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Facebook Timeline: Do you Speak Brand?

By DonoWhite

It’s a guy thing, a girl thing, a techno thing, brand thing, your thing, my thing, our thing. True but Facebook is becoming more than just a ‘Thing’ in the world after the Facebook Marketing Conference (fMC) held on 29 February 2012 at a packed Museum of Natural History in New York.
For Africa, which is home to some of the world’s fastest growing economies, it’s a winning scenario for brands to truly make themselves heard. 

Facebook transforming Marketing – Colour up digital
Coming out of fMC, a couple of new elements to the platform will assist brands in social media to yield positive returns. With the goal to connect brands and humans, the Time line concept is introduced. This rich and customisable canvas allows brands to customise cover images, avatars (or ‘profilics’), integrate applications, gestures, as well as pin and star content at the top of the time line to intrigue and keep potential new fans as companies express their identities.
Sheryl Sandberg, COO Facebook: “It enables brands to find their voices and have genuine potential relationships with their customers”. 

Starbucks showing off where your existing tabs will be positioned, talking about, and cover image.

Part of the users experience starts with the primary sense of sight, so give them eye candy.  Pages using the new timeline, set to come in on 30 Mach 2012, will need to create a Gestalt and make the elements work together as an enticing whole and give fans pure sugar, pure sweetness and make it Roar with Flavour.

1. Premium Offers – Drive it

Advertising models are out with the static and it is in with a breath of fresh air. Everyone on Facebook is accustomed to those Market Place ads sitting on the right hand side of the newsfeed, measuring user’s interaction with brands via click throughs.
With new Premium Offers, You always get something out as brands are brought to life and into stories, filtered into target audience’s newsfeeds, even if users or their friends are not fans of the page. Here a brand’s content is the ad, whether a status update, image or video.  

2. Reach Generator – Touch the impossible!

Moving toward a broadcasting model, Premium ads can be re-run in the newsfeed of the target audience. As the elements of Timeline and Premium offers work together, fans start becoming brand ambassadors of the page. It is the Reach Generator Product that helps brands interact with a fan or potential fan and have us all working Today, Tomorrow, Together.
In comparison to a page’s reach of only 16% today, Reach Generator will ensure that up to 75% of fans see a page’s content every month and therefore increase ROI.  Now we can truly target your friends and their friends, and their friends. 

3. Facebook Mobile – Where ever you go!

In 2010 Africa, with its population of 1 Billion and 500 million cellphones, mobile is the number one way to access the internet.  It came as sigh of relief for South Africa, as well as other top mobile users like Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt and Ghana, Facebook now caters for people on the move with premium ads filtering into the mobile version of the network.  Globally Facebook says it will have access to 845 million users across all internet spheres. For South Africa we can say we have reached the possible. 
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Africa’s mobile use in context (source: praekeltfoundation)

4. New Offers- So Much More 

What’s novel in the house of Facebook is that stories will appear to users as they log out, ensuring they don’t leave home without it. Additionally, Brands will be able to engage in private discourse with fans. The personal touch of 'helping you', the fan, will lead to less distraction on the wall and increased customer satisfaction. 

5. Content- The power is now in your hands

“Brands on Facebook are the best content creators”, revealed Facebook VP of Product, Chris Cox a fMC . Content is still king, even more so now that it will become part of the advertising exposure. Coca Cola has plotted their entire history in Timeline and Kia has turned their timeline into a virtual show room. 

History Today with Time Line and your relationship with the brand revealed 
Coupled with real time analytics, the ORM team must work closely with the Community Managers to understand what content should be promoted, starred and pinned. More than ever it is time to innovate! 

Window Shopping: Real life product experiences go digital 

Ultimately the true indicator of these changes will be judged by the fans. When they feel over exposed and invaded they may jump to Twitter, where there are only Promoted Tweets, or take to Google Plus, to spend time in video based ‘Hang Outs’. It will now come down to content being interesting on Facebook to keep the fan. Despite the changes, the rule will still be the same- don’t just keep the fan, ENGAGE! 

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More about Popimedia Innovations

Popimedia Innovations is a Specialist Social Media Marketing Company providing bespoke social media marketing solutions with a unique focus on interactive and viral marketing.
With extensive experience in Social Media strategy development and campaign creation across many industries, Popimedia Innovations' brand of social media marketing is recognisable by its leverage of social media networks like Facebook delivering results for marketers initiating social media activities.

Do brands undervalue using Social Media for customer service?

