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Facebook Marketing Bible
Here we’ll explain how to formulate a reply strategy for your Page that offers the greatest benefits for the level of resources you can devote to your Facebook Page’s community, and explain how it can improve brand loyalty, avert customer service disasters, and keep conversation on your Page productive.
When To Engage
Comments fall into four broad categories:
- Positive comments – Those that thank your brand for the value it provides the commenter.
- Constructive negative comments – Those that criticize your brands for flaws in your product or service.
- Disruptive negative comments (Trolls) – Non-constructive insults to your brand or other members of your fan community, and non-sensical comments designed to distract and interrupt the conversation.
- Spam – Links or mentions of unrelated websites or brands.
Constructive negative comments are the most important to respond to because if these fans aren’t appeased they can start evangelizing against your brand and cause customer service and public relations disasters. In a famous example, a man who rode a certain airline had his guitar broken in transit. When his attempts to contact the company through social media were ignored, he created a video criticizing the airline that received millions of views and hurt the company’s business.
In most cases, the best strategy is to apologize for the fan’s negative experience without admitting that there is a flaw in your product or service. If you’re sure there’s a simple solution to their problem, kindly explain it in your reply.
For example, if they say “I don’t enjoy your website because you require an account to upload photos, but I don’t know how to create an account”, you could reply “Sorry to hear you’re having trouble creating an account. You can create one by visiting this link www.examplesite.com/create or by clicking the ‘Create Account’ button at the bottom right corner of the home page.”
If it’s not exactly clear what their problem is, you aren’t exactly sure of the solution, or the solution may be complicated, refer them to your customer service department or provide contact information for someone they can privately communicate their issue with. You don’t want to have a negative customer service conversation in public where it might give other fans the impression that there are problems with your brand.
For example, if you received a comment saying “I bought your food product but it tasted rotten”, you could reply “Sorry to hear you had an issue with our food product. Please contact our customer service department here www.examplesite.com/service and we’ll see what we can do for you.”
Conclusion and Priorities
Every organization needs to decide how many resources they will devote to community engagement. In general, though, you should prioritize replying to the different kinds of comments in this way:
1. Replying to constructive negative comments to keep the authors of those comments from causing problems for your brand in the future
2. Deleting the comments of or banning trolls and spammers
3. Replying to the best positive comments to create brand evangelists
4. Replying to the remainder of positive comments
Walkthroughs for replying to positive comments and dealing with disruptive commenters, as well as Page management and moderation strategies can be found in the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network’s complete guide to marketing your brand using Facebook.
Featured Facebook fan page: Subway, Samsung Televisions, Stoli Vodka, NBC & Bravo and More
We’ve excerpted two of the campaigns below. You can see the full week’s coverage in the Facebook Marketing Bible, which also includes detailed breakdowns of dozens of other featured campaigns by top-performing brands and businesses on Facebook.
Subway’s Commit to Fit Sweepstakes
Goal: Page Growth, Engagement, Product PurchaseCore Mechanic: A sweepstakes on the landing tab allows users to make a commitment to be healthy for a chance to win $25,000, a Subway gift card or Champs Sports gift card.
Method: Users select what type of healthy commitment they want to make, enter their address and email, then have the chance to invite friends to enter.
Impact: In a week the Page grew from 6.6 million to 7.5 million Likes. A successful campaign with more than 1 million new Likes.
Samsung Television’s Like It, Reveal It, Win It Contest
Goal: Page Growth, Network Exposure, Product Purchase, EngagementCore Mechanic: A weekly product giveaway that incentivizes users to invite their friends to participate and to check in on the Page regularly.
Method: The Like-gated contest from Ignite Social Media asks users to unlock a certain amount of pixels each week to reveal a photo of the Samsung Television prize for the week. Users can win instant prizes, or a grand prize.
Impact: Users enter by unlocking a pixel, thus, the more pixels unlocked the easier it is to see the prize, creating an incentive for users to share with friends. Ignite Social Media tells us that the Page has grown 12,000 new fans to 64,300 Likes in just about a two week run.
How are top brands in the industry designing their Facebook marketing campaigns? See the Facebook Marketing Bible for detailed breakdowns of dozens of Featured Campaigns by top-performing brands and businesses on Facebook.
