CHAPTER 4
FROM ADS TO APPS: 25 FACEBOOK-SPECIFIC GUERRILLA MARKETING WEAPONS
Guerrillas have a lot to give and share. To add on to the 200+ Guerrilla Marketing weapons identified for use in any Guerrilla Marketing campaign, we are offering guerrillas some 25 Facebook-specific weapons to choose from in this Chapter.
Some weapons can help you generate or manage your content on Facebook; other weapons can help you engage your fans to increase customer loyalty or help you build your fan base. Some weapons help you improve your brand awareness and online reputation; while other weapons help you publicize or spread the word around by way of word of mouth marketing.
So the first step towards choosing our weapons is to get to our observation post so that we can get to know what is out there in Facebook in terms of features, tools and resources. Facebook is only as good as what we know about it. But even then, it’s not over. It’s not enough to just know what Facebook is about. We need to understand how Facebook works so that we can apply strategies in Facebook to forward our cause. We need to know what features we can use to forward our position. We need to know what tools are available so that we can use them to secure our position. And we need to know what resources are available that could help us defend our position, and which ones could compromise our position and backfire on us.
To do this, we will discuss each of the 25 weapons in detail, highlighting its functions and its applicability to us Guerrilla Marketers.
So let’s begin. Weapon #1: Facebook Page
Weapon #1: Facebook Page
This is where it begins in Facebook – your Facebook Page. Your Facebook Page is best understood as the “official” representation of your business on Facebook. We say “official” because there are other ways to represent your business on Facebook, but most businesses would invariably opt to start with a Facebook Page first.
So what is a Facebook Page all about? A Facebook Page acts as an information broadcast system. It is public information that can be disseminated to anyone: information posted on your Facebook Page can be seen by anyone who has a Facebook account.
Page vs Profile?
At first glance, a Facebook Page is very similar to that of a personal Facebook Profile, but there are some crucial differences to take note of. Facebook Pages were designed for optimal use by businesses and organizations, while Facebook Profiles were designed to represent individuals. One of the criteria of starting a Facebook Profile is that it must be held under an individual’s name. Organizations and businesses with Facebook Pages can have a number of administrators who can access and post updates on Facebook Pages. Administrators, however, need to have personal Facebook accounts in order to post updates on your business’ Facebook Page. This has the effect of keeping Facebook Pages real – that is, that they are administered by real people. Facebook Profiles typically have only one administrator – the individual and the administrator is one and the same.
Another point to note about Facebook Profiles is that they have an upper limit of 5,000 friends, while there are no upper limits to the number of fans a Facebook Page can have. Lady Gaga, for instance, was the first living person in Facebook history to have more than 10 million fans on her Facebook Page. As your business will grow over time, this can be an important consideration when deciding between the two.
On your Facebook Page, you can leverage on the customized tabs function (Weapon #9) to determine what kind of content you wish to generate. For instance, you could post static information about your business such as contact details or links to your existing business website, or you could also choose to share photos or videos about your recent publicity campaign, feature reviews about your new products or services, or generate discussions about your business or brand. You could also administer polls or post questions to engage your fans – the opportunities are limitless.
One point to note about your activity on your Facebook Page is that updates are automatically featured on your Wall. More of this is covered in Weapon #2. This has the intended effect of informing your fans what you have been up to on your Facebook Page.
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Ten-Hut! Weapon Tip #1: First things first: if you are a Facebook Freshie, spend some time first deciding on what kind of Facebook presence you want – do you want to create a Facebook Profile, a Facebook Group (Weapon #4), or a Facebook Fan Page (Weapon #5)? |
Weapon #2: The Wall
The most dynamic element of your Facebook presence is your Wall. This is where a Facebook Page differs from traditional websites and other social media such as Twitter, YouTube or blogs. The Wall featured in Facebook summarizes your Facebook activity in one easy glance. Your Facebook Wall is highly interactive – this is where you build your community by posting questions, sharing photos and videos, gathering feedback, organizing events, and so on. You can adjust your privacy settings to permit your Facebook friends/fans to function as an open forum – fans can post comments on your updates – or choose not to – depending on what you are trying to achieve.
Information dissemination & publicity tool
Your Wall is an extremely effective information dissemination and/or publicity tool – any recent activity on your Facebook Page can be immediately viewed by your fans on their News Feed (see Weapon #3). For what’s it is worth, you don’t always need big demonstrations to engage your fans who visit your Wall: simple, small actions such as status updates, sharing photos or videos, or posting questions can be just as effective as a full-on product launch event. Think of it this way: if you are wooing someone, it’s not always about wine, roses and expensive candlelight dinners. Small details, such as remembering how the person likes his or her morning coffee, or playing his or her favourite tune is just as important – if not more so, as we guerrillas like to believe so.
If you are a Facebook Freshie, we recommend that you read the following weapons (Weapons #3-8) in the corresponding order they are presented in this Chapter. For each weapon, we aim to discuss various basic functions that help us Guerrilla Marketers make our marketing campaigns more effective. If you are familiar with Facebook functions, you may wish to advance to Weapon #9 on Customized Tabs instead.
Weapon #3: News Feeds
The successful spread of information on Facebook lies within the News Feed function. The News Feed is a collection of short messages that streams recent activity on what is happening to your business on your friends/fan’s News Feed Page. The News Feed appears on the first page of all Facebook users the moment they log in to their Facebook accounts. In web-speak, this is often referred to as the “landing page”. This is where your friends/fans can get the latest updates on your business, and is certainly an effective way of publicizing events or new product launches.
News Feeds open a range of marketing ideas for guerrillas to launch. We guerrillas can make use of News Feeds to build relationships with our fans by streaming interest stories, making announcements about exclusive discounts or offers, holding marketing events, and so on. The key point is to keep your content ongoing: when we say that Facebook marketing happens best in small, incremental doses. It is here in your News Feed that sums it best for your Facebook marketing strategies.
How little updating is too little? How much is too much?
In Chapter 2, we highlighted that of the 955 million users, nearly half of them log onto Facebook every day. So if your idea of a Facebook marketing campaign is to engage your fans once every 6 months, your Facebook presence will take a long, long time to grow. If, however, you are updating your fans once every hour on the hour, we would be curious to know where you would be getting the tonnes of compelling content you would need in order to be updating once every hour on the hour. Perhaps you have launched an intense 48-hour marketing campaign. If you have what it takes – we say why not – go for it.
While there are no hard and fast rules, we guerrillas would go out on a limb to suggest that an update once a day, or once a week sounds like a good middle-of-the-ground to take, but take into account your business’ unique selling point. For example, if you are in the business of selling seasonal products such as Christmas trees, it might not make sense of you to be posting daily updates in the middle of summer . . . unless of course, you are selling Christmas Trees to Australians down under.
If you really want to drill down your attack to greater precision, you could strategically post your updates at times when you know your fans are most likely to log on. There are other weapons you could use as leverage, for example, Weapon #21: Analytics to discover the patterns of your visitors and fans to your Page. This way, you could increase your chances of getting your status updates featured on your fans’ News Feeds.
You don’t get to control the News Feed function of your fans
While the News Feed function is important way of reaching out to your fans, you need to bear in mind that you don’t get to control what appears on your fans’ News Feeds. Understanding how the News Feed function works is important as it would impact the way you approach your marketing plan on Facebook.
