To better understand what makes a successful Page post, we recently conducted an internal study to discover which topics generate the most engagement. The study shows that speaking about subjects related to your brand is the best way to generate engagement. While the conclusion may not seem surprising, since your fans liked your Page because they like your brand, understanding how post topics relate to engagement can help you improve your content strategy and identify the best content to promote through Ads and Sponsored Stories.
We examined four weeks of Page posts, across 23 brands and six industries and divided the posts into three types of content:
Messages about the product or service
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Travel brand example: Our new resort just opened! Book your trip today.
Messages related to the brand
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Travel brand example: I decided to go on my first cruise because______.
Messages unrelated to the brand
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Travel brand example: Hang in there everybody. Monday will be over before we know it!
Posts on topics related to the brand, but not specifically about the product or service, were the sole universally significant predictor of all types of engagement.
Here is a list of the drivers of each type of engagement:
If your goal is to generate shares:
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Post on topics related to the brand
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Use photos, photos albums and videos
If your goal is to generate likes:
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Post on topics related to the brand
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Post a clear call to action, for example “Like this if…”
If your goal is to generate comments:
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Post on topics related to the brand
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Ask a question in the post
You can maximize your success on Facebook by optimizing your Page posting strategy for the type of engagement you are trying to drive. You can use
Page Insights to monitor engagement for your individual posts. This research also underscores the power of advertising on Facebook. The branded posts that businesses naturally want to share more widely, are also the posts getting the most engagement, so be sure to use
Ads and Sponsored Stories to increase their distribution and generate even more engagement. For additional best practices, please visit our
Guide to Best Practices for your Page and media strategy.
Agency Imagination Sydney was tapped by Commonwealth Bank of Australia to highlight and amplify the bank’s charitable giving program. Together they created Community Seeds, a program that let people choose from among six local charities and direct the bank’s giving to that cause. After selecting a charity, people were given a virtual seedling for their Facebook profile. As they spread the word about their chosen charity, the virtual seedling showed the growth. And as their friends got involved, the seedling grew even more. The campaign helped Commonwealth Bank increase its Facebook community by 82 percent, and the bank donated more than $150,000 to six local charities as decided by their fans. David Clarke, Digital Creative Head of Imagination in Sydney, talked to us about the campaign.
First, congratulations on winning a Facebook Studio Award.
Thanks, getting this sort of international recognition with such top-tier talent being considered is a huge win for us here at Imagination. We’re all very excited by that.
What made the Community Seeds campaign an award-winner?
Commonwealth Bank was acting on an altruistic cause, which resonates with consumers. Donating to charity feels good, and being recognized for giving can feel even better. Using that insight to broaden the reach through a show of social influence was extremely meaningful to our audience.
We wanted to let people not only participate, but also wanted to incentivize spreading the message to their friends. By using gamification techniques like leader boards, social badges and progress tracking, we were able to encourage people to help these charities. From the beginning, we were looking to create a snowball effect where friends influence friends.
How did you and your technical team get from concept to working application?
We really wanted to visually show the results of a participant’s influence by motivating donations through their social network. The Facebook platform allowed us to track those interactions. Voting for your cause of choice was relatively easy, but visualizing a couple of seedlings growing was the true challenge.
When a vote was cast, the user would receive a seedling with a single leaf and have a badge placed on his or her Facebook wall. When their friends saw that badge and subsequently cast a vote, not only would they get their own seedling but they would also make their friend’s seedling grow. The seedlings and their development came to represent your social influence over the course of the campaign. People could clearly see that every seedling was unique and that it was growing based on their influence, reflecting their own ability to help out with this good cause.
The fact that the campaign was powered by complicated code didn’t stop it from being a very simple, beautiful, and easy-to-access experience for users. On that front, our technical team, led by Nash Trajkovski, is constantly testing and iterating on design to make sure we’re creating the best experience for people.
What made Facebook a good base for this kind of philanthropic campaign?
We looked at creating a website as well as a number of other options. Facebook is the most powerful platform out there when it comes to leveraging social influence. So we ultimately saw the platform was the best place for the campaign to live, and we were rather happy with the results.
How did you keep people coming back to the page?
We worked with a local PR agency,
One Green Bean, quite extensively on this campaign. In addition to running the targeted Facebook Ads, they handled all the community management and made sure that there was always fresh content on the Page to support the campaign, and active moderation and responses to people’s posts.
How did the campaign integrate with other media?