Harry Potter fans, Potter Parody Fuels Frenzy Of Facebook Wall Posts
Hardcore Harry Potter fans went up in arms over a parody that people misunderstood once it became a popular share on Facebook.
The Onion, a publication that satirizes news items, printed the “Final Minutes of Last Harry Potter Movie To Be Split Into Seven Separate Films” and all heck broke loose when people began sharing the story on Facebook.
Diehard Pott-heads began protesting to no end. Hudson Hongo, a writer, thought that he should capitalize on this debate and countless others, many of which are fanned on the popular social networking site, so he just created a website called Literally Unbelievable.
Hongo’s website interprets stories that The Onion runs that are then become misunderstood when shared on Facebook. The impetus for his site began with a May 18 story “Planned Parenthood Opens $8 Billion Abortionplex.“ The story also featured a picture of young teen girls and with a looming sign overhead that read “Abortions, 8,864,902 Terminated.” Folks were outraged over the fake story and a no-holds-barred debate began on Facebook from both genders. Many were convinced the article was real which talked about a sprawling abortion facility that would terminate pregnancies with rapid-fire results.
“When I found out that people were reacting the same way to many other Onion articles, I felt the phenomenon was worth documenting and put it up my blog. Y’know … for science,” Hongo told CNN.
But is he mocking the gullible? Hongo admits that he is somewhat sympathetic to those individuals who might be satirically impaired. “I think folks are willing to believe Onion articles because the real news so often seems unreal these days,” he explained in an email to CNN.
Meanwhile, back on the Potter front: I’m sure that I do not stand alone when I say, “End it already!” Poof, be gone! I would love to wave my magic wand to bring the curtain down on the coming-of-age fantasy series that has frankly run out of steam.
Readers, what do you think about the rise in Facebook users misinterpreting humorous fictional stories?
The House GOP conference says the challenge spawned 11,000 new Facebook likes for participants.
Allen West
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Games
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GOP
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Harold McKeon
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New Media Challenge
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politics
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Republicans
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Shelley Moore Capito
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Steve Womack
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U.S. House of Representatives
We told you about the New Media Challenge that Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives launched to increase member participation on social media platforms, including Facebook. Well, round two just wrapped up and we’ve got the winners and losers hot off the press. The envelope please…
The House GOP conference says the challenge spawned 11,000 new Facebook likes for participants.- Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (WV), simply asked (er, pleaded) outright for more friends in a video post on Facebook. The straightforward approach shouldn’t be surprising, since politicians have to ask for things all the time, right? Unfortunately, this time it didn’t work as her competitor, Rep. Allen West (FL), moves on to the next round.
- Or, there’s the “all for one and one for all approach,” as these Texas Congressmen shared on their respective pages (neither made it past Round 2.)
- Congressman Steve Womack (AR) posted a photo from his recent trip to Arlington National Cemetery, along with storm and tornado tips for his constituents in Arkansas.
So, what’s the secret to increasing engagement? There may not be a tried and true formula, but here are a few highlights the Republicans learned about it during the week.
Leanne Goodman, who handles social media for California Congressman Howard McKeon’s office, said, “The strategy is straightforward- engaging our constituents on Facebook through relevant, consistent content that integrates different new media platforms. The Congressman is fully engaged in the process, regularly recommending articles and opening his doors to ‘behind the scenes’ views for constituents back in California.”
about Facebook profile photos
Did you know that the average Facebook user will change their profile photo 18 times this year? That’s three times as often as in 2006. Check out these interesting stats about Facebook profile photos!
Pixable has put together a pretty informative infographic that details some interesting statistics about Facebook user behavior as it applies to their profile photos. Check out the stats compiled from the company’s more than 500,000 Facebook users below.
Pixable has put together a pretty informative infographic that details some interesting statistics about Facebook user behavior as it applies to their profile photos. Check out the stats compiled from the company’s more than 500,000 Facebook users below.
Readers, how likely do you think it is that Weiner’s accounts on Facebook and Twitter really got hacked
Sometimes, having a higher profile than Twitter has its disadvantages, as Facebook found itself mentioned in a scandal it had absolutely nothing to do with over the weekend that went by the chuckle-inducing name of Weinergate.Weinergate reared its ugly head Saturday, when Big Government reported that a photo of a man’s erection, concealed by underwear, appeared in the official Twitter account of Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), included in a Tweet directed to Gennette Cordova, a graduate student in Bellingham, Wash.
