Facebook Finally Adds 'Reply' Option to Comments

by Camilla Gildenhuys


Facebook announced yesterday that, after months of testing, the 'Reply' option is being rolled out to comments. Community Managers everywhere rejoice!

In their statement they said:

We've built a new feature that will improve the quality of conversation on your page: Replies. Starting today, you will be able to reply directly to comments left on your page and start a conversation thread. The most active and engaging conversations will be shown at the top of your posts.

There are 2 ways that we see Replies aiding us in everyday community management and page appearance:

1. Community managers can directly address fans comments and queries in a post: This allows one-to-one type engagement with fans even through there are multiple conversations occurring on a single post. It "will make it easier for you to interact directly with individual readers and keep relevant conversations connected," said Vadim Lavrusik, Facebook's journalism program manager, in an official blog post
2. The best conversations will be viewed: Facebook's algorithm allows for the best conversations to be seen at the top of the post. In this way fans won't wade through tens and hundred of comments, they'll get what they may want to see right under the post itself. Now, we still have to see what Facebook deems 'the best' (whether it be most replies from brand, other people, etc) but we're hoping it sits in the brand's favour. In saying this, we recommend that negative sentiment and commentary be taken offline to avoid highlighting of damaging conversations. 

You can start using Replies from today! There will be a banner under the Page's Admin Panel prompting you to 'turn on' Replies. If you don't opt in now, Facebook will do it for you automatically on 10 July 2013.

Replies is currently only available on desktop, but will be made available on mobile in the future.

Making a case for social media in small(er) businesses

Few small business owners and entrepreneurs have the bandwidth or the budget to launch a full scale marketing campaign. Combine this with a lack of the critical mass in terms of audience so frequently associated with the medium to large organisations / brands, and it almost seems hopeless to try and compete.

However, with the dawn of the digital age and the rise of social media platforms and opportunities, the sky has quite literally become the limit. It is no longer just about having the traditional above-the-line campaigns spanning across radio, TV and print, but about creating an online brand presence, about having a conversation, about listening and responding in real time to customers, potential customers and even potential detractors.

We believe that a truly successful social media strategy is one that is not based on talking to every man, but developing a specific and personal customer and audience experience.

There is no doubt that the current platform of choice for a two way, tailored communications experience online, is Facebook. And more specifically, the Facebook Fan Page as the first line of communication for an organisation.

Using Starbucks, as an example of a brand with one of the most successful Fan Pages, we have created a set of top tips and considerations, for maximising impact and delivering value, for a company of any size.

1. Know your brand personality – who are you, how do you engage, what is the ‘language’ and tone that you use when interacting and ensure that this resonates across all your audience interactions
2. Know your audience – who are you talking to, what makes them tick, what kind of information do they use and re-use, who do they talk to and about what
3. Don’t SPAM – instead of putting out marketing collateral, share content that is industry, topic and of audience interest and relevance
4. Make time – to post relevant information, to respond to comments and queries posted to your Fan Page and to really get under the skin of your audience
5. Listen – to the conversations not only on your Fan Page, but on other blogs, newsfeeds and Facebook Fan Pages and ensure that when you do respond, it isn’t mid-stream or out of context

Once you have these five elements buttoned down, Facebook has made it ridiculously easy to set up a Fan Page. Go to the Facebook login page, click on ‘Create a page for a celebrity, band or business’ and follow the step-by-step guide to setting up your page and gaining access to more than 500 million people around the world.

Your challenge – to sift through these more than 500 million people and make sure the right people become your ‘fans’.

And unlike traditional above-the-line advertising, which can sometimes feel like a bit of a hit and miss approach to reaching your target audience, Facebook advertising is audience customisable. By deploying a customised advertising campaign, you are able to eliminate what marketing and advertising folks call ‘wastage’, resulting in a more cost effective and tangible campaign.

Engage, interact and enjoy!

Keep an objective in mind

A campaign's single most important attribute is it's objective. This enables the calculation of ROI and ultimately determines if your marketing effort was a success. Marketer's often forget this simple rule of thumb. How does this apply to Social Media? Read on to find out... It’s about the conversation. Social media addresses the fundamental human behaviors of communication, sharing and collaborating. And social networks represent a step change in how people communicate, organize, recommend and decide. It’ not much of a surprise that social networks represent new threats and opportunities in reputation management. Nor that in terms of the ad game we’ve all had a bit of a rude awakening. Message discovery is now as important as message delivery. Everything has a tag. And it’s not about the conversation. But it’s not all about the conversation. It’s not a matter of whether you get it or don’t. Like all things, it’s finding what works, building from a foundation, measuring progress, and adapting to new situations. Chris Brogan posted on how companies can choose social media channels that are right for them. He points out that what most critical in terms of social media and the decision process is that companies need to have clear goals and ways of measuring them. So actually it’s also about getting stuff sold. So if you have an FMCG brand “what works” for you is probably what drives up brick and mortar sales, incrementally or otherwise. Let’s face it - FMCG is hardly web-friendly . I’m not going to order my washing powder, a beer or tube of toothpaste online. Especially not on a whim…. it’s just not going to happen. So if you’re into the “conversation” you’d be inclined to say - it’s great , everyone is talking about you, and you’re part of “the conversation”. But what good is that when they’re talking about you in a context (such as online) where your product isn’t readily available. After all, what’s going to push me, the consumer, away from that online conversation and out to a point-of-sale (POS) where I will make a purchase? And even if I recall the buzz around your brand when I notice your product at a POS, is that going to be enough to make me buy? And if so, will your social media campaign create enough impulse buys to cover the agency fees behind that campaign? And whether it does or doesn’t, how are you going to track it? What measurement tools do you have in place or can you get access to? Social media needs an objective. Or it's just more talk. Make social media pay its way Social media can be an excellent strategy for fostering customer loyalty, but what is its potential to do so with non-web-friendly products? Your Facebook app might get me to buy today but will it keep me coming back? Burger King got it right with their Facebook app. They didn’t try to foster a devoutly loyal customer base using Facebook groups or their own social network. Rather, they devised a delimited marketing blitz with very clear objectives and measurable goals. Every consumer that participated got a coupon that could be tracked upon redemption. This would provide them with a complete cost-benefit analysis, measuring the costs of deployment against the additional costs of fulfillment alongside increased sales during times of redemption. Another great example - Starbucks added a few hundred thousand fans in a day with the launch of their application in July of 2009. What the trick to making it work? So the trick to making social media count for FMCG it seems is that campaigns have to do three things: Drive brick & mortar sales, offer a way to track and measure those sales, and keep consumers socializing with your media long enough that their increased expenditures cover the cost of your social media campaign. FMCG marketers need to be choosing social media campaigns based on how they can meet the objectives of what FMCG ROI actually is: [Sales – (planning costs + fulfillment costs)]/(planning costs + fulfillment costs) = ROI As long as that objective is kept in mind, social media can be an effective marketing channel even for FMCG. If marketers choose a medium both based on those objectives and on their need for measurement -social media does pay.