We kick-started the campaign in main business park areas of Sydney and Melbourne, where we gave out actual branded seedlings to people passing by that included cards with a unique code. The card explained the campaign and invited potential participants to make their first vote worth $10 (10 times the normal donation amount) by entering the code on their Facebook Page. This was vital to the campaign because it ensured that in the first wave, that first roll of the snowball had a powerful push behind it. It was a predominantly digital campaign with a real world kickoff.
Was there one key factor in making this campaign such a success?
We always start our social campaigns looking at why users would participate; we use the old saying, “Why would they care, why would they share?” to get started. If you can make an intrinsically motivated campaign with an extrinsic reward, and then layer on gamification techniques to make it fun and keep people engaged, I think you’re on your way to success.
David Clarke is Digital Creative Head of Imagination in Sydney. Check out the Community Seeds campaign and explore the other winning work here.
Here are some of our latest product news and updates for agencies and brands.
Feature your brand’s app in the App Center
If your brand has a social app on facebook.com, on a website or on mobile, you’ll soon be able to include it in our new App Center to build awareness and traffic for your app. For the more than 900 million Facebook users, the App Center will serve as a unique destination where they can browse new apps and rediscover their favorites. The App Center is currently open exclusively to developers to enable them to create detail pages for the apps they have built. If your brand is working with a developer to build a timeline app, canvas app, mobile web app, or native mobile app, create an app detail page for the App Center before it goes live in the coming weeks. Read the App Center guidelines and guide to creating an app detail page for your brand’s app.
Offers rolls out to all managed accounts
Facebook Offers lets businesses offer coupons and deals to fans through posts that appear in people’s news feeds on both desktop and mobile, as well as through posts that are promoted as sponsored stories. Check out this product guide and the Help Center for more information. Offers is currently available to all managed accounts. Please contact your Facebook representative for more information on how to get started with your first offer.
Domino’s Pizza uses Facebook to launch its first global special
Check out this case study to learn why Domino’s Pizza turned to Facebook to launch its first global offer. The brand used its Pages in 20 countries to build awareness of the 50 percent off online pizza orders. A tab revealed the offer and let people share it in 14 languages. It then ran Premium ads to invite people to RSVP for the offer and used sponsored stories to amplify the stories created when people liked the Page or used the app. The campaign led to a record week for online sales and orders in the United States. And more than 542,000 people were led to Domino’s Pizza online ordering sites globally.
While we are all fans of likes, the true value of Facebook for brands comes from building loyalty and driving sales. We believe these are the metrics you should be measuring on Facebook.
To understand the value you are generating on Facebook, it is essential to measure the business goals you are trying to achieve. We find that most of these goals can be summarized by:
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Reach: Did you reach the right people, how many of them did you reach, and what was the frequency?
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Brand resonance: Did reaching these people change perception in the way you wanted and did the message stick?
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Reaction: Did people actually go into stores or onto your site and purchase?
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Consumer insights: What have you learned about people, product and brand that can improve the business?
Looking at how many likes you have and who the fans of your Page are can help you achieve additional reach. Understanding what content is driving the highest engagement helps you develop great creative and stories that will resonate with your audience. However, it is essential that everything you do on Facebook be tied to a business goal. Being clear on the objectives of your Facebook marketing programs or campaigns and measuring your success against those goals is the first step.
We also encourage companies to select metrics for Facebook that will enable them to compare across platforms. Read our Guide to Measuring Success to learn more about the measurement solutions Facebook offers and examples of how companies are successfully measuring their efforts on Facebook. We encourage you to talk with your client partner about the right metrics for your brand. You can also see our case studies to see how other brands are measuring their success on Facebook. We encourage you to talk with your client partner about the right metrics for your brand.
Here are some of our latest product news and updates for agencies and brands.
Build an audience for your app through Facebook platform for mobile
Wondering how to use Facebook platform for your brand’s mobile application? Check out this video demo for more on connecting people with your brand across any device. Using Facebook platform for your mobile app allows people to spread the word about your app with their friends through notifications, news feed and timeline. This can lead to more traffic, better discovery and more engagement.
PepsiCo India achieves 60% share of voice online
Watch our case study on PepsiCo India’s campaign on Facebook around the 2011 Cricket World Cup during which the brand achieved 60 percent share of voice online. As part of the “Change the Game” campaign, PepsiCo India released seven new television spots on Facebook before airing them on national television. The move led PepsiCo India’s fans to share the clips with their Facebook friends, creating buzz for the campaign before the official launch. The first spot alone was shared more than 10,000 times within the first hour of premiering on Facebook.
