Posts Tagged ‘Facebook’

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Facebook Advertising Guidelines.

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

With the rise of Facebook, advertising on the platform is bound to become a major marketing tool. The sheer number of users on the site has so far made the ad model a very lucrative option for marketers. The ROIs are comparatively higher than any other advertising platform and, thus, a good bet.

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Facebook Ads

Numerical Advantage

With near 600 million users to target from, Facebook provides for a very large collection of interested audience. Along with a very precise targeting tool, this interested audience could be easily and effectively engaged by a brand. All one needs to do is feed the desired set of combinations and Facebook does the rest. With past experience, it can be said that a budget as low as Rs. 20,000 can get an audience of about 3000 and total impression going as high as 60, 00,000 (In normal CPM language, it is Rs. 3.84). That is a lot of viewing for an advertisement.

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Facebook Advertising Targeting

Hence, keeping in mind the benefits that can be derived from Facebook Advertising, it is very important that we are aware of what are the basic guidelines of the same. The following guidelines apply to all adverts appearing on Facebook, including adverts within canvas pages of Facebook Platform applications.

The Basic Guidelines for Facebook Advertising

Facebook reserves the right to reject or remove advertising that they deem contrary to their advertising philosophy. These guidelines are subject to change at any time and Facebook may waive any of these guidelines at its discretion.

Following these basic do’s and don’ts would help us put up better advertisements quickly and easily.

Do’s:

1. Link the Adverts that contain a URL or domain in the body to that same URL or domain.

2. Clearly represent the company, product or brand that is being advertised

3. Products or services promoted in the advert must be directly available on the landing page

4. Target adverts with adult themes, including contraception, sex education and health conditions to individuals at least 18 years old. Platform adverts should do this via demographic restrictions, not by obtaining user data.

5. All ads must comply to the legal standards of the region it has to be displayed in

6. All intellectual property right should be with the advertiser.

Don’ts:

1. Do not use multiple Facebook accounts for advertising purposes unless given permission by Facebook to do so.

2. Do not automate the creation of accounts or adverts unless given permission by Facebook to do so.

3. Do not put unsubstantiated claims, including but not limited to prices, discounts or product availability.

4. Do not insult, harass or threaten a user or put audio that plays automatically, without a user’s interaction. Any automated animation must cease after 15 seconds and must not replay.

5. Do not use "fake" close behaviour (ie. when a user clicks the ‘close’ icon on the page, the page should close down and no other behaviour should result) on the landing page

6. Do not utilize "mouse trapping" whereby the advertiser does not allow users to use their browser "back button" and traps them on their site and/or present any other unexpected behaviour (for example, navigation to another advert or page).

7. Do not ask to submit Personally Identifiable Information (such as name, date of birth, phone numbers, social security number, physical addresses or email addresses) on the landing page or in the advert, except to enable an ecommerce transaction and where the advert and landing page clearly indicate that a product is being sold.

8. Do not imply any endorsement of the product, service or advert destination by Facebook or should mention that Facebook endorses the ad or the product.

9. Adverts on controversial topics, products or prohibited content shall not be allowed

10. All targeting should be in line with the laws of the country the advert is being targeted and not violate any copyrights.

We hope these simple guidelines gives you an insight to how Facebook Advertising works and what are the promotions you can do and which one you have to avoid.

You can also read more about Facebook Advertising in one of our earlier post, Advertising Goes Social. 

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Posted in Brand Promotion, Facebook, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Target Audience | 4 Comments »

Advertising goes social

Thursday, January 20th, 2011

Looking to make your Facebook promotions more effective? Facebook advertising, thanks to its highly targeted nature, can be one of the most effective ways for you to kick-start your promotion and ensure its success. In a recent survey, it has been found that Facebook Advertisement is the number one way of informing potential fans about your page and promotions running on your page.

What it holds?

Facebook advertising is still a relatively new offering and marketers are just beginning to understand how to use these advertisements most effectively. Like any other advertising, Facebook ads also target people in order to get them to react to the communication and visit the brand’s Facebook page. Where Facebook ads score above the other form of advertising is that it is more personal, more flexible and almost always comes with a friend’s recommendation.

Why Facebook Ads should be used?

Facebook is about relationship marketing, not direct sales. Facebook Ads can help transform existing advertising into messages that are tailored to the individual user based on how their friends interact and affiliate with the brands, music artists, and businesses they care about.

