Spinning the Web

“Ah, Facebook…”

This is the usual response I get when conducting social media training sessions with PR teams and I mention the world’s number one social network. Unfortunately that all-too-familiar ‘I know about Facebook’ grin is usually just a symptom of one of the most prevalent myths in PR today: that using Facebook every day means you know how to use it on behalf of a brand.

A large proportion of PR consultants (usually at junior levels, which is worrying in itself) have set up a Facebook fan page for a client. Usually, in my experience, this is a Facebook fan page that keeps them and everyone else on the six-strong PR team, plus a couple of people in the client’s marketing department perhaps, fully up-to-date with hot news fresh from the day they set up the fanpage last year, following which they quickly regarded it as a box ticked and left it alone. It’s sometimes quite difficult to explain that this does not constitute a social media strategy – a Facebook page left to gather digital dust with little more than syndicated news releases and product photos will do very little to garner a community of online advocates. It might even do more harm than good.

Despite it’s frequent misuse for marketing, nothing can detract from the fact that the leading social network can be an incredibly effective tool for engaging with audiences online and achieving broader communications objectives. Here’s our Social Media 101 guide to using Facebook…

Should we use Facebook?

It might seem like a no-brainer; Facebook is the world’s largest social network with (as of right now) over 24.4 million accessible users in the UK. For consumer brands, you would need a pretty strong reason to avoid trying to connect with audiences through the network – the potential opportunities are just huge. For B2B brands it’s a bit different, but all the same, Facebook can be very effective in professional circles too when coordinated properly. The key starting point is to look at the existing relevant and related communities for a brand – the existing reach of these unofficial channels gives an initial yardstick measurement of potential reach for your Facebook presence. However, it is essential to look at these communities from a qualitative standpoint as well as a quantitative one; as with any PR activity, risks and opportunities must first be identified and outlined before you get involved.

What’s the difference between a fan page, a group or an event?

Fan pages, compared with groups and events, are relatively new and developed principally as a reaction to brand involvement in groups and events, as well as a key driver for Facebook ad sales. Fan pages do exactly what they say on the tin – they are a hub for fans of a specific brand, personality, event or even turn-of-phrase. Groups usually (although rarely, when managed by brands) are focused on a movement of some kind – a cause or activity to support. It was a Facebook group, not a fan page, that got Rage Against the Machine to number one this Christmas. Events are simply that – a great way to coordinate and organise events, whether you are a multinational brand or someone arranging a hen night. These three tools are not mutually exclusive – all can be used by one brand if done correctly – but a fan page offers by far the best analytics (which I’ll get on to).

How do I set up a Facebook fan page?

That’s the easy part – if you’re not a member of Facebook already, become one. Then on your home page, you will have a set of icons on the left, one of which reads ‘Ads and Pages’ (as pictured below). Click on that icon, and it directs you to a page whereby you can build your page. Easier still, if you access another brand’s fan page, there is an option at the bottom of the page to ‘create a page for my business’. Simple. If you want to customise your page – there are the usual Facebook options with regards to your avatar, or you can get a design agency (such as, ahem, Manifest) to code an entirely customised page for you.

It's simple to set up a fan page

How do I grow our Facebook community?

This is the obvious question and one that doesn’t have an easy answer. The only way to both build and maintain a sizable community on Facebook is through quality, relevant content that is updated regularly. However, there are a few ways to give your Facebook community a kick start (I’m not going to list them all here but…). First of all, if you’ve read the above sections, you should have already discovered the existing related and relevant pages and groups on Facebook. Interact with them. Tell them about your site, but make sure there is a reason behind it. Tagging posts on Facebook is a technique rarely used by brands but this is the most polite and effective way to gain exposure on other fan pages/groups, whilst also requiring you to be relevant to that audience. For instance, when promoting the fact T3 had picked a SANYO camera in its Hot 100 on the SANYO Facebook page, simply linking to T3’s community through an @tag to the T3 fan page meant our post automatically appeared on T3’s wall as well, giving the brand relevant exposure to 4,299 gadget fans, as well as SANYO’s own community.

What should I post on Facebook?

In a word: everything. People only become fans in order to be more connected and involved with a brand. As such, content should be high quality and regular. As well as syndicating news and media rich content from other sites, it’s important to draw content and contributions from the audience itself. The power of social networks is the capacity to engage in a genuine dialogue with audiences and Facebook is no different. However – make sure the people writing the content are in touch with those reading it – a lot of brand fan pages read like they are updated by my dad… “hey gang…”

How do I measure success?

Analytics is a constantly evolving component of Facebook. Called ‘insights’, each fan page has a collection of data that can be exported and analysed in a myriad of ways. Post-by-post analytics is a new feature that allows you to see what content got the most reaction, which should be used to inform the content you create moving forward. Weekly update emails can also be activated to inform you of progress on a regular basis.

So – there you have it – Facebook 101. There’s obviously much, much more to developing a successful brand presence on Facebook than a blog post can tell you, but this post should hopefully give some insight into the answers for the most common questions. If not, feel free to ask questions as comments and we’ll respond with more specific advice.

Tags: brands, facebook, fan page, Marketing, Marketing and Advertising, Online Communities, public relations, Social media, Social network