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Latest Check-in: Intersection of Brand Pages and Facebook Places

Thursday, August 19th, 2010

Last night at a press conference held at their Palo Alto headquarters, Facebook announced Facebook Places. This new service allows users to see where their friends are and share their locations using the new Places tab on Facebook mobile applications, like Facebook for iOS, which was updated last night to support the new features, which will be rolling out to Facebook users in the United States over the next couple of days.

How Do You Use it?

A user will open up their mobile Facebook app and be able to see shops, restaurants, parks, areas, etc. that they are near. They can then check-in to that location. If a location doesn’t exist, the user can simply create it. A story about where that person checked-in will be published to their profile and subsequently their friends’ news feeds.

If your whole gang of friends is with you at that location, you can tag them to let people know that they are with you. The tagged friends have the option to decline, allowing them to maintain control over their location information.

What’s the Difference?
Facebook isn’t the first company to take an interest in socially sharing a user’s location. Other location-based services (LBSs) like foursquare and Gowalla had a head start in the location realm. However, Facebook’s massive user-base is a distinct advantage and is likely to generate location-based activity orders of magnitude greater than other companies already in the space. As the leading social network, Facebook is able to capitalize upon the users existing friends, and use their collected demographic and preference data to show users places that it thinks is relevant to them, instead of just places nearby.

How Will Brands Take Advantage of Facebook Places?

With all of these users checking in to locations, what does that mean for brands? Well if your brand has brick-and-mortar locations, your brand can claim these digital “Places”, turning the locations into Facebook Place Pages.

Brands can choose to merge a Facebook Place Page with an existing Facebook Page, if one exists, and if prompted– the option may not be widely available yet as Facebook is rolling it out over a period of days. Merging Places with a Page will result in some changes to the Page, but Facebook says that it will not affect your core content or any custom Tabs.

At this time Facebook does not recommend merging your Places with your Page if you are a national or global marketer with more than one location, like a McDonald’s or GAP. They recommend managing the Places separately and have stated that a solution that will help these types of brands is planned for the future.

To claim a place, tap the link on the place’s profile that asks “Is this your business?” and check the box to certify that you are an official representative of the company. You’ll need to verify you own the business by allowing Facebook to call the phone number listed for the location, answering the call and receiving the 4-digit PIN number. Once you enter the PIN number into the Facebook dialogue box, you’ll be set to go.

A Facebook Place Page that has not been merged with a brand’s existing Facebook Page will allow you to “post updates to people who have liked the Page, update your business information, and more.” Think of the offers your company could promote on to people who have opted-in to hear from your retail location(s).

Users can also tag pictures, text and other digital content with the location’s Facebook page, creating a multi-media description of the place in a sense. For example, people are able to leave public comments or recommendations by tagging the location. Others visiting this location will be able to see this information on the wall, which can enhance their visits to your location. But what happens if someone tags an inappropriate picture of him- or herself with your location’s name? It sounds like brands will need to moderate what is tagged with their locations’ names that will appear on the places’ walls to provide the type of feel that’s appropriate for their company.

Currently, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says they aren’t looking to monetize Facebook Places right now, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t in the future. With Facebook collecting all of this location-based data, it seems like Facebook could allow brands to place highly targeted Facebook ads on the Places Facebook pages. For example, if your brand’s products are sold in grocery stores, you could potentially place your ads on certain grocery stores’ pages to be viewed by people who’ve checked in.

We’ll be keeping an eye on Facebook Places as people begin to use the service, and social norms emerge around what is kosher and what’s not, to guide our clients about the best ways to use and manage the new location service.

Vitrue is excited about the announcement of Facebook Places. This new Facebook product makes it more convenient than ever for consumers to stay connected with their social graph.

We anticipate that Places will drive increased value to Facebook pages, allowing marketers to capitalize not only on their brand recognition but now the physical location of their stores. Vitrue Publisher allows brands to seize this opportunity in the most massive, efficient, and responsive way.