More importantly, Facebook Ads give the brand a borrowed voice of a friend which can help build a long lasting relationship for the brand.

Where You Find them?

When users log on to Facebook for the first time in a while, they will see the most important stories that they missed while they were away. This is where Engagement ads are posted and get the maximum eyeballs since there is no other ad on the page.

Engagement ads

Engagement ads are above-the-fold home page ads that integrate naturally within the user’s experience. Engagement ads appear in the right-hand column and can generate social stories in Feed. The ads allow your brand to share and connect with users on the home page. These ads are generally floated by a Facebook Media Buying agency.

Since there is a premium attached to these ads, a lot of smaller organizations opt for self serve ads.

Rest-of-site Ad/ Self Serve Ads

Facebook rest-of-site ads appear throughout the site, but not on the home page. Facebook rest-of-site ads for Pages and Events allow users to engage with ads in the same way they interact with other content on Facebook without leaving the page they’re viewing. Actions taken within the ad can generate organic stories in friends’ home pages. These ads can be developed and posted by anyone.

How they look?

The Facebook Ads give the advertiser the options of generating different types of ads based on the feature integrated in the ads.

Video Comment Engagement Ad

Watch video and comment. The ad unit allows users to leave inline comments on the video without leaving the home page. What’s more, users can also like the brand inline, without interrupting the video.

Event Engagement Ad

RSVP and invite others to join. The ad unit expands to invite friends to the event when one of the 3 RSVP options are selected. Friends who are attending the event are listed within the ad unit, as well as the total number of Facebook attendees. This increases the trust and likelihood of the user to engage in the ad. The act of RSVP-ing to the event is public and may appear in friends’ home pages. After RSVP-ing to the event, the user has the option to like the brand.*

Like Engagement Ad

If the user’s friends already like the brand, the ad unit provides relevant social context. This endorsement increases both the user’s trust in the brand and the likelihood that the user will engage with the ad unit and like the brand themselves. If none of the user’s friends currently like the brand, the ad unit displays the total number of people who like the brand at that time.

Poll Engagement Ad

Answer a poll and see how others voted. The ad unit asks a question with 2 or 3 responses. When the user selects a response, the poll results appear. These results reflect the answers of all Facebook users who have answered the poll. The user can also click to see how their friends voted or like the brand.*

Facebook’s Ad revenue hit $1.86B in 2010. Worldwide spending on social networks is expected to rise 71.6% in year 2011 to $5.97 billion, of which $4 billion will be spent just on Facebook Ads!!! This surely is a very potent medium which has great scope of growing to one of the biggest medium.

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Posted in Facebook, Social Media, Social Media Marketing | 5 Comments »

The virtual world gets a new currency

Wednesday, January 5th, 2011

It is often said that if Facebook was a country, it would be the third largest country in terms of population behind China and India. For a country of this size, it is but natural to have a currency of its own. No wonder, Facebook Credits are fast becoming the dollar equivalent in the virtual world.

The new world economy

Facebook Credits are a virtual currency that users can use to buy virtual goods in many games and apps on the Facebook platform. Currently users can use Facebook Credits to purchase premium items in popular games and apps like CityVille, FarmVille, Cafe World, EA Sports FIFA Superstars etc.

The new banking system

You can purchase Facebook Credits using your credit card, PayPal, or a mobile phone. The Facebook Games Dashboards displays your available balance. You can directly purchase credits from the dashboards also. A lot of games also have the option to let you purchase directly.

The goal with Facebook Credits is to give people that use Facebook an easy, convenient and trusted way to buy premium items in games and applications, while creating unique opportunities for developers to build successful, sustainable businesses. Facebook Credits are now used in more than 200 games and applications on Facebook from more than 75 developers.

The global impact

What this means is, with more than 500,000 applications on Facebook, and millions of virtual goods within those applications (particularly games), applications have become an increasingly valuable part of the user experience. And Facebook Credits is the currency that makes purchasing these virtual items across applications possible in a fast and simple manner.

Generally it’s free to play the games on Facebook but users can get ahead if they pump in actual money to buy virtual goods. With 200 million people playing games on Facebook every month, according to the site’s own figures, it only takes a small proportion of paying customers to generate healthy revenue.