What would your company use social media for? Everyone else is doing it, generating leads, spreading awareness, building a community and how about customer service? Find out if brands undervalue using Social Media for Customer Service below: According to a survey conducted by Alterian, few companies are utilising social media channels for customer-service objectives. Results reflected that when asked about the most important social media objectives to a company, 24% reported that the central objective is retaining existing customers, 26% believe that the most crucial objective is driving brand awareness and 30% are aiming for new customer acquisition. 1.2% cited that their most important objective is to offer customer service. "It's surprising that brands are reporting that they don't highly value deploying customer service in the social media channel," said David Eldridge, CEO of Alterian. "Many are under utilizing this approach, as all brands need to be prepared to handle their customers' complaints and act on them. While marketers may have different objectives than those working in the customer service department, it's important to have a cross-channel strategy and integrate outreach to gain maximum exposure and positive chatter about your brand online." Cross-Channel coordination is still needed Although their is lack of emphasis on customer service as an objective in social media, the survey results showed that about 90% of marketers believe that cross-channel coordination is indeed vital in marketing campaigns. Similarly, a whopping 61% of marketers said their brand's engagement with consumers occurs both online and offline, suggesting that engagement takes place on multiple platforms. Social Media engagement Based on survey results, marketers said they are increasingly viewing social media as a means for engagement as opposed to promotion. Three out of four respondents (74.8%) say their brand is either 'somewhat' or 'extremely' engaged in social media. Roughly 25.3% percent reported they are not very engaged, and three percent said they are not engaged at all with social media. Measuring ROI Yet the survey showed that measuring ROI is still a challenge. 37% of respondents said they are not able to measure ROI when it comes to the socialization of their brand, and 42% reported to be only somewhat able to measure ROI. Some marketers might be on the fence about ROI, the majority (57 percent) said they believe investing in social media has been a worthwhile investment for their brand. 35% claimed it's still too early to tell. Not one respondent reported that social media is not a worthwhile investment. "There are tools available today that help marketers measure the influence of their social media investment, and consequently understand the ROI for their social media efforts," said Connie Bensen, Alterian's Director of Community Strategy. "It's just a matter of identifying what you want to measure and tracking progress in a way that is appropriate for your brand." Reducing company costs Helping customers directly via social media is a great way to reduce costs! What’s the cost of a customer service call versus the cost of helping a customer via social networks? Also, as you begin to use social media to provide customer service, customers begin to help each other out by pointing you out to anyone that has problems. Here’s a few examples of companies that are using social media to lower customer service costs: InfusionSoft: The company provides web-based marketing automation software to small businesses. The company decided to create a community site to help customers better use the software, but InfusionSoft saw that the majority of the customers had customer service issues. So the company shifted gears a bit, and used the site to help customers with their problems. The company reports that in 2 years time it’s gone from having one customer service agent for every 55 customers (with a 77% customer satisfaction rating), to as of early this year having 1 agent for every 172 customers, and a 87% satisfaction rating. Cisco: The company needed a way to better organize product information/expert sources for Account Managers so they could handle issues for customers. The company created the Specialist Optimization and Results (SOAR) initiative, which brings the company’s vast knowledge base together in one location that can be easily accessed by Account Managers. It includes access to ‘virtual experts’, discussion forums, and marketing materials. The results the company has seen from this initiative include: Every 100 specialists can now do the work of 120, saving the company $5 million a year. Travel expense for Cisco product specialists are down by as much as 60 percent in teams using SOAR tools, and specialists report saving 17 hours a week on average, and boosting their productivity by 22%. Pitney Bowes: PB also utilizes company-backed forum to provide customer service (noting a trend here?). One interesting aspect is that the staff constantly monitor the forum for customer issues, but will wait a minimum of 24 hours before responding. They do this for two reasons: First, to give them time to properly research the problem and give the customer a better answer. And second, to give their fellow customers time to help out the other customer and offer advice. Obviously, you need a strong community in place to make the latter feasible. Results? The company estimates that every 5 visits to a specific question on the forum, or every 25 visits to a general post averts a customer service call, and that Pitney Bowes has averted a total of 30,000 calls to their customer service centers. At a cost of $10 per call, that means a total savings of $300,000. Thanks to Mike Hardy from Pitney Bowes for clarifying that in the comments. He added this: “While we don’t generally share hard numbers about our performance, I can say that we met all of our first year’s expenses, including startup, within 6 weeks of launching our forum.” Conclusion The study found that only 1.2% of brands surveyed utilise Social Media for customer service. In South Africa particularly, one only has to look at how seriously our brands take tools like Hello Peter to understand the value of engaging with customers in their domain on a customer service level. If taken seriously customer service through Social media can not only help build your community but save costs too.

