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30 Key Takeaways from the Facebook Success Summit

Randy Duermyer — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 19:45:11 +0000

Like its predecessor, Social Media Success Summit 2010, the Facebook Success Summit offered a wealth of information on how best to use Facebook for marketing.

Here is a mashup of what I consider the most important takeaways from the entire Summit.

Facebook became more than a social network when it eclipsed the 500 million user mark: it became its own ecosystem.
There are so many users on Facebook now, users wonder where you are if you don’t have a brand page. But one of the reasons that many companies haven’t embraced Facebook yet is that they fear negative feedback.
Don’t oversimplify social media. You HAVE to have a mission, define it and support it with your voice. Facebook can and should be a hub for expressing and carrying through on your mission.
Facebook isn’t free. Your Facebook business presence will require planning time, building time, possible expenditures on third-party consultants, possible paid apps, operations time, content planning, execution time, tweaking, time for responding to Facebook changes, analysis and reporting time.
Local businesses have become a larger part of Facebook’s ecosystem recently due to its support for micro-targeting. Facebook Places is one way that will allow businesses and users to connect on Facebook based on location data. Facebook has created an initial set of Place pages for nearly every publicly listed business in the U.S. Owners have to confirm ownership to edit and take control of the page.
Facebook presents a huge international mobile opportunity and an increasing mobile opportunity in the U.S. Overseas, Facebook usage is more mobile and more focused on sharing location activities. Facebook has created a number of partnerships to accelerate the growth of Facebook internationally. In many countries, Facebook is the number one use for mobile.
Some people prefer to hang out on Facebook while others prefer your blog. You want to engage both audiences to build a strong community. Facebook is more effective for building communities because blogs/websites lack many community building functions. For your Facebook Fan page to explode, your fans and your blog readers need to share common interests.
Facebook Search now has the ability to show if your friends Like something within the search results. Facebook is still in the early stages of integrating content into the search experience. Facebook Search could be a very powerful concept as the number of Likes continues to grow by leaps and bounds and provides a means of social filtering.
Having a clearly documented Facebook strategy provides an excellent road map for everything you do on Facebook. Know why you’re on Facebook and know what you’ll be measuring. The number of impressions is far more important than the number of fans.
Carry over your company’s culture and purpose to Facebook. Integrate your values into your day-to-day Facebook activities and engage in open and honest communication. With Facebook, you need to continually earn engagement on a continuum – not through spikes and valleys.
Custom Welcome tabs should be used for Fan pages as surveys have shown twice as many people who land on a custom Welcome tab will Like your page than those who land on your wall. The two most popular tabs will get 90% or more of total tab views. Your wall will always be one of those tabs.
Facebook users can Like a Fan page via SMS by texting like yourfanpagename to 32665. Therefore, choosing an easy-to-remember name (custom URL) for your Fan page is paramount. You can only specify a custom URL for your Fan page after you’ve reached 25 Likes for your Fan page.
Some easy ways to boost engagement with your fans: respond to every post using first names and greeting fans as friends, ask questions regularly, post third-party articles and encourage feedback from your fans.
Create editorial guidelines. Establish set guidelines for monitoring your wall and decide in advance how best to respond to negative and off-topic comments. Strip out spam promptly and handle criticism/negative comments courteously and honestly.
Be consistent and do updates regularly. This will make your page “sticky” and fans will continue to come back. Encourage shares and mentions. Don’t be afraid to ask for them.
Outside of Facebook, use the Like button and other widgets on your site/blog. Link to your Facebook page from your other social media platforms. Use tools such as the Wibya toolbar. Promote your Facebook page offline too.
Facebook ads give you access to hundreds of millions of people. You can push customers to a page, contest, your web site – more or less whatever you want, allowing you to create demand. Facebook advertising is available to all regardless of budget. (You can start with an ad spend of as little as $1 per day).
Facebook provides ad targeting combinations that are virtually endless AND relatively inexpensive. Like other forms of advertising, Facebook advertising is an iterative process. You need to set up the ads, run ads on at least a seven-day cycle before judging their effectiveness, scrutinize your results and make adjustments.
Social media, including Facebook, is about people talking to people. Users want to engage with you as a person and not so much engage with you as a business. You shouldn’t just post content that’s about you or geared to making a sale on your Fan page.
What’s shown by default in a user’s news feed (their “home” page on Facebook) is determined by a Facebook algorithm that factors in how often the user interacts with your fan page/content, the type of interaction (comments are weighted heavier than likes) and the recency of your content/activity. Getting into the news feed is critical because once they Like your Fan page, your fans are highly unlikely to return to it directly.
Videos and photos get stronger weight within Facebook’s News Feed algorithm, and photos and videos have been shown to have high rates of fan engagement. When using video, don’t just link to video on YouTube: upload the video to Facebook.
Visitors are more engaged and stay longer when their real identity and real friends are driving the experience through social plugins installed on your website/blog, and the Like button and Fan box are two of the most important social plugins you can use with Facebook.
Facebook is the perfect platform for promoting events, including conferences, parties, webinars and meetups. A lot of the same benefits available from your wall are available on Facebook Event pages. (Share, Like, etc.) Your Event page needs to be managed in the same way as your Fan page.
If you want to generate buzz leading up to the event, don’t create the Event page until you’re ready to launch. As soon as you create the Event page in Facebook it will show up. Deleting it doesn’t prevent other users from seeing it in their feed.
Guests can RSVP for your event from the Event wall. When your guests RSVP, it posts on their own wall and is sent out into the news feeds. When guests RSVP, they have the option to also include a personal note. The note shows on the Event wall and on their wall.
Keep an eye out and get ready to take advantage of Facebook Questions, which is now in a testing phase. You can use the Questions feature to create a feedback channel, a customer support channel, poll your fan base or post questions to start a discussion. A poll option is also available where people can vote on what they think are the best answers.
Most Facebook apps have moved into gaming or tools (tabs) for Facebook pages. Apps allow you to create a custom version of your brand right on Facebook as well as custom Like buttons for your website or blog.
You may not see a direct tie-in to sales from your Facebook presence. Typically, the main benefits to engaging on Facebook include expanding the top of your lead funnel, increased website and blog traffic and click-throughs, brand building and engagement. Results may be tangible or intangible.
Marketers should get used to being behind the eight ball and trying to keep up with social media. Social will become increasingly pervasive in your marketing efforts. In the meantime, keep building your social capital as your social assets (followers, likers, mentions, influence, etc.) could become some of the most important assets you have.
Never be discouraged. Facebook (and social media) are always changing. If you feel like you’re not doing all you can do now, tomorrow’s another day.

Facebook Success Summit – Index of Session Takeaways

Did you attend the Facebook Success Summit 2010? If so, what were some of the most important takeaways for you? If not, what are your thoughts on the future of Facebook and your experiences with using Facebook and other forms of social media marketing as a marketing tool?

Day 6 Wrapup: Facebook Success Summit 2010 (#fbss10)

Randy Duermyer — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 17:30:17 +0000

The Facebook Success Summit concluded on Tuesday, October 26 with three more information-packed sessions, picking up where last Thursday’s Day 5 sessions left off. The final sessions were:

Session 1: Using Facebook to Create Mega Events

Presenter: Mike Stelzner (SocialMediaExaminer.com

Mike’s presentation was about using Facebook to help promote a large or small event and included many examples of how this year’s Facebook Success Summit was promoted using that channel. Note that we’re not talking about hosting an event on Facebook, but promoting an event hosted elsewhere through Facebook.

Takeaways

Facebook is the perfect platform for promoting events, including conferences, parties, webinars and meetups. Expect more functionality in the future as this is an important feature to Facebook.
A lot of the same benefits available from your wall are available on Facebook Event pages (Share, Like, etc.). Meaning posts about your event (and the event itself) can go viral quickly and attract new attendees.
Promote your event on Facebook even before you create the Event page. Create buzz with posts like, “We can’t wait to share an exciting announcement….” Encourage your fans to comment and share the news to generate buzz. “What could it be?”
Send promotional updates to your fans. Go to your Fan page, click Edit Page and on your wall under Promote Your Page click Send an Update. That update will go to all your fans or you can select specific targets by location, gender or age. Your updates shows up under Messages… Updates in your fan’s profile. This could have limited reach as many people don’t check this area of Facebook and may never see the update.
Facebook makes setting up an Event page easybut there are a few things you should know:
- Once the dates are set, you can’t change them.
- If you want to generate buzz leading up to the event, don’t create the Event page until you’re ready to launch. As soon as you create the Event page in Facebook it will show up. Deleting it doesn’t prevent other users from seeing it in their feed.
- Use good images and copy. Mix up your content by using images and video on your Event wall.
- In the Event information area, only the first 50 words will display so keep your most important copy and link to your event’s landing page in the beginning. Most people don’t click the See More link to expand the text.
- Consider using a unique bit.ly URL for use only with your Facebook promotion so you can better keep of track of traffic.
- Be sure to show the guest list on the Event page and allow non-administrators to write on the wall for maximum benefit.
- Once the Event page is set up, anyone on Facebook can invite others to the event. You can also invite your Facebook friends, use lists of friends to include and send invitations by email by importing email address lists.
- Make sure to promote your Facebook page on your event sales page. This will increase event exposure and get
  people engaged.
Consider changing your avatar to a mini ad after the event is announced as that ad will appear on all pages.
The moment your Event page goes live you’ll want to invite a lot of people. There are a variety of ways to do this, including:
- Use the Select People to Invite feature on your Event page. You can invite individual people from your personal friends, Friend lists you’ve created, or choose All.
- You can also invite people via email or import your email address lists. Your invitees do not have to be Facebook friends, or even have a Facebook account.
- Ask your friends (and your admins) to invite their friends.
Add a personal note with your invitation. Once invited, your Event will appear in the invitee’s Event page if they are already on Facebook. This leverages the power of numbers because while you you are ‘awaiting replies’ from thousands of people, your event instantly looks important.
Use Facebook ads to promote your event. You’ll want to place the ads both on Facebook and on your external landing page. Use Insights demographics for ad targeting. (See Leveraging the Power of Facebook Ads from Day 2′s FBSS Wrapup post.
Guests can RSVP for your event from the Event wall. When your guests RSVP, it posts on their own wall and is sent out into the news feeds. When a guest RSVPs, they have the option to also include a personal note. The note shows on the Event wall and on their wall.
Your Event page needs to be managed in the same way as your Fan page. Some great tips were already provided in Day 2, session 2.