We look forward to building enhancements into Publisher as they become possible and are standing by to serve as your source for expertise on issues related to this new product. We anticipate great things in the coming months as new capabilities are built into the Facebook API and as we incorporate those capabilities into Vitrue products.

Posted by April Covil in Facebook, Vitrue |

Facebook Best Practices Series from Vitrue: Building a Relationship Through Response Management

Friday, August 6th, 2010

Moving forward, don’t think of social media as simply a marketing channel – but as an invaluable relationship-building tool. Novel concept, right?

The growth of Facebook, now exceeding 500 million global users, presents a huge opportunity for marketers to build a long-lasting relationship with their consumers. But do you know what the missing ingredient is for building relationships? It’s communication – the two-way communication that simply doesn’t exist today in other forms of media.

I remember a time when I had to remind clients that “people will be talking about your brand whether you are participating in the conversations or not.” Well people are talking about your brand. So what are you doing about it?

Show your fans some love
Are your fans feeling ignored and left out? Are they posting questions and comments to your wall with no responses ever received? Remember, these are your fans – the people who like you. Show them some love and participate in the conversation.

Depending on how active your fans are dictates the timeliness and type of responses given. Some pages receive little or no engagement with your posts – well that is another topic for another day. And there are some pages that are fueled by loyal brand advocates and inquisitive consumers.

Take a page like AT&T that garners upwards of 300+ wall posts per day just from their fans, with each of those spawning additional comments from other fans. Now add in a couple hundred more comments received from each AT&T branded post. AT&T finds it necessary to respond in a timely – almost real-time manner. The sheer volume of support questions they receive via the wall requires action from a dedicated team, typically within a few hours – but often responses are handled within minutes. If feasible, we recommend this vigilance when it comes to responding to fans.

However, if your page does not require such immediate attention we recommend responses be given within 24 hours. A lack of response from the brand could discourage fans and drive them to seek out other sources (possibly less credible sources).

Direct the conversation
In addition to listening and responding to your fans in a timely manner, you have the opportunity to direct the conversation – and continue the conversation on the wall. The more a marketer participates in their fans’ conversations the more “sticky” their wall becomes. Strive for your Facebook page and its wall to become a trusted place for fans to ask and receive credible answers.

Sometimes the social space can feel like the “Wild West” where anything can be said – and often is. In the event your page receives a flurry of negative attention, participating in the conversation enables you to put out fires, dispel rumors and correct any false claims made by individuals.

It is also equally important to respond to your fans right there on the wall. If someone asks a question, don’t direct him or her to your Web site for more information. Don’t provide them with an email address to follow-up offline (unless the question requires insight into personal information, like billing-related issues). Handle questions right there on the wall.

Responding to questions on the wall creates a Facebook notification for that user, along with anyone else who has provided additional comments on that post or ‘liked’ it. This practice keeps the conversation on Facebook where others can benefit from what the brand has to say. It also allows for others to continue commenting and ‘liking’ the post, which creates viral one-line stories in users’ News Feeds.

Devote the resources to manage your relationship-building
When it comes to allocating resources to managing your Facebook wall and responses, is this an after-thought? Is it often left for interns to handle? Sorry, but this is not a good idea. Your brand’s image and credibility are at stake and proper resources must be managing your response plan. Remember, these are your fans you want to build long-term relationships with.

Since the social space is fairly new, many companies have not yet allocated social media departments with people who can physically moderate their Facebook page. In that case, seeking out moderation tools are often necessary.

Need help?
Does this sound like a lot of hard work to manage your relationships on Facebook? Well, building your relationships should be given proper attention, but it doesn’t have to be difficult.

Our best-in-class Vitrue Publisher, which is currently serving about 182 million fans through custom publishing and moderation solutions on both Facebook and Twitter, can help both marketers and agencies maximize their social marketing. A few features that specifically help ease the potential pain of managing responses on the wall, include word flagging and publishing alerts.

