Facebook marketing: how to engage your fans better

Newsroom 14/05/2012 | 10:46

What can marketing professionals do to better engage with their Facebook fans?

Galvea Kelly

One in every seven people across the globe is an active Facebook user, according to a recent report conducted by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The research shows that Facebook has 901 million monthly active users – a 33 percent increase over the 680 million users reported in March 2011.

Facebook strategies will no longer become a choice but rather a necessity for Romanian companies. Facebook penetration now amounts to 60.24 percent of the online population. In the last six months alone, the total number of FB users increased by 843,080 people, bringing the total amount of Romanian users to 4.7 million.

Engagement statistics show that an average of 3.2 billion Likes and Comments are generated each day and to date there has been a staggering 125 billion friend connections made on the site. Photos are arguably Facebook’s most popular feature with more than 300 million uploaded per day. Still It has become so competitive to get engagement on this platform. That can be a possible reason for users to buy Facebook followers to grow on the platform.

What is interesting about these statistics is that they provide a deeper understanding of our evolving cultural norms: our values, our morals and our changing relationships with one another.

From a commercial perspective, 96 of the top 100 advertisers use the site. What is interesting is that although there were more than 42 million Pages with ten or more Likes at the end of March 2012, most marketers fail to derive value from these relationships. Engagement rates are now declining rather than increasing, which clearly indicates that marketers are failing to derive value from these relationships because:

1. They lack direction – In the race to develop their own Facebook page, a lot of marketers forgot an integral step: defining clear objectives. Now, it looks like there are a lot of brands out there whose only aim is to collect “Likes”. This lack of planning means that from a business perspective, fans don’t derive any real value from liking a brand.

2. Lack of understanding – Facebook is a very different platform from any other communications outlet marketers have used before – with its own very comprehensive set of rules and regulations. EdgeRank is Facebook’s system for deciding which content appears in the newsfeed. It is similar to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which lists websites on Google’s organic ranking system, but requires a very different set of optimization skills. Facebook Ads are also very different in that they are a mix of banner and paid search. Marketers struggle not only to understand each of the pieces individually, but also how they work together and how they are evolving.

3. They don’t invest in resources – A gap exists between the amount of people engaging with Facebook and the investment companies are making in this area in Romania in terms of man hours, content development and sharing processes. In order to be successful in this area, marketers need to be dedicating the resources necessary to get the results they want from social media marketing.

4. They measure the wrong metrics – Marketers say that measuring Return on Investment (ROI) is their biggest challenge in measuring Facebook. Too many marketers ask “What is the value of a fan?” and not enough marketers understand their fans’ value in terms of loyalty and influence on Facebook’s impact on their business. Marketers won’t be able to prove value until they begin to ask the right questions.

In order to be successful on Facebook, collecting fans without a purpose is not enough; marketers must get serious about driving business results from Facebook.

In my experience, the goals for the majority of companies are to grow their fan base and improve brand recognition.

Facebook Pages present a massive opportunity for brands to directly engage with their existing and future customers. However, simply creating a Facebook presence alone won’t help you achieve these goals. To do so, take four steps to derive more value from your Facebook page.

1. Set clear objectives – If you don’t know what you want to achieve, you probably won’t achieve much at all. Define objectives that provide real value to your business.

2. Build a page that provides value for your fans. Bring focus to your Facebook marketing by building a brand page that not only accomplishes your business objectives, but also gives fans a reason to continually engage the brand.

3. Leverage Facebook tools to increase reach and engagement. A brand page shouldn’t sit on its own. It’s imperative that you combine features such as ads, events, and apps along with your brand page to get the most out of your network.

4. Integrate Facebook into your marketing mix. Facebook is not an island. It’s as important to integrate it with the rest of the marketing as with any other medium.

If you do not have the in-house expertise to execute a comprehensive social media strategy, it is best to seek the advice of an outside digital agency that possesses the appropriate skills to formulate an engaging content strategy plan.

Engagement is what I consider the key ingredient of Facebook. Social marketing is a relationship platform, not a campaign. Brands that succeed on Facebook are the ones that give people a reason to be fans. The change will require new thinking from marketers who had generally tried to accumulate as many fans and “Likes” as possible.

As you engage with your audience they will begin to know, like and trust you. Content is king and marketers now need to deliver something of real value to the customer if you want them to share and interact with more content. This critical step is what is often required from them to purchase from you.

Bio Galvea Kelly

Galvea Kelly is the CEO of Brand Nua, a social media agency located in Ireland.  A pioneer in online community building, Galvea is responsible for many successful social strategies for companies worldwide.  Galvea is a popular speaker, researcher, consultant and digital video producer. She guest lectures MBA courses in Ireland and the USA and has has a paper published on the ROI of Social Media by the Marketing Journal. Currently based in Romania, she has worked in Ireland, UK, France, Germany, US and South America. Her client base includes Unilever, Toni and Guy, Berlin Festival, Irish Embassy, Rugby Football Union and Kinetica Sports. Her work and ideas have been covered by publications such as Washington Post, FOX, Huffington Post, Yahoo, Breaking News USA and USA Today.

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