# Facebook Marketing ![rw-book-cover](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51RktgdTcGL._SL200_.jpg) ## Metadata - Author: [[Chris Treadaway and Mari Smith]] - Full Title: Facebook Marketing - Category: #books ## Highlights - An April 2009 study by Harris Interactive revealed that 48 percent of all American adults had either a Facebook or a MySpace account. It took Facebook eight months to go from 100 million to 200 million users. Contrast that to the growth of the United States—it took the good ol’ USA 52 years to go from 100 million to 200 million inhabitants! If Facebook were a country, it would be the fourth most populous country in the world ahead of Brazil, Japan, and the populations of Germany, France, and Spain combined. But these aren’t just casual users. According to Nielsen Online, people spent 13.9 billion minutes on Facebook in April 2009, up from 1.7 billion in April 2008 for a stunning annual growth rate of 699 percent. In terms of usage, this makes social networking the third most popular computing activity now, ahead of using e-mail. Facebook reaches an estimated 29.9 percent of the global Internet user community. It has clearly become a mainstream phenomenon and the numbers are sure to get bigger from here. For the full Nielsen report, check out this page: www.docstoc.com/docs/5830948/Nielsen-Report-on-Social-Networkings-New-Global-Footprint The rise of social media has coincided with a decline in consumer use of traditional media. Social media usage numbers are up while newspaper circulations are down. In many cities, the number of social media users surpassed the stated circulation of venerable newspapers in 2008. eMarketer reports that Internet users consumed far less traditional media in 2008 than 2006 (www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1006892/). It’s safe to say that today, people get far more news, information, and commentary from their friends than from traditional media. ([Location 685](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003IS766W&location=685)) - Today, many people start their day not by going to google.com, but rather by logging into Facebook. ([Location 711](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003IS766W&location=711)) - Allow me to suggest five broad themes that I think will define social media and marketing for years to come: The need to share information. ([Location 723](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003IS766W&location=723)) - Immediacy is here to stay. ([Location 731](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003IS766W&location=731)) - All of the tools provided in social media give people an opportunity to respond immediately to things ([Location 732](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003IS766W&location=732)) - Everyone is a source of information, and everyone is biased. ([Location 738](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003IS766W&location=738)) - Noise level. Everyone is now a publisher and a celebrity in their own world. So it takes a lot of effort to keep up with it all, if you choose to do so. This can work two ways for marketers—some people will respond to direct engagement that cuts through the clutter. Others will instead ignore your noise alongside everyone else marketing a product or service. So the challenge is twofold: A marketer must fit into the noise with interesting things for one segment of their customer base while grabbing the attention of the other. The worst thing you can do as a marketer is say something wholly uninteresting or something that doesn’t serve to engage with customers in a meaningful way. The bar is as high as ever today, and consumers don’t have significantly more spare time these days. ([Location 747](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003IS766W&location=747)) - Melding of worlds. Like it or not, the openness of social media means that it is almost impossible for users to keep different parts of their lives distinct. Things done offline invariably find their way online—and it may not even be your doing. ([Location 753](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003IS766W&location=753)) - I’ve typically recommended at least one update per day per social network for clients, and no more than 7 or 8 per week. Remember, you don’t want to annoy people. ([Location 813](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003IS766W&location=813)) - To say the least, the marketing company got off on the wrong foot! The company would’ve been better served to mix it up a bit by including an occasionally important or informative message alongside its marketing messages, such as these examples: “Bring your umbrella—storms expected this afternoon in town!” “Get a free drink with any of our great meatball sandwiches today only when you mention Facebook!” “Festival downtown this weekend—get your early-bird tickets at www.earlybird.com.” When in doubt, you should remember the golden rule of social media marketing: “Do unto your customers as you would be happy to have them do unto you.” There is a fine line between informing and annoying your customers—make sure you are providing value to your community through social media. ([Location 837](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003IS766W&location=837)) - You’ll need to supplement this summary with online research to get a feel for how things change. Tech blogs