by: Jason Miller
Last week I attended the AllFacebook Conference here in San Francisco. Two gloriously informative days of nothing but thought leaders talking about the latest trends and best practices in the world of Facebook marketing. Incredibly insightful sessions and presentations from the likes of Dennis Yu, Marty Weintraub, Robert Scoble, and Brian Carter just to name a few.
There was so much useful information and I wanted to pass along my key takeaways for the B2B marketing professional.
1. Facebook is a media distribution center. Mark Zuckerberg has built a platform to bring us messages. From a user perspective, the more Facebook knows about you, the better the delivered news and results will be. The news feed is highly protected allowing only the most relevant content to break through based on each individual. However, the inbound subscription feeds and the ticker on the right side are much less filtered allowing for a more targeted marketing message to users from brands.
2. It’s all about storytelling. The vision that Facebook has for the Open Graph is to offer a tool that allows users tell their story by facilitating organic authentic behavior. The news feed chooses interesting aspects and shows each individual the most appealing post they can show that person at any given time. It takes into consideration what that person will probably “like”, what they are going to comment on, and which posts they will find most relevant. By identifying the activity that their fans engage in and then amplifying it, Facebook spins out certain posts to your brand’s fans in a way that generates an exciting feedback loop.
3. The opportunity for Facebook ads is to convert friends of followers. CEO of Aimclear and Facebook ad expert Marty Weintraub spoke about the disconnect in advertising on Facebook. He focused much of his session on how to break through to what he refers to as 2nd degree conections, or friends of followers. Facebook solves this problem with sponsored stories. Now pages can break through the second later and market to people who are not directly in their circle. Weintraub recommends that businesses take advantage of this opportunity before Facebook’s privacy challenges lead to the shutting down of this option.
Another way to break through and connect with 2nd degree connections is to use social applications such as social marketing boost from Marketo. Doing so will add a social lift to your marketing campaigns and encourage friction-less sharing outside of your initial following.
4. The average Facebook page only reaches about 17% of its fans. Facebook has admitted this startling statistic, but what’s even more frightening is that less than 1 to 2% of fans ever make it back to your fan page. These stats reinforce the importance of understanding how EdgeRank operates in order to get your messages into your fans’ news feed. When a brand posts a message, Facebook ultimately decides who is going to see that message based on Edgerank. This algorithm is directly affected by the engagement levels that users have with your content through comments and likes. When you get a new fan, you have the opportunity to keep them engaged. If you don’t, they’ll simply stop reading your posts.
5. Go visual or go home. Effectively utilizing visual content like infographics, video, visual note-taking, memes, and even Instagrams into your Facebook marketing strategy is vital for breaking through Edgerank. While not every post needs to be visual, a daily visual is vital for grabbing the attention of your fans. The secret is to tie an offer to each of your visuals or ask a question to encourage engagement. For help with your visual content strategy, check out our latest Slideshare deck; Visual Content Marketing: Capture and Engage Your Audience.
Did you attend this year’s AllFacebook conference? What were your key takeaways?
Original post: http://blog.marketo.com/blog/2012/07/5-takeaways-from-the-allfacebook-conference.html
