Icrossing facebook-challenges-2010

Facebook: New challenges for marketers

A collection of perspectives from icrossingseptember 2010

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Facebook: A collection of perspectives from icrossing

© COPYRIGHT 2010 ICROSSING LTD, HEARST GROUP

ContentsIntroduction – Antony Mayfield

Facebook vs Google – Is Facebook changing search or replacing search? – Dr Jason Ryan and Antony Mayfield

Facebook backlash – Could users abandon Facebook en masse? – Alisa Hansen

Facebook’s community pages and the impact for brands – Heather White-Laird

When fans attack – Handling crises on Facebook – Dana Mellecker

Earning your way to attention – Abandoning the ‘If you build it, they will come’ mindset – Anne Steinhaus

Moving at Facebook speed – Coping with the pace of Facebook’s innovation is a challenge in and of itself – Antony Mayfield

Ecommerce: The new benchmark for Facebook – Heather White-Laird

Facebook centricty – Social Media Strategy beyond Facebook – Alisa Hansen

About iCrossing

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http://www.icrossing.co.uk

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When Mark Zuckerberg recently said that Facebook would reach one billion users there were few people who doubted him. The social network has become a mainstay of people’s web experience for many and is second only to Google in its importance to online marketers.

While Google is becoming a known quantity, and search a maturing marketing discipline, Facebook is still evolving at a rapid rate. At the recent F8 Facebook developer conference earlier this year the company announced significant innovations on several fronts, adding new potential opportunities but also complexity to marketers’ task of developing effective strategies for Facebook.

This collection of articles from iCrossing e specialists gives our perspective on some of the things brand and media owners need to bear in mind when it comes to Facebook, as well as approaches for developing successful brand profiles.

We hope it is useful - and do let us know what you think e

Antony Mayfieldsvp, social media, icrossing

introduction

http://www.icrossing.co.uk

mailto:[email protected]

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We describe iCrossing as a search and social media agency, creating connected brands. We see search and social both as the twin lenses through which we can see and make sense of the web and as two interdependent facets of the medium.

Increasingly, however we are seeing Facebook as a platform that may challenge the established search engine paradigm - exemplified by Google - of a service that organises the web, helps us makes sense of it, navigate it and get what we want.

We like to explain the difference between Facebook and Google as a tale of two university start-ups that both set out to define the web in different ways. Google’s genius was to move away from the mental model of information being indexed like so many library books and use hyperlinks to see the relationships between documents - pages on the web.

Making sense of the reputation system that was implicit in links gave the Google algorithm the best way yet of divining relevance and what pages would be most useful to the user. Google was the product of a mathematical/engineering mind, an academic project of dazzling brilliance that was then applied commercially with equal intelligence. Facebook was the product of thinking about the social life of Harvard students, a desire to make their network more efficient that was executed with simplicity and elegance. Whereas Google made content something that was defined by the document and the documents surrounding it, Facebook made the content a facet of the individual and the individuals surrounding them.

Recently, Eli Goodman of ComScore said that Facebook “not only has the potential to become a viable search engine, but in fact it has a chance to help redefine the way we think of search.” Google and Facebook are not two parallel systems, alternatives ploughing their own course and destined never to meet, they are intertwined and also competing.

Google’s evolution has recently leaned toward social, taking into account the importance of people’s social graphs, their networks of friends, in deciding what pages will be most relevant to them on a particular subject. From the Vince update > onward, Google has been working hard to make search results more personal, and for personal, read: social.

The blaze of innovations from Facebook at the F8 conference earlier this year, especially Open Graph > , begin to make the social network look like a tangible challenger to Google’s monopoly on sense-making on the web. Sitting alongside its page index is Facebook’s ‘people index’. The pages Facebook can direct people to may be smaller in number but it could nonetheless end up being more influential.

For now though, the potential for Facebook to usurp Google is theoretical. For all the excited talk of “Likes” being more important than “links” Google is where most users go for finding things.

facebook vs. google:

is facebook changing search or replacing search?