So what does this have to do with Facebook? Not much, except that Weiner apparently doesn’t know the difference between the U.S.’s largest social network and the 140-character microblogging site, as he replied in a Tweet, “FB hacked.”
Weiner told Politico in an email that he thought it was “obvious” that his account had been hacked, and his spokesman, Dave Arnold, told the New York Post, “Anthony’s accounts on both Facebook and Twitter were hacked.”
For her part, Cordova never mentioned Facebook, telling the New York Daily News:
Friday evening, I logged onto Twitter to find that I had about one-dozen new mentions in less than an hour, which is a rare occurrence. When I checked one of the posts that I had been tagged in, I saw that it was a picture that had supposedly been Tweeted to me by Weiner. The account that these Tweets were sent from was familiar to me; this person had harassed me many times after the congressman followed me on Twitter a month or so ago. Since I had dealt with this person and his cohorts before, I assumed that the Tweet and the picture were their latest attempts at defaming the congressman and harassing his supporters.And as for the hacking itself, RedState blogger Caleb Howe Tweeted, “Haven’t seen it mentioned, but wouldn’t have to hack twitter/facebook to post from yfrog. Only have to hack yfrog. It’s authorized to tweet.”
And Photoshop expert Philip Bump went one step further for Mediate, reporting that the photo doesn’t match previous images uploaded by Weiner, that the type of camera is different, and that in his opinion, the photo did not come from Weiner.
Readers, how likely do you think it is that Weiner’s accounts on Facebook and Twitter really got hacked?
ShopIgniter CEO Matt Compton on Raising $8M and the Growth of Ecommerce on Facebook
Founded back in 2008, when social shopping was an exciting but unproven idea, ShopIgniter has been building its business among clients who have real-world goods to sell online, with a focus on Facebook. And like some of its rivals have recently, the Portland, Ore. company has raised more funding, an $8 million second round led by Silicon Valley venture firm Trinity Ventures with existing investor Madrona Venture Group participating.The new interest is because brands that had been focused on gaining Facebook fans in past years are now looking for what do next, as chief executive Matt Compton tells us in an interview today. For many Page owners, that means selling direct. ShopIgniter has a set of interlocking products aimed at meeting this emerging need.
One is a customizable white-label application for Pages, with ways to adjust the look and feel to match the page, tools for easily sort through product offerings, and other features seen social commerce apps. The Portland TrailBlazers basketball team, for example, has been using it to sell team merchandise on its Page. Compton tells us that in a recent test between on and off Facebook sales for a brand, conversions were twice as high on Facebook.
A ShopIgniter product called the "Social Promotions Engine" reaches further into Facebook, helping Page managers create custom campaigns designed to get users sharing content about the brand on their Walls and news feeds in order to generate sales. In an example detailed by Ryan Spoon, Nike promoted a limited set of collectible golf balls to fans of its Page. The contest winners got free golf balls, and Nike was able to increase fan awareness of and interaction with the store. Finally, participants were also encouraged to share a news feed story about their winnings with friends.
For the Blazers, Compton wrote last month, promotions like these resulted in the Page fan count growing by 25% and, perhaps more importantly, transactions conversions originating with Facebook friends growing by 16%.
Beyond the application and promotions, ShopIgniter also provides a white-label ecommerce product for web sites. The point of it is to go beyond more general online ecommerce management products, instead capturing commerce around social interactions wherever they happen. For example, one customer may go to a web site, find a product they're thinking about buying, click the Facebook Like button, and generate a story about it in their news feed. Their friend might then click to look at the product, be taken to the Page of a company with a ShopIgniter store, and buy the product there. Meanwhile, the person who Liked the product on the site might still go to the site when they decide to complete their purchase.
A variety of competitors in the business provide their own variations on social commerce applications — some we've looked at include 8thBridge (formerly Alvenda), which announced a $10 million second round in late May, and Payvment, which added a $6 million second round in December.
With client lists growing and venture capital firms doubling down, the non-virtual goods part of the platform appears to be coming of age. We just kicked off a series on social commerce in our Facebook Marketing Bible subscription service. Stay tuned for more.
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