way to distribute fresh content.

Tune in to the follow-up blog post to determine how to evaluate the effectiveness of your wall posts…are they going out into a black hole, or are they helping your company build a relationship with its customers?

Is there anything you’d add to this list? Let us know!

Post written by Helen Todd aka @helenstravels. To learn more from fbadz.com, connect with us on Facebook!

Setting up a Facebook page for your business is easy however it’s critical to set it up properly to take full advantage of Facebook’s inherently viral platform. Some steps, like choosing a category and page name, can’t be changed after you select them so it’s really important to do it right from the outset. Also, by following this guide, you’ll also get the most out of your Facebook page whether if you’re looking for the SEO benefits or to simply maximize positive word of mouth about your business on Facebook.

Top 10 Most Critical Steps for Creating a Facebook Page for your Business

1. Create an Official Page on Facebook for your business – NOT a community page, group or personal account. Get started by visiting http://www.facebook.com/pages.

2. Pick the correct category. For most local businesses, select ‘Local Business’ and then ‘Local Business’ or the most appropriate category from the dropdown box that will appear. This cannot be changed after you select ‘Create page’!

3. Select the most appropriate Page name. This cannot be changed after you select ‘Create page’!

4. Change the Wall setting for the ‘Default View for Wall’ to ‘All Posts’.

5. Upload a profile picture that’s optimized for the Wall thumbnail picture.

6. Fill out the information tab about your business’s location, phone number, hours, and website. The ‘Basic Info’ section will appear on the Wall tab.

7. Add any important additional details about your business in the Blurb area (the box right below the profile picture) such as your business’s website, slogan, or special services.

8. Create a custom landing tab for people who visit your Page and aren’t connected to it.        

9. Create a communication plan for the Wall, publish content regularly and respond to Wall Posts from your Page connections.

10. Upon reaching 25 connections, secure a custom URL for your page. A custom URL looks like ‘http://www.facebook.com/YOURBUSINESSNAMEHERE’. This cannot be changed after you select a custom URL username for you page!

Post written by Helen Todd aka @helenstravels. To learn more from fbadz.com, connect with us on Facebook!