With the likes of Zynga, the biggest social game company and developers of Cityville and Farmville, signing to deal in Facebook Credits in their games, it has cemented Facebook Credits economic strength. Industry estimates say that Zynga has brought in between $500 million to $700 million in revenue this year from the sale of virtual goods. That is a lot of money spent in a virtual world. And if Zynga is to make Facebook Credits as its official currency for these games, Facebook Credits can soon become the desired currency world over.

Emerging Trend

This has already led to Facebook Credits debuting  in real world. Facebook began selling Facebook Credit gift cards at Target stores earlier this year, but with the holiday season approaching, it decided to land on the shelves of WalMart and Best Buy. Facebook Credits have been on store shelves from September 2010 and were ranked as one of the most desired holiday seasons gift.

Opportunity for engagement

With more and more people spending time on these games and purchasing virtual world gifts using the Facebook Credits, this could be good bait for brands to attract more fans to their pages. It is a given fact that a lot of people join brand pages for deals and offers. A lot of them join in order to win the contest run by these brands. While they are on these pages, these users are more active on the social games. With their favourite brands giving Facebook Credits as gifts for various contests that run on these brand pages will only make them more loyal fans of the page.

(source: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/study-reveals-why-consumers-fan-facebook-pages/)

Not only that, with Facebook Credits easily becoming available for users, brands can look at adopting FB Credits as a viable ecommerce solution on Facebook. Though this system is not yet in place, a real world and a virtual world economy tie up cannot be ruled out. Knowing that a certain amount of FB Credits are worth a specific amount, the same conversion can be used to sell real products through Facebook.

The idea may sound radical but the growth of Facebook has lead to many changes in the brick and mortar structure of our society. More and more people are becoming citizens of the Facebook country. It is not just an imagination that soon there would be a virtual world with real transactions happening with Facebook Credits.

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Posted in Facebook, Social Media, Social Media Marketing | 1 Comment »

Twitter to roll out official Analytics

Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

With Twitter almost ready to launch its analytics service by the end of the year, the market is already abuzz about the impact it will have on the Social Media Marketing scene.

The social networking giant recently announced that it has roped in a select group of users to carry out the testing of the product. It is believed that as of now, Twitter will be keeping this product, free of cost for its 197 million users.

With Social Media Marketing gaining a substantial space in the overall marketing mix, such a tool, which can give insights to a brand’s online efforts will be of great benefit. Not only will it help in deriving the results of a campaign, it will also, and more importantly, help in realigning the SMM campaign.

Tracking the Campaign

Since its launch, Twitter has seen almost every brand using it for promotion activity. Simple #tag contests and customer support have become major online activities. Brands like Starbucks, Dell Computers and Ford motors have thousands of followers on line. Closer home, brands like MTV, NDTV and Kingfisher have successfully engaged thousands of people in the most entertaining manner.

But till now, all the brands were either clueless about where there campaign or SMM efforts were heading or they were paying huge sum of money for getting insights through third party vendors. With the launch of Twitter Analytics, that too, free of cost that is all set to change.

Now, the brands will know exactly which of their tweets has helped them get more followers. Which tweet has caused disgruntle and what topics gets the maximum retweets. Not only that, with analytics available, online reputation management also becomes easier.


At a glance

With the new tool, Brands will have data such as 6-hour bar graph to show mentions, follows, unfollows and retweets that the campaign has generated. Also, it allows you to categories and filter tweets into different groups such as “best,” “good” and ”all.”


The Impact

It is surprising that something that can help Brands so much should be offered at no cost. The rationale behind this seems to be that businesses are more likely to stick with Twitter if detailed statistics are made available to every user, helping them measure and improve upon the effectiveness of their marketing efforts and justify the effort needed to continually update a Twitter feed.

Also, though tracking social media is big business, the news that Twitter is set to enter the ring with a free product of its own may come as a bad news for third party providers.

It would be worth noting that while brands may not be able to make an exact impact on the sales figure through the tool, it will surely help them in becoming more in sync with their audience.

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Posted in Social Media | 2 Comments »

New Facebook Groups to define your social existance.

Friday, October 15th, 2010

Exclusivity was a promise that Facebook had started with. With the passage of time and with 500 million plus users, that exclusivity had somehow got lost. People were weary of bothering everyone they knew for queries that may not be relevant to most of them. To address this concern, Facebook launched the latest version of Groups.