Session 2: Preparing for the Future of Facebook and What Tomorrow Means for Business

Format: Michael Stelzner’s Interview with Justin Smith

Justin Smith is the founder of Inside Network, which publishes Inside Facebook, Inside Social Games, Inside Virtual Goods and AppData. He is also the author of Facebook Marketing Bible.

Discussion Highlights

On what he’s seen regarding the evolution of Facebook. He started Inside Facebook in 2006 and has seen mega growth in Facebook since then, both for marketing and as a platform for application development.
On Facebook’s latest announcement regarding the release of a PayPal widget for Facebook. This is essentially a payment widget that will enable people to conduct transactions inside the widget instead of having to go to PayPal. He sees continued growth for payment widgets that allow users to conduct transactions inside Facebook and from within Facebook apps.
On where he thinks Facebook is taking its user community in the future. The most important thing Facebook is worried about is that users trust it with the services it provides and the data it captures. Over the last three years Facebook has been increasingly focused on creating products for businesses of all types and sizes around the world.
On the new version of Facebook Groups. Motivation for creating the new Groups was to allow the sharing of content with a subset of friends in a way that’s easier than using Friend lists. You can just go to the group and post content and know that the content will only be accessible to group members. Instead of inviting and requiring acceptance, you can just add people to the group, much as you might tag people in a photo. This has made Groups more viral. Facebook has since added new controls around notification channels because some users found they began getting swamped by Group messages. To his knowledge, the old Groups will not go away, but Facebook may not continue upgrading them. You can no longer create an old type of Group.
On Facebook Places. Local businesses have become a larger part of Facebook’s ecosystem recently due to its support for micro-targeting. Places (just launched a few weeks ago) is one way that will allow businesses and users to connect on Facebook based on location data. A Place page emphasis check-in data. Its layout is different than a Fan page. Facebook has created an initial set of Place pages for nearly every business in the U.S. Owners have to confirm ownership in order to edit the page.
On Facebook’s use around the world. Facebook presents a huge international mobile opportunity. In the U.S., Facebook is still primarily desktop-based and accessed using a traditional browser. Overseas, Facebook usage is quite different. It’s more mobile and more focused on sharing location activities. Facebook has created a number of partnerships to accelerate the growth of Facebook internationally. In many countries, Facebook is the number one use for mobile.
On Facebook’s ad platform. Facebook continues to add more features for advertisers, including connection features that allow advertisers to target people who have a friend that are already a Fan of your page. Facebook is now rolling out an API for advertisers, which will allow advertisers to create ads with thousands of variations.
On Facebook Questions. This is Facebook’s new Q&A tool that’s still being developed and tested, but has great potential.
On Facebook search. Facebook search now has the ability to show if your friends Like something within the search results. Facebook is still in the early stages of integrating content into the search experience. Facebook search could be a very powerful concept as the number of Likes continues to grow by leaps and bounds and provides a means of social filtering. He believes Facebook search will grow in popularity over time.

Session 3: From Fishers to Farmers: Bringing Your Brand to Your Customers Using Facebook

Presenter: Jesse Stay

Jesse Stay is a speaker, author and entrepreneur specializing in social media technology. He is the author of I’m on Facebook, Now What? and FBML Essentials.

The presentation was about “Fishing where the fish are”: taking your brand where your customers are, and “Give a man a fish you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”: getting your message to one person can really spread to potentially billions of worldwide users in the future thanks to social media.

Takeaways

Facebook ads:
- Target your ad creative to your target audience by customizing your ads.
- Target the friends of those that like your page and already have an interest in your brand.
- Link to your Facebook page, not your website if possible, because as people Like your page, you’re building a distribution list. The Like button on the ad will add them as a new fan (Liker) even if they don’t click on the ad.
- Get a Facebook ad rep. for your brand if you have the budget. If you don’t, you can use other strategies to promote your brand.
Facebook Pages:
- Use Static FBML (being phased out) to build your own.
- Require people to Like your Page for promotions
- Build a Welcome tab
- Use SMS to get people to Like your page (text “like pagename” to 32665 – without the quotes)
- Place placards with your Facebook URL in your store windows, add to your site, etc.
- Creating a call to action on each post (give them something to do) will result in more comments and Likes
- Integrate your Facebook page with Twitter (to use your existing audience). You can hook up the two to automatically put your Facebook posts on Twitter by going to Facebook.com/Twitter.
- Add a Facebook Like box to your website.
- Use AppBistro.com to find Facebook apps.
- If needed, hire someone to customize your app.
Facebook Places:
- Claim your Places page. (Check in at your location and look at your Facebook profile. Use the link at the bottom of the Places page to provide proof that you’re the owner of that place.) Once claimed, your place turns into a Facebook Page others can like and get updates from, you can post updates to, etc.
- Track who’s checking in. Use a leader board, which shows lists of who’s checked in the most at your location, and then offer specials or deals to top check ins.
- Build deals just for those who check in. Apps are in development for this purpose now, but in the meantime you can enlist the help of a Facebook developer who can tap into Facebook’s API to set it up. For example, “Check in and we’ll give you 50% off.” In the meantime, you can just ask your customers to show you they are checked in by looking at their cell phone.
Facebook Questions:
- Briefly discussed in previous session. Now in beta and not available to all users. At the top of Facebook as you enter your status you’re presented with a Questions option you can use to ask questions and have your friends vote on answers.
- You can use the Questions feature to create a feedback channel, a customer support channel, poll your fan base or post questions to start a discussion. A poll option is also available where people can vote on what they think are the best answers.
Facebook apps:
- Most apps have moved into gaming or tools (tabs) for Facebook pages.
- Apps allow you to create a custom version of your brand right on Facebook as well as custom Like buttons for your website or blog.
Social Plugins. Social plugins provide a simple form you fill out to get HTML code you can copy and paste into your website or blog. Some popular plugins are:
- Recent Activity plugin that shows fan activity. This plug in can be useful for making presentations to management about the reach of your Facebook Fan page.
- Like button plugin that you can use with any unique URL, article or on any piece of content.
- Comments plugin allow users to post their blog comment to their Facebook stream.
- Recommendations plugin shows posts that have been liked by Facebook users in a list.
Graph API (graph.facebook.com). You or your developer just need to append a Facebook username to the graph.facebook.com URL to pull up Facebook ID information your programmer can use in other places. For example, to see the Market it Write Facebook page’s social graph, you’d go to graph.facebook.com/marketitwrite.
Facebook Insights (facebook.com/insights). You can get code you can put in your website or blog page to allow Facebook to immediately start tracking Facebook users on your site anonymously and provide you with the data in a graph format. Includes gender, age ranges, etc. Highly recommended.
Examples of how sites are integrating with Facebook: Loads of examples are available at developers.facebook.com/showcase.

That concludes Facebook Success Summit 2010. Watch for my wrapup post of the entire Summit in the next few days that will feature the very best takeaways from the Summit (and possibly some I haven’t even mentioned yet), much like my final post for the Social Media Success Summit, 17 Crucial Things You Must Know for Social Media Success. Till then, thanks for reading my session wrapups!

Facebook Success Summit – Index of Session Takeaways

Did you attend any of the sessions of the Facebook Success Summit 2010? If so, what were your takeaways? If not, what are your thoughts on the future of Facebook and your experiences with using Facebook and other forms of social media marketing as a marketing tool?

Day 5 Wrapup: Facebook Success Summit 2010 (#fbss10)

Randy Duermyer — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 18:28:09 +0000

The Facebook Success Summit continued on Thursday, October 21, with three more information-packed sessions, picking up where Tuesday’s Day 4 session left off. This post will discuss highlights and takeaways from all three of Thursday’s Day 5 sessions:

Session 1: Contrarian Insights from Facebook Page Analytics

Presenter: Jeff Widman (BrandGlue)

Jeff’s discussion covered how to measure the ROI of Facebook Fan pages, what the number should look like, and how to understand if changes you make to your fan pages are working.