For instance, your status updates could just be one of the many status updates fed into your fans’ News Feeds. In addition, not all status updates feed directly into everybody’s News Feeds. Hence, we would also caution against assuming that the News Feed function on Facebook alone would get you the undivided attention you are hoping for from your fans.
There is a lot of noise in Facebook, and it takes more than that to get someone’s attention on Facebook.
Not “new” information
One other thing to note about News Feeds is that the information reflected in the News Feed is not “new” in itself – it is simply a collection of information that has been voluntarily given by users – be it an update on your status, uploading of photos, videos, or comments left on someone else’s Wall. So while News Feeds can help reiterate or generate greater awareness about a certain event or brand, it does not, and would not, provide new or additional information. Not that this is a huge problem to us guerrillas, but there is a subtle difference that you need to be aware of.
Facebook Groups are small community groups banded together with a common denomination, such as school, geographical location, city, workplace or region on the basis of common interest or affiliation. Individuals can be added to groups through recommendations by friends. Compared with Facebook Pages, membership to Facebook Groups is exclusive; in that its entry to membership is limited by invitation only – this means that the general public may not know of the Group unless s/he has been invited or recommended by someone within the circle to join the Group.
Encouraging group discourse
The main elements of Facebook Groups are designed to encourage group discourse. Facebook Group members can engage in group chats - up to a maximum of 250 members, be on the same private mass messaging list for event invitations - messages that get sent into a user’s inbox- share videos, photos and comments among Group members. The new feature of Facebook Groups that is not available on personal Facebook Profiles or Pages is the ability to share documents with other members of the same group. This new feature opens up new ways for marketers and group members to share and brainstorm ideas.
From a Guerrilla Marketer’s perspective, Facebook Groups are the closest setup to focus group discussions. The setup provides businesses with a focused way of seeking and receiving constructive feedback on a personal level – sans the logistics involved when arranging for face-to-face focus group discussions. Although it does not mean that the effort involved is any less. You still need to have a plan of engagement knocked out. You still need to allocate an administrator or moderator to oversee the discussions on a regular basis.
Facebook Groups provide the natural setup for identifying and understanding the needs of your niche market – you have a group of interested fans, and they are sharing their preferences, what works for them and what does not. As for you . . . you exhibit your sincerity in listening carefully to what your fans have to say. You ask questions. You seek feedback. You seriously consider adopting sound suggestions or proposals that your fans have made. Your fans feel heard and understood. Essentially, you are doing what Facebook was set up to do: you are making connections with your fans, and they too are connecting with you.
Group vs. Page
What is the difference between Facebook Groups and Facebook Pages? The recon has been done for you:
1. Visibility. Facebook Pages are visible to all Facebook users. Anyone can join or sign up to be a Fan of a Page. Membership to Groups is selective – users have to be invited to join Groups. Only content on Pages come up in web engine searches; content in Groups are not searchable in the public domain.
2. Surveillance. Activity on Facebook Fan Pages can be monitored quantitatively by Facebook’s analytics, Facebook Insights or some other analytics tool, while activity on Facebook Groups cannot be monitored in quantitative ways. Facebook Insights is explored in detail as Weapon #21: Facebook Analytics.
3. Term and Scale. Pages are better suited for businesses that are looking to build long-term relationships with larger groups of people. Facebook Groups permit membership restriction and are therefore better suited for smaller-scale groups of people who are gathered together to discuss a shorter-term project, for example, a specific or time-sensitive topic.
4. Level of commitment. As the word suggests – members of a Group “join” a Group – in other words, they “join” to participate more actively, for example, participate in discussions and events, as compared to fans who simply need to Like a Page to become connected to it. In terms of expected commitment, fans of Pages are more likely to participate less on Pages compared to participating in Groups, but this point can be moot. Tread with some caution.
5. App aptitude. Pages can support a wide range of apps: from customized page tabs (See Weapon #8: Customized Page Tabs) to quirky, customized apps such as order apps - we recommend taking a look at Pizza Hut’s Facebook order app. Facebook Groups, however, can share events and send invites to their members’ inboxes, as long as the group membership remains under 5,000 members.
There are pros and cons to creating Pages as opposed to Groups. Both have their strengths and weaknesses.
Our question to you is, what is stopping you from creating both?
Some businesses do launch both, depending on the kind of marketing campaign they wish to launch, the level of participation they are targeting for from their fans, and their available resources. For instance, if you sell specialized fishing equipment, you may launch a Page promoting the activity and your business, while maintaining a Group to discuss the finer points of fishing among enthusiasts.
Weapon #5: Facebook Fan Pages
Fan Pages are set up by fans who are not authorized to create Pages. A Fan Page is not the same as a Page. Setting up Facebook Fan Pages is the only alternative available for fans to post their own information about a business, celebrity or personality without impersonating the real business or person. In social media lingo, this type of content is typically classified as user-generated content or UGC, as it is sometimes referred to.
Fan Pages deserve your attention
Why have we identified Fan Pages as a separate weapon? It is because we guerrillas recognise the value of giving power to the masses. Fan Pages can be a powerful tool in Facebook. Fan pages in Facebook have been notoriously known to gather fans and like-minded users into action – be it to boycott something, or to raise funds, or to bring about a change. We guerrillas simply cannot dismiss something this powerful. If Fan Pages can influence behaviour, we want to explore how we can be part of it.
If there is a Fan Page created about your business in Facebook, we feel it deserves your attention. Fan Pages can be a hot bed of marketing research for a business. This is where fans share their comments, ideas and preferences. It is not uncommon to find fans creating images or even sharing videos made by themselves about the topic. Such user-generated content is amazing. Where else are you going to get organic, raw and unadulterated feedback about your business?
In addition, you can choose to participate or be involved in the Fan Page as well. This is what some celebrities or well-known personalities have done, some to good success in terms of building up their reputation and branding. As for you, the business owner, when you interact with your fans, you are not only engaging with your prospective or current customers, you are also creating links back to your official business page, therefore increasing your Facebook presence.
Weapon #6: Facebook Apps
Apps are the heart of Facebook. You can’t talk about an effective Facebook Page or Group without the mention of apps. Facebook applications – apps – are tools created by Facebook developers as well as third party developers to offer users the ability to customize their Facebook experience the way they like it, without the need to have training in using software or specialized programming skills.
There are apps for everything – and we mean everything – you can think of. If you think apps are just social games, think again! To us Guerrilla Marketers, the Facebook apps we love are those that help us in our marketing efforts:
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Facebook apps we guerrillas love: • Analytical Tools (e.g. Facebook Insights—Weapon #21): apps that collate rich and up-to-date behavioural and demographic data • Automatic Content Generators (e.g. Feed Burners—Weapon #15): apps that help you generate automatic content for News Feeds • Promotions Organizers (e.g. Weapon #17): apps that create and administer publicity events such as sweepstakes or contests for fans |
These easily available apps provide decent ammunition for any Guerrilla Marketing campaign. Many apps are free, while some come at a price.
If you have deeper pockets and are willing to expend more resources to enhance your Facebook presence, you can consider developing a customized app for your business. You can choose to outsource this to a third-party developer, or engage in a little DIY - you will need to learn Facebook’s Markup Language to do this. If you decide to engage in some DIY, there are a number of online tutorials you can follow to help you learn how to come up with your own app.