Earlier people didn’t do much on groups but to post comments and view pictures or share videos. There was no direct communications amongst all the members of the group. Also, the administration of the group was in the hands of select few people, which was a powerful position because they could message the members directly. In short, the groups were not an integral part of the Facebook universe earlier.

With the latest version, that’s exactly what Facebook Groups has attempted to do, become as integral to Facebook as Facebook Pages. Amongst the few key changes that have happened, the most significant is that the administration of the group has moved from select few to every individual. This is done with a desire to develop groups as a real-world group where everyone is participating towards building something more productive. Now, each post sends a notification to all the group members unless the members opt out of the notification process. This rids the group member of the doubt about if their post has been noticed or not.

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The new version of Groups will also allow Group Chats that will enable real time IM conversations between the group members. This one tool has the potential of taking the Groups to the next level for business purpose. With real time communication possible, people and more importantly brands can engage in closed group surveys, focused group discussions and even internal communications. Also, the group mail facility makes it easier to communicate with the members when someone is away.

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Another little addition to Facebook groups is the Docs feature that allows the members to post “Docs” with minor amount of markups such as bold, italics and lists. The docs can be revised and each revision goes into the history, which users can navigate back through.

Click on the Image for enlarged view

With new Groups being released with a mobile interface and an Open Graph API, Facebook Groups will be accessible in all imaginable capacities, helping it reach more people in real time, thus making it more viable for business purposes.
What this means for businesses is that while Facebook Pages are useful for defining our commercial affiliations, Facebook Groups help define who we are socially. These would mean a more easy and more upfront interaction with the stakeholders, which can be leveraged to conduct Focused Group Discussions, Closed Group Surveys, addressing product complaints and even managing internal HR issues.

Between group chat, docs, and an eventual Groups developer platform, Facebook is aiming to become a more significant communications and collaboration platform. There’s no doubt that smaller organizations could find the new groups product to be extremely useful and with more customer support even the bigger ones will soon join the bandwagon.

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Posted in Social Media | 4 Comments »

Six keep-in-minds while devising a social media strategy

Monday, April 5th, 2010

Having been in business development for a specialist social media agency for a fair amount of time, there are certain caveats we keep reminding clients of. This is probably because social media is unlike any other marketing medium including the sir-please-try-our-website-since-the-model-is-very-different, which is at the end of the day, just a different form of display advertising.

So six caveats I’d like to give clients, agencies and social media enthusiasts or planners are…

1. What’s so great about you anyway?

While a statement like that is suicide as far as an agency is concerned, reflect on what it means. What IS so great about your brand that would make people want to put off watching pirated IPL videos on YouTube, stop chatting on GTalk with an old friend, stop scouring social networking sites for random profiles to make ‘franship’ with… And come talk about your brand? Now that I’ve put this question in perspective, it doesn’t seem as offensive, does it?

Let me put it this way: Look around you and search for a brand you have no professional affiliation to. Why would you become a fan voluntarily of that brand? Your answer to this will help you answer what your own brand should be doing on social media.

2. Great, you’ve got your fans. Now what?

In the craze to have a ‘presence’ on Facebook, companies often resort to buying fans, using FB ads. That in itself is not an evil thing, but what a brand needs to be clear on is what to do with these fans. We’ve seen many fan pages which the marketing team of companies opened frenetically, paid a sufficient amount to get 500 fans, post a few current-campaign-related updates, and then, once the campaign and budgets are over, lies inactive. What happens of the fans? Think of it this way: fans have, on their own volition, chosen to become fans of a brand. Which is as good as a footfall. And just like a footfall, you can never ignore a fan of a fan page.

3. Not everything’s for everyone

Telling a brand manager that a blog is not right for his brand is like finally telling your girlfriend that you’re not the right person for her. OK, almost. But you know what I mean. The ease with which social media platforms can be activated leads many to believe that their brand should be everywhere. Wrong. A presence on Twitter, a blog or even a FB fan page is a long-term effort. If your brand is in it for the ‘wham bam, thank you ma’am’ equivalent on social media, a quick application and some FB ads is what you should be looking at.

