Facebook Advertising | Social Media Marketing

How famous is Lady Gaga really? We’ll, she has recently become the most popular living musician/artist on Facebook. Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta better knows as an american recording artist, Lady Gaga has gathered over 17 million fans on the most popular social network. She has reached the stardom with her hugely popular hits Alejandro and Pokerface.

Talking about poker, the most popular Facebook Page is …you guessed it; poker. Texas Hold’em has managed to get a whopping 23 million fans and it is one of the most popular online games ever. Other famous Facebook personalities include Barack Obama, Vin Diesel and Hugh Laurie as the excentric Dr. House.

Here is the top 10 most popular Facebook Pages today:

MasterChef Australia is an Australian competitive cooking reality show based on the original UK version of MasterChef. It is produced by Fremantle Media Australia and hosted by food critic, UK born Matt Preston, Top 40 chef George Calombaris and restaurateur and chef Gary Mehigan who is the owner of the famous Fenix and Maribyrnong Boathouse restaurants.

This popular reality tv-show uses Social Media Components in its marketing quite effectively. Masterchef has its own Facebook Page as well as Twitter account. The show has close to 95.000 fans on Facebook and over 6.000 followers on Twitter. They post 3.8 tweets/day approximately and have followers from all over the world. Their website (masterchef.com.au) is also built to function like a social media website or portal with social engagement features such as polls, competitions, recipes (duh..) and games. Logie Award winning judge Matt Preston has his own Facebook Page as well with over 6.000 fans.

MasterChef is on channel TEN 7.30 Sunday-Friday.

The mega succesful rock band KISS had a live concert last night on Facebook. This seems to become a trend with big bands since just about three weeks ago Foo Fighters had their own Facebook appearance. See post. The KISS concert was arranged through Celebs On Facebook who have over 2 million fans.

As well as being one of the most famous bands on earth, KISS is also a massive marketing organization run by Gene Simmons, aged 60 selling ‘official’ clothing, jewellery, calendars, lithographs, glassware and even limited edition KISS wine. Oh, yes …and close to 100 million albums as well. It is rumoured that KISS is the only band in the world who make more money from their merchandising than from their music.

The Facebook concert was aired from the Staples Centre in Los Angeles, California and it was delivered by Ustream. Funnily enough the event was not advertised on the official KISS Faceboook page.  KISS has over 300.000 fans on Facebook and their current lineup includes Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Tommy Thayer and Eric Singer. The band was founded 1972 by Simmons and Stanley. Their biggest hits include Crazy Crazy Nights, Strutter and I Was Made For Loving You. You can check out the concert event here.

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Facebook presented a live concert from Foo Fighters last weekend. The live performance was streamed from their Studio 606 in California. Dave Grohl‘s Foo Fighters is hugely popular on Facebook with over 800.000 fans. The concert event was to promote their latest album Greatest Hits which will be released today November 3rd. According to Foo Fighters Facebook Events Page the concert attracted 16.316 confirmed guests. This event is just one example of the power of Facebook as one of the most important advertising channels of modern day marketing.

If you missed the concert, click here to see it on Livestream’s website.

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Earlier this month, Starbucks surpassed Coca Cola becoming the most popular brand on Facebook, with close to 3.8 million fans. Coca Cola has a tad over 3.6 million fans at the moment. (Hilary Duff here isn’t doing bad either with over 570.000 fans on her official Facebook page.)

This is a direct result of Starbucks’ aggressive internet and social media strategy according to Starbucks digital strategy director, Alexandra Wheeler. Starbucks is now actively incorporating and utilising the most popular social media channels, such as Twitter and Facebook in its online marketing.

Starbuck’s Free Pastry campaign, where you received a free pastry with a beverage purchase was a huge success. Nearly 600,000 people reacted to that campaign on Facebook. Another hugely successful campaign was their Product (Red) campaign with almost a million people responding “yes” or “maybe” to the promotion last holiday season. Product (Red) contributed 5 cents for every Starbucks beverage purchased to the AIDS-fighting project. These results show the power of the Starbucks as a brand and how well it has been able to connect with their clients through these social media networks.