Takeaways

ROI for brands, websites and retailers is always dependent on ‘eyeballs’ (impressions): the number of times your page is displayed to others. Therefore, ROI for Facebook Fan pages should be based on the number of impressions for your page.
Number of impressions trumps number of fans. Look at TOTAL impressions, not unique impressions.
Impressions data is only available if you have more than 10,000 fans, have a non-self-serve ad account with Facebook or by hiring an agency who has one.
For most pages they’ve surveyed, impressions average 50-70% of the fan base. If impressions average less than 50% of your fans, you should find ways to improve.
The primary purpose for your Facebook Fan page should be to get people to Like your page (become fans). Best practice is to increase incentives to become a fan and decrease the friction (make it very easy to Like your page by clearly indicating where you want user to click to become a fan).
Custom Welcome tabs should be used for Fan pages as surveys have shown twice as many people who land on a custom Welcome tab will Like your page than those who land on your wall. (Also discussed in prior sessions.)
The two most popular tabs will garner 90% or more of total tab views. The wall is always one of those two tabs. Other tabs in addition to a Welcome tab will get very few page views, so extra custom tabs rarely pay off except for very large brands.
Once people Like your Fan page, they are highly unlikely to return to your Fan page directly. The lion’s share of subsequent interaction with your Fan page will be through their own news feed (the Facebook home page they see by default when logging in). Therefore, the way to get in front of your fans and get them to interact with your Fan page is “News Feed Optimization” (NFO) – which has been discussed in prior Summit sessions, notably in Session 1 of Day 4 by Mari Smith.
For every 200 comments on a status update, 199 of them are coming from fans interacting in the news feed, and only one from a fan commenting on the actual Fan page.
Facebook Insights (analytics) is split into two sections: Users and Interactions. Insights has been updated, but the old version is still available.
The old version of Insights splits demographics between those who Like your Fan page and those who interact with it. Make sure your content is attractive to your target demographic as that is the segment you want to interact with your content.
Google SEO for Fan pages isn’t worth it as search typically accounts for a small percentage of external referrers. Facebook SEO isn’t worth it either (yet), but this may change as Bing starts powering Facebook search.
There are three ways to count your fans: 1. What Facebook tells you. 2. The total fans minus unsubscribes (your total reach). 3. Total fans minus unsubscribes minus algorithm hides (those who either Hide your content or aren’t engaging with you and won’t see your content anyway).

Session 2: Building Community With Facebook and Blogs

Presenters: Darren Rowse (founder of Problogger.net) and Michael Stelzner (founder of SocialMediaExaminer.com)

The crux of this session was a discussion of how to:

Get your blog/website readers to your Facebook page
Get your Facebook page fans to visit your website/blog
Develop an engagement strategy to build community

Takeaways

Some people prefer to hang out on Facebook while others prefer your blog. You want to engage both audiences to build a strong community.
Facebook is more effective for building communities because blogs/websites lack many community building functions.
In order for your Facebook Fan page to explode, your fans and your blog readers need to share common interests. Determine what their interests and passions are and focus topics on those areas. Use demographics info about your Fan page from Insights, which can help you make some assumptions about your audience.
Ways to make it easy for your blog/website readers to discover your Facebook page:
- Consider a solo email blast inviting your blog subscribers or your newsletter subscribers to join your Facebook community. Include a blurb in all of your email updates. Don’t ask readers to Like your page but to contribute to the conversation.
- Put an ad on your site to join your Facebook community. This can be much more effective for click-throughs than just the small blue Facebook icon.
- Install a Facebook Like box (or Fan box) on your blog sidebar or post.
- Consider using the Wibiya toolbar. (Discussed in the Day 4 Session 1 post.) The toolbar does not show up on iPads or iPhones.
To get Facebook fans to your blog or website:
- Leverage the Info box and avatar (profile photo) on Facebook. Include links back to your blog/website in the Info box. (See Social Media Examiner’s Fan page for an example. Their profile is one tall image but appears to be two, with the lower half essentially an ad with an arrow pointing to a URL.
- Place an opt-in box right on your Welcome tab since you cannot put one on your wall and few people visit the other tabs.
- You can’t change the name of or remove the Info tab. However, what you put in the Founded area shows up on your wall and you can paste up to 255 characters there, including links (use http:// to make them active), which will show up on your wall under your avatar.
- The Facebook Like button is also a way to get people to your blog because when someone likes your blog or post it will show up on their wall and act as encouragement for others to visit out of curiousity.
- Consider using the DISQUS or other commenting system on your blog that allows blog visitors to share their comment on your blog post on their Facebook wall.
- Consider the NetworkedBlogs app. Adds a Blog tab to your Fan page and pulls content from our RSS feed. You can also use the NetworkedBlogs app on your personal Facebook page.
- Use manual wall updates because they allow you customize the title and control the timing of your post.
- Schedule updates using tools like SocialOomph or HootSuite.
- Actively ask people to share your content when promoting content from your blog.
Develop an engagement strategy to build community. Some ideas:
- Develop an editorial guide to decide in advance how you’ll respond to different types of comments.
- Comment whenever anyone posts on your wall. Reply to all comments.
- Consider special events, such as a Facebook Expert Friday where you schedule a live Q & A session with your fans (promote in advance).
- Delete or ban spam and @links promptly. Get it off your wall so new people who come to Like you won’t see spam when they go to your wall after Liking your page.
- Ask questions, conduct polls, break news. Try occasionally going off-topic for posts of interest to your readers.

Session 3: Business-to-Consumer Big Brand Panel

Panel: Mary Renouf (Microsoft XBox) and Shripal Shah (Washington Redskins)

First up: Microsoft Xbox.

Background: How Xbox uses Facebook

Pushing out branded messaging to the consumer
Creating engagement opportunities
Listening to the consumer to gain valuable insights

Xbox’s presence on Facebook includes 3 main pages: Facebook.com/Xbox – their universal brand hub;
Facebook.com/Xbox For All – for families; Facebook.com/Xbox For Core – for hard core gamers; as well as the Xbox LIVE application and Xbox regional destination pages.

Takeaways

Xbox uses a 3-tier approach for growth: Owned media (tools and channels they control); Earned media (user other social presences such as MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, etc. to encourage sharing and drive people to their Facebook pages); Paid media: (placements to drive users to their Facebook pages, including campaigns for overall brand awareness and for promoting individual game titles).
Additional methods used include: Relying on personalities to share their Facebook messages; brand partnerships with the likes of Burger King and Pepsi; social partnerships with groups such as: Girls Guide To and Weplay.com. They’ve also developed retail partnerships for shared promotions with Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Amazon, include
celebrities in viral videos and have them serve as guest moderators and use their Twitter support account to create awareness of and drive traffic to their Facebook presence.
They developed policies for moderation and tone of voice to be used in responses to comments.
The incorporate a mix of communications to provide variety and allow for easy, quick interaction within the page and with the community.
One of the most important factors in their success with Facebook has been in creating a partnership with them.

Next up: The Washington Redskins

Background: Redskins Approach for Social Media Contests

Set goals.
Develop the structure for the contest.
Promote the contest via their Twitter and Facebook channels.
Measure results.

Takeaways

They integrate their Facebook sweepstakes into various Redskins microsites. The use the Wildfire contest Facebook app (mentioned in prior sessions) to force people to like their Fan page before they can enter the sweepstakes.
Comments on redskins.com are Facebook enabled through Facebook Connect plug in which allows commenters to log in using Facebook in order to comment on a blog post.
They also use Facebook widgets on their website.

Facebook Success Summit – Index of Session Takeaways

Did you attend any of these sessions of the Facebook Success Summit 2010? If so, what were your takeaways? If not, what are your thoughts on Facebook engagement, Facebook B2C marketing and your experiences with using social media as a marketing tool?

Day 4 Wrapup: Facebook Success Summit 2010 (#fbss10)

Randy Duermyer — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 15:26:28 +0000

The Facebook Success Summit continued Tuesday, October 19, with three more highly informative sessions. Despite losing the audio feed three times from Microsoft Live Meeting, here’s a summary of Day 4:

Session 1: From Fans to Superfans: How To Turbo-Boost Your Facebook Engagement

Presenter: Mari Smith

Mari Smith (whom I introduced previously in my Day 2 Wrapup) discussed the principles of a highly engaged Fan page, creative ways to generate engagement, signs that show your engagement attempts are succeeding and how to identify your super fans: your most important word of mouth.