With word flagging, you may establish word lists that flag posts and comments in our system and notify admins that action should be taken on them – or automatic removal of the post or comment is an option. With publishing alerts, when scheduling posts in advance you can create a distribution list of key stakeholders that are notified by email every time a post is published. This allows for them to prepare for real-time wall response management.

In the past Vitrue has talked a lot about the importance of the Facebook Wall in terms of maximizing the viral capabilities of social conversations. And yes, placement of custom apps in the wall (like polls and coupons) has shown 110 times greater rate of engagement versus apps housed in a tab.

But, often times it’s the real-time, real conversations you have with your fans that truly build relationships. Let’s get started today!

Posted by Matt White in Facebook, Facebook Best Practices from Vitrue, Vitrue, Vitrue Social Relationship Manager | 2 Comments »

Facebook Best Practices Series from Vitrue: How Frequently Should My Brand Be Posting?

Monday, June 28th, 2010

The question on everybody’s mind: how frequently should your brand post to Facebook? Unfortunately, the answer is not cut and dry - it just depends.

Our analysis based on data gathered from the Vitrue Social Page Evaluator supports that the more active a brand is, the more engaged their fans are. What we mean by that is the more often a brand publishes updates and content on Facebook, the higher the levels of “liking”, commenting and posting a brand receives from their fans. Best practices show that posting two to three times a day is most effective. However, many factors play into finding the right posting velocity for your brand. These include the type of brand, the time of the year, and even the day of the week.

Type of Brand

Different brands certainly warrant different Facebook publishing strategies. With more people relying on their Facebook and Twitter news feeds for news and interesting material these days, your brand should be prepared to update your fans as newsworthy content arises from your company. For example, fans of a news or sports organization are probably expecting frequent updates from the brand. Let’s face it – as a fan of those types of brands, those users are looking for scores and breaking news. If they’re not receiving the content they want, they will probably go to a different source to get it, so don’t lose their attention. Even brands who seem like they don’t have much to talk about can generate posts to spark conversation every day. Ask for your fans’ opinions about a topic. Talk about events your company may be sponsoring. It’s all about figuring out what type of information resonates well with your fans and keeping the conversation going every day.

Time of Year

Some brands tie to seasonality much more than others. Most retailers will want to increase posting frequency during the holiday season – and their fans are expecting that. Facebook users expect and appreciate relevant information that fits the time of the year. This means Facebook users may not be receptive to updates in their news feeds about ski clothing in the middle of their summer. Keep it appropriate.

Day of the Week/Time of Day

How many times have you pondered the best day of the week or time of day to post? If you said “a lot”, you’re not alone. Unfortunately, there is no secret sauce, but there are some key indicators about more effective days than others. A study conducted last October by IT staffing company, Robert Half Technology found that 54% of US companies block access to Facebook (and other social media sites) at work. For your brand, traffic may be higher in the evenings when people are checking their social media accounts from mobile devices on their way home or settling down at the home computer before dinner’s ready. According to Vitrue data, Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays seem to draw the heaviest levels of traffic on Facebook, so your brand should aim to publish its most important updates on these days. Weekends are a different story. If you are planning to post on the weekends, users typically have more down time on Sundays and check Facebook more frequently than on a Saturday.

Determine What’s Right For Your Brand

Facebook Insights tracks the numbers of impressions based on the date, but does not allow you to draw conclusions to determine which day of the week is best for your brand to post. Since a Facebook publishing strategy should be tailored to an individual brand, it may be a good idea for your brand conduct an exercise to determine when you’re getting the most exposure. Try this exercise:

- In a spreadsheet, figure out the total number of impressions for all of the posts your brand made for each day of the week over the past four weeks. For example, if you made two posts every Monday that each received 100,000 impressions, then write down 800,000 for that day (2 posts per day * 100,000 impressions per post * 4 Mondays = 800,000 impressions received on Mondays
- Repeat for the other days of the week
- Then, divide those totals by the number of posts that were published on each day of the week (800,000 impressions received on Mondays / 8 posts made on Mondays = 100,000 average impressions per post made on Mondays). This will give you the average number of impressions per post based on the day of the week so you can see which days are best for your brand.