By Dr Jason Ryan and Antony Mayfield

http://connect.icrossing.co.uk/unlocking-googles-vince-update_2990

http://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph

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While the battle plays out though, marketers’ responses to Facebook’s rise should include:

pDispute “either/or” strategies: While search or social may be a priority, marketing plans, and especially longer term strategies, need to ensure that both areas are represented and adequately resourced. pSearch and social literacy throughout the in-house and agency teams: While experts are a necessity for operating effectively in paid and natural search as well as social media, cross-discipline knowledge sharing and innovation is essential.

pStay close to users: Maintaining the relevance of customer personae and keeping a keen eye on how core customers are using the web via search and social media will help prevent you developing approaches based on how customers used the web last year. Web use is changing all of the time for all demographics.

pVisibility is about more than search engine rankings: “Search visibility” has been a useful and measurable idea for brands for some time. Extending visibility to include what people find when they look for you in their social networks as well as their search engines is a logical next step.

continued ...

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We’ve been seeing it for a while now: Facebook experiencing quite a bit of backlash in the media around their privacy policies and the subsequent exodus of users leaving the network in search of safer pastures. Unfortunately, this backlash has been aided somewhat by Facebook itself, which addressed the issue with evasive, predictable corporate-speak.

This is a slightly ironic twist, given the “era of Facebook” and the new transparency and openness ethos that brands, particularly those active in social spaces like Facebook, have adopted. However, shortly after the initial media firestorm, Facebook released another version of its privacy settings to help remedy the situation, giving users more granular control over sharing their data. It is, however, important to keep in mind that Facebook has not changed its Terms of Service (ToS), which still give Facebook significant control over what it can do with user data.

So what does all of this mean for brands and those who participate in Facebook? Is everyone really leaving Facebook? Should brands continue to invest in Facebook?

Firstly, it is important to keep in mind that, generally speaking, those leaving Facebook have tended to be either early adopters or much younger users who prefer social gaming networks to Facebook. What is important to keep in mind is that the growing user base for Facebook continues to be the 35+ year old age group, mostly “moms” and other mainstream target consumers.

Unlike early adopters who can be fickle about their social network of choice, and who get involved in the techno-cultural politics of social networking platform wars, the average Facebook user is not leaving Facebook any time soon. While the privacy concerns may have sparked a media frenzy and led to some proponents of the open web leaving Facebook, the majority of users will continue to use the service as their primary social network.

A brand’s continued investment in Facebook should be predicated on solid research, strategy and experience planning. Rather than taking a site-specific approach to social media, whereby a social strategy lives and dies by a single network or service, iCrossing believes in value of developing a federated content and community management strategy that may be deployed across one or multiple social spaces.

This approach enables a brand to firstly, deploy new social spaces effectively, secondly understand how each branded social space performs within a brand’s greater digital ecosystem and finally iterate and optimis e efficiently.

To be clear, this approach does not advocate a “one size fits all” approach to developing social spaces - we know that different spaces serve different functions and are often managed under the auspices of disparate teams of stakeholders. We believe spaces should fulfill differentiated goals, but what this approach does advocate is the development of a universal set of tools, content creation capabilities and management protocol which lay the foundation for a cohesive, integrated social media strategy.

Through this approach, investment is largely made in developing social currency - namely content (such as a brand video) and the “meta-content” (comments, Likes for the video) which proper community management generates. With this approach, a brand may pull in and out of relevant social spaces when networking habits shift or evolve.

facebook backlash:could users abandon facebook en masse?

By Alisa Leonard

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Facebook’s goal for the recently launched six million Community Pages > is to provide users with the best collection of shared knowledge on a topic. An altruistic goal for sure but one that has caused some consternation for brands.

Currently these pages are completely controlled by Facebook. They have no Wall where users can post comments and content is added automatically when users update their own Wall with a relevant keyword. Brands cannot add or edit any content either. And because there is very little meta data associated with these posts, it may mean a brand’s name or products can appear in a negative context. The best remedy for this issue is an engaging authorized b rand Fan Page through which you can contribute to your brand messaging.

Community pages have also created an avalanche of redundant and confusing content. For example, there are now over 500 results for Coca-Cola pages in Facebook’s search. A potential upside to this over-abundance of content is that, because many of these pages contain irrelevant and meaningless information, users may shun Community Pages in favour of the more targeted, brand-owned pages relating to their passions. Who’s really interested in seeing hundreds of thousands of posts around coffee? More likely, it’s a new coupon offer from Starbucks that is the desired result.

As always, brands need to be careful in this new and constantly changing environment. Vigilant monitoring of key terms and conversations is recommended and, as with all social media, active brand participation in the space is a necessity

facebook’s community pages and the impact for brands

By Heather White-Laird

http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=382978412130

http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=382978412130

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Brand Facebook pages seem like a no-brainer today. You provide some interesting content and people who enjoy your product or services will signal their loyalty by joining your page.

