360DigitalInfluence

What is “Facebook Stories”?

This July, Facebook announced that it had passed the 500 million user milestone. Along with this announcement, Facebook also rolled out a new application, “Facebook Stories,” to celebrate its achievement.  As the largest social network in the world, stories of how people are interacting with others on Facebook happen every day. However, these stories usually end up only on Facebook Status Updates and News Feed, where limited users (i.e.friends) can access.

By launching Facebook Stories, users are able to share their unique stories in a collective environment, and all users can read these stories searchable by location or theme. Themes cover a variety of topics such as education, relationships, reunions, love etc. and after reading a couple stories, I would add some are quite inspiring and mind-opening. While various people use Facebook to keep in touch with old friends, others have clearly allowed Facebook to become a part of their lives.

How Brands use Facebook Stories Tab

In addition to the Facebook Stories site, Facebook is currently partnering with 31 fan pages, which associates a certain brand to many of the Facebook Stories tabs. LIVESTRONG, for instance, highlights health-related stories on its Facebook fan page; The Knot, a leading wedding service company, highlights Facebook users’ love stories. While these stories do not relate to the brand itself, they do represent a philosophy behind it, or the mission of its particular cause. Through these stories, content on fan pages become more engaging and fans are more likely to spend more time thinking about or visiting the brand. At the same time, these Facebook Stories allows the brand to see a glimpse of what stories people like to share. In turn, the brand may tailor its engagement plan to cross promote its page and Facebook Stories.

Since Facebook Stories is now available to any developer, I believe that more brand pages will link up with this new application to establish greater consumer engagement and brand awareness.

So, what is your story?

This past winter was one the snowiest on record in the Lake Tahoe region of California, which was great for skiing but horrible for keeping cars on the road. I skied 28 days in a four months with a full time job in San Francisco — basically, every Friday night I was driving up to Tahoe in a blizzard.  And every Friday night I was glued to Google Buzz for real time updates about accidents and road closures — the results came in about a half hour to an hour before California Highways did. I also was checking for backroads ways around these road closures. Google Buzz saved anywhere from 2 to 12 hours of time each weekend; that’s a lot of precious hours on the snow when you add that up across a ski season.

Each time I used the mobile app portion of Google Buzz on Google Maps, I shared an experience with people normally separated by their cars. Google Buzz, to be just a bit sentimental, brought us together. And we weren’t talking about what we ate for lunch or some random Internet meme but about something actually — sorry Triffle — useful.

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Facebook often has the luxury of refining ideas that have been around a while and that is what I predict for payments over Facebook. People are already comfortable with entering their credit card info on websites so payments on Facebook won’t seem like a huge leap; here I will review a few of the most recent trends in currency and the opportunities for brands.

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Recently we contributed to a report from Jeremiah Owyang and crew over at Altimeter. They just released it last week and we would like to share it here. They drew conclusions from a variety of sources to end up with the “8 Criteria” - most of which I agree with and find useful. They then go on to “grade” a couple of dozen brands in terms of their overall “maturity” in Facebook marketing.  Here are the 8 Criteria:

• Set Community Expectations
• Provide Cohesive Branding
• Be Up To Date
• Live Authenticity
• Participate in Dialog
• Enable Peer-to-Peer Interactions
• Foster Advocacy
• Solicit a Call-to-Action

Forget my knee-jerk objection to using what sounds like such paternalistic terms (”maturity,” ” infantile,” etc…)  there is some sense here…

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Last week Facebook passed the 500 million users mark. That’s half a billion users.  When you consider that there are just under seven billion people on the planet it is pretty impressive stuff. If Facebook were a country, it would be the third most populous nation after China and India.

Add to this each Facebook user has on average 130 friends and shares 70 pieces of information every month.  With 500 million users detailing their moods and passions online, Facebook is more than a social networking site. It’s a global phenomenon that’s shaping the way people communicate, across all aspects of their lives including the way they do business.

