Facebook Advertising | Social Media Marketing

According to the first public Facebook user study done by Nielsen, Facebook Advertising works.  Nielsen studied more than 800,000 Facebook users as well as advertising campaigns from 14 different brands in several categories. Acccording to the study those Facebook Ads which included mentions from friends who were already fans of the advertised products saw an increase in product recall of 16 %. The increase was 30 % when the ads coincided with a similar mention in the users’ News Feeds.

Image - Courtesy of the Facebook Advertising Guide ISBN 978-0-9806484-7-8

The study showed a notable increase in awareness, ad recall and purchasing intent when the Facebook Ads mentioned friends of those users who have become fans of the brand in the ad. This is actually no surprise as it has been a known fact that online (or off line) peer recommendations are one of the most influential factors in brand acceptance. If a Facebook Ad coincides with an item in a user’s News Feed (for instance indicating that a friend has become a fan of a brand, artists, product etc.) the impact of the ad on awareness and recall is even more evident.

Facebook Ads on average generated 10 % increase in ad recall, 4 % increase in brand awareness and 2 % increase in purchase behavour among users who saw the ads compared with a control group with similar demographics or characteristics who didn’t see the ad.

According to Jon Gibbs, VP-media analytics at Nielsen “Paid and earned media work together in ways that could have implications well beyond Facebook. The market has been talking very much about how to buy paid media and how to earn earned media, but there’s been very little attention to the types of hybrid impressions and hybrid experience that blends these two. Facebook’s Social Ads present a fairly unique way of blending paid and earned impressions.”

Nielsen is the world’s leading marketing and media information company active in more than 100 countries, with headquarters in New York, USA.

Facebook has recently released a new form of participation on Facebook. Additionally to the original Facebook Pages (Fan Pages, or Like Pages as they should be called now) and Facebook Groups you can now create Facebook Community Pages. The purpose of these Community Pages is that by creating one you can generate support for your favorite cause, hobby, pet, hockey league or just about any topic that you are passionate about.

If your Community Page becomes popular, “it will be adopted and maintained by the Facebook community”. I wonder what that last sentence really means. Does it mean that Facebook them selves will support these pages? If it does then their goal is clear. Facebook is creating an alternative to Wikipedia! This would a very clever strategy to spread the Facebook Universe even deeper to the Internet. Most of the community pages already seem to have copied their essence straight from Wikipedia and they even have special Wikipedia -tabs (see image above). I think Wikipedia is not going to be very happy about this as this is creating a lot of duplicate information on the web.

Active Facebook users have already created all sorts of Community Pages. There are pages for Solar Power, Feminism (already 2463 fans!), Free Speech and even Satanism and Terrorism! The last one is a bit awkward since at the top of the page in the Community Pages official intro box (by Facebook) it reads “If you have a passion for Terrorism, sign up and we’ll let you know when we’re ready for your help.” Hmm? Ok, this would work with most topics but in this case it is a bit off the chart.

If you want to create yourself a nice fresh Facebook Community Page today just go here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php, give your page a name and click the Create Community Page -button. Happy authoring!

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Did anybody see this coming? Social network becoming bigger than a search engine? Facebook said it can be done; and they’ve done it last week! Facebook surpassed Google in the United States to become the most visited site on the Internet for the week 8th-14th March 2010. As this feat is an amazing result for the company you might not know that Facebook has been reaching the No. 1 position on several short occations in the past as well; on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day as well as the first weekend this March.

According to a US based metrics company Experian Hitwise Facebook claimed its top position over Google with 7.07 % of total Internet visits in US whereas Google had to settle for position two behind the world’s biggest social network with 7.03 %. Facebook’s growth has been phenomenal in the past year. Facebook visits grew by a whopping 185 % while Google was able to increase its visit only by 9 %. Together these two Internet behemoths accounted for almost 15 % of all US based Internet traffic last week.

Google is in a bit of a trouble with all the competition from the popular social networking sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace and Facebook. Their new Buzz service is designed to compete with Twitter and is very cleverly integrated with Gmail. So far it hasn’t reached a big following as some security issues have been raised. Also the interface isn’t as clever as in Twitter or Facebook Wall.

Facebook continues to grow at a very nice pace and is now attracting more than 400 million global users. This is good news for the advertisers as they now have a huge social platform which can reach a lot of potential clients. Facebook’s advertising engine is famous for being the best in the market for accurately defining and reaching your target audience.

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Facebook’s CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg annouces that the social network he started in 2004 has now reached 350 million users.

Zuckerberg also said that Facebook will be removing their regional networks. Facebook’s current privacy model revolves around networks which works well for smaller groups of people. However,  some of the regional networks, like India and China have now millions of members and this is no longer the best way to control the privacy issues of users. About 50 percent of all Facebook users belong to some regional network. Facebook will be adding features that many users have already asked for; for instance the ability to control who sees the content you create or upload. In addition, the privacy settings page will be made simpler by combining some settings. This is actually a very good upgrade as their privacy settings are quite a mess. So the next Facebook update will remove the current regional networks and create some new privacy features.  In the next couple of weeks Facebook will ask users to review and update their privacy settings.  Facebook will suggest settings for users based on their current level of privacy, but the best way to do this is to customise them yourself.

