Tim Bursch

This post was originally published on Saturday, February 12, 2011 on the Gage Blog.

Yesterday Facebook launched a new version of Pages that “will enable brands, businesses and organizations to build stronger relationships with their fans.” You can upgrade today or wait until March 10th when all pages will be updated. Let’s walk through the big changes and how they will impact your marketing efforts:

Be the Page

Now you can login as a page or profile. This means that you can post, comment, or like other Pages in Facebook. You will also be able to experience the news feed from the Page’s perspective. At this point you cannot comment on a Profile (individuals) unless their privacy settings are absolutely open.

Takeaways

• More engagement with other brands – co-marketing
• Expand your reach and exposure to more potential fans
• But be careful of spamming other communities. Don’t create noise. Add value to other conversations.
• Watch out for Page-jacking from competitors or distributors
• Use the newsfeed view to nurture strategic relationships with other Pages relevant to your fans

Where did everything go?

Watch for changes to the top navigation. You will see a photostrip of the 5 most recent photos posted to the wall. Fans photos posted on your Page will not show up here. This new look will match the updated Profile user interface.

Tabs are no longer front and center. You will now see navigation to tab on the left under your Page picture. Again, similar experience to Profiles. Fans will see 6 navigation options above the fold. You can set your default landing page for fan if you have an app, promotion, or welcome page.

The top right corner will allow you to feature administrators, similar to putting faces in a Twitter background. This area will also highlight mutual friends and interests (suggested by Facebook) to fans.

Takeaways

• Make sure pictures are high quality and compelling to fans
• First impressions matter. If people are landing on your wall or default option, make sure that have a good experience. You get one shot!
• Continue to focus on great content and real engagement
• If it makes sense for your brand, feature an admin and give fans a human connection

Moderation matters

The wall now has an “Everyone” filter or Posts by the Page. The Everyone filter is based on relevance and content with the highest feedback. In other words, the old wall showed fans content in reverse chronological order and now the Everyone filter will show what Facebook thinks is relevant.

In addition, Facebook added keyword moderation and profanity blocklists to Pages.

Takeaways

• Because the timeline is gone, moderation is more important. Posts and comments may get buried by the new smart filter.
• Brands will need to be intentional about moderation and take advantage of keyword and profanity blocklists
• If you are not using a Social Media Management Platform, use the Email notifications for your Page.
• Based on the Everyone filter, you must create great content and interact with your fans

How do you think these changes will affect brand marketing on Facebook? Likes? Dislikes? Tell us in the comments.

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My wife and I have a budget and we try really hard to stick to it. We’ve tried a variety of systems over the years and some have worked, some have not. We were comparing notes with some friends recently about budget woes and they talked about Mint. While it appears to have some cool features, what stuck with me after the conversation was the potential solution for some of our current system challenges.

We signed up and we are trying it out. It might not be the best solution yet, we’ll see.

Here’s the deal. These kind of word-of-mouth interactions happen every day between friends. Online and Offline.

What problem are you solving?

Tweet from Tim Sanders

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You’ve heard of the 90-9-1 rule. 90% of your online community are generally sitting back in their seats watching. 9% are editors. And 1% are creators. General rule for most communities. So, how do you engage that 90%? How do you move people from being a lurker to an active participant?

Here are 7 ideas to try:

1. Ask questions calling out people that have never commented before. For example: We want your input! What do you think about product X? Tell us in the comments. If you’ve never commented before, we won’t bite. We need your voice!
2. Encourage advocates (creators) to get their quiet friends involved.
3. Use polls and surveys to get people’s hands raised.
4. Do some outreach, if your platform allows. Not Big Brother style, but send a private message thanking the lurker, ask a question, get them talking. Make sure they know they are noticed.
5. Make it really easy. Don’t have barriers (Captcha) to entry or comment.
6. Reward behavior. Every time someone comments or puts their voice out there, acknowledge at a minimum.
7. Give guidance. Help with instructions and calls to action.

How do you get the audience engaged?

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I set out with big goals in 2010 to post daily. With life and work changes, that didn’t pan out, but you showed up and paid attention to thoughts and ideas that I care about.

This year, I’m not going to make a public promise. I will tell you where I’m hoping to take this blog.

So, what’s next? What can you expect here in 2011?

I’m going to keep writing about things that I care about. Watch for:

• Community- part of my work is focused on community development and management. I’ll share what I’m learning and what I think is working
• Ideas- I’m going to keep giving away my knowledge and network
• Social- marketing, media, business - it’s all about connections

Bonus-  I’m going to launch some extra content in the next months sharing some of the best stuff I’m finding and my analysis. Stay tuned.

Photo by: eioua

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I love Apple. I know they are not perfect, but they are pretty darn close. A week ago my iPhone was heating up for no apparent reason.

My son and I went to the store, got in the queue for help and loitered. We only had about a 15 minute wait for the Genius bar. Plenty of time to browse.

Here’s the deal, no one bugged us. There were no wolves surrounding us for the attack but we weren’t ignored either. It was busy, friendly, and fun.

Of course they helped and of course they went the extra mile.

