Converge Weekly

A large and growing portion of some of the most valuable demographics are spending more of their time and attention on Facebook and less on other channels and media. Not only are US college students and teenagers fully engaged in Facebook, but adults, professionals, and people from around the world now constitute a substantial portion of the Facebook userbase as well.

Facebook offers many ways to get the word out and bring the people in. Here’s how to get started.

For the aggressive guerilla marketer, Facebook offers a bevy of viral channels to get the word out to your friends and creatively reach your target audience. The best part about these guerilla tactics is their cost: $free. Everyone on Facebook can use these strategies to recruit and evangelize their causes.

I. Tools for Guerilla Marketers

For the aggressive guerilla marketer, Facebook offers a bevy of viral channels to get the word out to your friends and creatively reach your target audience. The best part about these guerilla tactics is their cost: $free. Everyone on Facebook can use these strategies to recruit and evangelize their causes.

1. Profile Page

The starting point for your presence on Facebook is your profile page. Your profile page is basically a landing page that you design in order to convert your friends to engage with certain parts of your identity.

Not only is your profile the page that you have the most control over, it’s the place where you can most deeply and authentically express your passion for the brand, company, or product you want to promote. Your profile page is an opportunity to craft a credible real-world story around the reasons your products or services are so valuable.

2. Facebook Groups

Groups are oldest and simplest way to build community around your brand or company on Facebook. By starting a group, you create a central place for customers, partners, and friends to participate in conversations around your brand. Facebook groups come with boards for posting discussion topics, photos, videos, and links right out of the box. You can also easily send news and updates to your group members as often as you like – messages arrive in their Facebook Inbox. And the best part about Groups is you can create as many as you like for free.

Groups are one of the simplest ways to do viral marketing on Facebook. Once members have joined your group, they can easily invite their friends to join the group via a built-in Invite feature.

3. Facebook Pages

Pages were launched by Facebook in November 2007 as a way for businesses of many types to easily establish a brand presence on Facebook. Pages are a lot like groups, with some important differences:

• Pages are more customizable than groups. You can add HTML, Flash, or even Facebook applications to your pages to extend their functionality and the depth of experience users can have with your brand.

• Pages get more prominent “Bumper Stickers” real estate than groups on the profile pages of your fans.

• There is no limitation to the number of fans in your group that you can message.

• “Fans” who join your group are NOT able to invite their friends to be fans of your Page. Fans must either “Share” your page with their friends, or their friends must observe that they “are a fan” of your Page either via their profile page or News Feed.

• Facebook has taken an active role in cracking down on Pages not created by authorized agents.

4. Facebook Events

Facebook Events is a free application developed by Facebook that anyone can use to promote marketing events, sponsored parties, or even product launches, transactions, or company milestones.

When you create an event, it gets a fully-featured page, much like a group, that includes a wall, discussion, photos, videos, and links. You can invite all of your friends to the event; friends you invite will receive a special notification requesting their RSVP. You can also add admins to the event, who can also invite all of their friends.

Facebook Events makes it easy to get the word out to hundreds of people, manage your guest list, and build community around your upcoming event.

5. Facebook Notes and Photos

Notes and Photos are two Facebook applications that allow you to share blog posts and pictures with your friends. You can use these features to post content about your brand, but be careful to always do it authentically – don’t be spammy. If your photo albums are all company logos, for example, you’ll lose a lot of credibility.

One feature that often goes overlooked within Facebook Notes and Photos is “tagging.” When you publish a note or post a photo, Facebook allows you to “tag” that note or photo with the names of your friends who are “included” in it. When you “tag” a friend in your photo or note, he/she gets a special notification.

6. Facebook Messages

The rise of Facebook Messages as a popular alternative to email has confused many “old” people. Nevertheless, Messages can be a powerful vehicle for targeted marketing on Facebook.

Messages are like email, except a lot less fully featured – Facebook offers no way to search, sort, filter, categorize, or star messages. While Facebook’s default privacy settings prevent you from seeing the full profile page of most Facebook users, Facebook allows you to send messages to users you have no connection with.

7. Facebook Marketplace

Marketplace is Facebook’s classifieds listing service. You can post a for-sale ad or wanted ad in any of your networks for free. However, if you want to post your ad in multiple networks, you have to pay $1 per network per listing.

Like with messages, spamming up the Marketplace will get your account deleted and your ads removed. It’s most likely not worth your time to try to evade their systems.

8. Facebook Share / Posted Items

Facebook Share is a Facebook application that lets you promote any Group, Event, Photo, Link, or Application you come across by a) giving it real estate in your “Posted Items” list on your profile page, or b) sending it directly to your friends’ Inbox.

By posting it on your profile page, you can direct some clicks to the shared item. However, while this is an effective promotional tactic, it’s not as targeted as sending it directly to friends’ Inboxes. Those messages are more likely to convert into valuable clicks.

9. Facebook Networks

Facebook Networks are like group pages for everyone who’s a member of an Educational, Work, or Geographical network. While no Facebook members “own” any pieces of network pages, network pages offer 1) another way for users to discover events, posted items, and marketplace listings, and 2) discussion forums and walls which any members can post to.

Network pages are probably the most commonly accepted places to spam in Facebook. While you can post there, keep in mind that your messages may be considered spammy even if they’re real and relevant.

10. Mini Feed and News Feed

While you’re not able to publish directly to the feeds (unless you’re willing to pay or build an application), Facebook’s Mini Feed and News Feed archive your users’ engagement with your brand and syndicate it to their friends, networks, and beyond, amplifying the reach of your campaign by orders of magnitude.

When Facebook users join your group, RSVP to your event, become fans of your page, share your photos, or further engage with your brand in any of these channels, Facebook automatically adds a feed item to their Mini Feed. That feed item exists for all to see, and is often in a prominent location on Facebook profile pages. Facebook’s News Feed, which occupies most of the login landing page, then amalgamates each user’s friends’ Mini Feeds into one unified stream of “recent news”. It’s possible that one Mini Feed item generated by a Facebook user could be seen in hundreds of their friends’ News Feeds.

Report Credit:

Amal Jafri, Assistant Brand Manager – Flora

Unilever Pakistan

You can read Part 2 here