Why Your Brand Needs To Be On Facebook

By simon | 30 March

This article was originally written by Dallas Lawrence, the Chair of the Social and Digital Media Practice at Levick Strategic Communications and appeared on Mashable. We have changed a few parts but most of Dallas's original text remains here, with our additional comments towards the end.

With 450 million users globally (and millions more being added each week) Facebook is dominating the web in unparalleled ways. Yet, even as the social network has steadily grown over its short but remarkable history, many brands have remained on the sidelines of the social media revolution.

Facebook was the most visited site on the web for the week ending on March 13, 2010, surpassing even Google in week-long stats for the first time in history, according to Hitwise. The shift in user habits and audience targeting is palpable and it provides marketers, brand managers, issue advocates, and political campaigns today with an age old choice: Adapt and change or face irrelevance and extinction.

A Social Media Parable

In many ways, the fundamental decision facing those looking to compete in the next decade of social media dominance is reminiscent of Dr. Spencer Johnson’s bestselling business tale Who Moved My Cheese? It’s the story of two mice named Sniff and Scurry and two “littlepeople” named Hem and Haw who find themselves facing this same predicament.

As the fable unfolds, the book’s four main characters arrive in their maze one day to find that their once abundant cheese supply has disappeared. Sniff and Scurry knew this day was coming. They recognized that their cheese supply was dwindling and set out to find a new source.

Hem and Haw, on the other hand, hadn’t noticed that their cheese was running out. Rather than adapt, they retreated into the all-too-human reactions of fear, denial, and disbelief as they hopelessly waited for the change to prove passing.

For those who have not read this late-90s change agent bible, I won’t spoil the ending. The moral of the story however is clear: Change happens. To survive it, you must anticipate it; and to be successful, you must embrace it.

Realizing the Critical Value of Facebook

To thrive in a rapidly changing marketplace, corporate communicators must understand that the shift now underway is just as powerful as the one that transformed Google into the modern Yellow Pages and turned a Silicon Valley start-up into a $200 billion everyday necessity.

Unfortunately, most of today’s C-Suite decision makers lack the foresight. Far too many executives still see Facebook as a vast, uncontrollable outpost for college slackers - one better equipped for picture sharing and random life updates than corporate reputation management, crisis response, and brand bulletproofing.

But the numbers don’t lie. Almost half-a-billion users each spend an average of nearly 6 hours per month on the site – inhabiting networks that are largely free of corporate messaging, spam, and expensive advertising.

3 Ways Your Brand can Get Started on Facebook

Facebook users are openly sharing their life’s passions, personal interests, and their affinity - or lack thereof – for corporate brands, political candidates, and the key public policy stances. In effect, they are openly sharing every bit of marketing data a 21st century company covets.

For those still wary of change but now ready to dip their toe into the waters and begin to understand and benefit from the power of social, there are three free and relatively painless steps to begin the journey through the social media maze:

First, evaluate your current advertising efforts and identify how they can best be tailored to Facebook. Consider allocating 10% of your current Google AdWords or online advertising budget to a 90-day trial run on Facebook. Be sure to develop clear benchmarks for success, and remember, unlike Google AdWords, Facebook ads rely on both keywords and a variety of demographic information –- information you no doubt have already identified as key indicators of your target audience(s). You can now put this information to use to further micro-target your advertising buy, narrow the net you are throwing in the online marketplace, and increase the return on your investment.

Second, conduct a survey of your employees to see who is already on Facebook and thus, who may be your company’s most social media-savvy employees. You may find that your workplace is brimming with talent just waiting to be unleashed. For now, these future brand ambassadors may be ideal candidates to develop your Facebook presence and initial advertising program.

Finally — and this may seem obvious — become a face on Facebook yourself. Become familiar with the site, its features and the value hundreds of millions of people find in the world’s most populous online community. It may ultimately not be for you personally, but as with almost every new platform, the best way to understand its value is to give it a try yourself.

For those still looking for meaning in the numbers released earlier this month, the message is clear: Not only has the cheese moved again, the entire creamery has up and relocated. It won’t be coming back. And no manner of hemming and hawing is going to change that fact.

TwoCents says

This article is spot on with its assumption that all brands need to be on Facebook but unfortunately fails to really delve into the how/why/why. Simply replacing your Google spend with a Facebook spend with no real objective is pointless. And Facebook advertising is vastly different from Facebook interaction.

Whilst Facebook is a fantastic medium for social interaction, it can be an incredibly awkward medium for brands to engage with their consumers. A message that can seem plausible and realistic on a TVC or a billboard and fall flat on its arse in a social context.

Consumers are wary of brand messages prying their way into their daily lives so the key to success in this medium are as follows:

1. Reach

2. Message

3. Content

Reach is obvious. You're not going anywhere if you're not reaching a lot of people. But the key is not just eyeballs, but quality eyeballs. Those who will interact and engage with you. Look at some of the brands working hard on Facebook:

FA CUP - 70,000 fans

WWE - 460,000 fans

MTV - 10,000 fans

The FA Cup, whilst popular, offers one-dimensional interaction - the odd FA Cup trivia quiz plus a competition here or there. The conversation is one-way and of course, they've constrained themselves because they can't show highlights.

The same is true for the WWE - with almost half a million fans, we get photos, comps and the odd-backstage video but of course the three little important letters keep cropping up - PPV. If you've not got the $$, you're not getting a look. A huge shame and something that must surely change in the future. Imagine the shift if MTV started showing exclusive episodes on some of their programming via Facebook?

So the important thing as well as reach, is the message. Have a specific message in mind to communicate through the social networks, and then once you've decided on that message, make sure the content is deliverable. Poor quality content and your fans won't interact. If your fans don't interact, all the hard work in recruiting them will be in vain.

Rule of thumb, if you're looking for comments, then aim to see perhaps 1% to 2% of your fans actually commenting on or 'liking' your posts. So with 100 fans, you might get 1 to 2 comments per post.

You can find Dallas's original article here: Mashable