App woes
One issue about selecting apps is that there is no comprehensive listing of apps for you to browse through and choose from. This is simply because there are hundreds of thousands of apps to choose from.
Another problem with apps is, how do you find apps that work best for you? In part due to the rapid number of apps that can be developed on any given day, identifying or searching for appropriate apps that work for you will be tricky, especially if you are a Facebook Freshie. Here are our tips on how to get your app radar going:
1. Start by browsing Facebook’s apps list at www.facebook.com/apps/directory.php. This list is non-exhaustive but it is a good start.
2. Check out what apps your friends / fans are using as indicated on the postings on their walls. This does means that your app radar would be limited to what apps your friends or fans are using.
3. Ask around: rely on recommendations or by word of mouth.
4. Use the general search function in Facebook to look for apps by keywords.
5. Read up Facebook’s official Developers page at http://developers.facebook.com/docs/guides/canvas/
6. Use our hints: we have taken the liberty of identifying and sharing with you our favourite apps in this book!
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Ten-Hut! Weapon Tip #2: Apps, plug-ins and add-ons or extensions basically carry out the same function, but the scope of ability varies. For a discussion on the differences and how it can impact your Facebook Page and online presence, turn to Weapon #16 on Plug-ins. |
Weapon #7: Call-To-Action Buttons
As Guerrilla Marketers, we are especially delighted with the range of Call-to-Action buttons available on Facebook. This is all part of the connection element that Facebook provides so well for use between users and content providers.
Call-to-Action buttons are like adding additional firepower to your guerrilla weapons without increasing your overall budget. They can be easily included in your external websites or on to your Facebook Pages to boost your Facebook presence.
On Facebook, Call-To-Action buttons have two effects: (1) they improve the visibility of your brand or business by way of word of mouth from your fans and (2) they help encourage relationship building between you and a visitor by making it real easy for the visitor to your Facebook Page or website to convert into a fan or follower.
There are plenty of Call-to-Action buttons on Facebook. Here are our favorites:
• The Like Button
• The Become a Fan Button
• The Follow Us on Facebook Button
• The Comment Function
• The Share Function
• The Recommend Button
The Like Button
We guerrillas really like the Like Button. In Chapter 2 on Facebook Recon, we have already sung praises of the Like Button, and here we are again, in awe of this simple but effective button. Facebook’s Like button appeals to a guerrilla’s reliance on energy, imagination and creativity rather than budget. The Like button provides positive feedback on your Facebook Page: it is direct marketing response at its simplistic best. When your fans click on the Like button, your Page’s visibility is boosted among your fans’ friends, and friends of friends, and so on. On average, more than 2 billion posts are liked and commented on in a day. Instant exposure, minimum fuss.
The Become a Fan & Follow Us on Facebook Buttons
The Become a Fan button is another hot favourite. If your Page has got the goods, get your visitors to convert into fans. The “Follow Us on Facebook” button works in a similar way – it enables you to feature this Call-to-Action on your existing websites, for example, blogs or corporate websites, generating more interest to both your Facebook Page as well as to your external website.
Once a Facebook user clicks on the Like button or Become a Fan button of your Page, that user begins a relationship with that Page – although s/he need not be a friend to receive status updates from your business, s/he is now connected to your business’ Page, and along with it, he will receive News Feed updates from that business page.
The best part about the Like button is that there are no limits on how many Likes a user can have! On average, the Like button is clicked on six times per day per user. That’s 6 × 955,000,000 times per day.
The Like button has also been recognized as an effective tool in lead generation for marketers. For example, you can get visitors to your Page to sign up by Liking your Page. Other commonly-used phrases include “Like Us to Find out More”, or “Like This Page Before the Deal is Gone”.
The Comment or Share Buttons
More than that, other Call-to-Action buttons, such as Comment or Share, encourage your fans to interact with your Facebook Pages, therefore providing opportunities for you to deepen your relationships with your fans – getting to know them better, identifying their needs and their preferences.
If you do choose to include the Comment button on your Page, do note that comments can positively or negatively affect your brand’s reputation. We discuss this in Weapon #9 on Discussion Boards.
Another similar function to the Like button is the Recommend function. Fans and visitors to your Page can recommend your Page to their friends. A variation to this function is the referral – encouraging your fans to recommend your Pages to their friends. The Share function is similar, permitting your fans to share what they have found interesting or exciting about your business to their friends. This word of mouth marketing technique to gain greater web presence is a sure-winner to us guerrillas.
Call-to-Action functions are not limited to buttons. Facebook takes this idea much farther as it also has a number of other functions we Guerrillas can use to engage our fans in different ways. More on this in Weapons #9-13.
Weapon #8: Customized Tabs
Customized tabs play an important role when creating your unique business Page in Facebook. As our heading suggests, the tabs on your Facebook Pages can be customized to meet your specific needs. If you are not familiar with Facebook tabs, think of tabs like having separate pages on your website. Depending on what you need, you can choose to highlight or feature certain content on Facebook using this feature. For instance, a company might choose to feature fun or informal ways of engaging its customers through certain tabs in Facebook, for instance, a poll or photo tab, while maintaining a more “serious” or formal corporate image on one of the tabs, for instance, a Info tab.
To make it sweeter for you, we have identified a number of customizable tabs (Weapons #9-13) that we think are especially useful for guerrillas, namely Discussion Boards (Weapon #9), Reviews (Weapon #10), Event Sharing and Invitation (Weapon #11), Question and Polls (Weapon #12) and Photo and Video Sharing (Weapon #13).
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Ten-Hut! Weapon Tip #3: In Facebook, tabs are treated like separate pages. If you want to monitor which tabs are most viewed by fans and visitors to your Page, then you would want to create separate tabs for various functions. Facebook Insights track tabs separately to offer you interesting insights into which tabs are most popular among your fans. |
Static FBML
To customize tabs, you will need to use the Static FBML (Facebook Mark-Up Language) app. The Static FBML app is by far one of the most used apps in Facebook – there are more than 106 million monthly users at the time of writing. In sum, this is the tool you need to use if you want to customize the look and design of the tabs on your Facebook Page. You can also decide which landing tab your fans or visitors will land first when they first access your Facebook Page. To customize tabs, you will need to have some knowledge of how to edit standard HTML codes. There are many online tutorials and guides available on the Internet. The Static FBML tool also permits you to format and embed videos and many other features on to your Facebook Page.
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Ten-Hut! Weapon Tip #4: If you are like most entrepreneurs with little or no knowledge of HTML codes, you can still try to create your own tabs. The truth is, you are not alone. Many Facebook Pages were developed through trial and error. While Facebook does not provide much assistance by way of guides or tutorials, you will find plenty of free advice, guides and online tutorials available on the net. |
Weapon #9: The Discussion Board Tab
Discussion Boards are like focussed two-way conversations on Facebook. These Boards can let you know what your fans are thinking about, and what they like. In return, you can seek instantaneous feedback on your products or services without having to conduct lengthy focus group discussions. In other words, Discussion Boards deepen the involvement between you and your fans. Discussion Boards are common for Facebook Groups, but it does not mean that a Facebook Page cannot have a meaningful Discussion Board.