So there you have it. Make it a point to experiment with your posts and track your progress. It won’t take long to figure out what works for your brand and start incorporating that into your brand’s overall posting strategy.

Posted by Yvett Evans in Facebook, Facebook Best Practices from Vitrue, Social Page Evaluator, Vitrue |

Facebook Best Practices Series from Vitrue: Anatomy of an Effective Facebook Post Strategy

Thursday, June 3rd, 2010

There is no doubt that Facebook has become an integral part of many people’s days. Close to 500 million pairs of eyes spend an average of 55 minutes per day engaging with friends, brands and games on Facebook. A typical user “Likes” approximately four brand Pages per month, according to the social network itself. Doing the math, that means a user who has spent a year on Facebook is likely following around 50 brand Pages. Add all of their friends’ updates and posts to the mix, and a user’s news feed can quickly become a proverbial traffic jam. For brands, your messaging can easily get lost in those streams. The key for brands that are looking to maximize their exposure is to create posts that stand out from the rest. News feed optimization is becoming the new SEO, so let’s take a look at a couple ways to help.

The Facebook stream is a very visual space. Brands need to think of their posts as interactive billboards. Before you post, ask yourself what you can do to draw eyeballs to your post. Take these tips into consideration:

1) Use a simple, visible thumbnail to represent your brand. Your brand’s thumbnail image appears in a user’s stream with every post, so it should clearly convey who you are. Many brands use a default profile image up that looks great on their Page, but do not account for how the image will be represented in the smaller thumbnail size. Your brand’s thumbnail should look its best on the wall, be recognizable and shouldn’t cut off parts of your logo.

2) Employ media in your posts. When we say media, we’re talking about images, video, audio, etc. At the very least, attach a compelling image with every post to help convey its message as much as possible. Use images that don’t contain text because it won’t be legible once they are resized to appear in a user’s stream. Similar the brand’s thumbnail, think about what this image will look like in a user’s stream.

3) Image size matters. Few brands think about this, but the easiest way to get your posts noticed is to associate a larger image with your post. Images associated with your post are rendered in a space up to 90 x 90 pixels, with an emphasis on scaling the image to be 90 pixels wide. To take maximum advantage of the real estate Facebook affords you, try to use the largest possible image you have available.

4) Ask questions. The easiest way to create engagement through posting is to simply ask questions when making a post. Try asking questions in a few posts if you aren’t already and see if the number of fans’ “Likes” and comments increase.

5) Text-only posts should be used rarely. We suggest having 95% of your posts contain media. Why? Text-only posts are less likely to catch a user’s eyes in a crowded stream. As a general rule, a text-only post probably makes the most sense when you aren’t looking for much engagement (e.g. making a post to say “Thank You” to all your fans).

Up until now, we’ve talked about the low-hanging fruit that every brand can do right now. If you really want to stand out from the crowd, it’s time to step up your game and take it to the next level.

6) DIY engagement. One of the great things about Facebook is that users don’t need to go out to discover content. It comes to them via their news feeds. Also, the popularity of custom applications on Facebook cannot be denied. We’ve built a ton of them ourselves and continue to receive requests for them. But we asked ourselves if there is a way to bring the engagement of custom applications to the news feed where users could more easily participate. We placed lighter applications built for the Facebook Wall, and found that they generate 110 times more reach from fans than applications housed within a Tab.

We introduced Wall Apps to our Social Relationship Manager as a way for brands to easily engage their fans in the news feed. Wall Apps allow brands to easily create and customize engaging apps such as coupons, polls, slideshows, and audio/video playlists amongst others. They’re visually appealing while offering your fans a phenomenal user experience in their own stream. Vitrue provides an easy-to-use interface that allows you to create and monitor your apps instantly. That means that you can create engaging posts more often and offer your fan base a variety of post options.