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Facebook was launched five years ago on February 4^th in 2004. Its founder, Mark Zuckerberg launched the Facebook as an experimental social network exclusively for Harvard University students. It was a huge hit right from the beginning. The current board members are Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Andreessen, Jim Breyer, Don Graham and Peter Thiel, David Sze (observer) and Paul Mader (observer). Facebook’s headquarters are in Palo Alto, California and they have offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas,  Detroit,  New York,  Venice Beach, Dublin, London, Paris, Sydney and Toronto.

Do You Want To Reach 350.000.000 Targeted Customers?

I have finally finished and published my Facebook Advertising Guide. It is currently available as a digital download managed by PayDotCom (108 pages, full colour) and it will be later available as a paperback.

Facebook Advertising Guide is not about fancy theories and statistics how to make million dollars on Facebook overnight. This guide book is a practical Facebook guide for all of you who want to learn how Facebook advertising works and how to do it effectively. Within the different chapters of this book I will present visual step-by-step guides how to do certain marketing operations on Facebook. There are also plenty of references and web addresses (URL’s) to various areas on Facebook and the web. Facebook Advertising Guide will show you how to bring your message across to over 350 Million targeted Facebook users quick and easy. I will teach you how you can advertise  effectively on Facebook plus how  you can create and advertise Facebook Pages, Facebook Groups, Facebook News Feeds and much more. There are also plenty of real life examples of Facebook advertising projects from real companies.

If you would like to get a copy of the new Facebook Advertising Guide, please click here.

Facebook announced yesterday that they are the world’s largest social network on the planet. Facebook’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement claiming that Facebook has now more than 300 million users worldwide. It seems like only yesterday they had a mere 150 million users and that has now doubled in 13 months! Mr. Zuckerberg proudly underlined his social network’s steady growth and also announced that the company itself has now become self-sustaining and cash-flow positive. The top spot remains still undecided since China’s largest social network, QZone has also claimed 300 million users. As most of QZone users would be Chinese that would mean roughly every fourth person in China would be there. Personally I find that hard to believe. The third spot is certain though; it belongs to MySpace with 245 million users. If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you subscribe to my RSS Feed or ReTweet.

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.

Businesses are gradually realising the commercial potential of 250 million Facebook users and opening shops inside Facebook. The latest shop to open doors is 1-800-flowers.com founded by Jim McCann who started his first retail store in 1976 in New York. Now the online flower retailer has launched an e-commerce store which they claim to be the first fully functional commercial store front inside Facebook.

Registered Facebook users can now order all kinds of flower products from the online florist and gift shop without ever leaving the social network environment. The shopping itself is quite easy and straight forward. First you choose a nice bunch of flowers from their catalogue; the prices vary from $29.99 to over $100. Then you enter your US based zip code and delivery date; next your contact details and the recipient’s details and finally your credit card numbers and you’re done. So, for instance as the lovely Sandra Bullock here had her birthday 4 days ago you could have sent her some red roses straight through your Facebook account. Very handy indeed! Sandra has about 30.000 fans on Facebook by the way!

The 1-800-flowers.com Facebook Shop has been built by a relatively new network developer, Alvenda who are based in Minneapolis. Alvenda was founded just last year by Wade Gerten, Brian Howe and Lou Abramowski. So far the Facebook Flower Shop has attracted 1,905 fans, me included, but I’m sure it will gain lots more as the news start spreading. Currently 1-800-flowers accepts payment with all major credit cards, but as (if) Facebook introduces its own internal currency (see Facebook Money Is Coming) you would be able to make purchases using that as well. If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you subscribe to my RSS Feed or ReTweet.

As advertisers are increasingly interested in Facebook advertising, ad revenues are not the only source of revenue for Facebook. Facebook started testing virtual currency just a few months ago so the company could also be profiting from the sale of virtual goods. With these “virtual money credits” Facebook users could carry out transactions in certain sub networks. Websites view alternative payment methods as a way to accelerate the sales of the virtual goods that can be an important source of revenue. On Facebook there is the potential for a currency exchange market similar to the hugely popular virtual world, Second Life. Second Life users have been using their Linden Dollars for quite some time now and they seem to be working fine in that particular environment. Linden Dollar rates fluctuate based on supply and demand, but over the last few years they have remained fairly stable. For 1 Us Dollar (US$) you can get about 260 Linden Dollars (L$). While Second Life’s currency is used to purchase virtual items (obviously), Facebook’s currency could be used to purchase real-world items as well; here is a huge potential for the recently updated Facebook Marketplace as well as Facebook Auctions and similar services.

Second Life has almost 15 million registered users from over 100 countries and a fully functioning economy with more than $300 million Linden Dollars transacted annually. As they have successfully implemented the use of virtual money in their environment, you might even speculate with the possibility of using Linden Dollars successfully on Facebook. This would create the biggest online marketplace in the world that would have it’s own currency. Science fiction? I don’t think so.

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!