Takeaways:

Fan engagement occurs when:
- Fans feel valued, respected and included
- The culture and experience of your Facebook page is consistent with your brand
- Fans come to depend on your page as a source of information/experience
- Content is regular, relevant, timely and fresh to give fans something to engage with
There are four ways your fans can engage with you on Facebook:
- Their news feed
- Your page wall
- Through apps (tabs) you’re using
- Open Graph/social plugins (discussed in the Day 3 Session 2) wrapup
What’s shown in a user’s news feed (their “home” page on Facebook) is determined by a Facebook algorithm that factors in:
- How often the user interacts with your fan page/content,
- the type of interaction (comments are weighted heavier than Likes) and
- the recency of your content/activity.
The more activity on your wall (share a mix of text, links, photos and videos), the more likely it will show up in someone’s news feed.
A study by Vitrue concluded that:
- Fans were most likely to engage with photos (confirmed by the Likeable Media study in Session 3),
- were more likely to engage with your content in the morning and
- more likely to engage with you on Fridays, vs. Saturdays and Sundays. (This contradicts other studies, so you should track to see what works best with your audience and use Facebook Insights to determine where the bulk of our fans reside).
Acknowledge fans at every opportunity. A simple thank you goes a long, long way. Treat fans like friends… let them in.
Questions encourage engagement, especially when asked about a topic everyone is experiencing. Fill in the blank types of questions also work well (e.g.,”The worst boss I ever had ___________”)
Establish set guidelines for monitoring your wall. Strip out spam promptly and handle criticism/negative comments courteously and honestly.
Wibiya.com offers a free social plugin (toolbar) you can install along the bottom of your blog or website that allows people to interact directly with your Fan page without leaving your site/blog.
Installing the Facebook Like button on your website/blog is also a great way to encourage Facebook interaction (as discussed in prior sessions). You can optionally change the text “Like” to “Recommend.” You can also add the Like button anywhere on your own fan page.
Signs your engagement efforts are working include:
- Your Like count increases
- Your daily post feedback increases
- Your average number of Active Fans increases (Facebook Insights)
- The traffic back to your site/blog increases
- Positive sentiment increases (see peoplebrowsr.com)
Super fans may:
- Answer questions from other fans for you
- Leave comments regularly (not just likes) – possibly daily
- @tag your page with a rave review
- Tweet about you
- Blog about you

Session 2: Profiles of Facebook Success: Retailers and Restaurants (Panel Discussion)

Panel:Nick Sarillo and Cory Eigenschenk (Nick’s Pizza), Persia Tatar (formerly from Frye Shoe Company and founder of the Social Media Society). Moderated by Rob Birgfeld (SmartBrief)

The discussion was about using Facebook to drive foot traffic to retail establishments (smaller retailers as opposed to big brands).

Nick Sarillo (owner) and Cory Eigenschenk (social media person) kicked off the discussion with a look at how they use Facebook, and what they’ve learned over the year since they started their Facebook presence.

Takeaways:

Carry over your company’s culture and purpose to Facebook. Integrate your values into your day-to-day Facebook activities and engage in open and honest communication.
Devise a Facebook strategy, pay attention to the structure behind that strategy and develop a culture based on that structure.
Having different admins within your organization allows you to refer posts and comments to the appropriate “Level of System.” For example, having the owner respond to fans where it is appropriate to do so, a bartender where it is appropriate, etc.
Authenticity, frequency and monitoring are their three keys to successful fan engagement. They call this “Active Balance.”
Results may be tangible or intangible. For example, a restaurant may put on a Facebook promotion that provides a discount for diners who sing their jingle at the table. This can result in other diners wondering what’s going on and wanting to join in the fun. An intangible, but nonetheless very valuable outcome.
Find team members who have similar values and a passion for social media and Facebook. Your team should be committed to continuous self education and be willing to apply what they learn to your strategy.
Track results to determine what works and what doesn’t.

Next, Persia Tatar discussed two case studies for Facebook engagement: The FRYE COmpany and Rachel Roy

Case Study: The Frye Company

Facebook campaign goals:

Increase awareness of Frye’s diverse product line in addition to their already popular boots.
Increase their Facebook fan count. (Had 7,000 fans going into campaign.)
Drive website traffic.
Increase spring/summer product sales
Entertain and engage the Frye audience

The approach:

Held a Facebook sweepstakes using the Wildfire Facebook app with website tie-ins.
Ran targeted Facebook self-service ads to support the sweepstakes.
Created Facebook Galleries. (Photo galleries of products).
Promoted the sweepstakes with a blast to their email list where the primary call to action was to become a fan of Frye on Facebook. (Saw open and click rates twice the industry standard.)
Reached out to bloggers who were already sending traffic to their site (determined through Google Analytics) asking them to support products they were promoting. Gave bloggers free products they could review or offer as giveaways and asked (but did not require) that they mention the Facebook fan page in return, but didn’t require them to.

The results:

Facebook fan page grew from 7,000 to 15,000 during the campaign.
Conversations about Frye and its summer products that were promoted doubled .
Increased Facebook conversions to sales by 60%.
Had over 70 million fan page impressions during the campaign.

Case Study: Rachel Roy: Rachel + Estelle Capsule Collection

Facebook campaign goals:

Generate awareness and buzz within the social media space for the Rachel + Estelle capsule collection
Increase brand engagement and conversations
Drive sales for the collection

The approach:

Use social media to bypass traditional media gatekeepers
Created a dedicated Facebook microstore tab pre-launch offering a product exclusive to fans
Outreach to bloggers and Facebook fans

The results:

Over 20 million views of content
139% Facebook fan growth in less than seven days
Exclusive product sold out in under 6 hours
Fourth largest ecommerce sales day ever

Session 3: How to Conduct Advanced Facebook Fan Page Promotions

Presenter: Dave Kerpen, CEO of Likeable, a social media marketing firm with an emphasis on Facebook marketing. Likeable currently administers over 200 Facebook fan pages, including big brands like Heineken, 1800Flowers, UNOs and others.

Takeaways:

Some ideas for Fan page promotions are coupons, giveaways and sweepstakes.
Read the Facebook terms of service (TOS), especially the promotion guidelines carefully before conducting a promotion. Violating the terms could result in permanent closure of your account.
Facebook TOS specifically states: “You may not administer any promotion through Facebook, except that you may administer a promotion through the Facebook Platform with our prior written approval…”
Facebook advertisers with more than $10,000 Facebook ad spend have access to Facebook account reps who can secure written approval for them. Otherwise, you can submit a form, but you’ll probably want to host your promotion off of Facebook using one of several available apps, or use alternate types of promotions that are permitted.
The Wildfire app (mentioned previously in this post) is a sweepstakes app you can use for sweepstakes and contests because during the set up you’ll only be able to make selections that comly with Facebook’s TOS.
All contests posted to Facebook are limited to people 18 and over. Contests for users under 18 should be re-directed to a microsite outside of Facebook so they are able to enter the contest.
Alternatives to sweepstakes include: polls, trivia, voting and content upload promotions.
Other promotional apps for Facebook include: Involver and Big Prize. However, Big Prize has a very wide, general audience and its use may not be appropriate for proper campaign targeting.

Kerpen then discussed the results of a recent study on responsive Facebook updates conducted by Likeable Media.

What the Study Looked at:

Status updates that pose a question or challenge directly to fans
Status updates that ask fans to “Like” the update
Status updates that announce winners of a Facebook-hosted contest or sweepstakes
All other types of status updates

Study Results

Engagement rates for “other updates” were below the overall average.
Engagement rates for posts that asked fans to “‘Like’ this” were on average 2.7 times higher and as much as 5.5 times higher than those for “other updates.”
In nine out of 10 cases, status updates that posed a question directly to fans were on average twice, but up to six times as engaging as “other updates.”
The five most engaging types of status updates were:
1. Photos
2. Videos
3. Links
4. Questions
5. Interactive apps (polls, quizzes, giveaways, contests, etc.)

He then discussed hypertargeting both your ideal customers and your favorite customers with Facebook ads and reiterated many of the Facebook best practices already discussed throughout the Summit, which I plan to present and summarize for you in my final post at the conclusion of the Summit.

Facebook Success Summit – Index of Session Takeaways

Did you attend any of these sessions of the Facebook Success Summit 2010? If so, what were your takeaways? If not, what are your thoughts on the future of Facebook and your experiences with using Facebook and other forms of social media marketing as a marketing tool?

Day 3 Wrapup: Facebook Success Summit 2010 (#fbss10)

Randy Duermyer — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 16:26:23 +0000

After last Wednesday’s whirlwind Day 2 session, the Facebook Success Summit continued yesterday with three more informative sessions that covered a lot of Facebook ground. I’ll do my best to summarize the highlights.

Because of the length of this post, I’ve included anchor links so you can access a specific session directly or read through the entire post.

Session 1: How Big B2B Businesses Are Leveraging the Power of Facebook

Panel Discussion: Panel – Ekaterina Walter (Intel), LaSandra Brill (Cisco) and Brian Ellefritz (SAP). Moderator: Michael Stelzner

The panel discussion included individual presentations by each of the three panelists followed by a moderated discussion and Q&A session. The panel looked at some common ideas that often surface when using Facebook for B2B marketing:

I thought Facebook was just for B2C.
Only LinkedIn is good for B2B.
People don’t use Facebook for business.

Intel

Ekaterina Walter from Intel was first to present. Intel started its Facebook page in 2008, and began its efforts primarily through trial and error.