There are several well documented examples of B2B companies doing a great job on Facebook; Dell, Cisco and Salesforce to name but a few. They are building relationships with their community, engaging them in conversation and providing targeted mix of content, customer service, special offers and more. There is less questioning of why B2B brands should be on Facebook, more focus on how to do it for lead generation and customer retention.

Yet for every B2B brand doing a good job, it seems Facebook for business remains an area of confusion for others, who struggle with severe multiple personality disorders. A quick audit of several well known companies will quickly show scattered pages that have grown like wildflowers, scattered randomly as the wind takes them around the Facebook-y field (OK so a “corny” analogy but you get where I am going with this). How is it that some high profile companies have allowed their presence in this social setting to become so fragmented?

It could be the lack of an internal “face” on social media to oversee a cohesive Facebook strategy. Or a decentralized infrastructure with teams in different countries and territories creating their own public profile, or a  company that is simply not ready be open with its customers or listen to their feedback yet that others want to show an affinity for, official page or not.

So what if you find yourself in that group of B2B brands on Facebook? By the time you discover that you have six Facebook pages  around the world, focused on Widget X or user group in country Y,  is it too late to regain control?

The good news is all is not lost. The same quick audit can also give a rich snapshot of what is being said about a business and where. It can also highlight social media champions on the inside who could be tapped to continue to drive Facebook and community programs forward. Or a user group that could be further activated in company marketing or to drive others internally to participate. There is no harm in having multiple pages on Facebook; product development will likely have a very different focus to recruitment, or to sales. As long as there is an overarching strategy, why not empower different teams to speak authentically to the audiences that matter to them?

Done properly, appropriate Facebook use can be part of social media use to transform the way companies operate in all areas – from customer service, to corporate reputation, product development, and importantly, market research. It also does not have to happen overnight.  A gradual roll out of a Facebook strategy will result in a measured and authentic presence, and the antidote to scrambling to get in just because you think the other 500 million are ahead of you.

What are your best practices for B2B brands using Facebook?

Photo courtesy of lululemon athletica via Creative Commons.

For those of you into healthy living, you have likely witnessed the merger of your fitness and digital worlds. I am no exception.

On my Facebook newsfeed, my spin instructor friend has announced an open spot in her 6:30pm spin class. When I check Foursquare, I can see that my friend Mike just checked into the Whole Foods, and is still the mayor of the organic restaurant across the street.  And even though I want to make an excuse to skip a yoga class, the Mind Body yoga app on my i-Phone shows me that there are still 74 yoga classes happening before the day is done. And not to mention the various Facebook posts from friends who are “hitting up the gym” or “out on a long run.”

In my digital world, signs of healthy living are inescapable.

Hence, the fitness and wellness crowd is a great example of using social media to communicate, collaborate, motivate, and create community in a landscape that might otherwise be occupied by silos.

But what does this mean for brands? The adoption of social media by the fitness and wellness worlds benefits businesses in at least four ways: continue reading

Between The World Cup and LeBronapalooza I’ve had sports on the brain for the last few weeks.

As I followed the media coverage I thought I might be able to take some of the tired clichés and re-fashion them into lessons for social media practitioners.

My original plan was to post 10 items, but I could only muster up nine.  Anyone care to help with the 10th?

1. Singles and doubles start rallies. Not every social media program has to be a round-tripper.  In fact starting small - listen, test and learn - can lead to bigger and better things down the road.  The groundwork gives you permission to swing for the fences.
2. The “12th man” is your greatest advantage. Give your fans something to cheer about - something exclusive, entertaining, educational or utilitarian.
3. Don’t hold your stars down.Let your most popular personalities represent you in social media.  Do you have a rockstar product manager?  A charismatic executive?  Give them the tools, forum and role to be a voice of your organization. continue reading
   

For PR Week Labs a few weeks ago I recorded a 15 minute presentation on 5 Steps to Conversation Management. Conversation Management is an 360 Digital Influence program for helping our clients establish or manage social network presence with the dual goals of grassroots engagement and business impact. Based on a dual theory of influence, our team uses Conversation Management to promote advocacy on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. The steps are included below and you can watch the video here (for more videos check out our YouTube channel- this one was too long to be included).