Discussion Boards vs. Groups
For example, popular third party Facebook game app developer, Zynga, has a number of Facebook Fan Pages with active Discussion Boards. These Discussion Boards bring together gamers who are interested to share and compare notes about their progress in the Zynga games they play, in a meaningful manner. At the same time, there are also a number of Facebook Groups in which like-minded Zynga gamers can gather together to share notes and help one another for specific outcomes.
Something to think about Discussion Boards: as with any form of free response, Discussion Boards can cut both ways. Some fans unhappy with your product or service may choose to voice out their unhappiness openly and publicly on your Discussion Boards.
You could choose to manage feedback in two ways: (1) leave the comments as it is, and let other fans decide for themselves, or (2) delete them and cause more irritation to unhappy fans who then feel as though their opinions, in this case, discontent, is being ignored. The same goes for other open-ended free response functions such as Comment.
What you could do is to indicate openly on your Page your policy regarding moderation of comments on your Discussion Board. For instance, you could specify that there could be filters for spam, hate threats or harassing behaviour. Such behaviour will not be tolerated. After all, you can’t always depend on your fans to behave rationally at all times, but you can certainly tell your fans what kind of content would be removed. This way, when rules are flouted, you are simply carrying out what you said you would do. If they do not agree, well, then they are free to leave. This is far better than the damage control you would have to do when fans realise that their comments have been unfairly deleted.
Managing Discussion Boards
Another consideration before including a Discussion Board on your Page is to figure out how much resources you have to maintain this particular line of attack.
In particular, think through how much time you think you would want to spend on moderating or managing your Discussion Board. The best way to determine this is to think about your policy regarding the timeliness of your responses to fan posts. What is considered a reasonable response rate? Every hour? Every day? Once every two days?
Also think about how much resources you have to manage your Discussion Board. Will you be running this as a one-person show? If so, in this world of global connectedness, who will mind your Discussion Board at 4am in the morning? Who will handle the Discussion Board when a crisis strikes? Do you have the resources to consider enlisting someone as the moderator of your Discussion Board?
If this function does not appeal to you, remember that you are the General of your battalion. Discussion Boards and Comments are options you can choose to omit from your Facebook Page. Do recall that we have mentioned that tabs can be customized: if it isn’t there, it won’t be missed.
Weapon #10: The Review Tab
A Review tab is another option you can choose to include on your Facebook Page. A Review tab does exactly what it says – it collates and publishes reviews written by your fans and visitors on your Facebook Page. There are many research reports that indicate the growing influence reviews by real users have on a buyer’s confidence and decision to purchase. In addition, there is a school of thought that takes this idea further by saying that reviews by people they know and trust – i.e., their friends - carry more weight than reviews from strangers. Plus, nothing says “we value your feedback and comments” more than a tab that is dedicated to reviews about your products or services.
If you want your Review tab to shine, there is some tough legwork to be done. But proceed with caution: if your Review tab is executed poorly, your brand reputation may suffer, so monitor your Review tab diligently.
Say for instance, you include a Review tab, but you don’t get any reviews.
What can you do?
Perhaps a better way around this is to include a Review tab only after you actually have some reviews – and you are comfortable to share the content of the reviews on your Page – after all, didn’t we say that your Facebook marketing efforts are to be carried out in small, incremental doses?
But what happens if you get many negative reviews?
What can you do?
The truth about review content is that it cannot be forced. Reviews are voluntary and subjective, and yes, it can get ugly. Do note that if you choose to intervene by weeding out the negatives, leaving behind just the over-glowing reviews, bear in mind that self-censorship can be picked up by your more discerning fans and backfire on you. We mentioned previously in Weapon #9 on Discussion Boards that one way to manage negative reviews is to publicize your policy regarding flaming comments or harassing behaviour. You might not be able to prevent negative reviews from happening, but the least you can do is to delete reviews that are baseless or spammy without any negative impact to your brand.
Like it or not, many businesses with Review tab Pages know that their reviews are the top three most viewed tabs. We guerrillas see it this way - publicity, whether it is good or bad, is still publicity. It gains you visibility, and puts you out there. The Facebook audience can be a discerning crowd. They watch to see how you are handling the publicity – be it positive or negative publicity, and they draw their own conclusions. If they like you, they would be converts to your cause, and customers for life. If they don’t, well, they weren’t really serious customers in the first place. The world of Facebook has some 955 million users. Surely we can carve our niche market out of that some 955+ million users, even if we choose to ignore or disassociate with some of them.
If all this talk about Reviews is making you feel too uncomfortable, remember that there are other ways to demonstrate your openness to feedback. For instance, you could occasionally share poll results instead of posting reviews. Polls are featured as Weapon #12 in this Chapter.
Our advice to you is, do what you are comfortable with and confident about; and not just because everybody is doing so. When you are authentic and sincere about the content on your Page, no one is any wiser if you had skipped or omitted the Review or Discussion Board tab.
Weapon #11: The Events Sharing and Invitations Tab
Events sharing and invitations are another arsenal in the range of Call-to-Action weapons – and we guerrillas love it. Many businesses have successfully pulled off Guerrilla Marketing events through the creative use of Event Sharing on Facebook, leveraging on the powerful word of mouth recommendation Facebook offers.
With Events Sharing, you can share details about an event you are organizing, say, a new promotion on your Facebook Page or Group. You could share maps, photos, contact information, and best of all, you can make use of guest management tools on Facebook to manage your event and invite fans and friends.
Up-coming events are displayed on the top right hand corner of your Home Page, and will continue to display on your list of invited friends until the function is disabled. Friends of friends who are also invited to the same event can see which friends will be attending the same event.
Different tools available for Pages and Groups
There are subtle but important differences in event invitations, depending on whether you have a Page or a Group.
Facebook differentiates between Pages and Groups by way of making certain tools available only for Pages and certain tools available only for Groups. If you are working from a Page, you can only invite fans to events that are posted on their News Feeds. We have previously highlighted that not all updates in News Feeds are picked up by fans, so this means that not all your fans might know of your event. If you are working from a Group, you get to send invites to the Group member’s inboxes. There is a school of thought that believes that invites sent to a user’s inbox stand a better chance of getting read.
But whether or not these differences could impact the response rate to your event is still moot. Events invites posted openly on your Page could be stumbled upon a visitor who may just bite and say yes to your event. Members who receive personal invites may still not bite if the event does not appeal to them in the first place. So play around and experiment to see what works best for your customers.
In Chapter 2, we talked about creating exclusivity for your Facebook fans as part of Rule #6 – Fans should not and cannot be treated equally. One of the best ways to introduce exclusivity is to organize exclusive Facebook events for your Facebook fans.
Take a minute to dream up the kind of guerrilla-type events you would hold with this weapon for your Facebook Fans:
What kind of events would you
organize for your Facebook Fans?
Now that you have dreamed up the kinds of possibilities you can organize on Facebook, you may wish to skip ahead to Weapon #17: Promotions app to help you get your event created and administered easily and quickly.
We couldn’t help ourselves, so we have included some of our ideas for fan-exclusivity:
• Exclusive discounts for Facebook Fans
• By invitation only sales / previews
• Giveaways / freebies / free trials
• Samplers for new product launches
• Photo / video sharing contests
• Quizzes / puzzles
• Sweepstakes / lucky draws
• Web-based workshops / seminars
• Loyalty programmes
Not limited to Facebook
The beauty about Event Sharing on Facebook is that you can choose to extend your events beyond your Facebook Fans. For example, CozyCot.com, an online women’s lifestyle portal, has successfully integrated their Facebook events with their online portal by not only featuring weekly giveaways for their Facebook Fans, but also promoting shopping spree events held on their web portal, effectively increasing their overall web presence.
