Social media has become the buzz in marketing circles these days. The big hairy elephant in the room is Facebook. Corporations have slowly warmed up to FB usage. You will find some who have thrived, creating a loyal following of fans. Others have scant information that redirect to their web site. Is Facebook good for marketing of corporations or is it just the latest fad that will fade into the sunset at the end of the day?

A new way to get the word out – through your customers

Web sites have been the message bearer for corporations for 15 years. The new online brochure is social networking. But here is the twist; the message comes from the grass roots (customers) and not from the executive wing of the corporation. The great thing about social networking sites is it gives power to the people. You need to get comfortable with the grizzly details of Facebook. Anyone who has an account and an opinion can comment on an open corporate site. That is good news if you are great at providing superior products and services and have outstanding customer service. However, if your company struggles in these areas, Facebook can come back to bite you. For instance, do you know the first restaurant with over 1 million fans? It was Chick-fil-A. They put their menu on Facebook and allowed viewers to post comments about their food. Chick-fil-A consistently rates high in being very good at customer service and great community supporters. This is the very thing that their customers feel compelled to talk about on their Facebook pages. Chick-fil-A crossed the 1 million fan threshold in August 2009. On the other hand, Best Buy and J.C. Penney's Facebook pages are filled with complaints and angst over poor customer service and shoddy products. They have scores of fans complaining about the company so the world can read it. If you are going to be on FB, you need to come up with a plan to handle the complaints.

Brand Marketing on FB

What are you trying to get out of your marketing efforts? If you have a branded product, Facebook can help you enhance that brand. In 2010, the top five corporate sites in terms of "likes” were food and beverage related.

-       13 of the top 25 were either candy, a beverage product or a restaurant chain

-       6 were clothing related (from shoes to lingerie)

-       2 were e-game related (PlayStation and Xbox)

-       1 each in the general entertainment division for Disney, MTV, iTunes, and the NBA.

Part of the trick in getting "likes” is to put out a marketing campaign centered around the brand. For instance, the NBA has a  page that lets fans comment on highlight videos, players, games, etc. They also have an apparel page, as well as lots of links to other pages. Of the major sports, they are the dominator in terms of likes (over 9 million compared to the NFL, who has 1/3 this amount.) They have created a forum for fan comments around their brand.

Another good example of brand interaction is the candy, Skittles. Skittles has hung its marketing efforts on outlandish video commercials. They offer a contest on their Facebook page called "Rainbro of the Week.” Fans come up with photos which are judged weekly and then added as a Profile Picture. They also have a lot of video commercials. The site is designed to get a lot of interaction from viewers. They are encouraged to "like” the page. It works. Skittles has over 17 million likes on their Facebook page.

Introduce new ideas

Another plus for Facebook is the speed in which information can get to your target market. Don’t ever downplay the power of getting information first. The first to know is a very powerful force in business. Letting your Facebook fans in on your latest and greatest innovations is a smart marketing ploy to create buzz around a product launch, a new app for use on a smart phone, etc. Apple has done this time and again with apps for the iPhone. Their fans eat this up.

Measuring Interactions

If you are the administrator for your corporate Facebook account, you have access to the Interactions on the site. This charts the number of people who have "liked” the posts you put on the site. It also tracks any comments people have made on your posts, any discussions or reviews that have happened on the site. Depending upon your goals for the page, you will want to handle these statistics in different ways. The statistic we put more weight on than any other is Post Views. This is driven by people actually viewing a specific post. They do not have to become a "fan” of the site or "like” the post. They do not have to leave a comment. Most of the businesses we deal with do not have an engaging video to share every night (like the NBA), nor are they emboldened to be as out there as Skittles is with their ads. When we put up a FB post, it may describe a new product the company is offering. It might be a press release about opening a new division of the company. What we have found is that more people feel comfortable viewing a post on a corporate Facebook page than feel comfortable leaving a comment. We want to capture the data that our posts have been viewed.

Another plus for Facebook is the way they can slice up demographics. If you are interested in placing an ad with them, you can hone in on your target market. For instance, if you wanted to sell a product to men over 50 years of age who lived in Orlando, Florida, Facebook can tell you how many users fit this demographic and send your ad specifically to them. Facebook ads are limited in size and the length of the message. A smart use of these ads is to link back to a landing page that has all the details you cannot fit onto the FB ad.

Corporate Facebook accounts are going to evolve as social media collides with traditional business. What business leaders are waking up to is the huge potential of an online network that has more users than the population of all but three countries in the world. If used properly, marketing on FB becomes gold. Make a mistake and most of the population of planet earth is leaving comments about it in real time.

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28 Brand Facebook Pages with the Most Likes Corporate Eye.com, October 26, 2010 http://www.corporate-eye.com/blog/2010/10/28-brand-facebook-pages-with-the-most-likes

Corporate America Top 50 FaceBook Pages 2009, RE Tech World http://retechworld.wordpress.com/2009/12/23/corporate-america-top-50-facebook-pages