Ever since Facebook launched Fan Pages in 2007, brands have started to occupy previously pristine social territories. You can’t blame them for that. After all, the biggest social network has long been seen as a lucrative place for many advertisers. Over the last five years, the concept of social marketing has been developing at an extremely rapid pace. At first, one of the main goals of brands was to collect ‘Likes’ and bombard users with numerous commercial offers. Not surprisingly, it soon became apparent that such an approach was not bringing expected benefits. At the moment, it is remarkable if a brand does not have a Facebook page. According to Facebook, there are about 37 million pages with 10 or more ‘Likes’. Unfortunately, quantity does not always go hand in hand with quality. As a result, many brands are still struggling to find a perfect social marketing mix to reach their targeted audience. Luckily, there are several simple yet extremely useful tips which can help brands to turn things around.

If it looks great, it is at least worth checking out

Although most of the interactions happen in the news feed, it takes effort to get there. With recent Timeline implementation, Facebook has clearly indicated the desire to make the user experience more visual and intuitive. A large cover image, 851×315 pixels, has become a perfect place for brands to express personality. Try to come up with some interesting concept, making a composition out of the profile picture and cover image. Get inspired by researching successful examples on Facebook. Don’t waste the cover image by showing contact information, arrows pointing to the ‘Like’ button and other cheesy techniques (sorry, couldn’t resist). The best thing about neat visuals is that they will persuade visitors to pay closer attention to your brand wall, where the next stage of social acquisition is taking place.

Images and videos are more efficient

To attract more attention to your brand page, highlight posts with relevant images. The picture should be catchy and in tone with the message of the post. Videos are another way to catch more attention. People get tired of reading all the time so a short video is a perfect way of delivering the message in a relaxing but meaningful way, and your fans will thank you for that!

Use analytics

Over the years, Facebook’s insights panel has become a real joy to work with. It allows you to trace fans’ demographics, brand page posts’ reach, stories generated from your posts and other important statics. Use the insights panel to learn what type of post your fans like the most and the time when the messages receive the most attention. Additionally, brands can utilize the data from insights to develop a schedule for posting activity.

Don’t overdo

Try not to overcrowd your brand page with too many messages. Sure, it is important to have rich content on your page, but don’t forget that people see tons of stories every time they reach Facebook. The last thing you want is to become annoying to your fans. Try to post several useful links, cover topics relevant to your business and create question polls to receive feedback from your audience. Don’t try to sell on your page – people don’t like it when they are approached on the street with some hot offers, so why should they like it on Facebook?

Express brand personality

With the rapid growth of social networks, many brands have a chance to be more personal with their fans. Show a human side of your brand by facilitating interaction via new features and direct messages. The message tab is basically a brand’s email box, where fans can address personal issues or simply interact with brands without being exposed to the whole community.  It is a very powerful tool, which can greatly facilitate the interaction process. Furthermore, sharing images and videos from company events is a great way to increase the emotional attachment of the community, as well as being a great way of highlighting the transparency of the brand.

All in all, having an appealing brand page requires patience and precision. Consequently, there is no ultimate method to develop a strong community. However, Facebook provides brands with all the tools required to achieve this goal. That’s why you should finish reading this article and then start developing yours!

UPDATE: A certain online broker has recently launched a contest where each entrant can guess Facebook’s stock price at the end of their first trading day after the social network’s IPO. The name of the contest is Coolest IPO, and you can participate by installing their Facebook application http://www.coolestipo.com  and making a guess. Good luck!

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I have just noticed Facebook is baking new service, Facebook Questions, which heavily reminded me of Yahoo Answers. See for yourselves:

Judging from this screenshot, kindly provided by facebook on their Questions Not Ready Page, it is exactly what Yahoo Answers is, but more like Google Answers tried to be, but apparently free (heey). Question looks polite, and answer is broad and well written. Or maybe they just did it for the sake of preview. I guess Yahoo is feeling sour already, but how soon will we head over to facebook for an answer to our stupid question? We’ll see.

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Right now, Social Media is what some people may call a “hot product”, in the sense that a lot of people are making new marketing products to teach people how to do marketing with Social media, but in fact, it is no better than search. Except for some practices. Growth of YouTube, Facebook caused this big explosion in internet’s social media attention, but in fact, there is something more to it that just 4-5 major social media sites. EBay, Craigslist, Twitter and all the forums of the Internet are social media . The reason to worry about is that all businesses and marketers are going crazy over social media right now simply because it’s hot. This is not always a good idea – go after a new channel because there’s value, a path to revenue and a solid set of tactics that fit with your overall strategy, not just because it’s under exposure all the time.

Social media is great for:

• Connecting with your customers/your prospects
• Building another channel for communication, branding & messaging
• Appealing to early adopters

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So I am ready to start with Affiliate Marketing. Odds are you are as newbie as me in this industry, so I will clear that up. Here is the image of how it works, and a quick quote from wiki:

Affiliate marketing is a web-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s marketing efforts.

Most famous and most comprehensive way of doing it is promoting the products using PPC (Pay Per Click) campaigns on Google Search and Content Network (AdWords), Yahoo! (Yahoo Search Marketing), Live.com search, and so on. Actually any using any methods to get visitors to your product (they should be interested in it, otherwise it’s just waste of time and money).

Some blogs I read (you can find them to the right > ), suggest to take first steps using Facebook Ads. The point is that if you will find a product that interests users, and make a good ad campaign, with targeting, people will click the ad, facebook will lower the cost of the clicks (if the CTR is high). And most important you can get some sales/leads, earn some money and stay in profit. Okay, there is a belief that this business is not for everyone. So Me and You want to figure out whether we are suitable for it. What’s good is that Facebook, like all other companies has coupons. And I will give you one right now, it’s $100 coupon by Visa. You just have to complete this offer, and attach your business profile on your facebook profile page, and you will get $100 voucher and instructions on how to activate it in email. Here’s the link: http://apps.facebook.com/visabusiness

P.S. There are more vouchers available every time, just use google search to find some. Most won’t work! Here is the link, I found 2 x $50 coupons there that work http://www.retailmenot.com/view/facebook.com

P.P.S. ALL Coupon credits have expiry date, be sure to use them or you will lose that free credit, and read 5 Killer Tips for Facebook Ad Ownage by nickycakes.

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