Weapon #12: The Questions & Polls Tab
Facebook has a feature that you can use to ask questions on your Page. Responses to your questions are automatically reflected onto your Page. There is also a Facebook Poll app that enables you to conduct polls on your fans. The app comes with the option to publish results of your polls on your Page.
What type of questions to ask?
Posting open-ended questions and conducting polls can engage, and even entertain, your fans on Facebook in meaningful ways. It is a wonderful way to connect with your fans, and to win you new fans.
Here are two types of questions Guerrillas can post in polls:
1. Cloud-Type Questions: ask questions to help you make decisions about your business. For instance, you are in the middle of designing a new product, and you are considering new colors for your product. You could choose to apply a cloud strategy by asking your fans which colors would be more suitable for your product—hot fuschia or steel grey? - and let your fans help you decide. Everyone loves to feel helpful and that they have contributed to a good cause – they are more likely to come back for more. And you – you get instant feedback about what’s hot and what’s not.
2. Provocative Questions: ask questions that are provocative in nature—highly opinionated statements that will provoke more responses from your fans. For example, on a regular basis, administrators of Victoria’s Secrets’ Facebook Page ask highly-opinionated but fun questions that revolve around the idea of ‘What is sexier’. One day it was, “What is sexier - legs or cleavage?” Another day it was, “What is sexier - candlelight dinner or breakfast in bed?” Simple, clean fun and extremely effective.
Caution: guerrillas are respectful. In Chapter 1, one of the “guerrilla attitudes” highlighted was that guerrillas have an obligation to put money into their coffers, and not looks of horror or shock or disgust on the faces. Your fans are intelligent and discerning. Being provocative does not equate to being rude or disrespectful. If viewers do not get the respect they deserve from your Page, they will look for it elsewhere.
3. Opinionated Questions: Victoria’s Secrets looks as though they have it easy because they sell sex, but questions need not always be provocative in order to evoke response. Some questions naturally solicit opposing opinions, camps or schools of thought. For instance, if you own an ice cream store, you could ask questions like: which is a better topping: fruit or fudge? Can you see how you could plan marketing strategies based on your fan’s responses?
Polls
Polls are a useful way of seeking reviews. They are more useful than open-ended comments or reviews because the responses can be controlled. Visitors to your Page can select from a range of predetermined responses, and you can collate the results and share them as part of your content. There is a Poll app on Facebook that allows you to carry out marketing surveys in an easy manner – such as from the comfort of your cubby hole or bedroom, but it certainly does not lessen the hard work required by your task force to craft first-rate questions in the first place. That comes with any marketing campaign – guerrilla style or not.
Asking the right questions can open a mine field of data that can aid targeted marketing for your future marketing campaigns. For instance, you could close the gap between desire and purchase with greater accuracy as you learn more about your fans’ preferences.
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Ten-Hut! Weapon Tip #5: Look for the Poll app by using Facebook’s Search Function. |
Weapon #13: The Photos and Videos Sharing Tab
Another element of Facebook to harness is its sharing nature. When you and your fans share information, you are making connections with one another. And it is this connection that deepens relationships. One of the main draws of Facebook is its sharing of photos and videos by users. According to Facebook, more than 250 million photos are uploaded each day in Facebook.
Who shares what?
So who shares, and what can you share about your business? Well, since you started the Page, it is only natural that you should share some information first.
The first thing to note about sharing is that it does not necessarily have to be new information. In fact, maintaining a consistent web identity – posting the same videos and photos online in different channels - can help you build your brand’s awareness. So go ahead, share your current commercials, presentations, product photo shoots, and tutorial videos that are posted elsewhere on the web on your Facebook Pages – your website, your blog . . . just be careful not to overdo it.
Facebook has made it relatively easy to link up online content that you may have posted elsewhere. For instance, if you have videos posted on YouTube, the YouTube for Pages app allows you to link your videos from YouTube to your Facebook Page. If you have photos shared on Flikr, these can also be exported into your Facebook Pages quite easily.
What if you have nothing to share?
If you don’t have existing photos or videos, it’s not the end of the battle. Guerrillas don’t give up just because of this. You can still leverage on the power of your community to get a fair share of photos and videos going for your Pages. For example, on the Facebook Pages of ice-cream maker Ben & Jerry’s and Starbucks respectively, are photos of happy fans enjoying their favourite ice cream / coffee from all over the world. Their Walls are filled with warm comments and feedback from happy customers, creating a sense of belonging to a warm, ice-cream / coffee-loving community. That is customer loyalty at its best.
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Ten-Hut! Weapon Tip #6: Not all Weapons need to be permanent features on your Page. Events Sharing & Invitation (Weapon #11), Questions & Polls (Weapon #12) and Photos and Video Sharing (Weapon #13) can feature as part of your Wall activity instead of featuring as permanently separate Tabs on your Page if these are ad-hoc activities for your business. |
Weapon #14: Facebook Marketplace
Like most other online tools, it was simply a matter of time before Facebook launched its own ecommerce facility. For Facebook, their answer was Facebook Marketplace, an online classifieds feature within the Facebook community.
The key difference between Facebook Classifieds and other traditional classifieds is the social element, hence the coining of a new phrase, “social commerce”. What social commerce means is that you are not just buying or selling to people locally within your neighbourhood, you are buying or selling to people who know you, or you know them. This is because your friends who use Facebook’s Marketplace are listed at a corner of Facebook’s Marketplace Page.
Facebook Marketplace is useful for businesses that need to post new information about their products or services on a regular basis, such as real estate companies, recruitment agencies or used car dealers. Such businesses would be able to list their classifieds elsewhere within the Facebook community rather than cluttering up their Facebook Pages or Profiles.
Why would you consider listing on Facebook?
If your business relies on online classifieds, Facebook Marketplace could be an attractive option for you as the coverage of your classified listings is automatically linked to other social networking platforms such as Twitter, Oodle and MySpace. Unlike independent listings on online classifieds, listing on Facebook Marketplace also increases the authenticity of your listings, since each listing can be traced back to your Facebook Profile / Page. This in turn could also boost your overall Facebook presence.
Drawbacks
One drawback about Facebook Marketing is that the barrier to entry is set pretty high. For starters, listing your products or services on Facebook Marketplace isn’t exactly the same as having your own personal place within Facebook for commercial transactions. If you do wish to add your Marketplace listings as one of your personal places within Facebook – the only way would be to include your listings on the Marketplace as a tab on your Facebook Page / Profile. But to do so means you need to subscribe as an Oodle Pro user – this is considered a “premium” service offered by Oodle – which essentially means you have to pay for the service.
Another drawback of Facebook Marketplace is that this is still a fairly new feature on Facebook. Recently introduced in 2007, Facebook Marketplace was then handed over to be developed by third-party developer, Oodle, and re-launched in 2009. Hence, in terms of usage, its popularity and outreach lags behind other more established online classified marketplaces such as eBay or Craig’s List. At the time of writing, according to the official Facebook Marketplace Page, there are more than 3 million monthly active users. While this number might be impressive in itself, its actual popularity among Facebook users remains fairly insignificant, when compared against the some 955 million current active Facebook users.