Here are some of the lessons they’ve learned along the way:

Social media, including Facebook, is about people talking to people. Users want to engage with you as a person and not so much engage with you as a business.
Facebook uses an algorithm to determine which stories pop up in someone’s news feed when they first log in and posts are sorted by “Top Stories” (the default). On average, only 0.02% of posts are included in a user’s news feed. Anything you can do to increase engagement increases your chances of getting into that feed.
Don’t automate your Facebook content. It’s never worked for them. They experienced far lower levels of engagement than when they began customizing every single update. Questions and polls work very well to encourage engagement.
Video can be your secret weapon. Videos and photos get stronger weight within Facebook’s News Feed algorithm. When using video, don’t just link to video on YouTube. Upload the video to Facebook.
Likewise, it’s best to post without using the link box that appears when you include a link your post. Close the link box before completing your post. Link boxes don’t carry any weight in Facebook’s News Feed algorithm.
Encourage shares and mentions. Don’t be afraid to ask for them.
Don’t be afraid to go off topic by wishing people happy holidays, etc. Talk to people like you would your friends to boost engagement.
Create exclusivity. Offer your fans (or “Likers”) something non-fans can’t get.
Develop moderation guidelines in advance. This tip has been mentioned throughout the Summit. You’ll want to decide in advance which posts you’ll delete and how you’ll respond to posts that may be abusive or critical.

Cisco

LaSandra Brill (Cisco) was up next. Cisco currently has 80 Facebook pages (including their Cisco Networking Academy Group) with 450,000+ total combined fans.

Cisco’s primary objectives for all of their social media efforts are facilitating conversations, listening and engaging in conversation.

They’ve learned to:

Welcome new people as they become fans. Their community manager tries to see their presence in Facebook as hosting a party of sorts, interacting with people as they arrive and socializing with them on an ongoing basis.
Provide custom views for fans in which the Welcome page refreshes its content once someone Likes the page.
Sign all admin posts. It adds personality to the brand.
Tightly integrate the Facebook Like button into their blogs so those visiting blogs on Cisco.com can go directly to the associated Facebook fan page where they are encouraged to Like the page. Using Like button integration, they were able to expand their fan base by 4,800 fans in a very short time.

SAP

Brian Ellefritz (SAP) presented last. The SAP corporate Facebook page’s original audience was not recruited: it was built organically over time. They use Facebook as a place to test new techniques, best practices, what does and doesn’t work and for sharing user-presented ideas with the rest of the company.

Their focus is on great daily execution, setting goals and monitoring and managing performance.

They discovered:

Having a clear documented strategy provides a roadmap. They documented where they wanted to be with the site, what they wanted their brand presence to be, their content strategy, developed an editorial calendar to support their content strategy and established community standards.
Just sending out metrics didn’t work for them. SAP reviews its metrics monthly for trends, issues, evaluating new tactics, etc. They discovered that the best way to make use of the information was to hold meetings to discuss what those metrics are telling them and how they should react.
They could successfully steer posts where they wanted them. At first, many of the postings were made by recruiters looking to fill positions with people who had SAP experience. Over time, Cisco gently directed those posts to a separate Job Center tab they created. This kept the postings out of their News Feed and reduced unwanted noise.

The panel then discussed:

The main benefits of their Facebook presence. None of the three panelists could see a direct tie-in to sales from their Facebook presence. Main benefits included expanding the top of the lead funnel, increased website and blog traffic and click-throughs, brand building and engagement.
Who handles their Facebook communities. There was general agreement that administering Facebook was much of a shared function that included cross-functional department involvement for input and support, and those who had responsibility for administering their Facebook page typically had other social media responsibilities as well.
Tools they use. Several tools were mentioned that helped in managing their Facebook presence, including Sprinklr, Objective Marketer and others. Cisco uses Google Alerts to track mentions and posts on its page.
What they use for Facebook metrics. All use Facebook Insights, although some of the data may need to be worked manually in order to get it into a useful format. Cisco integrates its data with Omniture and SAP outsources its analytics requirements to an agency.

Closing Thoughts: If you could give one piece of advice on using Facebook for business, what would it be?

Don’t be afraid to try things. Every business is individual, with different objectives. Don’t be afraid to step away from something you think is safe. Look at content spikes to see what resonates with the community.
Think about Facebook as a medium and decide how best to use it. Facebook provides an opportunity to connect with customers at a deeper level.
Having a Facebook strategy is key because it will help you see clearly what you’re trying to accomplish and how to best interact with your audience.

Session 2: How to Benefit from Facebook Open Graph and Social Plugins

Presenters: Paul Dunay and Richard Krueger

Paul and Richard are co-authors of Facebook Marketing for Dummies and Facebook Advertising for Dummies

Paul Dunay kicked off the session and discussed benefiting from Facebook’s open graph. Facebook’s “Open Graph” (or “Social Graph”) is used to describe the ability of developers to access Facebook’s API openly in order to create Facebook-specific apps that have access to information contained in Facebook profiles and to Facebook content. This information is then used to display customized information to users. He discussed how Facebook’s Open Graph is being used now as well as how it might be used in the future.

Takeaways:

The future of media is just one word…contextual. The Open Graph enables crowdsourcing.
Measuring social media is not as hard as it looks. Using Open Graph will provide rich data behind it and we will see more apps that are highly trackable.
Watch for everything to become more social.
Marketers will be playing catch up with social media for a while longer. Get used to being behind the eight ball. Social will become increasingly pervasive in your marketing efforts and you’ll need to keep up.
Keep building your social capital. Personally and professionally, your social assets (followers, likers, mentions, influence, etc.) could become some of the most important assets of your life.

The session continued with Rich Krueger’s discussion of benefiting from Facebook’s social plugins.

The Internet BFB (Before Facebook) consisted of websites that didn’t communicate with each other. Then, Facebook opened up its social graph, most notably on April 21, 2010 at its F8 Developer Conference, which entirely changed things. Since then, sites have become more social than ever before.

He explained that the 3 components of Facebook’s Open Graph are:

Identity
Connections
Content

Facebook currently offers 8 social plugins:

Like Button
Like Box
Comment Box
Login Button
Activity Stream
Facepile Plugin
Recommendations Plugin
Live Stream Plugin

Expect to see more soon.

Takeaways:

Any website can implement Facebook Open Graph for free. It provides a completely integrated experience between websites and Facebook and standardizes the portability of user identities, their connections and content.
The Like button is the easiest of social actions. It’s easier than “share” because there’s just one button and no choices to make. The Like button can be applied to anything, from brands to content to products and no authorization or privacy information is required.
Many publishers are reporting substantial increases in traffic since adding social plugins. Examples include:
- ABC News (+190%)
- Gawker (+200%)
- TypePad (+200%)
- Sporting News (+500%)
- For NBA.com, the Like button is its #2 referral source.
Visitors are more engaged and stay longer when their real identity and real friends are driving the experience through social plugins.
Optimize your Like button By configuring the Like button to show friends’ faces and by placing the button near engaging content (not off on its own), you can expect click-through rates to improve by three to five times.
When a person clicks Like, it publishes a story to their friends with a link back to your site; adds the content to the user’s profile; makes the content discoverable through Facebook search, which will be more and more of a traffic driver in the future.

Session 3: Applying Method to the Madness: Picking the Right Facebook Strategy

Presenter: Jay Baer

I enjoyed Jay’s presentation at the Social Media Success Summit and was not disappointed with his presentation here, which discussed various strategies you can consider for your Facebook business presence.

He noted two common problems with companies who use Facebook:

Doing too much
Not doing enough

The causes for both problems are the same: not having a Facebook strategy.

Takeaways:

The goal isn’t to be good at Facebook…the goal is to be good at business because of Facebook. Unless you are an agency providing these services, you are not in the Facebook Fan page business and you should never lose sight of that.
Facebook isn’t free. Your Facebook business presence will require planning time, building time, possible expenditures on third-party consultants, possible paid apps, operations time, content planning, execution time, tweaking, time for responding to Facebook changes, analysis and reporting time.
Facebook will require more work than your website. Many experts recommend that you update your Facebook page three or more times per day for maximum effectiveness. When was the last time you updated your website three times a day?
Key Facebook strategy questions include:
- Why are we doing this?
- Who is our audience?
- What do we want them to do?
- How will we know if it’s working?
Five Facebook strategies for businesses:
- Create New Awareness. To create awareness, win the news feed.
- Increase Sales. Use special offers, Fan-only offers, add direct response and ecommerce options, generate sales in the real world through your Facebook presence.
- Market Research & Insight Generation. Facebook can be a relatively inexpensive living focus group because people love to share their opinions. You can also mix your research efforts with promotional efforts, just don’t bang the drum too loudly.
- Customer Service. You can build a full-service customer service platform like AT&T or just listen proactively.
- Context, Relevancy & Integration. You can use Facebook’s Open Graph API to improve the experience for your other content; you can also use Facebook for influence mining, data mining and more.
Know why you’re on Facebook.
Decide on a scoreboard. (Know what you’ll be measuring.)
Focus first on Likes.
Create more content, more oftenand make it compelling.
Activate fans, don’t collect them. Get them involved with your research, with voting in polls, etc. Give them assignments to get them engaged.
Never be discouraged. Facebook (and social media) are always changing. If you feel like you’re not doing all you can do now, tomorrow’s another day.

