Dubai
6 ways to supersize your Facebook fan page.
Do you have a Facebook page? Do you think it’s a complete waste of time? Have you recently considered deleting it? Well,don’t. Get back on that page because it’s time for some revamping.
Here are some tips on how to successfully run a Facebook Page in the Middle East:
1. Evolve with your audience.
Your audience may vary. From excited, glum, smart, hyper to just plain annoying, each one of their needs must be addressed separately. Being kind to all gives the evil McDonald impression. Sometimes fans love debating and there’s no harm in keeping it healthy and exciting. Getting defensive is a Big No.
2. Connect, don’t spam.
Being passionate about your fanpage is natural; however, constantly posting things every twenty minutes is not advisable. It might gather your an audience in the initial stages but at a certain point people start un-liking the page. If not that, there’s always the Hide button. Remember to try and keep the intervals between posts big unless its an urgent announcement. Loudness doesn’t always pull in the crowds, it can often drive them away.
3. Be Multilingual.
Most fan pages are in English. But there’s no harm in using the English script and writing in another langue. If you notice that someone posting on the wall might speak in Arabic, throw in few words or phrases so he/she relates to you. Sa7 ?
4. Take it like a man.
Deleting a comment is worse than ignoring a comment. Pretending like your fanpage has no negativity on it can either only mean you’re not interactive enough or there’s a heavy censorship, both absolute turn offs. Best-case scenario: Take the criticism, be constructive about it and report feedback to the person.
5. Create a buzz – Competitions.
Fans love free bees and won’t hesitate to spread the word just to win something as simple as a Music CD. Contests must be simple to understand but remember never ever to deviate from the rules. Never let the fans change the rules. Here’s an example: www.facebook.com/switchtoapple
6. Games,Games,Games. Applications are fun.
Developing an application that is more fun and less advertising is perceived well by the audience. It might not communicate a strong message but it creates if not enhances brand image. Also having a custom landing page can convince users to not only join, but explore the fan page. Chances are they’ll share the page or application with friends if they enjoy it. Plus if they’re amusing, games often go viral. Here’s an example : www.facebook.com/samsungwave
And there you have it. So if you’ve read something here that you haven’t incorporated yet, go to your Facebook page, spice it up, and watch the wonderworks a simple Facebook page can do for you.
Is there anything we haven’t mentioned? Have you tried something that has worked for your Facebook page?
Do let me know. I’d love your feedback.
Social Media Club Dubai
Welcome to Social Media Club Dubai, where innovators from United Arab Emirates will meet for monthly events to share, engage and collaborate with the community on the issues of social media and technology. We are currently working to launch our chapter. For more information, please leave a comment or visit our Facebook Group, where we have 23 members as of today, and say hello.
Facebook wants Hyper-Like to be the new hyperlink, and other ways the social network is taking over the web.
I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said last night was the night the web – as we know it – started its change into something drastically different. f8, Facebook’s developer conference was held in San Francisco last night and Zuckerburg said what he had for us was the most ‘transformative’ thing they had ever done for the web. And the way they plan to do that is by empowering their developers. Although it was done in a better manner than the oh-so-elegant Steve Ballmer where he portrayed his ‘enthusiasm‘ for developers at a Microsoft Developer conference a couple of years ago.
The announcements made by Facebook had an underlying theme of ‘connections between people and things they care about‘.
The Facebook platform has three new components to help create and foster these connections: Social Plugins, Open Graph Protocol and Graph API.
The Graph API is an improved and simplified version of their older API (Application Programming Interface) to give developers better access to the Facebook platform and the data it holds.
Social Plugins: These 8 plugins allow websites to interact and engage with Facebook users (people). The simplest implementation is the ‘Like’ button which can be put on any object, site or page and when a user likes it the action is carried forward to Facebook. You’ll see an implementation on this blog/post too. Other plugins include Comments (users comment on your site), Recommendations (personalised suggestions on the website), Activity Feed (what users are doing on the website) and more.
These plugins alone take the formerly closed and walled social network much closer to the open web. But this is just the top layer. The last component, that of the Open Graph Protocol aims to integrate webpages into the Social Graph – or the very social activity of users on Facebook. What this means is, once websites are Facebook-ized, they start showing up in Users Profiles, News Feeds and Search Results. And it is these websites that are the things that facebook wants the people (users) to build a connection with. So you may connect with an activity, a company, a cause or a country – a school, a bar, a band or a movie; suddenly Facebook and the entire web is a graph – a set of connections joining people and things by ‘likes’.