360 Digital Influence- PR Week Labs- Conversation Management from Ogilvy 360DI on Vimeo.

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WPP (parent company of Ogilvy PR and our 360° Digital Influence Team) has been sponsoring a series of technology partnership meetings called “Co-Labs” which are aimed at connecting digital teams to discuss the latest advances in web technologies. I made the trip up to NYC last Thursday to hear from Justin Osofsky, head of the Facebook Developer Network. On a side-note at the Starbucks across the street I ran into the T-1000. I love this town.

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This past week, Ogilvy PR of Washington DC had the treat of hosting a discussion with DC-based Facebook representatives Adam Connor and Andrew Noyes. Among the topics discussed was the new Facebook community page feature, which Ogilvy blogged about in April.

Facebook Community Pages 101

For those unfamiliar, a Facebook community page is a separate page that groups users around a common interest. Users opt into the page automatically when they list the interest on their profile.

For example, when I click on my interest in “yoga,” I am taken to a Facebook yoga community page. Here, I can see all of my friends who also like yoga. I learn that my friend Erin “really needs some yoga in her life,” and that my favorite yoga teacher is hosting his next rooftop yoga class at the W Hotel. I can also see status updates from people and companies who would not otherwise show up in my newsfeed: yoga studio events, a yoga apparel company’s new product, what yoga DVDs are for sale. I have a whole yoga community at my fingertips, with current and future connections… all in what appears to be an informative, authentic, non-commercial space.

4 Ways Community Pages Boost Brands

Now, there is ample opinion about why brands need to tread slowly with community pages, and how such pages are harmful to brands (see this post by our Global Managing Director, John Bell). Though I would likewise advise brands to proceed with caution, I also see some silver linings to the Facebook community pages. Here are four ways Facebook community pages can boost brands:

1) Attract new brand followers. Think of the Facebook community page as a crowded expo, with a self-selecting base of consumers who are there to see what’s new. Your brand’s page is one among the many booths competing for attention. By posting engaging updates, you can lure users to your “booth.” If users are inspired by your content, they can easily like your page, and know where to find you in the future. Bonus – this grows your online fan base at no added cost to you. In that sense, these pages are more desirable than paid-for ad space.

2) Create more authentic consumer connections. In an ideal world, brands would do the impossible and create real, face-to-face relationships with consumers. In many ways, Facebook is the next best thing to face-to-face interactions, and community pages help further target the people with whom you need to be connecting. That is, because these community pages allow consumers to find your brand based on what it represents, it creates somewhat of a more authentic brand-consumer relationship.

3) Glean Useful Consumer Intelligence. Facebook community pages can offer some useful quantitative insights on consumers. Sticking with my yoga example from earlier, let’s pretend that you are a running apparel company considering expanding into the yoga market. On the yoga community page, you can tell at a glance that there are 500,000 yoga fans, about a third of the amount of proclaimed running fans. This supports your suspicion that the yoga market may be worth your investment (and considering the 400 million+ Facebook users worldwide, this is no sample size at which to sneeze!).

4) Monitor What People Are Saying About Your Brand. By clicking on a community page, you can also monitor what kinds of conversations are occurring around your brand outside of your page… for better or for worse. This can help you learn qualitative information you might not easily find elsewhere about your potential consumers.

Clearly this list is not comprehensive and omits the glaring pitfalls… like the loss of brand control on user-generated brand pages. Merely, I aim to offer an optimistic alternative to some of the fears surrounding the new feature.

What are your thoughts on the new Facebook community pages? We would love to hear your opinion in the comments below.