Note: This post is part of a series on social media basics. It is derived from the extensive training module that I use for  clients. If you are interested in having a full-fledged social media training workshop for your company, please get in touch here

A while ago, I’d written a post about the opportunities that Facebook as a platform offers to brands. I want to start with some numbers (for more impact )

Facebook has over 400 million active users.

These users spend over 500 billion minutes per month on the network.

The average user has 130 friends and is connected to 60 pages, groups and events.

The math is not difficult. Facebook is today one of the most powerful and popular social networks on the Internet.  What’s more, it is also very easy for brands to create a presence and engage its audience with a variety of tools and applications. Here are a just a few benefits:

1. Search Engine Optimization:
   A presence on Facebook via the fan page or application provides a better  footing in search ranking.  With regularly updated content and enhanced engagement, the ranking will not only go up but also display in other related searches.
2. Engagement
   The Fan Page is a great platform for your audience to come together and offer feedback and suggestions by writing on the walls etc. Users can also post pictures, create and upload video, hold discussions with each other – all supporting the growth of the brand’s online community.
3. Cost
   The Facebook fan page provides a customizable platform with an audience that can be broken down and marketed to based on demographic and it costs nothing.
4. Analytics
   Facebook fan pages come equipped with a fair amount of analytics which offer insights into fan usage, interactions, demographics such as sex, age, location and more.

I’ll spend some time here elaborating on the opportunities for customization.

Custom Tabs

Facebook Fan pages come with some default tabs (links in website parlance). Typical ones include Wall, Photos, Videos etc. others are plug-ins which allow fans or visitors to view extended content of a brand. These tabs can be customized and new ones added based on brands’ requirements and objectives. So for instance, if you have a blog on your company site, it can be fetched and a new tab created for that.

An application called Static FBML allows for the customization.

Create a Landing Page

The fastest way to convert friends, followers and visitors to your fan page is to create a custom landing page. There can be multiple landing pages for different demographics, but it is suggested that one is created to start and study. Typically landing pages are rich in visual appeal and have a call to action. So if you have a service which requires signing up, create a landing page with a clear sign up form.

What’s more, you can decide which audience lands on which page/tab. So while regular fans can arrive on the Wall, new comers – who might find your page through ads, the search box or their freinds’ feed – can be taken to another page with a different message.

What’s THAT Image?

Displaying your company’s logo on a social media channel is not necessarily the best strategy. People on such networks are looking to connect with the human side of a brand or company. The logo sends out a clear signal – its impersonal and detached. Facebook allows fan pages to display pictures as large as 200×600. A larger image will offer better visibility and recall. Coca-Cola’s fanpage is an example.

Other Engagement Strategies

Events

Events provide an amazing opportunity for brands to reach out to their fan base. Best of all, these events can be virtual and don’t need to be in-person events. Examples such as Earth Hour which people “attended” virtually or Silent vigils are getting increasingly commonplace.

When people RSVP to an event, it will be distributed throughout the network via the news feed. This accords events the same value as becoming fans or liking brand’s pages.

Special Offers and Deals

According to a survey carried out by Razorfish, 40% people “friend” brands   on Facebook. Out of these 37% reported that access to exclusive deals or offers was their main reason for friending these brands.

Facebook has an app called Promotions which can be explored for this purpose.

Polls

A poll can be a fun, casual way to engage fans on Facebook and also get some valuable feedback. Polls can be published on the wall (and therefore newsfeed) or added to a cutom tab on the fan page.

So that’s a little info about customizing your facebook fan page. Of course brands have reasons to be concerned with Facebook introducing community pages. I’ll talk about that in another post.

If you have anything to add to this post, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Till next time, folks…

Note: This post is part of a series on social media basics. It is derived from the extensive training module that I use for  clients. If you are interested in having a full-fledged social media training workshop for your company, please get in touch here

It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809 – 1894)

Did Mr. Holmes know, a good 116 years ago, the one sacrosanct guiding principle of social media marketing? Seems like it doesn’t it? Marketers and brands jumping into social media are increasingly finding the perks of listening before they talk. Like in life and personal relationships, listening is key in the world of social media.

Why is it important?

Chances are your audience is talking about you or your brand already. If you’re interested in creating a presence on social media and genuinely engaging this audience, then its critical to perk up your ears and listen in to what is already being said about you. Lets say, for example, Shoppers’ Stop wants to create a presence on social media tomorrow. What’s the first step they’ll take? Hopefully they’ll begin by monitoring conversations already happening about their brand. Just for fun, I put some together here:

Do you see what I see here? A hoard of opportunities! PR, crisis management, customer support, brand ambassadorship, REAL engagement, brand awareness, product updates… the list is endless.

How do I go about it?

Brand monitoring has spun into its own industry in the last two years offering a range of sophisticated, expensive tools to very basic, free ones. Which one to deploy depends entirely on how big your brand is, what resources – human and financial – you have at your disposal to carry on your social media efforts and last: how committed are you to learn what customers and the community think about your brand?

But to start from the start, here are some basic tools to kickstart your listening skills with:

Google Alerts:

Feed a query or search term into Google Alerts and you will be notified by email (or feed) whenever this term is crawled by Google’s search engines on the web, news etc.

I also recommend searching on Google search’s cousin Blogsearch for more time-sensitive and relevant monitoring of blog content.

Twitter:

Like Twitter or loathe it, its here to stay. Besides within its millions of 140-character tweets abounds a wealth of information about your brand and the competition too. If you’re a registered user, you can save each search term and it will update itself as and when the term is mentioned anywhere on Twitter.

What Else Can I do?

Get proactive and set up an account on Google Reader. There you can subscribe to all blogs and content that is relevant to your brand and industry. I’m going to dedicate a blog post on RSS feeds and the like as part of this series as well. Soon…

While these tools will get you started, there are a host of tools available – free and paid – that can greatly enhance your listening experience. Here’s  list each of free and paid monitoring tools:

Free: 13 Essential Social Media ‘Listening Tools’ (Marketing Profs’)

Paid: 11 Tools for Social Media Monitoring, Tracking And Analysis (Your’s truly)

In my opinion these basic steps are a good start to initiate the listening bit. The other big part of the strategy entails engagement – what do you do with the discovery of these conversations? What about conversations about your competitor? What if two people are tweeting (and bad-mouthing) your brand? Do you step in? Do you contact them privately?

As they say, let the games begin