If you are looking to stand out in the crowded Facebook news feed, the key is to make your posts more visually appealing, while offering content that users want to engage with. We’ve given you some best practices for building more visually appealing posts. When you are ready to take the next step, Vitrue SRM Wall Apps can help take you to the next level.

Posted by Brian Gupton in Facebook, Facebook Best Practices from Vitrue, Facebook News Feed |

Facebook Best Practices Series from Vitrue: Keepin’ it Short and Sweet

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

Sharing links - it’s a big part of social media. It’s become a lot easier and more aesthetically appealing, thanks to our good friends, URL shorteners.

What’s a URL shortener? They’re web tools that shorten long URL links, and make it easier to communicate and distribute web links via social media and emails because they work nicely in spaces that have character limitations. Brands also use shorteners for their analytics capabilities, allowing users to view how many times the link has been clicked and where the link is being shared.

Sometimes when you copy and paste a link for a page that you may want to share with someone, the link appears to be a long chain of letters, numbers and characters that don’t make much sense when pasted. URL shorteners solve the issue of not-so-pretty URL links and create smaller, easier to manage links. For social media sites like Twitter, that have a character limit, these shorteners free up more characters that you can use to write your message.

There are several free online services that will shorten your URL, the most familiar ones being bit.ly and tinyURL. While they shorten long URL’s for the above reasons, there are several downfalls to free online services to shorten URLs. The first is authenticity. The shortened URL does not show who the link is from or where the link will go. Spammers will use these free services to redirect online surfers to an unexpected site. Another main problem is that shortened URLs give users the ability to view analytics with the link. They show how many times the link has been shared or clicked. It is a great tool for marketers to see how their links are being employed. But with the free services, that data can be made public, which some marketers probably wouldn’t be happy with.

To sidestep these problems, several brands choose to use branded shortened URLs. Branded URLs shorten links and include the brand’s name that identifies who the link is from and that it can be trusted. These also keep tabs on where the link is being shared and how often. Because it’s branded, the analytics and tracking remain hosted on a private server.

One way to brand these short URLs is to build it on their own. The route most brands take is to purchase services to authenticate their links. A great service, if I do say so myself, is the Vitrue Social Relationship Manager (SRM). Along with the ability to manage posts and build apps for your Facebook and Twitter pages, the Vitrue SRM allows users to brand their shortened URLs to share.

How will you shorten?

Example of a long URL and a branded, shortened URL

Posted by Nancy Lim in Facebook, Facebook Best Practices from Vitrue, Vitrue |

How to Take Your Social Media Presence from “Good to Great”: Creating the Facebook Flywheel

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

One of my favorite books of all time is a book called “Good to Great”, written by Jim Collins. It’s a best-seller and it talks about characteristics of companies who go from being good to being great. One of the concepts he talks about in the book is the Flywheel.

"Good to Great", copyright Jim Collins

The Flywheel Concept applies to companies when they break out and really start to hit accelerated growth. I think the Flywheel Concept can be applied to a brand’s Facebook presence, taking it from good to great. Hitting the synergy between earned media—in this case shared fan engagements and endorsements about your brand—combined with paid media can create a breakout success. I like to think of it as the “Facebook Flywheel”.

A few weeks ago there was a great article in “Ad Age” about a Nielsen study on social context in ads. It revealed a 16% greater recall of an ad if your friends are surfaced to “like” the product, cause or brand, especially if noticed through your news feed. And a greater recall of homepage ads when appearing alongside mentions of friends who are brand fans.

