1. Facebook Photos
Facebook Photos are likely a much overlooked brand utility. In recent weeks, the social network has added a slew of photo enhancements that Page owners should become keen on.
Especially of note is the ability to upload hi-res photos up to 2048 pixels wide or high. In combination with the lightbox interface and the removal of pagination (all album photos appear on a single page), photos now really pop on the world’s largest social network.
For marketers and brands, these upgrades offer huge opportunity; you can now use Facebook’s magnified photo product to better engage brand fans. Take a look at Travelocity’s Facebook photos for a prime example of this strategy done right. The brand employs its iconic Roaming Gnome in photo spreads — that are then posted straight-away to Facebook — every chance it gets.
2. Online Focus Groups
Facebook recently introduced a New Groups feature for private, even secret, one-to-many communication channels. New Groups are like mini Facebooks — but with group chat and document uploading — which make them ripe for intelligent brands and marketers to employ to their advantage.
We’re not suggesting you run out and invite random Facebookers to join your group — that’s a terrible idea. But, we do see potential for several practical use cases, especially given that most social networkers call Facebook their online home.
Here’s a few that come to mind:
- Consumer Review Groups: Instead of hosting customer or product feedback sessions via your own tools, invite members to participate in private group sessions via the New Groups. It’s a win-win for both parties because participants will feel more at home in a familiar environment, which may make them more likely to participate and provide higher quality feedback. These groups won’t replace market research efforts (for bigger brands anyway), but they could help you glean insight in a much faster and more intimate fashion.
- Event Groups: If you host networking events, conferences or seminars, consider letting participants know prior to, or following, the event that you’ve created a group for further discussion.
- Live Chats: As noted above, New Groups feature group chat. Brands and marketers that maintain groups should consider inviting company figureheads to participate with customers and fans in live group chats. You could either schedule live chats or have a recognizable personality drop in unannounced.
Any marketers or brands employing these strategies need to remember to respect the online boundaries of Facebook members. As such, we’d recommend not inviting customers to join a group without their express permission.
Facebook Questions is another new product from the social network that can be molded into the perfect tool for brands and marketers.
The Q&A product lends itself to Page owners, who can respond to questions as their business (versus responding as an individual). Page administrators can also post questions directly to their Pages, with the activity also showing up in the News Feeds of your Facebook fans. Clearly, Questions can be a marketing tool for soliciting organized feedback in a way that also exposes the business to larger audiences, should fans post and share their answers.
4. Facebook Places
If your place of business has a physical store, then your job as a marketer is to improve foot traffic. Facebook Places is a potential digital tool for creating a tangible connection between your online profile and your offline venue.
Your goal, by and large, should be to inspire in-store customers to share the “I was here” message with a place checkin that gets distributed to their Facebook friends and posted to your Place Page. You’ll want to start by claiming your Place Page — one is automatically created once a Facebook member checks in to a venue. You can then encourage checkins via in-store signage or special checkin-themed events.
Loopt and SCVNGR also offer deep Facebook integration with the potential to loop location activity on those services back to your Place Page, as well as bring Facebook checkins to their apps’ audiences. You’ll certainly want to explore what these apps can do for your venue, but distribution and visibility are key here.
Right now, there is a clear disconnect between Facebook Pages and Place Pages, but we suspect that the two entities will eventually merge into one single page. Once this happens, you’ll have even greater potential to turn fans into venue advocates and vice versa.
5. Just "Like" It!
“Likes” aren’t exactly new to Facebook, but they are becoming increasingly more important buttons to brands and marketers. The more you can encourage fans and would-be fans to “Like” your Page and updates, the more distribution you’ll get. Distribution is nothing to scoff at either, especially given a recent partnership between Bing and Facebook that surfaces Facebook “Likes” in search results.
There are a number of creative ways to solicit “Likes,” one of them being the more passive approach of posting stellar content that inspires action. You can also integrate “Like” buttons into your website, should you wish to complete the circle between Facebook and your business site. This might be a wise move considering “Likes” are proving great at generating referral traffic.
More aggressive “Like” tactics mixed with a little old school marketer know-how have been known to work as well.