Many companies, however, are finding that their low-cost social media tool can turn into their worst PR nightmare. Some brands may even question whether they should have a Facebook page at all given the risks.

Nestle is a typical recent Facebook casualty. Nestle’s undoing was a poorly thought out initial response to negative comments following an aggressive Greenpeace campaign. Nestle’s first responses were more than a little snippy and went a long way to inflaming the fan base. My guess is that the person in charge of managing their Facebook page is (or was) a very bright but young staffer with little PR experience who was not give much guidance in managing the page.

Think about it. Would you let the person responsible for communicating to your Facebook page fans provide comments to the Wall Street Journal on corporate policy without proper training and vetting of messages?

The potential for PR backlash alone should not be reason enough for a brand to choose not to have a Facebook page. The most important question is whether you have the resources and strategy to manage it correctly. Is content approved by senior PR people? Have you established a set of “best practices” to guide your Facebook page managers? Do you have a specific Facebook plan in place in case of a crisis?

Like any good PR campaign, you need to prepare for the worst. Without such preparation you are simply navigating the social media tightrope without a net.

It is a bit unfair to single out Nestle. They just happen to be the most recent Facebook casualty. All brands, however, should learn from their mishaps.

When fans attack:Handling crises on facebook

By Dana Mellecker

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Yes, the Facebook audience is huge, both in terms of sheer numbers and time spent on the site. And yes, of course it makes sense for your brand to have a presence on Facebook. But remember: Facebook is not a search engine. Facebook users are not there to actively search for brands or products and they need a compelling reason to leave the site.

Too often companies think that if they just create the right content it will spread like wildfire. They’ve been wooed by agencies and vendors promising to make “viral” content that will instantly garner millions of views; in reality there are few brands that have the recognition and reputation to pull this off.

So, if you would like to see any traffic to your Facebook fan page, you’d better be thinking of ways to drive that traffic yourself… at least at the onset.

How should you support your Facebook page? There are obvious options – Facebook ads (the simplest of which are relatively inexpensive), putting a Facebook logo in the global footer of your dot com site, creating a social media landing page.

What else is there? Well, why not start with your employees – they can be a great way to seed your page with fans. Leverage your current internal communications and encourage employees to Like the page and add it to their email signatures.

Use blogger outreach to build awareness, send emails to your most loyal customers and incentivize them to spread the word, create a display campaign, put up signage in your retail locations… in other words, think of this as you would any other marketing initiative.

This might sound expensive, and may seem antithetical to the common notion that Facebook is a “free” platform to build on. Maybe you want to dip your toe in the water, or maybe you need to run a small test to prove the value of Facebook to upper management. But look at it this way: shouldn’t you be willing to invest at least a little bit in a site that has an audience as big as Google’s?

Over time (once you’ve reached a critical mass) you can rely more on organic, or earned, impressions – those updates that are created when users interact with your page, allowing your brand to appear in their friends’ news feeds. These carry with them an implied endorsement and are key to increasing your visibility on Facebook.

Of course, you don’t want to drive users to a bad experience. This is all predicated on a solid content and community management strategy. But if you’ve gone through the trouble of creating useful, unique, relevant content for your Facebook page, it would be a shame for it to go unnoticed.

earning your way to attention:Abandoning the “if you build it, they will come” mindset

By Anne Steinhaus

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The pace and scale of innovation coming out of Facebook is a challenge in itself for marketing professionals. Just as we come to terms with the social web, large parts of it seem to shift beneath our feet.

As Facebook celebrates the milestone of 500 million users, it is not just the growth rate of the service which is dizzying to witness. The innovations which are coming out of the company also seem to arrive at breakneck pace.

We are becoming familiar with the idea of Facebook as an innovation engine - its ability to produce new technology solutions at a rapid rate is the key to its success so far.

Following April’s 2010’s F8 Conference digital marketers might have been forgiven for wanting a couple of days to think through the implications of the Like button (or “social plug-ins” alone). However this was just one of a host of potentially game-changing announcements from the company, including the Open Graph protocol, opening up its public data for searches and adopting a new authentication standard.

All of this before we even begin to take into account developments from third party developers and service providers in Facebook’s ecosystem.

