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See all articles by: Lucas Scholten
Last updated: [ 13.11.2008 ]
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Marketing
Over the past year Facebook has become incredibly popular. Whether you like it or not, this means that you can now harness this community to get a message out to potentially thousands of people for very little money.
What is Facebook?
For those of you who have been hiding in a cave for the past decade, Facebook is a platform very similar to MySpace. It's a website where you can put up your personal details and interact with other user.By getting a Facebook account you can:
- Establish an online presence
- Talk to your friends
- Share photos with your friends
- Play games with your friends
- Sell your old stuff
- Meet new people
- Do whole array of other things
What's unique about Facebook is that it keeps you updated on what your friends are doing on Facebook, as well as on other affiliated sites. You will be notified when they make a change to their profile, when they start playing a new game, when they add a new song to their favourite music list, etc. Almost all interactions with the site are sent to friends so that they can keep informed about what you're up to.
All these things seem trivial, but it is exactly this that allows you to get a message out to thousands of people very quickly.
How do I use Facebook to advertise my business virally?
Facebook has an advertising option called Social Ads, which allows you to place adverts in the lower left of Facebook's website.
You make an advert and typically pay whenever someone clicks though your advert. The system is a lot like Google's Adwords program.
Most people simply send visitors straight to their website; an effective advertising method in itself. But this overlooks an enormous potential to leverage Facebook's ability to spread your message virally.
What you need to do is set up what is called a Facebook Page. This is like a normal Web Page, but it is integrated within Facebook's system, which means whenever someone interacts with that page, all their Facebook's friends will be notified.
This is very important!
Here's an example to illustrate:
The NHS wants to spread awareness for it's anti smoking campaign. To spread their message virally, they create a Facebook page.
The Facebook page is customised with the NHS logo and colours. It also explains some facts about smoking and directs visitors to their main website to learn more.
To get the users to interact with the page; the NHS decides to start a competition:
"NHS 20 Free Ipod Giveaway
Help Us Spread Awareness
Simply Add Yourself as a Fan for a Chance to Win
Winners will be notified by email on the 26th of September 2008"
This would be an excellent way to get users to add themselves as a fan.
Lets say Paul arrives at our page and decides to add himself as a fan; all his friends (maybe 30 or a hundred) would be notified. Lets say Suzie, George and Chris all read the notification and decided to join too; that means all their friends will also be notified. We may have spread our message to 90 - 400 people already, and it doesn't stop, it just keeps going virally.
All that is required to start the viral chain is some initial visitors and that is what we use Facebook Social Ads for.
Is Facebook advertising really for me?
Although Facebook has mass potential, to make a successful campaign one is required to break away from traditional marketing methods.
Whilst advertising your product right from the advert can work, the campaigns which tend to spread virally:
- Realise that people use Facebook for leisure and try to appeal to them through competitions or by providing something fun to do.
- Provide something of value; a reason to interact. In the NHS example, people will interact because they know that doing so will help a good cause and will also give them a chance to win something desirable.
- Up sell from the Facebook page rather than selling straight from the advert.
- Use Facebook's in-built targeting to target people who are most likely to be interested in your advert.
Contact us now, to find out more.