Facebook – 6 Brand Basics

In the last few months quite a few brands have started rolling out brand fan pages with the help of their agencies. Unfortunately it seems that many of these are missing some key elements. So we decided to make an easy list of 6 basic things that shouldn’t be missed on any fan page roll out.

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How to run your brand in the Social Media space

Social Media Marketing is the latest buzzword… and one of the fastest growing segments of online marketing. The value of good social media marketing is immense – direct consumer interaction creates brand evangelists and advocates.

While there are many success stories out there, few South African brands truly understand the medium and how to interact with their consumers inside of social spaces.

Here’s a brief overview of how to run a social campaign:

1. Planning

Planning is crucial, but gets the least amount of attention when brands consider marketing in social spaces. You need to figure out what spaces you’re going to populate, what content you are going to distribute, and what resources you are going to allocate.

Another important part of planning is to work out your goals and measurement tools upfront. This will ensure that at the end of the campaign you actually have some data that can tell you something and prepare you for the next campaign.

Planning is not just about ticking the right boxes, it’s about having clear intent and direction around the programme.

2. Creative Execution

Once you have selected the social networks that you are moving into, find out how customisable they are. Create Myspace skins, upload your logo to your Fan Page or create a custom landing page, skin your blog or brand your Twitter background. There are various ways to customise each of the different social networks and it is important that your brand is integrated and correctly shown on all of them.

3. Talking To Consumers

One thing most brands get wrong is that they fail to realise that social network marketing is vastly different to television advertising or print advertising. Remember, Social Media is not a broadcast medium. Consumers expect you to talk and act like them. This means that you need to be relevant and always available. Having the right resources is critical. It’s also critical that these resources have the time to monitor the networks and the authority to answer questions.

4. Incentives and Promotions

A leading global agency, Razorfish, recently published their annual feed report. One of the findings was that promotions and discounts were primary drivers of “friending” a brand for over a third of social networking users, and 44% of Twitter users. Knowing this, brands should set aside budget to keep the consumers incentivised to talk about the brands. Promotions should be used to drive both talk-ability and awareness.

5. Exit Strategy

One thing I have seen quite a lot of is the lack of exit strategy. Once your campaign or programme has ended, have you thought about how you are going to close down your various properties? Leaving consumers in an online brand limbo creates a negative impression.  The nature of search and SEO also lends itself to the fact that your old social profiles will be easily found via Google or Bing, and potential consumers could think negatively of a brand should they come across a space that hasn’t been updated in months.

Your exit strategy should include ways to close down the space but also keep the consumers happy and entertained.

Conclusion

Social media is unavoidable as a marketing tactic today. Be sure that you have a strategy and a plan in place before you jump in headfirst.

For more information feel free to contact us.