Despite its apparent drawbacks, we Guerrilla Marketers would not be so quick as to dismiss the potential Facebook Marketplace offers. Although on the surface, the classified section of Facebook might seem fairly limited in terms of marketing opportunities, it could turn out to be a very interesting tool to harness. For a start, we especially like the fact that Facebook Marketplace has the ability to reach out to other Facebook users (read: who are not your friends). If your goal was to boost your Facebook or online presence by drawing in more traffic to your business Profile / Page, this feature could just be the right weapon to use.
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Ten-Hut! Weapon Tip #7: Another way to integrate an ecommerce facility is to look for apps that help you set up a mini-store within your Facebook Page. For example, third-party developer North Social has a Show & Sell feature that permits Pages to incorporate an online retail store within a Facebook Page. |
Weapon #15: Feed Burners
Creating a Facebook Page does not mean that you throw out your other web-based marketing resources such as existing websites, blogs or Twitter. Rather, we guerrillas would reinforce our business’ online presence by linking our Facebook Pages to existing blogs, podcasts, videos or photo-sharing facilities. And, to make our job easier, we will look for apps that can help us in this respect. This is where Feed Burners apps come in.
Blog RSS, Facebook Twitter, RSS Graffiti
Feed Burner apps automatically connect “feeds” - content - from your other web-based sources and load them onto your Facebook Pages. For instance, you have a blog about your business. There is a Blog RSS Feed Burner that can link your blog to your Facebook Pages. If you have been using Twitter to disseminate product launches or special discounts, there is a Facebook Twitter app that can support your tweets neatly onto a corner of your Facebook Page. If you are an administrator of a Facebook Page, you may be interested in RSS Graffiti – this is an app that helps Page Administrators check feeds that Administrators read on partner websites, and post them as new entries on to the Facebook Pages they are administering. Social bookmarking website Digg is an example of one of the pioneer partner websites whose content can be fed onto Facebook News Feeds automatically.
The advantage of using Feed Burners is that this is essentially a covert exercise on generating automatic News Feeds for your fans, without you or your administrators having to load in independent status updates onto your Facebook Page that you have already done elsewhere, say on your blog or Twitter account. This can go a long way towards stretching your time spent on Facebook to achieve brand awareness on the web.
Weapon #16: Plug-ins
A Plug-in is a ready-made, standalone software feature that you can use to enhance your Page or elsewhere, for example, your external website or blog. With Plug-ins, you don’t need to have special IT skills or knowledge to pull off a professional look for your website or Facebook Page – you simply need to know what’s out there and what could work for you. Most Plug-ins are free to use.
In Facebook, the Call-to-Action buttons – for instance, the “Like” or “Recommend” buttons - are common social plug-ins that you can use to strengthen your Facebook presence and boost your overall online presence. Here are three plug-ins offered by Facebook that we like:
Visit Us on Facebook
On your corporate website or blog, you could include a banner or Facebook Badge, inviting visitors to your external website to visit you on Facebook to participate in events or entice your visitors to Facebook. This is a simple yet effective way to direct existing traffic from your corporate website or blog to your new Facebook Page.
Facepile
Facepile, or Facebook Fan Box, is a listing of photographs of your fans who have liked your Facebook Page that you can feature on your website or Page – it provides you and your readers with an idea of who your fans are, and who they connected with. When you do this, you are also saying something else very powerful. You are saying, ‘I don’t just have a fan base. I have a community of fans whom I can put names and faces to.’ And that is a powerful statement. More about Managing Friends is covered in Weapon #24: Managing Friends and Fans.
LiveStream
LiveStream enables real-time sharing of videos and webinars on Facebook Pages. If the nature of your business or events involves real-time seminars / talks or live performances, this is the plug-in you want to have on your Page.
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Difference between Plug-ins, Add-ons & Apps The main difference lies in the scope or ability of the program. A plug-in is a simple, limited feature that you can include on a Page, for example, Facepile. It is a standalone, complete software program that can function by itself. An add-on or extension, as the term suggests, requires existing and/or compatible programs in order for it to work. Of the three, apps are the most sophisticated in terms of programming and hence abilities and functions: think the ability to conduct polls or manage events. |
Weapon #17: Promotions App
Guerrillas know that many Facebook users sign up to be a Friend or Fan of a business Page in the hope of receiving some benefit such as a freebie or special deal. Carrying out promotions is an effective way of increasing your fan base and generating further leads for your business. In the context of Facebook, promotions take on a slightly different twist that gets us guerrillas excited.
On Facebook, you can find apps that would help you quickly and easily create and administer promotions such as contests, sweepstakes, group deals and quizzes. What we especially like are apps that also have Facebook-friendly viral driver features, such as Friend Invites - inviting Friends to participate in share deals - or the Share Feature button - a pop-up dialogue box that asks users to post a message to their wall.
We have earlier pointed out that any status update on a user’s Profile or Page is reflected on the News Feed page. If your fan posts a message to their wall, they are essentially helping you reach out to hundreds more who are on their list.
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Promotions We Guerrillas Like: Sign-Up Forms: usually in the form of a lightbox - a small window overlay that seeks basic contact information from the user but does not take the user away to another Page or website) User-generated Contests (UGC): photo / essay contests are popular choices. Winners can be voted by the public or appointed jury to boost engagement Coupon Giveaways Group Deals / Deal Share: special discounts based on getting a certain number of users to commit to a purchase Knowledge Trivia / Quizzes Sweepstakes (giving away prizes based on random draws) |
Examples of promotions apps providers
There are a number of promotions apps developed by third party developers to help you create and administer promotions easily. North Social and LiveWorld’s Facebook CMS are examples of Facebook-based promotions apps you can use. When selecting which apps to use, bear in mind that some promotions apps work only in Facebook’s interface, while other promotions apps, for example, Award-winning Wildfire, work from an external website, making it possible for you to integrate publicity events with other external websites, for instance, corporate websites or blogs.
Weapon #18: Moderating Forums on Facebook
When you have a lively Discussion Board or forum, and a strong following by fans and visitors, you know that time is of essence in managing user-generated content on your Facebook Page. If you are unable to commit resources to manage this aspect of your Facebook Page, the next best course of action would be to look for some support to develop, operate, organize and moderate the user-generated content of your Facebook Page. One way is to outsource this function to professional social media programming agencies such as LiveWorld.
Introducing . . . LiveWorld
LiveWorld is a community programming agency that offers businesses unique products and services to ease the management of discussions and conversations in social media. Of particular interest to us guerrillas is LiveWorld’s Facebook Forum introduced in 2010. LiveWorld’s Facebook Forum is a conversation application that seamlessly integrates onto existing Facebook Pages to facilitate the conversations between a business and its fans (e.g. uploading of text, videos, and photos) as a standalone tab.
In addition, there are moderation tools businesses can use on the Discussion Board, such as the ability for moderators to set up multiple forums with unlimited topical threads, highlight topics, focus on top contributors or hot topics, post announcements, ask & answer questions, and even carry out polls without the need for additional or sophisticated programming skills.
