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<\/p>\nOne of the biggest criticisms of Facebook has been its inability to generate revenue and turn a profit. This is an ongoing challenge for the company as a whole, but that does not mean that marketers shouldn’t use Facebook as an excellent tool to reach target markets, expand market potential and incorporate Facebook into overall marketing activities. It is fast, effective and relatively cheap. With the right direction and consistent content updates, this could be a useful weapon in your business marketing arsenal in the next year!<\/p>\n
In late 2007, Facebook launched a service that allowed businesses to better engage with their customers and brand advocates. The three-tiered product provided a platform for businesses to upload all manner of content, delivered a way of raising awareness of its existence and a mechanism to measure the impact. These services are called Fan Pages, Social Ads and Facebook Insights respectively. \u00a0This activity really marked the maturing of Facebook from merely a website that was all about getting in touch with friends and family, to a vehicle for companies to interact with their customers on a more personal level.\u00a0 It became an environment \u00a0that can provide professional, business driven content for people to engage with.<\/p>\n
Recently, Facebook further boosted the functionalities of these services making them even more attractive marketing and communication tools. But before you dive into the Facebook toolbox, it is important to fully understand the environment into which you are stepping and how to maximise the potential it holds.<\/p>\n
Let’s start with the basics. What are Fan Pages?<\/p>\n
Simply put, Fan Pages are branded pages where companies can post videos, images, news and announcements for their fans. \u00a0A Fan page is a place where companies can interact with their customers, gather opinion, provide unique offers and engage in discussion. An example of a particularly successful fan page is the Coca Cola fan page, which was originally started by two regular guys who quite simply just loved the product. \u00a0The Fan page eventually became the most successful Fan page on Facebook. As the page grew in popularity, Coca Cola had a choice to make; take over the page or allow the fans to retain control. Coca Cola chose the former and flew the pair who started it all to their Head Office in Atlanta and encouraged them to create a video about how the page was started and its subsequent success. This is great example of how companies should engage with social media – create brand evangelists, empowering them to engage with their favourite products.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n What about Promotion?\u00a0 <\/strong>It’s not always enough to create a Fan page and hope that it will attract simply visitors by osmosis. Some effort needs to be made to support and promote the page. That’s where Social Ads come in. These are ads that are served by brand owners which appear either within a user’s news feed as sponsored content or down the right hand side of the page. The ads that appear are dependent on the content and preferences of the users; this enables a greater level of targeting based on relevance. Note that ads are served on a cost per click basis.<\/p>\n So the page is ready and the ads are up…now what?\u00a0 <\/strong>In order to measure and monitor the success of your Fan page, Facebook offers “Insights”. This free analytics tool allows you to monitor the performance of your ads and pages in terms of actions, behaviour and exposure.<\/p>\n