According to Wheeler one of the key priorities we have to think about when it comes to social media marketing is that we have to connect in ways that are relevant to those environments as well as to our consumers. One of the most powerful ways is by sharing content and participating in discussion.

Starbucks has also a big fan base on Twitter. They have over 270.000 followers and are following 85.000 of them back. Almost all of Starbucks’ posts are @ replies which means that they actually are communicating with their fans. Most of the communication on their Facebook page, however is done by the fans on the wall posts. If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you subscribe to my RSS Feed or ReTweet.

250 million people seem to love Facebook. Here’s a different, humorous view by Julian Smith and his friends…

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Michael Jackson died last Thursday in his home in Los Angeles 25th June 2009. The 50-year-old musical genius was preparing for what would have been a series of 50 mega concerts starting July 13 in London. He was the most talented and the most kind musician that ever lived. We will miss him dearly. Michael Jackson will live forever in his music.
…and apparently on Facebook as well. There are 495 personal Michael Jackson accounts on Facebook. Most of them are named Michael Jackson or Mike Jackson. None of these are the most famous Michael Jackson though. The King of Pop is represented by over 540 Fan Pages and 548 Groups containing millions of people. There are also 323 Michael Jackson applications and over 500 Michael Jackson-events. The five biggest Michael Jackson Fan Pages have over 7.5 million fans and the six biggest Michael Jackson Groups have about 400,000 members. Judging by these figures there is no doubt that Michael Jackson will become immortal and take his place alongside Elvis and Marilyn Monroe who have over 600 Fan Pages and over 1000 Groups (combined) on Facebook. Long live the King and the King of Pop!

Facebook personal (or vanity) URL’s are coming soon! Facebook vanity URL is a more personal Facebook web address than the current one they offer. At the moment some priviledged (read=famous) Facebook users are already enjoying their own vanity url’s. Some good examples are the president of the United States, Microsoft, the musician Sting and the most famous TV-cartoon Simpsons.

Here is a top 10 list of famous Facebook users with their own names (not in any particular ranking order):

1. http://www.facebook.com/u2
2. http://www.facebook.com/barackobama
3. http://www.facebook.com/oprahwinfreyshow
4. http://www.facebook.com/Microsoft
5. http://www.facebook.com/sting
6. http://www.facebook.com/markzuckerberg (duh…)
7. http://www.facebook.com/coldplay
8. http://www.facebook.com/eBay
9. http://www.facebook.com/redcross
10. http://www.facebook.com/TheSimpsons

Luckily for the rest of us Facebook will soon be allowing all users to claim their personal, or vanity URL pointing to their profile page. For instance at the moment www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=697888240 is me, but next week it could be something like www.facebook.com/KrisOlin, which would be much easier to remember and use. No to mention the advantages for SEO purposes for famous people and companies. Google, buy the way, does not have their own Facebook URL. Hmmm? Facebook has recently asked their users if they would pay for a vanity URL. The results are not yet published, so at the moment we don’t know if  they plan on charging for them or not. In all likelihood personal names will be free, but busines names might incur a cost; possibly much the same way as paying for your domain name, for which you pay a yearly fee to the registry. This is the official, most recent comment from Facebook about the matter:

“Unfortunately we are not currently able to approve requests for vanity URLs. The only Pages that presently have vanity URLs are bands and businesses that partnered with us for the initial launch of this new product. We hope to make these URLs available for everyone to have on their individual Page(s) in the future.”

Well, the future seems to be now, since they have plans to make an official announcement no later than next week. The rules will prohibit trademark infringement and a lots of words will be blacklisted, such as generic terms and phrases. But for the most part, users should be able to grab a name that they want.

Vanity URL’s have proven to be a very powerful tool on other social networking sites such as MySpace and Twitter. It’s not just that users like them but it makes telling people your online profile name easier as well. People have also long used MySpace URL’s as their main online identity, even instead of a website. Twitter, more recently, has started to become the online identity provider of choice. It’s no wonder Facebook wants to enter this game now.