Although, it would not be wise to equate social media marketing solely with Facebook, it’s important that attention is paid to this platform at the moment.

Due to its complexity, social media generalists may not be enough to be successful in Facebook, and clients should insist on specialist support in technical development, content, community management and analytics in addition to strategic expertise.

moving at facebook speed coping with the pace of facebook’s innovation is a challenge in and of itself

By Antony Mayfield

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While everyone has been up in arms about the loosening of the privacy settings, Facebook is quietly making an assault on a much bigger battleground: ecommerce.

When Facebook launched over six years ago, it was conceived as a friend-to-friend system, where people felt comfortable sharing their most intimate information. In doing so, they gained the trust of their users and built a loyal and committed fan base of 500,000,000 people. And that trust for “sharing” will lay the groundwork for trust for “buying”.

The 100,000,000 people who play games on Facebook are already very comfortable paying real dollars to buy virtual goods, enabling companies like Farmville to generate projected revenues of $450 million this year. Not one to miss an opportunity, Facebook recently announced that Facebook Credits would be the only virtual currency allowed and game companies would have to pay them up to 30% of all revenue from these transactions.

In addition, Facebook has developed their own ecommerce app, called Payvment, that has already been rolled out to over 20,000 independent retailers and will be available to the major players soon. The app is free and takes roughly five minutes to set up.

Given that people spend over seven hours a month on Facebook and they are already Fans of many Fortune 500 companies, why wouldn’t they just buy books, clothes and movie tickets right there?

The only ones who might protest this new arrangement would likely be competitors, such as Amazon, eBay and PayPal, but I don’t think there’ll be much of a fight. The Facebook forces have already set the benchmark.

ecommerce: the new benchmark for facebook

By Heather White-Laird

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We believe the web is social. Social media has fundamentally dislodged the traditional communications and marketing equilibrium.

We have entered a new world where content scarcity has given way to content overload, fixed channels of communication have dissolved into fluid and complex networks of information exchange and once-captive audiences have now become active participants. This shift requires a new course of action for brands, it demands a new marketing imperative: Connectedness.

Connectedness is a way of thinking about how successful brands do marketing. It’s about focusing on audiences, not targets; engaging in dialogue, not shouting; and developing trust that is meaningful and lasting.

Social media is an essential keystone in a connected brand’s strategy. Facebook alone is not a social media strategy. Twitter alone is not a social media strategy. Because “the web is social,” nearly all of your digital touch points will impact or be impacted by your social media presence. Ideally, your investment in social media means investing in objectives-oriented social spaces, working in concert with a brand’s dot com, media spend, PR campaigns, and customer service efforts.

There is a tendency for brands to focus solely on developing a Facebook strategy. While Facebook is indeed an essential piece to the puzzle, it is not the be all and end all of your engagement strategy within social media.

By first focusing on listening to the consumer conversation, understanding consumer needs and expectations through deep analysis and crafting an overarching engagement strategy which focuses on compelling content and objectives-based community management, the focus shifts away from any one social space.

Compelling content and objectives-based community management are the true ingredients for social media success-- whether it takes place in Facebook, Twitter, your dot com or some other new social platform that may emerge. The key is to focus on the larger picture: engagement can happen anywhere, not just Facebook. Creating a multi-touchpoint ecosystem for engagement is key to success.

A facebook page isn’t a social media strategy: social media strategy beyond facebook

By Alisa Leonard

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iCrossing UK is a digital marketing agency that specialises in search and social media.

We design and build search and social media strategies for some of the world’s biggest brands, including The Coca-Cola Company, Toyota, Virgin, Bank of America, and TK MAXX.

iCrossing UK is part of iCrossing, one of the world’s largest, digital marketing agencies, which employs 600 staff in 12 offices around the globe, including 100 staff based at UK offices in London and Brighton. iCrossing has won numerous accolades, including the number one-ranked agency for both paid and natural search in Forrester Research’s 2009 Wave report of US search marketing agencies, OMMA’s Search Agency of the Year, Best Use of Search at the Revolution Awards and a finalist for Revolution’s Agency of the Year award. We are also the only agency with two Forrester social-media case studies to its name.

iCrossing is a unit of Hearst Corporation, one of the world’s largest diversified media companies.

For more information please visit www.icrossing.co.uk > or contact us at [email protected] >

About icrossing

www.icrossing.co.uk

mailto:[email protected]

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Icrossing facebook-challenges-2010