such as Mashable (www.mashable.com) do a great job of reporting monthly usage numbers and demographics for social media usage. You can also visit the web site companion to this book at (www.facebookmarketinganhouraday.com) where we’ll keep you up-to-date on the latest happenings in social media. ([Location 989](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003IS766W&location=989)) - 5. Social media is best applied in addition to existing Internet marketing programs and alongside other Web assets. When building a strategy, you must think comprehensively. ([Location 1066](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003IS766W&location=1066)) - If you are going to create a successful marketing campaign, you’re going to have to identify the people you are trying to reach and exactly how you can reach them more effectively. Figure out who your customer(s) are and what their motivation is for using Facebook. That exercise will help you craft a much better campaign for your target market, and it will also inform your ad copy and/or creative. ([Location 1088](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003IS766W&location=1088)) - The key to success with social media marketing is mapping your business goals to the social networks that can make you most successful. How do you assess this? Ask yourself a few key questions when putting the plan together: Are there enough people in your target demographic on the social network? Is it common for people on the social network to say good things about your company or brand? Are there other ways for people on the social network to approve of your company or brand? Does your product fit the needs of your target demographic? Can you turn positives or negatives about your product into a viral marketing success? But perhaps the most important question in any major corporation is about risk. Is your company willing to take a chance on social media marketing? I’m not talking necessarily about dollars and cents or coping with success. Is your company a cultural fit for the experimentation necessary to make social media work? For reasons outlined before in this book, social media is both hot and new. ([Location 1174](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003IS766W&location=1174)) - (Note: we recommend once your profile is set up, you then go in and edit your personal information to only show your month and day of birth in your profile for security purposes.) ([Location 1238](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003IS766W&location=1238)) - Remember the old Henry Ford quote: “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said ‘a faster horse.’” Customers may not be aware of how technology can help them in new and innovative ways. It’s your role to translate their feedback into new and interesting offerings that they’ll love. ([Location 1769](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003IS766W&location=1769)) - Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day: www.facebookmarketinganhouraday.com Mashable: www.mashable.com AllFacebook: www.allfacebook.com Inside Facebook: www.insidefacebook.com Social Media Examiner: http://socialmediaexaminer.com Government 2.0: www.govloop.com, http://radar.oreilly.com/markd Enterprise 2.0: www.web-strategist.com ([Location 1878](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003IS766W&location=1878)) - If you’re going to comprehensively analyze your competitors’ activities, consider staying on top of the following: Features Keep track of all the elements of the competitors’ presence that appear to be run or officially sponsored by them. You need to know whether they are maintaining a profile, Facebook fan pages, Twitter accounts, blogs, or other social media accounts. Since social media sites typically rank high on search engines, you shouldn’t have any trouble finding these sites with a search engine. Commitment Monitor the quantity and quality of social media updates. Is the competitor truly committed to social media for customer outreach, or does it appear to be more of an experiment? Objectively speaking, would you consider their effort a competitive differentiator, or is it just the bare minimum necessary for a company these days? Popularity Keep track of the number of customers who appear to be communicating with your competitor. This can be a simple metric such as the number of fans/followers/friends/participants they’ve attracted, or you can dig deeper to see how much “conversation” they have with their customers via social media. This is good to give yourself a benchmark for performance—either as a stated goal or as a personal goal. PR/coverage Analyze how much your competitor’s social media work is discussed through articles, in popular periodicals, by bloggers, and so on. It’s been said that there is no such thing as bad publicity. We guess that depends on your risk tolerance. A good campaign or strategy can get a lot of people saying good things about a company. When looking for this, be sure to discern between a competitor’s own employees talking about the social media effort and seemingly disinterested third parties doing so. It’s far too easy to appear anonymous on the Web—sophisticated competitors will plant moles around the Web to say good things about themselves to make it all more impactful. ([Location 1899](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003IS766W&location=1899))