4. Time lagega, boss!

It is unrealistic to expect something like 1000 followers, fans or subscribers to get to your page in one or two months. Social media growth should be organic and growth will be exponential in nature. Which means, the first few months may have very few people coming in. But after that it’s like compounding. Think of it this way. A personal blog starts off with five loyal readers coerced to reading it (the industry equivalent being co-workers and your agency!) before merit alone decides whether more people start coming in on their own. It’s pretty much the same thing for your fan page, corporate blog or Twitter page.

5. Can you pass the cricket score test?

I’ve mentioned this before. But it needs to emphasised again. People are online to surf porn, plant virtual strawberries, chat with friends, check the latest gossip, read their friends’ blogs and most importantly in India, check cricket scores. The Cricket Score Test is what I call the process of someone actually deviating from this schedule, distracted by something else. Why do I say this? Because this is the same guy you’re trying to convince to play your application. Or read your corporate blog on your latest AGM. Or follow your Twitter handle of 3 updates. You get my drift, I hope. Remember, buying out fans is the only shortcut you can take. Then what?

6. Never attempt policing

It’s a free, democratic medium. It’s open. People can say anything they want, there is no point trying to suppress them, you’re only going to get lots of backlash. Anyone who followed the Nestle episode will know what I’m talking about. For a quick guide on what NOT to do on a Facebook page, click here.
And so there you have it. A few keep-in-minds for social media. All points are fairly debatable (That was the intention, honestly) and I look forward to your feedback on the comments.

Oh, and I blog here.

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Posted in Social Media Marketing | 3 Comments »

Making a branded Facebook fan page

Saturday, March 13th, 2010

Facebook fan pages work. From every movie releasing on the next Friday to Reality Show going on in the television, everyone wants a fan page. As my dear friend Saahil would say, it is all a part of the engagement plan 🙂 . However, these days fan pages tend to do a lot more than just send out their updates to the fans and let the users talk amongst themselves. People have gone up to the extent of creating a full micro-site within the fan-page. Check this Puma fan-page for instance.

Getting a very well branded fan page is a little bit of work (It is as good as getting a micro-site done) for sure, but getting a basic beautiful fan page with a landing tab other than the wall tab is not so difficult. I am not a master at making a super cool fan pages but here are some small tips which will help you make a fan page which won’t look the same as  other fan pages. Please try not to pay people for making some cool tabs for your fan page if it is not super intensive page. If you really wan’t to pay, try paying me 🙂 :).

Step#1 : Add the static FBML Application to your fan page. It is available here.

Static FBML application

  • Step#2 : When you click on the Add to my page link, you get a pop-up like the one shown below

    Choosing the page to add static FBML tab to

  • Step#3 : Now that you have added the staic FBML , you can now create a custom tab in your facebook fan page.

  • Step# 4 : Now that you have added the static FBML, go and edit your FBML tab.

Edit Facebook Fan Page

  • Step # 5 : Now that you are editing the fan page, you need get to see the list of applications including the Static FBML application, you just added as shown below.

Editing Applications Facebook Fan Page

  • Step#6 : Now click on editing the Static FBML page and you see the window shown below. Edit the Box title to what you want the tab to be named.
  • Step#7: The problem now is how to write the FBML script. Actually, writing FBML is very similar to writing HTML and hence you need help. Okay, I admit you need to learn that. However, I will provide a couple of ready to go scripts which i wrote once i read a little bit of FBML today.(A 10 min reading will do.)
  1. A small piece of code to open a tab to invite friends is here.

The small FBML required is:

<fb:request-form
method=”post”
action=”microreviewsorg?ref=ts”
type=”Microreviews.org”
invite=”true”
content=”Microreviews<fb:req-choice url=’PAGE URL’ ‘ label=’GO’ /> “>

<fb:multi-friend-selector actiontext=”Invite Your Friends to Microreviews” rows=”3″ showborder=”true” />
</fb:request-form>

  • Make sure you replace the http://microreviews.org with your web page’s URL

To Change the default landing tab to your newly made Static FBML page, you just need to click on the settings link available on the fan page for an admin and change the default landing tab. This doesnot show up for admin and so ask your friend or logout and check if the default landing tab setting is working. Check the image below.

Changing the Default Landing Tab on a Facebook Fan page

In the next post, I will discuss how you can make some commonly used tabs like Flickr, Youtube Channel, Twitter etc.

I hope you like this post. Please let me know your suggestions.

  • Find me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google Buzz.
  • This is a repost from Microreviews.org.
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    Posted in Social Media | 1 Comment »

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