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New Facebook Redesign Creates a Brilliant Marketing Platform for Brands

posted by Nick Cifuentes @ Wednesday, March 18, 2009 - 7:43 AM
Facebook made a bit of noise last week when they introduced the new Business Pages layout. Then, several days later, made changes to the Home page of all user profiles, and integrated a 'Twitter' like wall stream - Facebook's strategy in building out a more real-time conversation tool.

As usual, when Facebook decides to make changes, your entire office, your close friends and other random people you might see throughout the day - they all have something to say, and I am sure you've heard the complaints already. However, I am here to bring calm to the storm...rest assured, Facebook is making a very intelligent change in status here. And most importantly, businesses will be able to flourish greatly from this move.

When it comes to the new business pages - it will now look and function much like personal profiles, offering stronger brand connections via the wall stream, which now takes center stage. When a fan comes to your page now, the very first page they look at is the 'wall stream'. On this page, businesses that create content often, will thrive in this new environment. As a brand, the wall stream page will gather content and post information about the page and posts by the page itself. Also, content shared by you, links, photos, videos and short text updates via the status updates, and posts by your fans left for you - all now show up in the wall.

In this update, which is really the holy grail here, the wall updates you post will publish to your Fans' news feeds, and posts by your Fans will go to their friends' news feeds as well. So, think about this a second - the more content you are able to place and create in your channel, the more you engage with your fans, in turn, the more people you will be able to reach constantly. A single status update of your business profile seeds through Facebook into your fan's news streams. Now, all their friend's see this, and can 'like' or 'comment' on the update, and possibly go one step further and become a Fan of the page.

The wall stream will be a large key in driving attention to your page - use it wisely! You are familiar with how Twitter works, Facebook is integrating the same concept using this wall stream - homepage stream. The more frequency of status updates on your page, the more chance you have to stand out with your fans in the Facebook stream.




When it comes to the layout of the page, Facebook rid themselves of the long 'leaderboard' layout, and moved to a tabbed layout - exactly how your user profile pages now function. And now, when a fan goes to your business page, they are defaulted to the Wall tab, so that fans can see the most recent added content to the page. And for non-Fans that visit your page, you can set a default landing page within your business profile page.





With the ability to send new potential fans to your business page, you can highlight a specific default tab to send them to that might have the most appealing or interactive elements within your page. This will allow users to better promote different portions of their page by driving ad traffic or new fans to certain sections of your profile. By driving potential fans to landing pages within Facebook, you can dramatically grow your fans and leads that ultimately improve conversion rates.

If you are running a specific campaign, or have a new application, event, or interactive element on your page you want new users to connect with - now you can easily create that conversion path for the user.

Some interesting analytics were also integrated into new business pages. Facebook now allows you to track video views, comments posted, news feed posts viewed, and this is all in addition to page views and unique views. And even better, all this data is exportable via CSV sheets.

New Design Makes Advertising on Facebook Irresistible

Facebook is clearly trying to drive more advertisers to use the platform, and it makes a lot of sense now with Facebook allowing you to drive non-fans to specific pages inside your business profile. This is going to add value and interest for users who will make their way to your Facebook page. Brands should embrace this tactic and give Facebook advertising a shot - you won't be disappointed this time around.

People in the past have been reluctant to spend money on advertising within social networks. The real fact is, social network members are co-creators of content, and in turn, feel they have a sense of ownership within the site. Advertising needs to be more about participating in relevant conversation with consumers rather than simply pushing ads onto a social network user. Advertising should focus on being part of the conversation, not invading the social space.

Advertising needs to be about adding value to a user's experience, as social networks are built around members adding value to each other's lives through interaction. This is why fan sites and sponsored groups are truly one of the most successful strategies when marketing within the platforms. This act touches on the principles of interactivity, and adds value to a user's experience via offers, previews, and the ability for user's to help create content.

The true challenge though in creating a perfect marriage between social network advertising - marketing and that network's user, is time. There is no quick-fix in social network marketing, sure there can be exceptions, but those are few and far between. Much like a friendship, social media marketing requires effort, time and a continual investment in the platform to build and foster relationships. Remember, your messaging needs to be authentic and humble, and built on two-way conversation, not a push (one-way) model - in the end, this will add value to the consumer's decision.

For more information on social media marketing, please review our services, and contact us or myself if you have any questions.

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3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

People use Facebook for connecting with friends. I think it's hard to pitch users to embrace the new Facebook design "because it's better for advertisers."

Right now, Facebook can probably get away with it because there is no alternative that people want to use or that has the following like Facebook does (...friendster, myspace, they had their turns)

Social media starts with trust. Because social media is derived from connections and networks, savvy advertisers can relay their messages in less intrusive ways by building upon our trust.

Fine, in the end, Facebook may be a better platform for advertisers to exploit the website users. However, if Facebook doesn't up its game & reinstate some of the "trust" it lost with users by pandering to advertisers - well, the advertisers will be preaching to each other.

The other thing about social media is that alternative platforms catch on quickly.

melissa
http://nonpretentious.com
@nonpretentious

http://recruiteresq.com
@recruiteresq

March 20, 2009 at 10:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Why is a business centric change great for non-business users? This is a total plug piece.

March 20, 2009 at 11:17 AM  
Anonymous cheap dsi r4 said...

On of the most common habit of facebook user is browsing the profile pages of friends and stalking the profile pages of people they want to learn more about.

February 5, 2010 at 2:49 AM  

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