As Nielsen also cited, 90% of products and services are influenced by friend and/or peer recommendations. And we’ve noted for some time now the effectiveness of messaging directly in the news feed, generating up to 110x greater interaction as opposed to other locations, like a Facebook tab. Clients that utilize our Social Relationship Manager platform—which allows brands to deliver engagements like polls, coupons, etc., directly in a user’s news feed—have wielded staggering results. Combine effective engagements directly in a user’s news feed (organic earned media), with Facebook ads that ties to your peers “likes,” and your brand is on its way from good to great.

Bottom line: You’ve got to tie-in the ads that you buy on Facebook with messaging that shows up in the news feed to double your impact.

Fundamentally this means the more fans you have on your Page, when you run ads on Facebook, the more relevant those ads become. If my friend “likes” a brand in an ad, I’m much more likely to click on or recall that ad. If your friend, family or peer “likes” a brand, you are much more willing to follow their lead. Birds of a feather – well, you know – they tend to flock together. This is especially true on Facebook.

Marketers need to focus on winning Facebook fans over the long haul if they want to improve their odds of success when advertising, as well as with shared engagement. The higher click through on organic impressions is another indication of the power of earned media on Facebook.

This is why the Social Page Evaluator is so critical to measure and understand where you stand and how your page is valued today and then how you track that over time.

We saw a great void in the market as we know marketers are clamoring for data to determine ROI for their social media efforts, and we wanted to help push this conversation and thinking forward. We clearly struck a cord, as in less than a week since the product has launched, we have seen nearly 30,000 evaluations run from 121 countries.

Cultivating and growing your fans over time is where Vitrue products like the Social Relationship Manager (an arsenal for publishing to Facebook) and the Fan Management System (tab management) come into play.

These tools empower you to communicate and engage your fans so you actually get more growth in your fan page. But then you also get more engagement and sharing effects when you add content that is relevant for your consumers.

Combine all this together with effective ads and you are on the Facebook Flywheel. And ready to go from good to great.

Posted by Reggie Bradford in Facebook, Social Media Measurement, Social Page Evaluator, Vitrue, Vitrue Social Relationship Manager |

I Like You, I Just Don’t Love You

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

…or how Facebook is redefining the Fanatic.

By now I’m sure you’ve seen the latest update to Facebook Pages. It’s out with the “Fans” and in with the “Likes.” Facebook Pages are no longer using the term “fan” to define the connection between a user and the brand/Page owner. The more accepted term “like” is being used in it’s place. Here’s a couple of reasons this makes sense, and what marketers need to do.

First, clicking “Like” rather than “Become a Fan,” creates a lighter declaration for a user. According to Dictionary.com, fan is short for fanatic; meaning an enthusiastic devotee, follower, or admirer of a sport, pastime, celebrity, etc. “Like” allows users to make connections with Pages without claiming to be a devotee. It’s easy to tell your date you “like” them rather than you “love” them.

Second, the “like” action is easy and familiar for users. After all according to Facebook stats, users click “like” more than twice as much as the “Become a fan” button each month. This is likely a key step in preparing the world for the Open Graph API where fans can “like” any web page not just a Facebook Page.

The Open Graph API will allow any page on the Web to have all the features of a Facebook Page – users will be able to become a Fan of the page, it will show up on that user’s profile and in search results, and that page will be able to publish stories to the stream of its fans.

Previously the fan box had only one set of thumbnails and a couple of them would always display one of your friends. Now there is a separate list of thumbnails on top which lists “Friends who also like this”, which is much better. This mimics the “mutual friends” function from personal profiles, which is a very powerful tool. I know that before I accept a friend request from somebody I ALWAYS look at mutual friends. The overall net effect of this change could result greater personal endorsement for brand pages from your friends.

Lastly, marketers shouldn’t change their ~~Fan growth strategy~~ “People Like This” growth strategy. Growing your connections will still be important, and the functionality of your wall and users’ newsfeed will not change. Remember the Wall has 110 times more reach than your page, and leveraging this channel is extremely valuable. Worst case scenario, some marketers may need to update copy; replacing “fan” with “like” - just don’t call them Likers.

Questions, concerns? Leave a comment and join the conversation.