So how is this expected to play on from here? For starters, most websites will now scramble to implement some of these features on their websites. Whether it’s as simple as a Like button or a full fledged activity stream and comments box; websites will now feature elements of Facebook on both front and back ends. Secondly, with connections not restricted to Facebook, every website then becomes a fan page. Websites now essentially have the ability to interact with over 400 million users on their turf.
Most importantly however, Facebook stops being just a social network in a corner of the web, and becomes a social layer that is spread all across the web. A layer that will start becoming an increasingly crucial element of the social interactions users make. Everywhere .
The idea of ‘Relevant’ Social networks
Robert Scoble just put up a long and detailed post about the idea of ‘Malleable’ social graphs and minimobs. A malleable social graph is one that “changes based on conditions you set in motion.” Providing a number of examples Scoble talks about how an ideal malleable social graph would change based on where we are, what we’re doing or what we believe. And this element of Relevance is exactly what Facebook and Twitter have been lacking so far.
If I am at an event and am up to pull up my Facebook feed on my phone, I’ll be shown irrelevant status updates by my friends’; but what if I was shown posts from friends who were in and around where I am, or posts from friends who might be at a similar venue (concert/restaurant/park or beach), or maybe updates from a fanpage of the venue I am at? That would be much more relevant to me.
Services like FourSquare have the location relevance element locked down, but what they don’t have is the interactivity and the sheer number of connections most us have made on Facebook. FriendFeed had a fantastic system where it let you filter out posts from specific users, from specific services and a combination of two. It was genius and it meant you only saw what you wanted to see. What if Facebook could have an automatic filter in system where posts that were more relevant to me would automatically be filtered in and prioritized in my feed.
I check into my FourSquare a lot more than I update my Facebook status when I’m out, but I assure you I’m a lot more likely to be social on Facebook if it starts getting more relevant.
Social Media - A Love Story
Love is not just found in the intoxicating haze of romantic, but in countless other ways. Most of them pretty ordinary. I’ve found love in a cup of Marble Slab sweet cream icecream with marshmallows. Darn.
Yes, we all look for love. Something to love. Someone to love. And for companies and products in our lives that make it easier to do so. As a marketer, it was my job to communicate benefit and make customers fall in love with our products. When our overpaid agency submitted a flashy commercial, something in my B-school-taught DNA made me believe that I had gotten it right. My boss thought so too.
But, things have changed. Social media marketing is not about talking to people the way advertising talks to people – it’s about spreading the love and indulging in 2-way conversations. Getting social. The more I think about it, the more I know, social media marketing is simply about genuinely giving a damn. Passion is easy to share, even with strangers. But like love, it’s rather hard to fake.
Like, when she told you it’s not about the size, it’s how you use it. She was right. Social media marketing too, is not about the tools, it’s the way you use them. Just setting up a twitter account and a Facebook Fanpage, won’t cut it. Where is the love my friend? Products and ideas go viral when you can share them like gifts. Think Google Wave invites.
So, lets narrow down this whole social-media-is-about-love theory. Love begets love. Making a social gesture with a product, gives the product a social element. Something people can have conversations about. Seth Godin, calls this remarkability. We call it the WildPeeta-approach.
If your business wants to get started with social media marketing – think of it as falling in love. The stages of development are stunningly simliar and like love, it’s not deterministic. There could be a range of outcomes, and you have to be prepared for them all. Double darn.
The first date: Introductions and learning about the person on the other end of the table (Learn and listen to what customers are saying about online).
Early months: Establishing reason to maintain the relationship and learning to share (connecting with your followers regularly and giving them a reason to stay engaged with you)
Commitment: Being transparent, being vulnerable ( considering customer feedback more seriously and letting them in)
Marriage: Investing in a life together (customers willing to invest in your success, leads transalating into sales and your followers becoming an advocate of your brand)
..and bada-bing bada-boom: Co-creation. Yalla, babies (Collaborating with customers to create new products and new ways to message and market)
Yes, a well executed marketing campaign is an act of love. Social media marketing, my friends, is not about communicating benefit anymore. It’s about communicating conviction.
Are you ready?
