Tag Archives: Facebook

Landmark bill signed…watch it all on Facebook

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I just saw the Health care reform bill signed by Obama live on….Facebook. That’s right, not Fox, Sky, the BBC, the ABC, but Facebook. While live streaming through facebook isn’t brand new, it’s extremely interesting to see that the White House is using it as a major means of communicating, but then again, why not? Health care reform in the US effects millions, so it’s important that people are offered the news through as many different channels as possible, which is going to include the countries biggest social network.

Health care pic

As you can see from the screen grab – it’s a very simple and straight forward application, but another nice touch is the use of Facebook Connect next to it, letting you see the reactions of others. The most interesting thing about this is the history behind it. Countless US politicians have fought for this over the years, but it wasn’t until Obama that the job got done. What else would we expect from an administration that has utilised social media so effectively in today’s media landscape?  That’s right, you heard it first…..through Facebook.

Your Facebook page is your own personal TV show

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I happened to be talking to a contact over at a media buying agency today about Facebook from the PR side of the fence and starting using a phrase that I’ve been toying with for a few weeks now – your Facebook page is your own personal TV show. It doesn’t matter if you’re a brand, a society, a person or whatever – people are interested in your story.  That’s not to say everyone, for most people it’s their friends, if your a celeb it’s your fan base and if you’re a brand – it’s your buyers and potential buyers. But in just the same way that someone that doesn’t like Sci-Fi won’t suddenly start watching Star Trek, people that are interested in you won’t suddenly take an interest in you – and that is especially important if you’re a brand looking to engage people through Facebook.

So what does this mean. Well, if you are a brand that’s looking to engage with people via Facebook it’s not enough to just get them to your page, you need to keep them there and keep them coming back. This is where the TV show analogy comes back in – you’ve got to give them a reason to keep coming back, you have to entertain them and tell them a story that builds day-to-day and week-to-week. It’s also important to remember that you won’t be talking to your entire fan base at one time, so you need to keep a theme to your story so that returning fans don’t feel cut out.

Remember – it’s your show and while your fans might not catch every episode, they’ll watch enough to know what’s going on

Is it all about you, or me?

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New research from Rutgers suggestions that people that use social networks such as Facebook and Twitter can be broken down into two groups of people – “Meformers” and “Informers”. What this essentially means is “Meformers” are all about letting the wider word and their circle of friends now what’s going on with them, while the “Informers” are more focused on sharing interesting information.

Now, I am going to position myself in the “Informer” box (of course you are, I hear you say) because I don’t lead a very interesting life to be honest, in fact my 3 year-old daughter gets up to more interesting things than me – the other day she made a Ginger bread man mask at pre-school and got a sticker for doing something good…….I want a sticker as well. Back to the topic, most people actually fit into the “Meformer” section, representing around 80 per cent of the survey, leaving on 20 per cent of us representing the “Informers” camp.

From a communications point of view, we should be gearing our approach towards helping “meformers” with their own personal news feed – providing them with material, content and news to share. In addition, brands should also try (as much as possible) to fit into the “Informers” camp, but again focus on providing information that the “Meformers” can reshape and make personal. 

A few other interesting stats from the report

  • Informers have more friends and followers on Twitter than meformers (Informers had a median 131 friends and 112 followers compare to meformers median figures of 61 friends and 43 followers.)
  • Females were more likely to post “me now” messages than males. (Forty-five percent of females’ messages were “me now” compared to 37 percent of males’.)
  • Posts from mobile devices were more likely to be “me now” messages than posts from non-mobile applications. (Fifty-one percent of mobile-posted messages were “me now” compared to 37 percent of non-mobile messages.)
  • Informers mention others in their messages more often

Surviving and thriving on Facebook

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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

Twitter: The final frontier

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I spend most of my day thinking up new ways to help my clients interact with social media and I have to say, I find that extremely rewarding. I recently had some time with one of the senior team at my agency and she described my current position as “working in the place to be at the place to be” and I think that pretty much sums-up the way I feel about things – I work for an awesome agency in the most cutting edge part of PR.

One of the most interesting challenges at the moment, is figuring out exactly how to get clients involved with Twitter and how we then measure the output. It is the final frontier, in a Captain Kirk sense, we’ve pretty much got a handle on blogging, YouTube, Facebook and so on, but Twitter is still a bit of a tough one.

Sure, I know the same rules as everyone else in terms of engagement, growing followers, becoming a trusted presence, but what about the overall package? Take Facebook and YouTube for example – both have some awesome analytics attached to them, which make it easy to track, measure and analyse your work. Twitter lacks this and while there are 3rd party tools, they lack the sophistication of those on Facebook and YouTube.  We’re kind of stuck with numbers like followers, friends and retweets. For those that are interested in working Twitter into their communications mix – here are a few tips :

  • Use tools like Tweepsearch to help grow your network in a more targeted way
  • Don’t underestimate the power of the retweet
  • use bit.ly links to take your Twitter feeds effectiveness
  • Identify a core set of followers that you really want to retweet your content and focus on them -perhaps consider providing one of pieces that are specific to them
  • Take a look at tools like Tweetbeep to help your tracking
  • Identify and use the #hashtags that are most relevant for your industry and use them  

The way I view Twitter at the moment is as a part of a wider social media plan, acting as more of a hook than anything else, allowing brands to direct their audiences to content hosted elsewhere. So, for the time being the basic analytics we have kind of do the job, but you have to ask – where to next for Twitter?