What to Expect from Facebook

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What To Expect from FacebookFacebook has been attractive to marketers due to its unprecedented reach and scale. But what does it really mean for your brand? While 56% of the Fortune 500 now have a Facebook page, they continue to struggle with deriving real ROI from their Facebook investments. Analysts remain divided on whether or not tangible benefits exist for marketers in the Facebook channel.

Nevertheless, a Facebook presence has become a destination for many global brands. To not have a Facebook page today means not showing up to the social party. Hence, Lithium has set out to help brands discover how to best address Facebook marketing.

Here’s what we learned:

What Top Brands Are Doing on FacebookWith 600 million users worldwide, if it were a country, Facebook would be the world’s third largest. Spots and all, Facebook represents an enormous opportunity for marketers to engage with their audiences to build deeper and longer lasting social relationships.

So, how exactly do companies go about engaging their Facebook audiences? What’s the best way to get started? Who’s doing it right?

To answer those questions, we researched the Facebook pages of over 600 brands. We looked at number of pages, fans, fan posts, company posts, likes, and custom apps available, and we came up with the Facebook ACTivity Score—a comparative scale that shows how brands are engaging their social customers on Facebook.

Here’s how we sliced it:

The Careful—Companies with a Facebook page and a few fans, but not doing anything to drive engagement.

The Curious—Those who have devoted some resources to maintaining their Facebook presence and are dabbling with customer engagement. Some fans, multiple fan pages, a few posts from both fans, and the company.

The Invested—Brands with a clear Facebook strategy and in the early phases of execution. The company is more engaged and posts often, the fans are more engaged and post often. They’re exploring custom Facebook apps.

Lithium defines social success as driving real

business outcomes through social

customer engagement.

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The Committed—Companies dedicated to growth on Facebook and have invested significant resources to build a thriving fan base. Both fans and the company actively post and a number of Facebook apps are offered.

The Obsessed—Brands who are in it to win it. Trail-blazers with a rich Facebook engagement strategy, targeted, custom Facebook apps, a large and active Facebook following. The FACT Score Chart shows example brands at each level of engagement on Facebook, from the Curious to the Obsessed. So, this is what they’re up to. But are they successful? What does success mean on Facebook?

Lithium defines social success as driving real business outcomes through social customer engagement. So let’s talk about Facebook and outcomes.

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What Works and What Doesn’t on FacebookWe looked to brands with deep experience engaging customers through a variety of social channels to help us answer that question. We wanted to know how experienced community managers, customer engagement, and social strategists saw Facebook as part of their overall engagement strategy, so we asked our customers.

In a Social Customer Survey early in 2011, we asked leading marketers about their expectations for Facebook, their successes and challenges with the channel, and how their endeavors there compared with those in their Lithium brand community. Here’s what they told us—they said that Facebook is:

1. Great for outbound communication. Indeed, the reach and scale of Facebook provides a real benefit to marketers. When it comes to creating awareness, Lithium customers say Facebook delivers.

2. The place to create social goodwill for the brand. Here again, for size and visibility, a Facebook presence is a “must have” for presenting a sense of social goodwill.

3. Not useful for gathering customer feedback. When it comes to keeping a finger on the pulse on customer sentiment, gathering ideas for product innovation, measuring customer loyalty, finding influencers and advocates, or conducting market research, our customers told us that Facebook has room to grow.

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4. Lacking in opportunities for peer-to-peer engagement. Peer-to-peer engagement is a driving force behind getting social customers to create the content that allows brands to benefit from social media. When customers engage with each other, they build the content that drives SEO, that can be used for unassisted customer support, etc, and they become more loyal and more satisfied. With comments and status updates disappearing from the Facebook Wall in minutes and hours, opportunities for peer-to-peer engagement is limited.

5. Not a tool for building trust among social customers. Without peer-to-peer engagement, there is no opportunity to motivate and reward behavior—two key components of trust-building in social networks.

What Brands Should Expect from FacebookNow that we know what top brands are doing on Facebook, what’s working and what isn’t, how can we align our expectations appropriately for our Facebook initiatives? Here’s what we think brands should expect from Facebook in the current environment:

Expect your customers to want you to be on Facebook.Most industry analysts and social media thought leaders agree, Facebook is a platform not to be dismissed. If you have no Facebook presence at all, get one. Average Internet users spend more time on Facebook than Google, Yahoo! Wikipedia, Amazon and Microsoft combined according to Altimeter Group’s Jeremiah Owyang. Social customers especially expect brands to engage them where they already are, and they are already on Facebook in droves.

Expect Facebook to help expand your reach.For its sheer size and viral features, Facebook is generally considered a smashing success at the dissemination of marketing messages. Our customers tell us Facebook provides them with real awareness benefits and the key channel for demonstrating a posture of social goodwill.

Expect to participate—often.We all know by now that jumping on Facebook or grabbing a Twitter handle for your company isn’t a social strategy. Frequent posts, lots of sharing and liking—even custom Facebook apps—are in order if you hope to get the most benefit from Facebook page(s). New visitors want to know your brand is present and existing followers need to hear from you in order to stay engaged. Consistently updated, fresh, and timely content are especially crucial as Facebook Wall content decays very quickly.

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Expect to serve your customers on Facebook.With 91% of social customers reporting the abandonment of at least one brand on Facebook or Twitter, we can see that the audience is fickle. As we’ve seen in online venues before, driving people to a social site without providing an outlet for their needs invites a peak-and-trough customer engagement cycle rather than a path toward sustained increases in customer lifetime value.

Q&A, moderation, and recognition features enable the peer-to-peer interactions needed to get your Facebook fans to start helping each other so they can real value from their visits to your Facebook page—either by finding the information they need or by being recognized for their contributions.

ConclusionExperienced social marketers report that a campaign-based approach to Facebook focused on simple dissemination of discrete marketing messages is worth the effort. But if you’re looking for real business outcomes—increased customer loyalty, deeper customer insights, increased demand, more sales leads, competitive advantage—marketers must move beyond simply counting fans and likes.

Systems of rank and reward motivate social customers to contribute and act on your behalf, building a sustained, profitable enthusiasm for your brand. Creating opportunities to identify and amplify trusted voices on Facebook will help to derive real business outcomes from the channel. Fostering productive peer-to-peer relationships among fans is essential for turning your Facebook presence from a staticdestination into a vibrant community that meets customer needs, rewards visitors for their participation, and motivates Facebook fans to become your brand advocates.

Creating opportunities to identify and amplify

trusted voices on Facebook will help to derive real

business outcomes from the channel.