Facebook Success Summit – Index of Session Takeaways

Day 2 Wrapup: Facebook Success Summit 2010 (#fbss10)

Randy Duermyer — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 16:41:55 +0000

After Tuesday’s inspiring keynote by Brian Solis, the Facebook Success Summit continued Wednesday, October 6th, with three fast-paced and information-packed sessions that are summarized here.

Session 1: How To Create a Compelling Facebook Presence That Generates Profits

Presenter: Mari Smith

If you know Mari Smith or have ever had the privilege of hearing her speak, you completely understand why FastCompany calls her the “Pied Piper of Facebook.” She is a gloriously entertaining and when it comes to Facebook, there aren’t many who possess the level of knowledge she’s only too happy to share.

This session was all about making the most of Facebook Fan pages (or as Brian Solis referred to them in his keynote, “Brand Pages”). If you visit Mari’s Facebook Fan page you can see immediately that she knows how to do it right.

Takeaways:

The design strategy for your Fan page needs to clearly address your objectives for having a Facebook Fan page in the first place. Such objectives might include building your email list; driving traffic to your blog; selling more products/services; increasing event registrations; getting media contacts and attention; connecting with joint venture partners; establishing yourself as a leading authority; improving customer service.
When you create your Facebook Fan page, you need to be very careful about the category and name you select for your page as those cannot be changed.
Add custom tabs to your Fan page, especially a custom Welcome tab. A recent study has shown that 47% of those who see your Welcome tab as a landing page will Like your page, whereas only 23% will Like your page if they first land on your Facebook wall.
Currently, custom tab content is created mostly in FBML (Facebook Markup Language), which is similar to HTML but with its own proprietary tags and attributes, or through Facebook Apps. At some point in the near future, Facebook will only allow iframe coding, but they’ve promised they will continue to “grandfather in” any tabs you’ve already set up using FBML.
Facebook users can Like a Fan page via SMS by texting like yourfanpagename to 32665. Therefore, choosing an easy-to-remember name (custom URL) for your Fan page is paramount. You can only specify a custom URL for your Fan page after you’ve reached 25 Likes for your Fan page.
A well-designed landing page will accomplish these purposes: Increase conversions, help visitors know immediately they’re in the right place, be inviting and compelling and provide a positive, interactive user experience.
There are a number of great Facebook Apps you can use to create tabs for your Facebook Fan page. Apps that push content onto your wall (in addition to updating the tab) are better for engagement because that content is more likely to get noticed by your fans because it’s placed in their feed.
You shouldn’t just post content that’s about you or geared to making a sale on your Fan page. Content sources for your Fan page include blog posts, articles, podcasts, videos, photos, interviews (transcribe) along with other people’s content (OPC) available through email subscriptions, ezines, Friends lists, Twitter lists, etc. Fans appreciate content “curators” as it saves them time and allows them to find a variety of useful content in one place.
Allow fans to post items. It’s easy enough to remove anything spammy, offensive or off-topic. Respond promptly to Fan comments with personalized comments of your own. Try to provide daily updates to keep your page fresh.
Conversion strategies may include: regular calls to action, contests, fan-only content, special offers, coupons, etc. If you mix up your content to add sufficient value you’ll find better acceptance of your promotional content.
Remember that Facebook is just ONE marketing channel. You can use a Fan page as a hub for your content or as an outpost. Use your Fan page to educate your marketplace about all that you do, but be sure to enhance the user experience for your fans in the process.

Session 2: How to Build and Manage a Loyal Facebook Fan Base

Presenters: Amy Porterfield and Cindy King

Amy and Cindy (along with Michael Stelzner) are the core team behind the highly successful Social Media Examiner Facebook Fan page. The session was all about sharing what they do that makes their Facebook presence (18,546 fans and counting) so successful, as well as tips for creating Facebook editorial guidelines and creating a strong Facebook team. They covered an awful lot of information in a very short period of time.

Takeaways:

You need to create fan engagement. Ways to do so include:
- Respond to every post using first names and greeting fans as friends.
- Ask questions regularly to get interactions both you and your fans want.
- Post third-party articles and encourage feedback from your fans, by leading into the post with a question.
- Strategically tag fans to give shout outs but use carefully: You don’t wan to come off as too pushy, too loud or too promotional.
- Decide how best to respond to negative comments but don’t ignore them – they only get worse. Be friendly, explain what’s going on and then move on.
- Decide how to respond to off-topic comments. If you don’t know the answer, try to point them in a direction to get the information they seek.
Promoting your page. You can promote your page through tabs, sneak peeks, testimonials and reviews. Keep in mind:
- Facebook is a place to network and connect first; Always think of “value-add” before you promote.
- You want to get fans interacting with each other. Make these experiences unique to your brand and of great value to your fans to build community.
- Be consistent and do updates regularly. This will make your page “sticky” and fans will continue to come back.
- Outside of Facebook, use the Like button and other widgets on your site/blog. Link to your Facebook page from your other social media platforms. Use tools such as the Wibya toolbar. Promote your Facebook page offline too.
Tips for establishing editorial guidelines:
- Keep posts short and to the point. Use headlines that grab attention fast.
- End most posts with questions or an engaging call to action.
- Using multiple admins for your Fan page is a good thing as it enables and enhances research development and collaboration, but if using multiple admins be sure they identify themselves in comment responses.
- Use common sense in moderating comments and wall posts. Fix the facts, correct wrong or misleading information and avoid potential legal issues.
- Encourage sharing and conversation. Remember to strive first for social success and not marketing success. Use your people skills and be empathetic. Create entertaining games and/or use entertaining apps to create multiple ways fans can interact with you on Facebook.
- Encourage others to Like your updates and Like and comment on updates yourself as they are posted.
- Network to build your community. Tag people, share other people’s links, reach out and acknowledge fans on other social media platforms.
How to create a strong Facebook team:
- As your Fan page grows, you may need more than one person as an admin.
- Educate your team and distribute tasks. Write easy to follow guidelines. Be flexible in order to adapt to your audience
  and adapt as Facebook and other forms of social media evolve.
- The ideal community manager is a natural communicator; problem solver; enjoys people; good listener; professional; has a positive attitude and is enthusiastic.
- The ideal community manager should have a solid understanding of social networking and be social media savvy; have the ability to multi-task and think quickly; understand online marketing and have the ability to grasp how social media activity aligns with business goals.

Session 3: Leveraging the Power of Facebook Advertising

Presenters: Chris Treadaway

Treadaway is the co-author of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day and has extensive experience with helping brands with their Facebook advertising.

Takeaways:

Facebook ads give you access to hundreds of millions of people. You can push customers to a page, contest, your web site – more or less whatever you want, allowing you to create demand.
Facebook advertising is available to all regardless of budget. You can start with an ad spend of as little as $1 per day.
Facebook advertising is a fast and effective way to learn more about your customers and how they respond to your advertising.
Google, LinkedIn and Twitter are alternative social media ad outlets, but: Google is a mature auction model that’s 9 years old and users have bid up costs for keywords. LinkedIn direct ads have a CPM that’s can be 10 times or more the CPM of Facebook ads, yet Treadaway has yet to see what he would call an effective LinkedIn ad campaign. Twitter advertising has just been made available, but by its nature will only be able to offer limited ad criteria.
Facebook offers surgically precise ad targeting options based on geography, demographics, interests, language, education level, those who are not yet “Likers” of your or your competitors Fan page and more (not already connected to something). Facebook provides estimated reach and cost numbers based on your targeting.
Because Facebook user information is provided by users themselves, targeting information may not be entirely accurate or may be missing. Therefore, it can sometimes be wise to include a wider target in your ad campaign.
Facebook has finicky ad copy regulations and your ads may be rejected without a reason. Additionally, advertisers cannot yet target a user’s status updates and there is currently no mobile advertising or targeting available, although many of these features may be added in the not-too-distant future.
There are two types of Facebook ads: Self-Serve and Sponsored. Main differences are cost and ad placement. Self-Serve ads can be based on cost per impression (CPM) or cost-per-click (CPC) and are ideal for small budgets. Sponsored ads have a +/- $5,000 minimum ad spend per month. Sponsored ad buys are negotiated directly with Facebook Ad Sales staff and are geared to large corporations. Targeting criteria is the same for both Self-Serve and Sponsored ads.
Like other forms of advertising, Facebook advertising is an iterative process. You need to set up the ads, run ads on at least a seven-day cycle before judging their effectiveness, scrutinize your results and make adjustments.
A/B and multi-variate ad testing are used with Facebook advertising the same way as they are used in search and other types of advertising. Both forms of testing are valuable for getting the most out of your Facebook ad campaigns.

