The Gong Show - Latest Comments in Facebook Fan Pages

Re: Facebook Fan Pages

jpmarcum — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:01:53 -0000

RE: ShakeShack - please, please hop on that cholesterol grenade and save me from myself - I need to shift my focus and become the mayor of Chopt... but then again a cone is sounding pretty good right now and it's right across the street...

I don't think it's a matter of FB engendering all that brand love but rather being a great environment to capture/encourage it - to elaborate (forgive the length here, have obviously been looking at this a bit):

1. FB users are always sharing interests and lots of those interests already involve brands. If a fan page/stream allows a brand to spark a conversation with a fan that otherwise wouldn't occur and do it unobtrusively that's a huge win and not possible via coke.com. It's great conversational marketing and FB is where the world's conversation is mostly taking place.

2. People like belonging to clubs/showing affinity/displaying loyalty. This is Marketing 101, of course but in the case of Coke and others they've made the brand extremely accessible through FB. It's sugar-water for pete's sake and they've got 3.7MM people joining their club! Even if they're preaching to the choir they're keeping them coming to church. Also, worth noting, FB provides a better environment for this than Twitter - far more whistles and bells that go with being a fan (Invite your friends, post on the brand's wall) vs. just following someone.

3. While I agree with another comment that the FB page tools suck - they do - I would argue that (in addition to the audience size) the standardized display and ability to include videos/images outweighs the downsides here. I'm a big fan of Twitter but a big product image does more for brand-building than a bit.ly link.

4. Finally, increasingly marketers are buying media offline to drive traffic to their FB pages. I saw a Mohegan Sun billboard on I-95 promoting their FB page, asked friends for some other examples and apparently Absolut Vodka, Vitamin Water and JetBlue have all run campaigns. While this suggests that they see a lot of value in this (and they've hopefully looked at the ROI far more closely than I have) it also indicates a HUGE win for FB. It's a trick right out of Yahoo's playbook and more evidence of FB's increasingly dominant position online. (I was at YHOO when Terry Semel didn't close on FB for $1.1B - oops!)

Re: Facebook Fan Pages

andrewparker — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:07:18 -0000

"considering that Facebook practically is the internet these days with a
supposed 1 in 4 internet page views, brands need to have some presence
there." <---- I think this is spot on. Perhaps I should just consider
these pages to be on a different internet, and not at all redundant to their
own domains.

Re: Facebook Fan Pages

andrewparker — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:46:38 -0000

PS, I hope your major-ousting burger was extra tasty yesterday. When the
rain breaks, I'm gonna storm your drawbridge and reclaim my throne ;)

Re: Facebook Fan Pages

andrewparker — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:46:36 -0000

I like the coke example, but did Facebook engender all that brand
love/participation for coke? Or, did the brand love/participation already
exist and Facebook is simply a measurement/output of it? I'm not sure which
is more true, probably some of both.

Re: Facebook Fan Pages

joemedved — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:04:29 -0000

With the disclosure that Buddy Media is a portfolio company, we've seen them launch a number of popular Facebook pages, such as http://www.facebook.com/Bud... and http://www.facebook.com/NHL. These sites have tens of thousands of users that are interacting with the brand's fanpages/apps and spreading brand messaging across their friend's pages.

You need a decent level of brand affinity for a Facebook fanpage to be very active, but considering that Facebook practically is the internet these days with a supposed 1 in 4 internet page views, brands need to have some presence there. Bringing your website into Facebook's environment and enabling interactions with your customer base, which is on Facebook in massive numbers, will become essential. Long term, even the most boring brand may see more activity on their own Facebook fan page than their proprietary website.

Re: Facebook Fan Pages

Ethan Bauley — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:59:57 -0000

You're right, they are not really solving any big problems

There's not really a differentiated value prop at all vs Twitter, x/c for the scale of the user base.

You can have some fun increasing "engagement" with conversation with fans. One issue is that it's pretty tough to build a fan base.

The admin/identity tools are incredibly weak.

I have worked on several, for celebrities and a 800k+ soft drink brand...it's a missed opp in general.

Lack of good API and data i/o hurts too. You can't automate cross-posting of content, etc

Re: Facebook Fan Pages

jpmarcum — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:19:48 -0000

Is there something specific you think they lack? From what I see they're pretty valuable. They give brands an opportunity to broadcast to their fans (updates appear in users' feeds) where most of them are spending their time online and allows enthusiasts to show their affinities. While Twitter allows for a similar approach, it lacks both the reach (my Mom, sister and niece are all on FB, none on Twitter) and standard rich media display of FB. As for examples, I think Coke would probably count their page as a win - over 3.7MM fans and consistent interaction (over 40 wall posts today, the last of which was 17 minutes ago). www.facebook.com/coke/

Re: Facebook Fan Pages

falicon — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:14:06 -0000

+1 to your confusion...I've never really understood the point of them either nor I have ever heard of a REALLY useful/successful one.