In addition to products, LiveWorld also offers outsourced human moderator services to businesses – these professional moderators can be hired to review user content on Discussions Boards and Forums and take appropriate action to manage discussions based on pre-set guidelines. Reports are then generated for the business so that the business will know the active threads and feedback received. Depending on your needs, LiveWorld’s Advanced Power Moderation Tools can vet up to 1,000 posts per hour on Facebook.
One of the criticisms often raised about Facebook is that not all business owners are “cut out” for Facebook, simply because they do not have the time or the personality to engage their fans, for example, they could be shy. Even if you do not think you have the personality for Facebook, you can still launch a successful Guerrilla Facebook Marketing campaign by engaging a third party to do the work for you. To this end, there are service providers such as LiveWorld who have a team of professionals who can be hired to carry out marketing campaigns on Facebook.
We guerrillas like LiveWorld’s solutions. It comes with a price, but it is an option for businesses with a larger budget.
Weapon #19: Facebook Search
At first glance, this weapon might not appear to have any firepower. Why would anyone recommend this function as a Guerrilla Marketing weapon? But we guerrillas know better. There is a reason why Internet search engines like Google and Yahoo have grown into corporations of their own. In an information world, the search service is an indispensable tool.
Seek and Connect
The ubiquitous search function on Facebook is often times overlooked as a weapon in its own right.
A simple search function on Facebook can throw up plenty of opportunities for Guerrilla Marketers. Trust us: this is much better than cold-calling. For instance, we could search and make contact with relevant Facebook Groups or Fans who may be interested in our business. We could browse through our search results to decide on whom to invite to our events, or to view our Facebook Pages or to join our Groups and/or Group Discussions. If we have chosen our search parameters well, we are increasing the chances of increasing our fan base and growing our Facebook presence. Facebook’s search function is also useful for finding out what apps are available to help you build or maintain your Facebook Page or Profile.
It doesn’t get better than this. Really.
Weapon #20: Facebook Places
Facebook Places is a location-based service facility that identifies the geographical location of Facebook users by way of a check-in from using a mobile device, enabling Facebook users to indicate where they have been via Facebook. Facebook Places also helps users identify their friends who are located nearby to them in real-time, in addition to receiving local deals and discounts closest to the user’s location.
Updating the buy loyal strategy
Facebook Places brings a new dimension to the age-old strategy, to buy local. Imagine the marketing possibilities that could be opened to you, if you knew that your fans were nearby your place of business. This feature literally takes on a new spin as it has the ability to bring fans to your shop front. How would you entice them to your shop front? What kind of location-based deals would you craft for fans who check-into a place listed on your Pages? Would you consider varying your discounts or deals by changing variables, such as coming in a group, or coming at a certain time to help your business grow?
Weapon #21: Facebook Analytics
As a Guerrilla Facebook Marketer, how would you discern if your guerrilla attack has been victorious?
Welcome to the new face of market research, where being connected to your customers and knowing more about what your fans are doing on your Page are closely monitored in Facebook.
Want to know how active your Facebook presence has been? Curious to track your user interactions on your Facebook Pages and tabs?
No problem. There are features that can collate data such as the number of Likes, the number of daily active users, the number of new Fans, who is clicking on which tabs and on which ads, who has joined the Fan’s list, and so on. We have one word for you: Analytics.
‘Analytics’ is the term used to describe data monitoring and analysis by applying operational research methodologies. It is a concept that has become commonplace for businesses and marketers alike when it comes to monitoring online activity on websites, blogs, social media and the like.
Information and analytics are the core businesses of Facebook. The analytic tool offered to users is known as Facebook Insights. Facebook Insights is a free analytic service available for all Facebook Pages. Some users of Facebook Insights have criticized its simplistic nature. If you feel that way, you are free to engage third-party analytics providers – there are others out there – e.g. Socialbakers’ Analytics or Appdata.com.
The main crux of getting data is not data collation, but how we decode the data: what we do with the data we receive. We guerrillas treat analytical tools like report cards. Data can tell us what is working and what is not. Data can tell us what is helping us achieve our goals, and what is not. To answer that question, we need to first ask ourselves what we wanted to achieve from our Facebook marketing campaign in the first place – more on this in Chapter 6.
Facebook data we want to decode
If you are a Facebook Freshie, you might be wondering how you are connecting with your visitors. If so, data such as which Pages are viewed most frequently, how many Likes and how many comments you received per post, or the number of views per tab might be of interest to you. Or, you might be wondering if your content is relevant and appealing to your fans. If so, data such as number of unsubscribes and unLikes would tell you a lot about the appeal factor of your content to your current fans.
Data can also help us decide on how to tweak our Facebook activities. For instance, we may adjust our content or approach according to the demographic data such as gender or age on our fans in order to attract the kind of fans we are after. Or it could be as simple as adjusting when we post new content, based on the peak times for fan responses.
And we guerrillas are not just content with decoding simple data. We would want to take our decoding exercise further by, say for example, exporting the data into a simple excel sheet, and correlating this data with other data such as sales data or your external website traffic statistics. For instance, if you are giving out coupons on your Facebook Page, you can track activity to pinpoint how many Facebook Fans eventually make a purchase on your website or shop front using those coupons downloaded from Facebook. Or, you could correlate website traffic statistics to access if there has been any directed inbound / outgoing traffic between your external websites and Facebook and vice-versa.
Interested to find out more? Turn to Chapter 6 on Dollars and Cents: Making Sense of Guerrilla ROI where we discuss measuring outcomes in greater detail.
Weapon #22: Facebook Ads
Facebook Ads are the most blatant marketing tool available on Facebook for guerrilla marketers. Each ad is posted on the right column of a Page or Profile of Facebook users. If you Liked a particular ad, your preference will be noted and reflected thus for all your other friends to see. Facebook ads can drive traffic to external websites, or to another Facebook Page.
Facebook runs their advertising service as a self-service function: you are expected to do your own ad copy, and ad space is extremely limited. There are just 135 characters for the body of the ad – this means your ad copy text has to be absolutely watertight and, at the same time, look creatively eye-catching.
Facebook also offers advertisers the option of audience targeting. Which means, you, the advertiser, gets to control who gets to see your ads – you can specify the location of viewers as determined by IP addresses, age, educational status, gender, language and so on of your intended viewers. Incidentally, Facebook ads can also be targeted at people on their birthday.
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Ten-Hut! Weapon Tip #8: Ad Tips! If you are a Facebook Freshie or new to Facebook ads, here are some tips to help you get the most out of your Facebook ads: • CPC (cost-per-click) or CPM (cost-per-mille/thousand impressions)? On your first try, we say opt for CPC to keep your costs down simply because you don’t pay for that version of that ad if you do not get any clicks on your ad. • Spilt-test your ads. To spilt-test means to run your ad with one or two variables changed in order to assess which version of your ad is most effective. • Ads with attractive images get clicked on more than those without images. So it pays to give some attention to your ad’s image, no matter how small the image is. • Complement your ad with a functional landing page that has an email capture function. • Reward visitors who sign up to be on your emailing list or become a Fan of your Page with downloadable coupons or free gifts, samplings or free trial periods for your service to build up trust. |
• Read and re-read Facebook’s guidelines and best practices at www.facebook.com/adsmarketing. Their guidelines do change from time to time! |
Weapon #23: Facebook Sponsored Stories
Every time a Facebook user clicks on the Like button, Facebook collects the information, and stores it in their great library of information for use later on. Facebook Sponsored Stories is one of them.
