360DigitalInfluence

Today’s interview comes from a conversation with Mike Hoefflinger, Director of Brand Product Marketing for Facebook where he oversees revenue-generating products for brand marketers.

As part of our Focus on Facebook series, we interviewed several Facebook experts and asked them the same four questions. Check out our previous interview with Kevin Barenblat of Context Optional and stay tuned this week for more interviews and materials from our upcoming presentation.

1. Facebook is all about connecting with friends. What should a brand do to ensure their personality and story comes through in their Facebook presence?

Brands should think of themselves as a guest at a party. Bring something fun, listen, have an interesting opening line and engage in a relevant conversation. Also, mix things up (don’t keep talking about the same thing) and adapt to the conversation and tone around you.

Facebook pages are a great way for brands to tell stories. By aggregating fans around engaging and relevant (and fun) content on the brand page, brands can easily and quickly start to engage consumers in a two-way dialog. In turn, fans can easily interact with content by “liking”, adding a comment, or sharing with their friends and this social action gets amplified through the social graph, meaning that for every action a user takes around branded content, this generates a story in the Stream on the Facebook homepage.

It is important for brands to:
• Have a relevant and authentic story to tell. Always be transparent
• Communicate with fans on an ongoing basis, keeping content fresh and interesting
• Listen to consumer feedback and read comments
• Invest in the appropriate drivers to engage with their Facebook content, including Facebook engagement ads

2. In your experience, what has been the biggest hurdle for brands to successfully use Facebook? How can smart brands overcome this hurdle?

Brands can simplify their efforts and overcome perceived hurdles of complexity by viewing their Facebook program as an integral part of their marketing communications plan. For example, a brand may want to start with considering existing assets and programs that would be a natural fit for a social platform (elements of sharing and connecting) instead of investing against new content creation and additional resources.

3. How do you think brands can best measure their success on Facebook?

Success metrics will vary by vertical and brand but in general Facebook success is often measured by:
• Number of fans and page views (of brand page)
• Level of engagement-volume of comments, likes, application downloads,
• Organic impressions- the number of unpaid impressions delivered as a result of social actions fans take on the brand page

4. Imagine you’re the marcom representing a high-end coffee/tea/beverage brand sold across country in most super markets. How do you convince the CEO that your brand should be on Facebook?

• Reach: Facebook is at 200 million users. I would talk about how many of those users align against the brands’ specific target audience. I would also talk about how many users are talking about the brand and what types of conversations they are having. Each and every social action related to the brand is amplified on the Facebook platform, creating unique amplified reach no other website or web platform can provide.

• Engagement: Facebook allows brands to aggregate fans and then communicate with them on a regular basis via status updates, content and tools. The brand assets can be easily leveraged and distributed via the Facebook platform, engaging consumers and driving them to take social actions around content that then gets distributed via the social graph.

• Connections: Facebook allows a brand to build an authentic, long-term relationship with its fan base that can be leveraged for a number of strategic reasons- from product development and feedback to seasonal promotions and product launches. Imagine getting feedback on a new coffee/tea flavor, or giving out samples to loyalists or empowering advocates/influencers with coupons.