Here are some of our latest product news and updates for agencies and brands.
Reach more people on the go with sponsored stories on mobile
At fMC we announced that your brand can now reach more people on the go. Sponsored stories that appear in people’s news feeds on desktop will also appear on their mobile phones. Sponsored stories promote organic interactions between people and your brand, so there’s a better chance that people will hear about you via their friends. Sponsored stories in news feed on mobile is currently available in all global regions.
Mobile is a great place for your brand to share its story as more than 480 million people access Facebook monthly on their phones. Sponsored stories on mobile are available through Premium on Facebook, which offers distribution on the right-hand side of homepage and in news feed on desktop and mobile. The best way to increase the likelihood of delivery in news feed is to create engaging content on your Page, as sponsored stories in news feed cannot be purchased separately. Read our Premium on Facebook guide to learn more.
Hyundai uses Facebook to launch new vehicles globally
Watch our latest case study video to learn how Hyundai used Facebook to help launch new vehicles across its key markets globally. As part of its launch of the new Veloster model, the brand put people at the center of its marketing effort, inviting fans to create videos with the theme “expect the unexpected.” Fans then voted to select the best video, which appeared in an ad on the Facebook homepage. In 2011, Hyundai Worldwide gained more than 1.5 million fans, enabling the brand to now reach 215 million people who are friends of its fans with its brand messages.
We recently launched the first version of the Facebook
demo tool, an app designed to help brands and agencies mock up how their premium ads will look to people when they’re using Facebook. The demo tool makes it easier than ever to visualize how creative from your Page will translate into different
Premium on Facebook placements. Anyone can use the demo tool to test different campaign ideas and share them with colleagues or clients.
Getting started
The first step is to create a sample brand Page by uploading a profile photo and cover photo. Be sure to check out these
best practices for the new Pages layout.
Next, choose a few of your friends to be “fans” of the brand. These sample fans will help illustrate what people see when their friends are connected to your brand. (Please note that you are building mockups in a simulated environment—your activity in the application, including friend selection, won’t publish to Facebook.)
You can create Page post content from photos, status updates or questions. Once your Page post is ready, you can preview it as an ad or a sponsored story. You can also preview your Page posts in three different locations: right-hand-side, news feed on your desktop and news feed on mobile.
Have fun
The
demo tool lets you experience the visual impact of Premium on Facebook first-hand, rather than just imagining how your ads and sponsored stories would appear to fans and friends of fans. Please keep in mind that currently, the demo tool provides a visual overview of Premium on Facebook, but does not comprehensively describe all Premium ad scenarios.
We’d love to hear your feedback on version one—please click on “Feedback” to let us know what you think, how you’re using the demo tool, and what features you’d like to see in the next release.
Here are some of our latest product news and updates for agencies and brands.
Facebook Offers is a new way to reward fans
Facebook Offers lets businesses offer coupons and specials to fans through posts that appear in people’s news feeds on both desktop and mobile, as well as through posts that are promoted as sponsored stories. Fans will be able to redeem Offers via email or on a mobile device. Offers is currently in beta and is available to a limited set of Pages in New Zealand, Singapore, Australia, Japan, and Turkey. We plan to launch Offers more widely in the next few weeks. Please contact your Facebook representative for more information on how to get started with your first offer.
1-800-FLOWERS.COM uses Facebook to connect with its customers
Watch our case study on 1-800-FLOWERS.COM to learn how the brand is using Facebook to interact with customers in the same personal way as when it had just opened its first brick-and-mortar store. With all the real-time conversations happening on Facebook, the brand is able to put people at the center of its business. In the weeks leading up to Mother’s Day, the brand asked moms to like the products on its Facebook Page that they wanted to receive for their special day. The four of the five most liked products in that campaign ended up being the top-selling products for the brand's Mother’s Day season.
Everywhere I go, people ask me about changes in the automotive industry. Increased competition, shrinking margins, alternative fuel technologies, in-vehicle infotainment and new business models have all changed the industry dramatically over the last few years. But in every market I visit, one thing remains the same. From manufacturers to dealers, everyone echoes this sentiment: the car business is a people business.