When the personal  URL’s  are available, you can with get more instructions from the horse’s mouth: http://www.facebook.com/help.php

Kris Olin
Web Designer | Internet Promotion Strategist
Msc (marketing)
http://twitter.com/KrisOlin (in the meantime)

Facebook and Twitter have become important tools for brand building and -maintenance for companies and public figures.

McDonalds has over 300.000 Facebook fans and Lacoste and Lacoste Bags have over 2500 followers on Twitter and close to a million fans on Facebook. Karl Lagerfeld has more than 21.000 followers on Twitter which is quite suprising since he’s following back none.  The basic rule on Twitter and other social medias is that when someone becomes your fan or starts following you, you should return the favour. Obviously Karl is so cool (see pic) that he can bend this rule. Generally for a commercial entity it is not a good idea to show disrespect and not to be interested in your fans or followers. Chanel has collected 45.000 fans on Facebook so far, however they missed out on Twitter. The most popular Chanel is ‘chanelwestcoast’ aka c.c. who is a 20 years old “Rapping Receptionist” from Los Angeles with over 18.000 followers.

There are over 9 million visitors on Twitter every month, while Facebook has more than 200 million users worldwide. These sites are serious sites to be at when you are a marketer or advertiser reliant on individual people to buy your stuff.

At first you might think that Facebook is just one more social networking site and Twitter is just a crazy, 140 character micro-blogging platform, but marketing professionals have for some time recognised the capabilities these tools offer for branding and customer loyalty.  One of the key advantages to using social medias for a brand is the engagement with your fans and hence, consumers. You are able to create an important link between your product and your consumer. If you searched “Coca Cola” on Twitter you would have found out that a Spanish guy was drinking Coke with his Doritos 9 minutes ago. Do you think that would be interesting news for the marketing department of the Coca Cola Company? We’ll, it should be. Suprisingly Coca Cola does not have a Twitter presence, however they do have 3.5 million fans on Facebook. Pepsi on the other hand has close to 3000 followers and they even have official Pepsi Max Finland up there! I think I’ll just follow both of them since Pepsi must be the coolest cola drink out there at the moment.

Here’s my advice to all you marketers who are targeting your products or services direct to individual consumers: lock in your Facebook and Twitter names as soon as possible. Don’t think about it, just do it. Later on, when you actually realise the importance of this, it is quite unpleasant to find out that someone else (perhaps even your competitor) has beaten you to it.

Kris Olin
Web Designer | Internet Promotion Strategist
Msc (marketing)
http://twitter.com/KrisOlin

The most popular people on Facebook are Barack Obama, Homer Simpson and Mr. Bean. There are  over 600,000 fan pages currently on Facebook. Over 57,000 of those pages have more than 1,000 fans each.

The top 30 fan pages are:

1.     Barack Obama     4544050 Fans
2.     Coca-Cola     2286085
3.     Homer J Simpson 2230644
4.     Nutella     2109429
5.     Pizza             2050050
6.     Mr.Bean     1974882
7.     Michael Phelps     1909378
8.     Facebook     1835553
9.     Windows Live Messenger     1826767
10.     Kinder surprise     1802602
11.     Chocolaaaaaaaaaaaaate     1800924
12.     Cristiano Ronaldo     1787865
13.     Sid             1679985
14.     YouTube     1664281
15.     Edward Cullen     1612729
16.     DR. HOUSE     1578536
17.     Boo             1542923
18.     Rihanna     1505949
19.     Adam Sandler     1486388
20.     Coldplay     1477028
21.     Twilight     1445260
22.     Donkey       1436120
23.     Batman: The Dark Knight     1349610
24.     Stewart Griffin     1339765
25.     Los simpson     1326733
26.     Lil Wayne     1325780
27.     Linkin Park     1319831
28.     South Park     1295837
29.     Chris Brown     1293294
30.     Converse ALL STAR     1289037