MARKETING ON FACEBOOK
Jean Sexton reports:
Facebook should never be your sole source for getting out information. It is primarily useful to get info to people who live and die by Facebook. It is good for reaching out to those who have a fondness for your games, but aren't rabid fans. The rabid fans haunt your website already. Facebookers are the folks who your want news in small doses. In our case, we have a thousand fans on the forum and over six hundred friends on our page on Facebook and the overlap between the two groups is tiny, less than a hundred people. LOTS of people found our forum to be "too intense" and require them to pay too much attention to too many posts.
You have to feed your page on Facebook every day, two-to-five wall posts per day, in order to keep Facebookers interested and the news "above the fold." Some days we have to work hard to find something to post, and other days we have to hold back and not post too much. We usually post a piece of art every day, some of it old stuff and some of it new stuff. We had to get the design/graphic people into the habit that when they did some new piece of art, they would spin off a copy to me to upload to our page on Facebook. The artists now know to send me their preliminary sketches which build buzz about future products (and make the artists feel more important). We have a blog where we post something every day, and most days we link to the blog and mention what the blog is about. If the big shots at the company post some important news on the forum, we either copy it to our page on Facebook or link to that forum post. Whenever I can convince the boss to do a press release, we load it onto a special website page and link our page on Facebook to it. Whenever we upload some new "free useful download" (say, a chart that some fan created that compiles obscure date) we make sure to tell the forum about it and port it to our page on Facebook. If you keep people coming back, then you can get them to pay attention to what you really want them to pay attention to (announcements of a new product to buy, an event you are attending, a survey you need answered).
Check your insights (some of the statistical data provided by Facebook if you know how to dig it out). See if you are really hitting your target groups, and if too many people are blocking your news feed. Keep an eye on spikes (sudden increases in friends or in responses) and ask yourself what happened to cause it. Did a game store "friend" you and you are getting some of their customers? Was there a convention where your ad ran in the program? Did you send out a newsletter or press release? Did a fan post a major talk-up monologue on some website? If you can figure out what caused something good, maybe you can make it happen again, but even things that work six times in a row may stop working eventually.
Make it easy for folks to friend you. Have a like button on your website. Remind people in your products, press releases, and newsletters that you have a page on Facebook. New people join Facebook every day and they may forget to friend your page unless you remind them. Conversely, remind the folks on Facebook of your website and forums. There is cross-pollination to be found.
Don't stress over what Facebook does or doesn't hand out about people. Your customers are there on Facebook anyway; just remind them to practice safe Facebooking. (If you have no idea what I am talking about, you need to hire someone who knows Facebook to run your page on Facebook for you.)
Get a "front-person" to do your page on Facebook (if for no other reason to avoid spending so much of your own time). If you aren't warm and fuzzy, if you aren't "into" Facebook, find one of your employees or trusted fans who is. Facebook is all about people connecting and it takes someone who is a "people person" (and someone who just likes Facebook) to send out the right vibes. If you find Facebook tedious, boring, annoying, or bothersome, get someone else to run your page for you.
Remember that if you don't take control of your product on Facebook (set up, manage, feed, and grow your own page), odds are that some fan will set up a page about your product and company, and people on Facebook who want to know about your product and company will go THERE as you didn't give them an official choice. Ask yourself if you want people getting information from some fan (who may or may not know what he's talking about) or from you. You have to manage your message.
Facebook should never be your sole source for getting out information. It is primarily useful to get info to people who live and die by Facebook. It is good for reaching out to those who have a fondness for your games, but aren't rabid fans. The rabid fans haunt your website already. Facebookers are the folks who your want news in small doses. In our case, we have a thousand fans on the forum and over six hundred friends on our page on Facebook and the overlap between the two groups is tiny, less than a hundred people. LOTS of people found our forum to be "too intense" and require them to pay too much attention to too many posts.
You have to feed your page on Facebook every day, two-to-five wall posts per day, in order to keep Facebookers interested and the news "above the fold." Some days we have to work hard to find something to post, and other days we have to hold back and not post too much. We usually post a piece of art every day, some of it old stuff and some of it new stuff. We had to get the design/graphic people into the habit that when they did some new piece of art, they would spin off a copy to me to upload to our page on Facebook. The artists now know to send me their preliminary sketches which build buzz about future products (and make the artists feel more important). We have a blog where we post something every day, and most days we link to the blog and mention what the blog is about. If the big shots at the company post some important news on the forum, we either copy it to our page on Facebook or link to that forum post. Whenever I can convince the boss to do a press release, we load it onto a special website page and link our page on Facebook to it. Whenever we upload some new "free useful download" (say, a chart that some fan created that compiles obscure date) we make sure to tell the forum about it and port it to our page on Facebook. If you keep people coming back, then you can get them to pay attention to what you really want them to pay attention to (announcements of a new product to buy, an event you are attending, a survey you need answered).
Check your insights (some of the statistical data provided by Facebook if you know how to dig it out). See if you are really hitting your target groups, and if too many people are blocking your news feed. Keep an eye on spikes (sudden increases in friends or in responses) and ask yourself what happened to cause it. Did a game store "friend" you and you are getting some of their customers? Was there a convention where your ad ran in the program? Did you send out a newsletter or press release? Did a fan post a major talk-up monologue on some website? If you can figure out what caused something good, maybe you can make it happen again, but even things that work six times in a row may stop working eventually.
Make it easy for folks to friend you. Have a like button on your website. Remind people in your products, press releases, and newsletters that you have a page on Facebook. New people join Facebook every day and they may forget to friend your page unless you remind them. Conversely, remind the folks on Facebook of your website and forums. There is cross-pollination to be found.
Don't stress over what Facebook does or doesn't hand out about people. Your customers are there on Facebook anyway; just remind them to practice safe Facebooking. (If you have no idea what I am talking about, you need to hire someone who knows Facebook to run your page on Facebook for you.)
Get a "front-person" to do your page on Facebook (if for no other reason to avoid spending so much of your own time). If you aren't warm and fuzzy, if you aren't "into" Facebook, find one of your employees or trusted fans who is. Facebook is all about people connecting and it takes someone who is a "people person" (and someone who just likes Facebook) to send out the right vibes. If you find Facebook tedious, boring, annoying, or bothersome, get someone else to run your page for you.
Remember that if you don't take control of your product on Facebook (set up, manage, feed, and grow your own page), odds are that some fan will set up a page about your product and company, and people on Facebook who want to know about your product and company will go THERE as you didn't give them an official choice. Ask yourself if you want people getting information from some fan (who may or may not know what he's talking about) or from you. You have to manage your message.
posted by Federation Commander at 8:10 AM
<< Home