It is a relationship business and a word-of-mouth business. Building strong connections with customers has always been a cornerstone for success in the industry. Most people only purchase a new vehicle every three or four years, so automotive marketers work hard to develop effective loyalty strategies that retain their existing owners and keep their businesses growing. Because loyal owners are also some of the best salespeople. Their recommendations and positive word of mouth can help attract new customers.
Leveraging loyalty
A successful loyalty strategy begins with a brand’s connection to its customers. Facebook Pages are an invaluable way to connect with people. When owners become fans of your brand, they allow you to publish stories to them. Each of these stories can be the beginning of a conversation and, over time, a relationship. Ongoing, regular engagement not only impacts customer loyalty, but also becomes the basis of meaningful stories they can share with friends.
To pinpoint the real value of these of connections between automotive brands and their owners on Facebook, we conducted a loyalty study* earlier this year and identified several insights:
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55 percent of U.S. automotive Page fans own a vehicle manufactured by that brand
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Loyalty among those owners who are Page fans is 16 percentage points higher than owners who haven’t fanned (62 percent vs. 46 percent)
The results of the study show that many of the connections auto manufacturers have are with their most loyal owners. We also asked fans of U.S. automotive Pages when they plan to purchase a new vehicle, and 26 percent said they plan to do so in the next year. That underscores why quality connections with your actual owners are far more valuable than artificially inflated fan bases. Their loyalty can translate into real dollars.
Creating influence
The study also revealed the influence owners who are fans can have on their friends:
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82 percent of owners who are fans of automotive Pages are very likely to recommend their vehicle to a friend vs. 69 percent of owners who are not fans
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On average, owners who are fans of their manufacturer’s U.S. Page are connected to 433 friends which is more than three times the friends of the typical Facebook user
Owners who are fans are stronger advocates than those who aren’t. And they’re able to share their recommendations with three times more people than the average user. That’s a powerful channel for attracting potential customers.
The automotive opportunity
Despite this very promising data, the fan bases of 10 leading automotive brands in the United States represent less than 5 percent of their owners on Facebook. This is a significant opportunity for the industry. Here are some tactics that can help automotive brands connect with owners:
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Leverage customer databases: Email your owners with links to your Pages and a compelling rationale for becoming fans, including owner updates, service offers and new product information.
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Run cost-per-click (CPC) Facebook advertising campaigns with creative targeted specifically to owners.
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Sponsor Page Like stories to friends of new fans. These stories are an effective way to leverage the power of owner advocacy.
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Use social technology such as the Like Box Social Plugin on your website to encourage customers to become fans on Facebook.
Today’s automotive industry is more competitive; however it’s still a people business. Connecting with loyal customers and their friends can create a valuable advantage for your brand. Integrating Facebook into your existing marketing channels and leveraging Facebook Pages, ads and sponsored stories will help you capture this advantage and let people drive your marketing.
Doug Frisbie is Head of Automotive, Global Vertical Marketing, at Facebook.
*Note on study methodology: The study was conducted with 15,938 Facebook users who responded to poll questions delivered in two phases of the study between 12/16/11 and 3/13/12. The study included 54 brand and model Pages from 10 leading mass-market automotive brands selected primarily based on historical sales and market share. Phase 1 measured owner and Page fan loyalty, and phase 2 measured owner and Page fan likelihood to recommend. Questions included:
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Which of the following brands is your primary vehicle?
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When you purchase your next vehicle, will you purchase the same brand you currently own?
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How likely are you to recommend your primary vehicle’s brand to friends?
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When do you plan to purchase your next vehicle?
Join us tomorrow, Wednesday, April 18th at 11am PDT (2pm EST, 6pm GMT), with Roland Smart, Sr. Director of Product Marketing of Involver as we explore the intersection of social technology, marketing, and creativity.
Guest Speaker: Roland Smart, Sr. Director of Product Marketing of Involver
Time: Wednesday, April 18th at 11am PDT (2pm EST, 6pm GMT)
Involver is part of the marketing developer ecosystem that helps brands build social applications and experiences. During this talk, Roland Smart will share insights on building meaningful connections from a marketing developer standpoint, along with some of his favorite examples of social applications such as the SuperBowl Ad Meter.
The discussion will be followed by a live Q&A with questions from our online audience. Please share this event with your friends and colleagues and post questions in advance on the
event page.
Creatives Talk is a series designed to inspire creativity on Facebook. In this series, we welcome creative thought-leaders from many fields, such as storytelling, fashion, TV, advertising, and more, to share how Facebook influences their creative processes.
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