Posted by Michael Strutton in Facebook, Facebook Best Practices from Vitrue, Facebook News Feed, Industry News, Vitrue |

$3.60 Facebook Fan Valuation Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010

What’s the value of a Facebook Fan? - a question we are asked every day. Savvy marketers continue to invest substantial sums in building a presence on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. They clearly see the Return on Investment (ROI), and we want to help you understand some of the reasons why. So we developed the first-ever published Facebook fan valuation (also covered in this Adweek article)

According to our research a Facebook Page with 1 million fans is worth a minimum of $3.6 million in earned media annually. Honestly that’s just the tip of the iceberg as I’ll explain.

Let’s explore how we developed the Fan valuation.

Vitrue manages over 45 million fans and sampled data across varying pages from digital entertainment to retail to B2B to CPG to publishers to quick serve restaurants—in order to determine a wall post impression to Fan ratio. In other words, how many impressions can a single wall post receive? To our surprise we learned the average was approximately 1:1 (0.96:1 to be exact).

This means our 1 million Fan Facebook Page can average 1 million impressions with a single post to the wall. Factor frequency; a two post per day strategy would garner approximately 60 million impressions per month. Now here’s a metric all marketers are familiar with - we’ve been buying impressions since the dawn of the Internet.

These impressions are practically free, similar to earned media - that we are all familiar with. So our last step is to place a CPM value to our earned media. We factored a very conservative $5 CPM - how much would you pay for highly targeted impressions?

This final assumption gives our 1 million fan page $300,000 in earned media per month or $3.6 million annually.
1M impressions x 2 posts x 30 days = 60M impressions 60M impressions / 1000 x $5 CPM = $300,000

So there you have it: a simple valuation using metrics every marketer is familiar with. But that’s not all. Facebook wall posts have social engagement such as clicks, comments, likes, plays and shares. Wall Apps such as a coupon or a poll offer even greater levels of engagement. Brands engaging their Fans stand to earn much more value, potentially doubling or tripling these estimates.

Are you feeling short on fans? I hope this simple valuation helps you see the importance of a Facebook Fan acquisition strategy. One of the fastest ways to grow your Fan base is with Facebook Ads. You can also leverage Fan exclusive content/offers and deploy engaging apps.

Are you lacking a daily wall post strategy? Are your posts garnering maximum engagement? Vitrue works with marketers large and small to maximize ROI from the Facebook wall. The Vitrue SRM (Facebook publishing system) enables your marketing team to create and schedule a daily wall post strategy. Marketers can create eye-popping posts with video, images, audio and even apps that will maximize your Fan engagement. Comprehensive reporting gives you realtime metrics on clicks, comments, likes, plays, shares and app engagements.

Are you maximizing your ROI on Facebook? What strategies are you using to grow your Fan base? What’s your posting frequency? Leave a comment and join the conversation.

Posted by Michael Strutton in Facebook, Facebook Best Practices from Vitrue, Facebook News Feed, Industry News, Social Media Measurement, Vitrue | 14 Comments »

Wendy’s, SunChips and Stacy’s Pita Chips Leverage Facebook – Recent Vitrue Launches and Key Takeaways

Thursday, March 18th, 2010

From time to time we blog about campaigns and best practices we launch with our partners to help highlight emerging trends.

Today we are featuring a few recent examples of brands using the Facebook platform in innovative ways to to sample their products and grow substantial fan bases. Engaging consumers around key launches with offers is a powerful and proven way to drive results and incent trial.

A quick look at a few examples:

Wendy’s
In partnership with The Kaplan Thaler Group, Vitrue launched an acquisition app geared to get people to sign up for Wendy’s to help host their Final Four Party. Users create the date, invite their friends and Wendy’s will send them a free coupon while automatically entering them for a chance to win their new Boneless Wings for their upcoming March Madness Party.

A smart way to tap into a fun time of year when friends gather to watch the games while introducing a new product launch.

