Understanding Facebook
Facebook was created by Mark Zuckerberg, a student at Harvard, who had developed a few sites for his fellow students (one to enable students to see what others are enrolled in the same classes, a "hot or not" rating system for coeds, etc.) and eventually came up with "The Facebook" as a way for students to network, largely because the university was slothful in updating and upgrading its student directory.
It caught on quickly, and spread to other schools, and they later opened the site to anyone with an e-mail address. The site quickly siphons off a large body of MySpace users who are disgruntled with the spammers and high-school crowd. Presently, it is the largest social networking site and continues to expand rapidly.
The author notes that much of what was discussed pertaining to MySpace is also true of Facebook, so he will not go over that again (what is a profile, how do you choose "friends" and so on).
Anatomy of a Facebook Profile
As with MySpace, each user has a profile on Facebook, but because it was intended to be a networking site (rather than a music site), the nature of the profile is not as purpose-driven as MySpace. An individual provides a photo, name, location, relationship status, age, schools and workplaces, and other basic facts, by which others can find them (a search is provided to locate other alumni who graduated the same year, for example).
Additionally, any user may create a "group" which others may join to share information about leisure interests, so many hobby and fraternal organizations have used Facebook for communicating with their members, and businesses leverage the same capabilities to communicate with their regular customers.
Comments made by any individual group are sent out to their friends, and each person can control what information, from which friends, should be brought to the forefront of their news feed (list of recent posts).
One difficulty the author mentions is segregating professional and personal interests. Your pastor an employer might not approve of a social or political "group" your have joined, and you may want to make remarks to friends that you don't want your boss to know about - but right now, that's not possible, and as a number of employers look to Facebook to gather information they are not legally allowed to ask for in a job interview, and there are a number of instances where a person has been fired for a Facebook comment, most people have become cautions about the information they share.
The author discusses the components of a Facebook account:
- Profile- The basic personal information an individual shares with others: their name, location, relationship status, schools and workplaces, hobbies, etc.
- Status - A brief note intended to tell others what you're currently doing (called a "micro blog" as it is a sentence to a few paragraphs)
- News Feed - A stream of information about friends and groups, including status updates, profile changes, groups recently joined, etc.
- Friends - A directory of the individuals you have "friended."
- Networks - An evolving array of things, such as groups you have joined, celebrities you have become a "fan" of, causes you support, etc.
- The Wall - A public bulletin board where friends can leave notes to you (the author compares it to a dry-erase board on a dorm room door)
- Inbox - A place where you can send and receive private messages, which is a primitive form of e-mail.
- Chat - A real-time text chat application for Facebook users.
(EN: Facebook has evolved since the book was written, but this is a pretty good run-down of the features that are still available, and presumably still popular.)
The Basics
The author examines some of the features and capabilities of Facebook with an eye toward their potential value to marketing, and provides some random tips on marketing in the channel.
Events
A Facebook "event" is a date-specific announcement, which can be set up as a public announcement of a private event (in which only specified individuals will be made aware of it). The announcement will be called to the attention of anyone who has friended/fanned your profile. Users may post a response indicating their intention to attend (and the author suggests "seeding" the event with attendees, as an empty event is not appealing). The author asserts that you should "include all of your events in Facebook," but later cautions about overdoing it: if you have more than two or three events per month, people will feel you are spamming them (even though they voluntarily signed up to receive such announcements).
Groups
A Facebook "group" enables individuals to join to receive announcements sent to the group (as well as seeing who else has joined, encouraging others to join, etc.). By creating separate groups for separate audiences, you can better segment your announcements to the interests of each specific group rather than spamming everyone.
People generally regard their "groups" as a sort of badge or emblem on their profile to show their interests to others, and some groups have more cache than others: a group of "green energy supporters" has more prestige than a group about "efficient water heaters". (EN: choose a name carefully, but it should be accurate to te kinds of information you will publish - people will see through the ruse and be angry if your name is deceiving)
Be aware that others will create groups as well. As an example, Radio Shack has 136 groups, a few run by the company, but others created by avoid customers, disgruntled customers, employees, and the like. You should keep an eye on these groups and engage with your admirers and detractors as appropriate. There is a note about detractors' groups, particularly employees who complain publicly on Facebook. The author mentions it and suggests you need to "curtail this behavior before it gets out of hand."
(EN: Employers who discipline or terminate employees because of Facebook remarks have found that they are more often fanning the flames rather than silencing the opposition, so it's a delicate situation that must be handled with extreme care).
Pages
In 2008, Facebook introduced the ability to create "pages," with the intention of enabling users to create a page for things (like a company or a product, though pages are often created for certain people, particularly celebrities). People can "fan" a page and receive updates on postings, and may comment on the postings.
In general, a page works like a group (including the esteem associated with being a "fan" of a page), but there are a few notable differences:
- Groups enable you to send bulk invitations. You can suggest that a person become a fan of a page, but that is less common and must be done one at a time.
- Groups are not visible to search engines, whereas a page will be.
- Groups do not provide statistics for user activity, where as pages allegedly do (EN: I have not seen this, personally, and the author doesn't illustrate it)
- Groups "feel" more social and members tend to interact more with one another, whereas a page enables users to comment on posts, but they do not generally interact
- A page can be created anonymously, where a group has an identified administrator
The author advises against creating both a page and a group. In his experience, it does not increase audience, as people generally choose one or the other, and it often makes you seem desperate for attention. Choose the one that is most appropriate.