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.

Social Media - Get what you pay for!

Social media is getting major attention. There’s no doubt about it. More marketers (locally and definitely abroad) are considering their media strategies and approach in terms of social media. More companies are developing social media policies for communication and more businesses understand that South African internet usage is escalating and consumer behavior is changing. “Word of friend” is becoming KING! Social Media is free? A big question on most people’s mind - does it pay? Can I get ROI? We’ll it’s hard for something to be perceived valuable if it’s also “free” and “anyone can do it” – right? Wrong! Everything can be free if you know how to do it! Google is free but companies outsource their SEO, their Google ad campaigns, and website design to name but a few - Why? Because there are expert professionals that specialize in it, do it every day all day long. Likewise with social media - It should be approached strategically, handled by professionals - people who do this on a daily basis; have cut their teeth in the grind and have concrete results to prove their worth. There are a myriad of different social platforms and all have their merits. People have different tastes and using one social network over another depends on their network and what they want to communicate or collaborate on e.g. LinkedIn versus Twitter. Each platform has many tools and mechanics that make it work. Knowing how to leverage these tools makes all the difference. This is not a part-time job and when done correctly is arguably far more powerful than traditional media. Does this resonate? The general trend is for companies to create a Fan Page or Group – the first to join are fellow employees; family and friends, thereafter fans dribble in. Companies that have a few thousand fans believe they have achieved great strides on Facebook – but have they? Your fan base should be a significant percentage of your foot traffic or customer base. To do this one needs to know what they are doing in this space. Think of it like this: You have a footprint of say 1 million customers and have a fan base of say 5000. That’s 0.5%. You have not by any stretch of the imagination, leveraged the power of social media. But if a brand had a 20% following (200,000) then you would have significant leverage and power with your customer base and what comes next would be endless. Achieving this is certainly not free! What’s your goal? Getting what you pay for is about your goal. If your goal is to have conversations then are you planning for that conversation and where it will go or just hoping you can handle it on the fly? If your goal is to sell your product then are you planning on how to talk about your product or service in a way that is relevant or just hoping you can email the brochure? If your goal is to foster a community then are you planning on how you leverage social networks to find the people you need to speak with? Or are you just putting up your Facebook page and hoping? Brands that understood their goals Dell - They knew what they were doing. They started in 2007 by posting offers and responding to questions on Twitter.com/DellOutlet—and have to date earned more than $3 million in revenue attributed directly to their Twitter activity. It is also driving interest in new products in that people come from @DellOutlet on Twitter into the Dell.com/outlet site and then ultimately decide to purchase a new system from elsewhere on Dell.com. Brands like Zain Africa, Starbucks, Coca-Cola, Sun Microsytems and Burger King – they get it. Brands are missing the boat So many brands have followed advice (albeit incorrectly) and started a Facebook Fan Page/Group and have no idea how to make this work for the brand and the customer. Alternatively they have opted not to have a social media presence at all. But no presence creates a void that will in all likelihood be filled, whether a brand likes it or not. A new study released by enterprise wiki provider Wetpaint and the Altimeter Group shows that the brands most engaged in social media are also experiencing higher financial success rates than those of their non-engaged peers. Those brands that were the most engaged saw their revenue grow over the past year by 18% while the least engaged brands saw losses of negative 6%. More facts: Rice University's Jones Graduate School of Business conducted a survey recently and documented the first evidence to support the concept that Facebook Fan Pages are an effective way to market. If a brand embraces the power of social media then it’s not about finding free tools or hiring an intern to handle the company’s most important presence (social media). It’s about adopting the right resources and professionals to create a holistic approach; leveraging all media and not comparing the cost of social media versus other media. Rather appreciate the value of the space - if done right, you’ll get what you pay for. ©2010 Popimedia on Social | PostNet Suite 366, Private Bag X1, Melrose Arch 2076

Facebook - cost per click (CPC) vs cost per thousand impressions (CPM)- who wins?

There are a lot of people newly entering the fray to sell advertising space on Facebook and as social media specialists assisting many South African and global companies to enter the social media space, we'd like to tell you what works best in this space.

Facebook ads can be targeted to users based on various criteria; amongst others; age demographic; gender; key words and networks. Facebook operates using the “Search” model of selling advertising space, which relies on the bidding system. Therefore the greater the value you attribute to your ad the better your chances of out bidding another ad vying for the same placement.

The Search model is part and parcel of Cost-Per-Thousand Impressions (CPM) and/or Cost-Per-Click (CPC).