SunChips
Our acquisition app that simply asked consumers to submit their email for a free bag of SunChips has built a vibrant fan base. By putting the product in consumers’ hands, tremendous value and affinity were instantly created. Also fronting the new biodegradable packaging was effective as users had additional motivation to share their action of redeeming a coupon when tied to a cause they care about like being green.

To date, fans base is over 170,000 – up from 22,000 in the past few weeks.

Stacy’s Pita Chips
In partnership with OMD, Vitrue helped refine Stacy’s Pita Chips Facebook presence and added in a coupon application. The coupon app was executed on a tab that all non-fans would come to and were prompted to become a fan to receive a free bag of Stacy’s Pita Chip. A great execution that taps into an effective trend – couponing on Facebook that is fan protected.

The page has seen tremendous growth and now has over 126,000 fans. Comments are passionate as its fans spread their love of this unique product.

Takeaways

+ Be seasonal – like your offline calendar, your social calendar needs to reflect your key initiatives

+ Fan protect your offers to maximize growth/acquisition

+ Fans socialize offers – everyone loves a good deal – so be sure to consider when building out your strategy

+ Tie to causes and events consumers care about

+ Take your promotional strategy to the next level by targeting your efforts directly on the Wall – our recently launched Wall Apps enables marketers to also serve offers like these directly into fans’ news feeds that will dramatically increase their reach (our research shows over 110 times)

Posted by Gretchen Miller in Facebook, Facebook Best Practices from Vitrue, Industry News, Vitrue, Wall Apps | 1 Comment »

Vitrue Wall Apps Bring Home the Bacon for Restaurant Marketers

Friday, March 12th, 2010

Recent study in the Harvard Business Review reinforces notion that restaurants on Facebook who engage consumers drive more sales

We came across a recent study issued cited in the Harvard Business Review, examining the consumer response for a restaurant chain, Dessert Gallery (DG), when they became the restaurant’s Facebook fan.

As the study cites:
•    Facebook changed customer behavior for the better
•    People who had become fans ended up being DG’s best customers - though they spent about the same amount of money per visit
•    DG fans increased their store visits per month after becoming Facebook fans and generated more positive word of mouth than nonfans
•    DG fans went to DG 20% more often than nonfans and gave the store the highest share of their overall dining-out dollars
•    DG fans were the most likely to recommend DG to friends and had the highest average Net Promoter Score—75, compared with 53 for Facebook users who were not fans and 66 for customers not on Facebook
•    DG fans also reported significantly greater emotional attachment to DG—3.4 on a four-point scale, compared with 3.0 for other customers.
•    DG fans were the most likely to say they chose DG over other establishments whenever possible
Pretty compelling findings that Facebook engagement can lead to significant and meaningful results on consumer behavior and purchasing.

With the recent launch of our Wall Apps, Vitrue is providing marketers the tools to increase this engagement and its velocity through their Facebook Wall and thus through their fans’ news feeds, where they spend the most time.

This HBR study reinforces our vision for Wall Apps and how smart companies in this vertical like Chick-fil-A and Buffalo Wild Wings are leveraging the Vitrue SRM. Wall Apps provide a marketer an arsenal of tools to engage fans and serve up a balance of utility, insight and entertainment.

Vitrue Wall App Coupon in a Fan's News Feed

A few quick examples of the daily engagement marketers can drive using the Wall Apps:
•    Utility - providing a valuable coupon
•    Insight - issuing a poll to see what their preference is for product refinement or pricing
•    Entertainment - posting a quiz and find out what kind of topping or sauce best suits their personality

We believe creating this kind of engagement right in the news feed is cutting edge and challenge marketers to see the results for themselves.

Posted by Gretchen Miller in Facebook, Facebook News Feed, Vitrue, Wall Apps | 3 Comments »

Archive for the ‘Facebook’ Category

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Vitrue Wall Apps Bring Home the Bacon for Restaurant Marketers

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