Market Passively
Social media sites should be considered "virtual hangouts" where people come to be at ease and interact with people at their own choosing. They do not expect to be aggressively marketed, and will react very badly to any overbearing attempt to get their attention.
The author suggests a passive approach: create a profile, pages, and groups that people may join of their own accord. You may wish to invite someone, but do it only once or twice rather than constantly hounding people. The best way to attract participants is to provide information of value to them, such that they'll want to receive it. As an example, the author mentions an outdoor sporting goods company that posts "how to" videos to a Facebook page. Exclusive promotions are also a good draw.
Also, be aware of channel glut. People may already read your blog, subscribe to your Twitter posts, visit your home page, receive e-mail newsletters, etc. Your Facebook efforts should not be more of the same, or people will feel it is redundant and stop paying attention.
Case Study: Bojangles
A case study of Bojangles (a QSR that specializes in chicken):
- The marketer created a page and a group for the restaurant and posted a few events
- He joined a few existing groups and became an active member (commenting, discussing, etc.), but did not overtly attempt to convert their members (people joined anyway, after tracking back to his profile and seeing his groups)
- An ironic bit: people Googled the marketer and found he was from New York, so he took a bit of ridicule for promoting a southern brand, but was able to handle that with some remarks on his profile
- His goal of recruiting 1000 fans in 6 months was more than met - within two months, he had 5,000
The author notes that this individual did very little, just created some pages and participated in existing conversations, and that's the entire point: if he had been more aggressive in promoting and recruiting, the audience would have been "turned off" to his brand.
Facebook "Apps"
Facebook has been supportive of open development, and provides an API to help developers roll their own applications, called "apps" or "widgets", that Facebook users can integrate into their profiles to provide functionality not supported by the site's own features and capabilities.
Many applications are frivolous and have a short shelf-life due to the perishable nature of novelty interest, but others become popular and have a much longer shelf life. Some of them provide or extend capabilities users desire (apps that enable users to share video, though Facebook later built that into its core capabilities), others speak to a cause that the user wants to support on an ongoing basis (a daily image of an endangered species), or fill a need (give users the ability to send images to one another as "gifts" or "awards").
Another source suggests some of the common attributes of popular applications. Applications that are visually social are popular (the "virtual equivalent of flowers" delivered to someone, who displays them on their desk); they are "fun" (which is a difficult to define), they do not require a lot of knowledge or effort to use, and they speak of the user's personality of attitudes.
From a marketing perspective, an application builds brand visibility, but doesn't tend to drive traffic to your site in large numbers. And if it's a frivolous bit of fun, people may show up to use it and then leave without perusing anything else (much like online games failed as traffic builders). However, it does get your logo in front of a lot of eyes and create an association with the brand (for better or for worse, as a novelty will be seen as cool by some and lame by others, and that experience will associate to your brand).
Working with Facebook App Developers
The author expects most marketers will need to hire a developer to build an app for them, and advises choosing someone with experience building apps before (as it's a bit different than Web development or traditional programming).
He provides some general advice on choosing and managing the developers:
- Ask for a portfolio of samples of their previous Facebook applications and visit them on the site to assess their quality.
- Ensure the developers are familiar with guidelines and terms of service (an application that does not meet them will be rejected)
- Discuss the development process, especially change requests and deadlines
- Ask if the app's core functionality can be used elsewhere (a bonus if the code can be used for other purposes)
- Plan to use a different service for testing and QA than for development, and make sure the developer understands this
- Ensure the developer will help get the app submitted and approved , not just walk away when the coding is done
- Ask about follow-on support they will provide (timely and reasonably-priced responses to bug reports and problems in the wild)
- Consider the future availability of the developer to do work on the app in the future.
On the other hand, you must be a good client to them by providing them with a clear and detailed indication of your expectations of them (the apps functionality, deadlines, their role going forward, etc.) and commit to keeping up your end of the relationship.
(EN: This is a good overview of some of the key points of selecting and managing an IT vendor, but there's a lot more to be said on the topic.)
Facebook Advertising
Online advertising is a tactic used in sales promotion, whereas social media marketing is used to build brand awareness - hence the author generally discourages clients from using advertising as a part of social marketing, as it is in most instances a counterproductive tactic. However, there are some instances in which it can be beneficial (namely, building awareness in a completely unknown brand).
Advertisement on Facebook can be very effective (for either purpose) because that they can be very tightly targeted because individuals on Facebook provide a lot of personal information that is unavailable in typical advertizing. For example, you can target women, ages 31 to 35, who live in New Jersey, support environmental issues, are a member of a Methodist church, who have an interest in horses and a have expressed disappointment with of a specific competitor's product. This degree of discernment is referred to as "hyper targeting."
The Future of Facebook
The author indicates that, at the time of the writing, Facebook seems to be an "unstoppable juggernaut" and predicts that for the next few years, that should hold true - but it may not always be so. Consider the example of Geocities, MySpace, and the Alta Vista search engine: they were all the rage, and ran out of gas or fell to the challenge of new competition. So it may be inevitable that Facebook, too, will fall, and there's no telling what will replace it.