Facebook Success Summit – Index of Session Takeaways

Day 1 Wrapup: Facebook Success Summit 2010 (#fbss10)

Randy Duermyer — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 13:37:37 +0000

Opening Session
Keynote Address: The Case for Facebook and What Your Business Needs to Know
Presenter: Brian Solis

The Facebook Success Summit 2010 got underway last night with a thought-provoking keynote address from Brain Solis, Author of Engage: The Complete Guide to Building, Cultivating and Measuring Success in the Social Web and principal of FutureWorks, where much of his work focuses on how businesses can get the most out of Facebook.

Like its predecessor, Social Media Success Summit 2010, the Facebook Summit got off to a compelling start and promises to be a very rewarding experience.

The theme of the keynote was that Facebook is a force to be reckoned with, underutilized by many types of businesses, destined to continue its explosive growth over the next year and Twitter will start to fade away.

Facebook is deserving of more respect and recognition as a character of its own than it received in the recently released film, “The Social Network”.

Main Session Takeaways:

Facebook became more than a social network when it eclipsed the 500 million user mark: it has become its own ecosystem.
Solis predicted that by this time next year, you as a brand (or brand representative) will spend more time and resources on Facebook than you will on Twitter.
Facebook is designed to keep people sharing. It’s organized, designed to act as a center of experience, whereas Twitter is not.
Twitter celebrates the ME in social media and can easily transform introverts into extroverts. With respect to brands and businesses connecting with customers, etc., it’s a network that’s not really competing for mind share, prominence or service as you are always competing against the next tweet in the stream.
Conversely, Facebook is a platform in and of itself where the message is not the medium. Community pages, groups and events are all visible from within the Facebook platform. Therefore, it plays a much bigger role in building community and interaction than Twitter ever will.
Many companies go wrong with their Facebook presence by following what Solis referred to as “The Fallacy of Social Syndication”: The idea that all you need to do in order to succeed with Facebook marketing is take one update and broadcast it across the web a few times each week. The truth is that to be successful with Facebook marketing, you need to create original content on Facebook and then comment and support it, responding to comments in a fashion that’s representative of your brand’s mission.
There are so many users on Facebook now, users wonder where you are if you don’t have a brand page. However, one reason many companies haven’t embraced Facebook yet is they fear negative feedback. His position is that if you fear feedback, you have other issues to resolve BEFORE you become actively involved in social media outlets, including Facebook.
He discussed the importance of companies recognizing that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) today goes far beyond making charitable contributions. It goes to understanding whom you are trying to engage and compel; what it is that’s going to move them and demonstrating that you hear them. Ignoring negative feedback is no longer an option. Instead, Facebook can and should be used to steer things in a positive direction.
Don’t oversimplify social media. You HAVE to have a mission, define it and support it with your voice. Facebook can and should be a hub for expressing and carrying through on your mission.
Fans, friends and followers are not created equally. A social consumer could be a customer, lead, prospect or idea generator. People affect how you communicate. Reputation, trust and relationships are earned through your action and words. Your actions result in your “social currency”, i.e. your social influence.
Successful interaction through Facebook requires empathy. For that you need to find the right individuals to represent your brand because empathy is the difference between listening and hearing. You need to know what inspires people to share – what moves them – what their options and challenges are.
To be successful on Facebook, brands have to change their content and distribution strategy in order to find ways to integrate and stimulate interaction. People need to believe they are at the center of the brand experience. Their attention becomes the major currency in “content commerce”.
With Facebook, you need to continually earn engagement on a continuum – not through spikes and valleys.
He offered a modern day version of the “KISS” acronym as it relates to social media and specifically to Facebook – “Keep it Simple and Shareable.”
In the end, we earn the stature, relationships, and experience we deserve.

Facebook Success Summit – Index of Session Takeaways

Did you attend this session of the Facebook Success Summit 2010? If so, what were your takeaways? If not, what are your thoughts on the future of Facebook and your experiences with using Facebook and other forms of social media marketing as a marketing tool?

Market It Write Coverage of the Facebook Success Summit – #fbss10

Randy Duermyer — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 20:08:05 +0000

I’ll be attending the 2010 online Facebook Success Summit that runs from Oct. 5th through Oct. 26th, 2010 and reporting on it right here on the Market It Write blog.

The list of presenters at the Summit is impressive and includes:

Brian Solis: Author of Engage: The Complete Guide to Building, Cultivating and Measuring Success in the Social Web and principal of FutureWorks.
Mari Smith: Co-author of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day
Justin Smith: Founder of Inside Facebook, the first news site dedicated to covering Facebook for businesses, marketers and researchers. He is also author of The Facebook Marketing Bible.
Jesse Stay: Author of multiple Facebook books, including I’m on Facebook—Now What??? and FBML Essentials.
Michael Stelzner: Founder of SocialMediaExaminer.com and author of the book Writing White Papers: How to Capture Readers and Keep Them Engaged and the Social Media Marketing Industry Report.
Paul Dunay: Co-author of Facebook Marketing for Dummies and Facebook Advertising for Dummies. He is also global managing director of services and social marketing for Avaya.
Rob Birgfeld: Director of Digital Strategy at SmartBrief.
Jay Baer: Co-author of the book The Now Revolution and a social media strategist, speaker, and coach for well-known brands including Nike.

Additional experts in the field of social media (and specifically Facebook marketing), as well as panelists and presenters from businesses, will be featured, including representatives from Intel, Cisco, Microsoft XBox, SAP and the Washington Redskins.

The Facebook Success Summit features a total of 16 online “sessions” over the course of 6 days. I plan to attend most of them and will be posting takeaways from each day’s sessions the following day along with a capstone post at the conclusion of the Summit.

How We’ll Be Covering this Event

Blog – Watch for updates on our blog throughout the month of October. I’ll add links to individual session takeaways to the bottom of this post, which can then act as a table of contents for our coverage of the Summit. My first Summit post is planned for Wednesday, October 6th, and will cover Brian Solis’ opening keynote, Why Facebook now?

Twitter – If you tweet, you can find additional coverage by searching with the Twitter hashtag that’s been set up for this year’s summit: #fbss10. Market It Write will also be tweeting during the event and you can follow us at @MarketItWrite

Facebook – We’ll also be posting updates related to the Summit on our Facebook page. If you haven’t already done so you should Like our page at www.facebook.com/MarketItWrite.

Market It Write Newsletter – You won’t want to miss the Facebook marketing insider tips that we’ll feature exclusively in our newsletter at the end of October. If you haven’t already subscribed to the Market It Write newsletter, we encourage you to do so now to take advantage of this free insider information. Just go to our home page and use the Sign Up box on the right side of the page and you’ll be good to go.

We hope you’ll follow along with us as we report on this exciting event.

Daily Session Takeaways

Day 6 Wrapup: Social Media Success Summit 2010 (#SMSS10)

Randy Duermyer — Fri, 21 May 2010 19:44:59 +0000

Social Media Success Summit 2010 continued yesterday, May 20th. The day’s sessions continued to build on the wealth of information provided throughout this year’s Summit with a great return performance by Facebook guru Mari Smith along with some insightful information on social news sites and a lively panel that consisted of three very popular bloggers, who weighed in how they use Twitter.

Day 6′s sessions were:

Session 1: Facebook Engagement: Advanced Strategies for Building a Loyal Fan Base

Presenter: Mari Smith

While her Day 2 presentation on Facebook was excellent, I felt it went a bit too fast to keep up. In my opinion, her return appearance, however, was spot-on perfect timing wise. While her Day 2 presentation focused on Facebook design strategy, she picked up on Day 6 with developing strategies for Facebook content, promotion and engagement.

Main Session Takeaways:

Content is far more engaging when you mix it up. Sources for Facebook content include blog posts, articles, videos, podcasts, interviews, etc. You can effectively repurpose this content for use on Facebook. Your overarching goal when it comes to Facebook content is to provide value.
You should feature other people’s content (OPC) as well, which you can get through blog and ezine subscriptions, Facebook friend lists (you can create a friend list from a collection of Facebook Fan pages) and Twitter lists.
Facebook plug-ins are available for content promotion, such as the Facebook Like button plug-in (which can be customized as a “Recommend” button and include a Comment box). Additional plug-ins are available at
First impressions may be deceiving. The panelists’ first impressions of Twitter varied from a monumental waste of time to suspicion. It took Darren about 24 hours to see Twitter’s potential, whereas it took Brian a year to try it.
Newbies need not be intimidated. Best ways for newbies to get started with Twitter are to find people to follow who are relevant to your business, don’t expect to read every Tweet that goes by and provide value. Take advantage of Twitter’s search tools, listen in and participate.
Don’t auto follow. If you indiscriminately follow those who follow you, you are leaving yourself open to spam.
Pitching your products and services doesn’t work. Point to interesting content, create interesting content and the following will happen over time.
Twitter is a relationship-building tool. People buy from people they like and Twitter allows you to build those relationships that may eventually lead to some sort of transaction, partnership or joint venture.
Passion moves people to action. (Now there’s a deep thought!)
Twitter makes a good outpost, not a destination. Twitter and Facebook are social tools that are great to use as outposts to drive traffic to your home base (website or blog). (This reinforces the concept of identifying your home base and outposts discussed in a previous session.)
The results of your effort may not be apparent at first. You may tweet someone’s content and nothing comes of it for 6 months, when out of the blue you might get an offer to do a partnership or joint venture. Provide value to other people and don’t count exactly how you’ll get the return: It may be much bigger than you’d otherwise expect.
Give changes some time to take hold. The world of social media is constantly changing. There was agreement that all three typically waited for someone else to bring up new developments, technologies and tools. They don’t obsess on keeping up with everything as none of them has the time to worry about it.