Are you letting customers browse? Offline or online. Do they get pushed into a sales pitch or pop-up box? Or can they just look around at the cool stuff.

Apple creates a good balance of help and freedom. They are confident that you will be back.

Here are some possible ways to make it easy for people to loiter online:

• Simple clear design
• Easy to find case studies or testimonials
• Images, video, examples
• Obvious contact form or place to ask for help

How about your storefront? Do you let people linger?

Images by: exquisitur and goodrob13

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Remember the fast food burger wars? Each chain tried to differentiate. Burger King took the position that you could order a burger your way. It was a break from the pack with a personalized burger.
Today we pretty much expect that we can order food the way we want.

What about marketing content? Are you delivering it the way your customers want? With more and more of us opening email and checking our social networks on mobile phones, are your customers getting the best form of content?

This doesn’t mean you have to design all marketing for mobile only. It does mean you have to consider how the customer wants it served.

Desktop: Think about the cluttered inbox, busy Facebook newsfeed, and the river of Tweets. Will your message stand out?

Smartphone: Can I see a quick call to action? Will I read your content regularly on my bus ride or will it make me just want to delete?

If you make the content good enough and allow your customers to "have it their way," they will keep coming back.

How are you giving your customers choices in content?

Photo by: jeffreyw

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I keep hearing this term Transmedia thrown around in marketing, advertising, and social media today. What is it? Does it matter to me?

Well, here’s what I’ve found:

• The term was developed by Marsha Kinder and later expanded by Henry Jenkins.
• Essentially Transmedia is immersive and participatory storytelling across multiple forms of media.

In English? It’s a story that draws people in using multiple forms of media with many story entryways.

How is this used in marketing? Have you heard of Lost? A TV show that has spun off web sites, products, and a cult following.

How about the Halo game? Games, products, events, books, and more around a story. I think what Chipotle is doing with Jamie Oliver could fit into Transmedia Storytelling (TV, web, social media, print, in store, fan activation).

So, why should you care? Stories are compelling and therefore they sell. Stories are part of our DNA. We connect, fight, and come together over stories. They touch us at a deeper level and I think as consumers we want to make meaningful choices. Would you rather just buy a pair of shoes or buy a pair and give a pair?

I’m not saying there won’t be a place for commodity-type products and services. I am saying that more and more customers are buying the whole story, not just the widget.

Read more from the standard wikipedia entry, Mitch Joel’s blog, Big Spaceship, and Henry Jenkins’ site.

How is your company thinking about Transmedia? Does your story draw people in? What if it did?

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More and more brands are setting up outposts in Facebook. There is obviously some value in connecting with customers there.

When a brand posts something and gets a crazy amount of comments, what is the value? Is a comment equal to an ad impression?

My guess is someone is out there figuring out the dollar value of comments, retweets, and likes. They matter. But how do they compare with a display ad? Or billboard?

Let’s take a look at it this way- Passive and Active Marketing

Passive – ads, billboards, print, TV

• normal media
• top down influence
• impressions
• somewhat measurable

Active- social media, interactive sites, apps

• participatory networks
• sharing and word of mouth and peer influenced
• interactions
• almost all measurable

Both have a place in the marketing mix. But remember to pay attention when a customer or prospect takes time to make a comment because they are certainly paying attention to you.

How would you value a comment?

Photo credit: borman818

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Do you have multiple locations for your business? Or maybe your customers are global. Let’s say you are connecting and marketing to customers on Facebook.

Some businesses have one global page and serve up unique content using a custom tab.

Other companies have decided to create a page for each market.

What is a better strategy? It depends on content and resources.

[Let's just assume a multiple location/market business]

Content

In order to execute well in social channels you need to have compelling content. Content will drive engagement, which will drive action. So, think about where content will come from and ask yourself these questions:

• How is your business structured? Central and uniform or local control.
• Will you need to communicate unique messages to each market? Or will you have one main message that applies to all locations?
• Who are your audiences? Think through each one. If this involves multiple countries consider the language and moderation.

Answer these questions to develop your outpost strategy. Centralized or distributed.

Resources

Do you have one central team managing social marketing? Or is each market responsible? The big challenge is time and organization.

Many pages will require more content and more resources. Do you have a team that can monitor, manage, and engage for every location?

This issue will affect large and small businesses. If your audience is on Facebook, take some time to plan this out and be realistic about the resources you will need.

Know what is in front of you and know the possibilities.

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I’ve signed up for too many email lists should probably take time to unsubscribe. Sometimes I get lazy though and just open and delete.

I wonder though, from a marketers perspective who is being lazy? Me, the irrelevant-target. Or the list owner that is not scrubbing their data.

If I had a list (depending on the size) and had some time and money, I’d at least do the following:

• Look up each prospect in Linkedin. Are they still in your target audience?
• Google the subscribers. Again, target audience?
• Look at a tool like Rapportive or Flowtown. Are they influencers? How are they connected?
• Ask. Seems too simple, but ask if the content is relevant and valuable. And then make it really easy to unsubscribe. Clean up your list.

Bonus: while you are at it, check on the resonance of your list and give people the option to share too. If they are sharing, you are relevant and you get word of mouth.

Image credit: Darwin Bell

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