Surviving and thriving on Facebook

Once the darling of social media, Facebook now has to battle Twitter to be the first word on excited communicators lips when talking about social media. But in my opinion, it’s between Facebook and YouTube as to who’s done more to attract brands to invest in their platform. If pushed, I’d have to say that it’s Facebook, if for nothing else that the self-serve advertising and awesome analytics it offers.

But still, getting it right on Facebook requires a bit more that setting up a sponsored page. I’ve worked on several Facebook campaigns to date and the one thing that I would say is this – getting it right takes time, effort and commitment, here’s a few tips:

1 – take a look at what’s going on elsewhere on Facebook that relates to what your doing – what are the type of things that your competitors are doing that makes them successful, what kind of pages are your audience interacting with and the big question – is someone already running a page under your brand name and do you want to work with them rather than set-up your own?

2 – talk to people. Ask your audience what they think. Ask them on Facebook, via your website, your blog and other social profiles and get their opinions.

3 – have a content plan. You need to have a steady flow of content in order to keep your audience interested, don’t just launch then twiddle your thumbs

4 – promote your page through all means available to you. Internally, customer emails, traditional advertising, PR, blogger relations and even packaging – check out what Pepsi Raw did 

5 – engage with your fans as much as you can, as often as you can. Keep the conversation flowing from both sides.

6 – give them the autonomy to help shape the page by submitting photos, videos and even regulating negative comments

7 – Invest in some social advertising from Facebook. Using this blended results yields some awesome results.

Finally, remember that Facebook is most effective as a long-term marketing tool. As such invest and plan to be active with your page for the long term and you get some superb results