Someones always got to push the limits on Facebook… and today’s winner was Conan O’Brien. From what I gather, he spent an hour “hosting his show” on Facebook, to his 1.5 million fans.
Sounds like a smart idea — but rather than sharing a live video stream, he posted status updates… again and again, and again and then some more, non stop.
Now, this could go either way — either be incredibly annoying, or insanley brilliant. Annoying, well, because they took over their fan’s news feed. Brilliant, because for every ‘like’ or comment one of their fans would post, means ANOTHER group of friends would be exposed to CoCo and his show.
My first impression was that people would unlike the page en mass. When I first noticed it, they had 1,523,043 fans… by the end of the episode, they dropped to 1,522,047 — a loss of just under a thousand?
I’m guessing they lost a bunch more, but for every unlike, they probably picked up 5 more likes, simply because of the viral aspect of Facebook.
And on top of that, I suspect CoCo will pick up some additional exposure somewhere on broadcast news and blogs.
The only real question I had at the end of it, is why didn’t this trip some sort of Facebook alert, to freeze his account after the 50th post, all a minute apart? (I counted 96 in total…)
All in all — I’d rank this one as a clever use of Facebook. Though, I don’t think every brand could pull it off.
With the Canadian election underway, I ‘liked’ all of the major parties on Facebook to see what they’re doing to leverage social media. For the most part, I’ve been unimpressed…
When the USA had their presidential election, there was a much more active outreach through social media. In Canada, much like Canadian politics… we’re boring! Everything’s been safe — almost too safe, for such an innovative medium, but I digress.
What has caught my attention, isn’t WHAT the parties are posting, but HOW. In particular, how the NDP is dealing with a bilingual country. Rather than targeting users based off their language (which is dead easy to do…), they post everything twice, within minutes of each other: Once in English, and once in French.
Why? Who knows…
Here’s my advice. Work under the assumption, that whoever “Likes” you on Facebook, is viewing Facebook in their preferred language. With that, target them accordingly… here’s how:
- Below the status update box, select the ‘Everything’ drop down.
- From here, a popover window will appear — simply start typing in the language you’re speaking in, and hit ‘Okay’. You’ll have to do this twice, to target those speaking English, and those speaking French — but it will leave the page much less cluttered, and not double message the fan base (ultimately reducing ‘unlikes’).
And while we’re at it… the political campaigns can take it one step further…
- Go Beyond French and English: With Facebook, you can target any language, so why be restricted by just French and English? Open it up to even more languages, using the same steps as above.
- Add Some Branding: The party leaders all have their own Facebook Fan pages, but none of them have any party branding on their profile picture — sure, they have branding on the Party pages, but not their own. This is a missed opportunity in terms of further tying themselves in with their party.
- Add in a Welcome Page: Give me a reason to ‘Like’ the page (and make it clear, via a giant arrow on where to click), along with links to your YouTube, Twitter, Email and Website.
- Thank Me for Liking You: Provide an exclusive ‘welcome’ video to whoever likes the page. Its fairly simply to do, and will help guide the fan on what they can do to help the campaign further.
- Integrate an Email Capture Form: Try to collect an email address at every turn — this gives you another way to reach out and share your messaging with supporters. Don’t just rely on Facebook, look for engagement on every medium.
- Make it a Conversation: Most of the post are simply “telling” us things… how about asking us something once in a while? (eg: what’s our take on healthcare)
I was stumbling around on Facebook today, and found this great example of how to leverage Facebook Profile Pictures for Business Pages. Rather than using a static logo, the people at Knorr made it a big advertisement for growing their page ‘Likes’, while helping Canadian Food Banks at the same time.
Knorr has tied in a marketing objective (growing their Facebook Page to 7,000 Likes), with social good (food for those in need), to give Facebookers a compelling reason to ‘like’ the page.
On top of this, the Profile Picture itself is also being used to track their success, by way of a progress bar disguised as a thermometer. As more people ‘like’ the page, the thremometor rises (by way of simply uploading a new profile picture, for each milestone). Very clever!
A little while ago, I was looking around to see what others are doing as a Facebook Welcome Page — the first page a visitor sees before anything else. Typically, it has a call to action for the visitor to “Like” the page along with the company’s branding and positioning statements.
Red Bull caught my eye, as their message is crystal clear: “Like” us. It’s clean, clever and effective, and hard not to like them with this compelling of a welcome page.
I was looking online for shoes the other day, when I came across Shoe Metro — they had a Facebook link on their homepage, so I clicked through out of curiosity, and discovered a really cool Facebook feature they’re taking advantage of: Depending if the visitor ‘Likes’ the page, they’ll see different content shown in an FBML Box.
In particular, Shoe Metro is giving users a reason to ‘Like’ their Facebook page, by offering a 10% discount — the brilliance is, you won’t see the promo code until you “Like” the page. This provides a powerful incentive to consumers, and in turn, helps Shoe Metro grow their Facebook user reach.
Digging around, I also found 1-800-Flowers is using the same trick, giving users 20% off when they “Like” their page. Instead of showing a completely different image, they make a promo code appear in a pre-existing white box.
It took me a little googling to figure out how its done, and it turns out its fairly simple — its combining the <fb:visible-to-connection> and an else statements in an FBML box — the code below does the trick:
<fb:visible-to-connection>
People who Liked it, see this
eg: Enter promo code SAVE10
<fb:else>
People who haven't, see this
eg: Like us for 10% off
</fb:else>
</fb:visible-to-connection>
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Hi, I'm Dave. I'm an online marketer in Vancouver.