Facebook Sponsored Stories is a new ad format. It features customized friends/fans’ actions that have been turned into ad message promotions that can be bought by businesses. Basically, it is a customized message based on your friends’ / fans’ actions.
Stories based on actions taken by fans/friends
Sponsored stories include actions captured by the Facebook Places function that checks-in fans or friends into businesses (Weapon #20: Facebook Places), Page posts and Page Likes (Weapon #7: Call-To-Action Buttons), RSVPing to an event and so on. How it works is that businesses can pay to feature a percentage of all check-ins to their businesses featured in a Facebook Sponsored Story slot on the right-side column of Facebook Pages and Profiles. The message of the story could go along the lines of ‘300 friends have checked into ABC business today’, or ‘x number of people or so [name of friend] and so [name of friend] liked this (ad)’.
From a Guerrilla Marketer’s point of view, Facebook Sponsored Stories is an interesting concept to explore. Perhaps if guerrilla marketers know how to pacify Facebook users who have rallied against Facebook for selling their Likes, and not getting a share of the proceeds, this could turn out to be an even more powerful tool for businesses.
Weapon #24: Managing Friends and Fans
Any Guerrilla Marketer knows the importance of maintaining lists. Creating and maintaining a database is a tactical necessity for all Guerrilla Marketers. Facebook knows this too, and makes it easy for businesses to manage their lists without any cost.
It matters not whether you have 100, 1,000 or 10,000 friends or fans. The principle of maintaining a Friends List on Facebook remains the same: your target is to build a relationship for each name on your list, one at a time. This isn’t a popularity exercise; it is a Guerrilla Marketer’s golden rule.
One useful way to help you connect and build relationships is to organize your lists into sub-lists according to interests, demographics, preferences, and so on. Facebook makes it easy for you with the Friends List function: you can have up to 1,000 friends on a maximum of 100 separate Friend Lists – so why not make full use of this feature? With organized Friends Lists, you can carry out targeted marketing campaigns by sending out specific content to specific groups of fans on your lists through invites and private messages. You can even determine who gets to read what content on their News Feeds.
If you have existing email lists you wish to import from other emailing systems, say in Yahoo or AOL, but not Gmail at this time of writing, you can do so by making use of the “Import Your Facebook Friends’ Email Addresses” function on Facebook.
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Ten-Hut! Weapon Tip #9: Not all fans might share their friends list with you. There are privacy controls on Facebook that can limit access to information about your fan’s friends who are more careful about sharing personal information. What can you do? Seek to get them interested first. Share compelling content about your business, encourage them to join events or group discussions. And always offer them the option of signing up to be your fan or friend. |
Facebook has made it easier for Guerrilla Marketers to carry out targeted marketing campaigns by way of the Top Friends feature. Top Friends is a feature that helps you identify who are the top Friends or Fans to your Facebook Profile / Page. These are your friends / fans who have interacted with your Business Page recently, or the most. There is a neat Fanbox widget tool we featured as Facepile (Weapon #16: Plug-ins) that you can adopt to feature your friends/fans on your Facebook Page or elsewhere, but not in Facebook Groups.
When you have a growing list of Top Friends, you know that you are doing something right on Facebook. Good for you! Our advice to you is to treat your targeted marketing campaign for your Top Friends as a full-on assault. Continue to connect to them in regular conversations. Make them feel special – organize exclusive events for them, offer them special deals and treats. Get them to recommend you to their friends, or provide positive reviews and feedback to your Facebook Page.
Weapon #25: Facebook Connect
This is how Facebook goes beyond its Facebook interface to interact and grow its presence with the web community at large.
Third-party links
Facebook Connect is a facility that enables links between Facebook and third-party partner websites. These third-party partner websites have existing arrangements with Facebook that enable Facebook users to leave comments, Like or share with their friends as they would on Facebook Pages, or even to access their email accounts without having to log in again from external websites. At the time of writing, Facebook announced that they are “transitioning away from the Facebook Connect brand to reflect that there is one platform behind any integration with Facebook. This change has no impact for developers using Connect; everything is still part of Facebook Platform.” The change in Facebook’s direction suggest that Facebook no longer sees Facebook Connect as merely a weapon to be wielded; it has become part of Facebook’s philosophy – in other words, it will become easier for businesses to make connections between their Facebook Pages and third party websites.
That aside, what can Facebook Connect offer to a Guerrilla Marketer now? Obviously, if you already have an existing website or blog, leverage on this tool to boost your online presence by directing traffic from your website or blog to your Facebook Page and vice-versa. As more connections and links are made between your Facebook Page and website or blog, you will also understand better how or what makes your fans connect to you online, or what makes them turn away from you. There’s more on online influence in Chapter 7 - The Faceoff: Where do we go from here?
So that’s all 25 weapons – dissected and discussed. Let’s take a breather and review them again, this time, presented in an easy-on-the-eye table:
Table 3: At a Glance: Summary of Guerrilla Facebook Marketing Weapons
Weapon #1 |
Facebook Page |
Weapon #2 |
The Wall |
News Feed |
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Weapon #4 |
Facebook Groups |
Weapon #5 |
Facebook Fan Pages |
Weapon #6 |
Facebook Apps |
Weapon #7 |
The Call-to-Action Buttons |
Weapon #8 |
Customized Tabs |
The Discussion Board |
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Weapon #10 |
The Review Tab |
Weapon #11 |
The Events Sharing and Invitations Tab |
Weapon #12 |
The Questions and Polls Tab |
Weapon #13 |
The Photos and Videos Sharing Tab |
Weapon #14 |
Facebook Marketplace |
Weapon #15 |
Feed Burners |
Plug-ins |
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Weapon #17 |
Promotions App |
Weapon #18 |
Moderating Forums on Facebook |
Weapon #19 |
Facebook Search |
Weapon #20 |
Facebook Places |
Weapon #21 |
Facebook Analytics |
Weapon #22 |
Facebook Ads |
Weapon #23 |
Facebook Sponsored Stories |
Managing Friends and Fans |
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Weapon #25 |
Facebook Connect |
The reason why we guerrillas love Facebook as a marketing tool is because more than 20 of the 25 Facebook-specific weapons we have highlighted are free. This is exactly what we guerrillas mean by focusing on time, energy, imagination and information instead of big budgets.
Selecting Guerrilla Weapons
But wait—there is more. Other than just having a good understanding of Facebook guerrilla weapons, guerrillas also need to wield the right weapons at the right time. One way to help us choose the right weapons is to prioritize which weapons we would want to try first.
Take some time to go through the list below, and classify the weapons into the order of priority for your next Guerrilla Marketing campaign. For each weapon, ask yourself: is this weapon something I can implement straightaway? Or is this weapon something I can try next if Plan A does not work out? Or, is this weapon to be kept in cold store for this particular marketing campaign?
The Priority Exercise on the subsequent pages is designed such that it can be re-used over and over again. Before starting on the exercise, make a few copies now for multiple use later on. Trust us, you will need the blank copies for future use.
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Ten-Hut! Weapon Tip #10: If you are undecided on how to prioritize, you could also check out what your competitors or “neighbouring” businesses are doing. |
Campaign Name: ________________________________________
Priority Exercise: Selecting Your Guerrilla Weapons
