My social media journey - Week 6

Andy Hatcher of The Mapp talks about Facebook for Business

(Andy is the MD of  The MAPP Ltd., a company that provides simple visual planning solutions)
“Even if you fall on your face(book), you’re still moving forward.” Adapted from Victor Kiam
 

Listen to Andy’s interview on Show 20 

 
Summer seems to know no end which seems to mean that literally everyone has gone on holiday.
Despite all that I have had 72 new visitors in the last week and interestingly they look at an average of 2 pages each with the most popular being Pricing and the Demo page which I am thinking are both good signs. 9 new free account signups which makes 36 in total.

Is Facebook the place for businesses?

So this week I took a long look at the area that I think most unsettles those that are relatively new to social media – the world of Facebook. Stats are everywhere about Facebook but one of the most interesting was that Mark Zuckerberg (like me) suffers from red-green colourblindness and sees the color blue best (like me!), which is why blue dominates Facebook’s colour scheme.

The key thing about Facebook, for those that have been avoiding it, is that it is fairly and squarely focused on you as an individual and your relationships and all other activities are subordinate to that. Facebook has introduced Facebook for Business which leads you through how to set up a business page from your existing Facebook account which is quick and fairly easy. There‘s a pretty good video from Hubspot on how to set it all up here.

Many, including me, ask the question about whether Facebook is even about business and the general answer seems to be “Well, it depends…”. Facebook is full of individuals who, in theory, could buy anything from you either in an individual capacity or as an employee so ultimately in the wider sense Facebook can be seen as just another marketing route to people’s money, supported by all the interaction.

What’s a ‘Like’ worth?

Once the page is set up then the task is to get others to become your ‘fans’ and ‘Like’ your page which means that they click on the thumbs up sign on your page and in effect show support for what you and your company is doing. The Like process has caused some controversy in the past as some brands have used it explicitly as an indication that you are happy to promote the brand in other ways without your knowledge – in reality it is just an agreement that you are happy to get updates from that page.

What is clear is that, from a business point of view, Likes seem to be a critical factor in building an audience with the potential to convert to buyers. It also determines whether you can generate any income from advertising on your page.  A recent report cited that Likes have increased in value in the last three years so now when someone likes your page, that click is worth $174.17 to your brand - a 28 percent increase since 2010. You’ll have to look at the report to see how they come up with that number! Who would have thought…?

Turning a Liker into a Buyer

Facebook does provide some help on turning a Liker (?) to a Buyer including Offers which are essentially adverts. These allow you to create a promotion for everyone that either looks at or Likes your page – usually offering a discount or something for free. When someone takes up your offer, a message gets sent to all of their fans that they have done so and so the message spreads. Creating the offer is free but promoting it works on a pay per click model where you can set a daily or lifetime budget for the life of the promotion.

Some interesting stats in all this is that fans are usually vocal about what they do and don’t like, with 75% of them likely to share good brand experiences, promotions and discounts with their Facebook friends and 66% also likely to share a bad brand experience.

Continuing with the micro-industry theme from previous weeks, Facebook has of course generated a huge number of applications that work alongside it to enhance the user experience. It has, in a similar way to Twitter, also generated a market for companies who offer the opportunity to acquire large number of fans at relatively low cost. The general feeling about this process is that it is flawed as many of the fans will be fake or dormant accounts who are not in any way potential customers. So what’s the point of 10,000 likes if none of them are real people? There is some argument that numbers acquired in this way gets you some reward but they seem very small and potentially reduce your overall credibility.

So at the end of all of this the general learning seems to be:

1. Create a Facebook page even if you are not sure whether you should or not
2. Once created, make sure it is updated with content
3. Respond to comments posted on your page
4. Find a bona fide way of generating Likes
5. Use offers and promotions to convert Likes into buyers

So if you are reading this and think that your site might be worth Liking then let me know and then be reciprocal and Like ours and we will have together generated 2 times $174.17 just like that!

Follow the progress of The Mapp on Twitter

Week 5 of Andy’s journey is here