Archive of Secrets of the Post-Advertising Age

Archive for March, 2009

RE: Businesses Can’t Ignore Facebook Connect

Submitted on: March 18th, 2009

TO: High-Level Business Executives

FROM: The Executive Whisper

No company reading this can afford to ignore Facebook Connect. In fact, you should add it to your site. If not immediately, then very soon. And you should ask your internal marketing folks and your agencies how they can integrate Facebook Connect into your marketing programs. It will provide a competitive advantage. The following summaries this transformative service and why it will mean so much to your business.

What Is Facebook Connect?

Facebook Connect was announced on July 23, 2008, and made available to users on December 4. It allows visitors to login to your website using their Facebook accounts and share information about their activities on your site with their friends back at Facebook via their new feeds – the news feed is a list of short comments about what Facebook users are doing, thinking, feeling.

For example, a person might review a book at Amazon.com. Since he signed in to Amazon with Facebook Connect, his review appears on his FB profile and in the news feed of many of his FB friends. Thus Amazon and the book are highlighted in the news feed.

If the person comments on your blog or makes a purchase or takes a survey on your site, it can be broadcasted to his social network of friends on Facebook. And if his friends have done anything on the site, like reviewed a different book, he’ll see that activity as well. Therefore, it’s easy for him to see what his other friends have done and endorsed on the site, which is much more influential than endorsements from strangers.

To avoid previous privacy problems, Facebook lets users have control over how permissions to access content are granted, how identity is revealed and shared, and what information is to be shared with friends.

The Benefits of Facebook Connect

The benefit to users is the one-click or single sign-on convenience and seeing what their friends have done.

For marketers:

First, it facilitates getting mentioned in Facebook users’s news feeds, which has been the holy grail for marketers because it raises awareness of your business and delivers an implied endorsement.

Second, it provides a treasure trove of user data, allowing über-targeting. You can literally customize the content of your page based on the visitor’s Facebook data, such as his age, gender, location, likes, dislikes, relationship status, even networks, groups, and pages he’s joined – or “fanned.” As a simple example, if you know a visitor is a fan of the band U2, you can highlight your U2-theme stationery, T-shirts, dog bones.

Starbucks, for example, uses Facebook Connect on its Pledge5 site, which asks people to donate five hours of time to volunteer work. When a visitor signs in with his Facebook account, a new screen – a hybrid of Facebook and the Pledge5 home page – pops up with information on how to find local volunteer opportunities. A tab on the page asks him to “help spread the word.” Clicking on it produces his entire address book of Facebook friends, enabling him to evangelize Pledge5 with just a few keystrokes.

(BTW, Facebook will also use Connect and the data to deliver more personalized ads on other participating websites, in effect turning Facebook Connect into a social ad network. That’s coming. Not here yet.)

Facebook Connect Will Be Everywhere

Most of the major sites are or will soon be joining the program and the Facebook Connect icon will become ubiquitous throughout the internet.

Just last weekend Facebook revealed Facebook Connect for the iPhone, a new technology that lets iPhone application developers connect their apps to FB.

Practical examples of Facebook Connect iPhone apps are already in the wild. Urbanspoon, is one such example. A free restaurant review application, Urbanspoon has been updated with Facebook connectivity, enabling Urbanspoon users to post votes, reviews and photos on their Facebook news feeds.

Time to call an internal meeting. RE: Facebook Connect.

Important Links

Facebook Connect’s Developers Page

How to Add Facebook Connect to WordPress

Best Article Highlight Benefits of Facebook Connect for Marketers

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Posted in New Media, New Technologies | 3 Comments »

RE: What Business Do You Have on a Facebook Page?

Submitted on: March 11th, 2009

TO: High-Level Business Executives

FROM: The Executive Whisper

What began as a story comparing Facebook Pages and Groups, quickly evolved into how Facebook as changed Pages and what it means for marketers.

First, a brief explanation of Facebook Pages

Facebook frowns upon commercial entities or public figures setting up profiles. It even put in place limitations that restrict a profiler’s ability to speak to larger audiences. Instead, companies are encouraged to create “pages” which allows Facebook users to join or “become a fan” of the individual, company, product, service, or concept. When users become a fan of a company, the company’s icon or logo shows up on the user’s profile page. Users can interact with the company’s page by writing a message on an area called the “Wall” for others to see, as well as upload photos and join other fans in discussion groups. Companies are also able to add applications to their pages that engage their users with videos, reviews, flash content, and more.

Since pages are integrated with Facebook’s advertising system, page owners can easily advertise to fans by sending them news, promotional announcements, and offers. They also have access to software that provides analytics of their fan base.

Finally, a Facebook page improves a company’s natural search rankings, i.e., its search engine optimization, because Facebook pages get indexed by Google – and Google displays a sampling of which pages Facebook users are fans of.

Facebook Pages Compared to Facebook Groups

Companies, clubs, and public figures can also establish groups which Facebook users  can join. Group membership can be controlled by the administrator, so a group may be open (anyone can join), closed (the admin has to approve all members), or secret (only the members and invitees know the group even exists). Groups tend to be more informal and based around interests or events. Anyone can set up a group around any topic. However, a significant drawback for businesses is that groups can’t be customized and no applications can be added. In addition, there’s a 5000 emailing threshold, which prevents groups of substantial size from communicating with all members at once. Groups, in general, are wonderful for small businesses that want to start marketing themselves within the Facebook community and to bring together people in their industries.

Most companies, especially with the recent changes, should opt for setting up a Facebook page.

The Changes to Facebook Pages and What It Means to Marketers

Beginning today, March 11, Facebook launched extensive changes to its user profiles and branded pages. Users will now have much greater flexibility in the way they share and follow information. Borrowing from Twitter, a user’s home page will now feature a news “stream” (which used to be called a news feed) that updates in near real time, instead of refreshing every 10 minutes or so. Users will also be able to filter content more easily to see updates only from family, closest friends, or a smaller network of friends.

Facebook is also replacing the status box at the top of the page with what it is more broadly calling the publisher box — asking “What’s on your mind?” Users can drop not only their musings but also photos and videos into it, and that material flows into the news stream their friends see.

Branded pages also underwent significant changes, and now resemble, both visually and functionally, standard Facebook profiles, including tabs and wall design as well as the “status” feature. This all means that businesses can publish content directly to their fans’ homepages, and allows them to interact with their fans much more frequently through status updates, links and questions – essentially moving into their fans’ social graphs. Think Twitter times ten.

Further, Facebook applications will now be integrated into a company’s page and can even direct users to specific tabs on a page with, presumably, targeted content.

Collectively these changes will produce a more engaged user experience between a company and its fans. And the best reason yet to develop and execute a Facebook strategy.

Topics we’ll cover include: Engagement Ads, Facebook Connect, Case Studies, and President Obama and Politics.

Posted in New Creative, New Media | 2 Comments »