Cost-Per-Thousand Impressions (CPM)

CPM pricing is defined as a cost attributed to every 1000 impressions your ad will have on a website. The CPM model is used by most content web portals, whereby you buy X number of impressions for X Rand over X period of time and you do not have to bid for preferential placement thereby guaranteeing the exact number of impressions over the period (That is of course assuming that the web portal has enough impressions and unique visitors to serve those impressions too.)

The Search CPM model is similar but different! This model was actively promoted by the big portals such as Yahoo and AOL. It was a great guaranteed revenue generator for them that had the added bonus of being largely risk free (for them). That is, the client did all the creative work and made the payments while the only thing the web portals had to do was display the ad as often as they could until the advertiser's budget was exhausted. No guarantees are made in respect of the number of impressions served as it is the value you attribute to your ad as well as the popularity thereof that will determine this and this is at the discretion of the web portal.

It's this one-sided nature of both the Search CPM and content web portals CPM models that has pushed clients (marketing and advertising departments) to seek an alternative that can offer them some sort of guarantee of performance and a better return on investment (ROI).

Cost-Per-Click (CPC)

CPC sometimes called Pay-Per-Click (PPC) involves risk from the media owner's side in that they are only paid for every click on the ad. This forces them to ensure that the ad is relevant to what is being offered so that it has a good chance of turning into an action (click). At the same time, the client takes on the responsibility of displaying the ad in appropriate places and multiple times so that it will receive clicks. No clicks, no revenue. It's a very simple formula for both sides.

Search CPC is the same thing, however, you will have to bid to attribute a value to your click which would otherwise be an agreed fee with a content web portal. In this case the media owner needs to also take into account the quality of such placements ensuring that ads are actually relevant and have a high chance of a click.

This sharing of risk and the simplicity in measuring performance is why Search CPC and CPC have become so popular. It has been so wildly successful that Google (using Search CPC) generates most of its billions in revenue by playing the middleman between advertisers and media owners. In the case of the ads on the search engine results, Google actually is the publisher. An entire industry has sprung up around this model where big name companies' pay search engine marketers to handle their advertising campaigns. These CPC campaigns are so successful that there has been a measurable shift in advertising spend with more and more going toward the online world.

It is a well known fact that online ads do not get immediate responses the first time a user sees it much like one does not react to a TV advert immediately. Users have to see an advert multiple times in order to get them to action (click) the ad. A Search CPM model used to create multiple impressions would require very deep pockets to pay for a significant number of impressions to justify a reasonable ROI. 100% of the risk would be with you the advertiser. However, on a CPC basis, you only pay for the click, so you are guaranteed the multiple impressions and on Facebook this amounts to millions of impressions!

By way of example -

Search CPM and CPM is tantamount to saying to the web portal - “here is R5000, spend it wisely!” Search CPC and CPC, on the other hand, is tantamount to saying to the web portal - “here is R5000, if you want it, go work for it!”

How revenues effect business models and offerings?

The CPM (not Search CPM) model is the only model most content web portals offer as it would not be financially viable for them to offer CPC. The simple reason for this is due to the fact that these small web portals don't have the critical mass traffic required for them to rely on CPC alone from a revenue perspective. At a few cents; Rands or Dollars per click, no small web portal would make money.

Facebook on the other hand, offers a Search CPM model as this is a good business offering from their revenue perspective, however with over 200 million users around the world growing at a rate of five million people per week - they do not need to rely on the Search CPM model for revenues, and therefore offer the Search CPC model too as this is more attractive to the client.

As Facebook has critical mass traffic they are able to serve as many ads as possible, to your desired target audience, in order to convert the clicks into revenue. Utilising the Search CPC model on Facebook ensures millions of impressions in a short space of time which guarantees ROI and ensures that they work for their money!

What next?

As clients get more familiar with what works online and what does not and with ever increasing options for placement, a few more models have come to the fore with exciting prospects for marketers:

1. Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA): Affiliate marketing has expanded and today's technology is pushing the length that media owners are willing to go to prove that their offering actually works. In this case the advertiser calculates what the cost of acquisition is (the cost of obtaining a new lead or converting that lead into a sale). They can then understand what they should be willing to pay for a lead. It should be stressed though that CPA although fairly new to some, should currently form part of any online campaign's metric in order to quantify ROI.


2. Cost-Per-Call (CPT): With technologies such as Skype, a click can effectively mean a call from the prospects computer directly to the clients sales call centre. Click fraud now becomes a thing of the past, and clients are only paying for genuine sales leads.


3. Stay tuned to Popimedia who has launched South Africa's first homegrown CPC model in the form of FrogsLuck.com.