Closing Comments

Darren:

Twitter is about enhancing people’s lives. If someone helps you, they make an impression and you notice them. Trust grows and they’ll want to spread the word. Be useful, be personal. Allow people to see part of your life and people will talk about it. If you’re going to use Twitter, use it regularly: You have to use Twitter for it to work for you.

Chris:

For me, 40-60% of revenues are received from things that happen via Twitter. Unless your job is tweeting, your job isn’t tweeting.

[In other words, don't let Twitter take over your life at the expense of your job or business.]

Brian: (Who said when he first learned of Twitter he laughed out loud and thought, “What a waste of time!”)

It’s important for business not to blow off social media. It’s not a fad; it’s not going away. However, it’s the fundamentals that matter. If you’re too busy to keep up it’s because you have a real business – that’s a good thing. Figure out how it works for you. Stay open-minded to new things but be ruthless about whether there’s a return and if it makes sense for you. Don’t just put on every new hat that comes out.

Social Media Success Summit – Index of Session Takeaways

Did you attend any of these sessions at the Social Media Success Summit 2010? If so, what were your takeaways? If not, what are your thoughts on building an engaged fan base in Facebook, using social news sites to improve your SEO efforts or your tips and insights regarding Twitter and other social media marketing tools?

Day 4 Wrapup: Social Media Success Summit 2010 (#SMSS10)

Randy Duermyer — Fri, 14 May 2010 17:12:42 +0000

Social Media Success Summit 2010 continued yesterday, May 13, 2010. Once again, the day was full of useful information and insight on getting the most out of social media for marketing purposes.

Unfortunately, my PC froze up during the final session. Of course, rebooting a PC means you’re not going to rejoin a live session in anything that resembles real time, but I did jump back in as soon as I could. The slides and videos of each session are made available to attendees after the fact, so I hope that I was still able to capture the essence of the final session.

Three sessions were held:

Session 1: How to Bring Raving Customers Repeatedly to Your Local Business

Panel: Andrew Mason (Groupon), Tristan Walker (Foursquare) and Narrator Rob Birgfeld (SmartBrief)

This session was all about getting foot traffic in the door of your local business, specifically through Foursquare and Groupon, two fairly recent social media tools that are growing rapidly.

Foursquare
Foursquare is a geolocation empowered social media mobile app that focuses on three segments for business development:

Sole proprietors with local stores
Mid-sized retailers
Big brands like Bravo, Starbucks, MTV and Pepsi.

The premise of Foursquare when you launch the app on your mobile phone is, “Tell us where you are and we’ll tell you who and what’s nearby”. Foursquare tells you where you’ve been (Nearby Favorites), as well as places your friends have and others have recommended nearby.

Foursquare use is game-based and involves checking it at a location and earning points; users try to unlock badges (tied to time, distance and location) and the user with the most points can be named Mayor for that location and earn freebies. The Swarm badge is unlocked by getting 50 people to check in at the same venue.

Foursquare can also be effective for promoting charitable causes, and an example was given of a Pepsi-sponsored campaign for the benefit of charity. Analytics tools are provided to track check-ins as well as other key metrics like top visitors and most recent check-ins.

Groupon
Groupon’s purpose is to harness the power of group buying by featuring a daily offer on the best local experiences in each of over 60 cities (soon to be expanded to 100, including European cities).

Users can get great deals on restaurants, theater tickets, spa packages and more buy buying coupons from Groupon, printing them out and then taking them to the sponsoring merchant. Merchants set up the promotion by contacting Groupon.

There is only one deal offered per day in each metro area, so there is a considerable waiting list. Merchants don’t pay anything unless and until their deal is featured, and then only if a targeted minimum number of users is reached.

Good deals can result in large crowds visiting a business in a single day, so Groupon gives the merchant a heads up in advance so the business will be ready for the influx of traffic.

Each Groupon deal includes a custom deal writeup, a monitored discussion forum, social media promotion on Facebook and Twitter and customer service.

Main Session Takeaways:

In both cases, social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook allow customers to rapidly spread the word. If merchants give customers a great experience when they come in, the customers can be expected to spread the word.
Like other social media platforms discussed in the Summit, neither Groupon or Foursquare should be considered a “quick fix”, but should instead be considered a way to reach a large number of potential customers over time.

Session 2: 5 Social Media Case Studies Worth Close Examination

Presenter: Ann Handley (Marketing Profs)

This session was a discussion of the common traits of the case studies examined by MarketingProfs of those who have succeeded with social media: that they are friendly to the customer, focused, and fertile (having viral potential) and that they have repurposed their content creatively across more than one social media channel, including blogs, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

Disney’s Promotion of Pinocchio
Case studies examined included Disney’s promotion for its re-release of the movie Pinocchio, in which Disney used Twitter as its main promotional platform. The campaign involved promotion by a Twitter power user, Melanie Notkin (@savvyauntie) as her followers best fit the demographics that Disney was targeting.

In just three weeks, more than 300 tweets about the movie were made, a special hashtag of #disneysa was created to track the conversation and short, trackable URLs were used for analytics.

The Coffee Groundz – First Order on Twitter
The second case study was for The Coffee Groundz: a 2-year-old Houston coffee shop who wanted to differentiate themselves from their many competitors. One of the owners started using Twitter informally to interact with friends and customers. A month later he got a tweet from a customer to see if the customer could place an order to go via Twitter, and it is believed this was the first to-go order ever placed on Twitter. Word-of-mouth about the order spread and the shop received a lot of favorable publicity.

Over time, the company made it a regular practice to process Twitter orders, give tips on making better coffee and began hosting local tweet-ups. The number of followers have skyrocketed since and business increased in the area of 30%.

General Mills Fiber One Cereal
General Mills used Facebook, YouTube and a blog to promote the good taste of its Fiber One cereal, calling the campaign, “Coping with Disbelief”. The campaign attracted 25,000 Facebook fans, and an unexpected volume of fan interaction. General Mills let the customers take control.

Intel – Live Music Animations
Intel created an animation app that users could download in order to create their own short animation. Each week, users who created the best animations won prizes. Users could submit animations or vote on those submitted by others.

The end result was that 17,000 people in 101 countries downloaded the app and participated. The Facebook Fan page drew 56,000 fans. The final film, consisting of the best entries, was shown worldwide.

Forty – A Phoenix-Based Marketing Agency
Forty placed ads on Facebook that reached 13,000 people within their targeted audience. True to their name, the Facebook ads cost the company less than $400. Two types of engagement ads were used to test a pure branding approach: one using the company’s logo and tagline and the other using ads that featured photos of individual Forty employees with a description of what their role was within the agency.

The staff photo ads far outperformed the logo and tagline ads. In total, over 1 million ad impressions were served and 1 of 11 people who saw the ads clicked through, giving Forty considerable brand awareness for a very small investment.

Main Session Takeaways:

J.R. Cohen of The Coffee Groundz offered sound advice for businesses using Twitter: “Just be yourself. That will take you farther than you could ever imagine.”
Let your customers take control of the conversation. Listen and offer help, but don’t butt in.
If used effectively, social media offers a relatively inexpensive means to reach a very large, targeted crowd.
Reuse and re-purpose content across all of the social media channels in which you engage your customers.
If you stay friendly and focused, your social media efforts can prove to be very fertile.

Session 3: Creating Buzz With Social Media Contests

Presenter: Michael Stelzner

This session featured step-by-step tactics that can be used to create social media contests with viral results. Contests may be rewards based (win a prize with economic value) or prestige based (recognition for being named to the top 10 for something, e.g.).

One example of each type of contest was discussed: The contest to win free tickets to the Social Media Success Summit (rewards based) and a contest to name the Top 10 Social Media bloggers (prestige based).

Main Session Takeaways:

Contests offer several benefits: they excite customers, drive traffic, increase exposure, sell products and can engage customers and prospects because they’re fun and memorable.
Offering a compelling reward for taking an easy action and promoting it through social media can create the “Perfect Marketing Storm”, a domino effect that occurs through social sharing.
Social media contests offer viral potential. The contest to win free SMSS tickets had 1400+ retweets in a matter of days. Most activity takes place in the first few days.
Prizes need to be valuable; required actions to win need to be very easy and explained clearly in a skimmable fashion; you’ll want to line up partners to help you spread the word. Contestants will then share information on the contest and their participation with their social media connections.

Social Media Success Summit – Index of Session Takeaways

Have you used Foursquare or Groupon? Have you held a contest that was promoted via social media? What were your experiences? If you attended any of these Social Media Success Summit 2010 sessions, we’d love to hear your thoughts on and your thoughts on social media marketing in general.