SMX West 2011: Building Buzz on Facebook: Getting Liked & Shared

This session is all about Facebook and how to best use this important platform for your marketing efforts. It’s the last session of the day and everyone looks a little tired … or is that me? It’s been a great second day, so let’s close it out right!

Moderator: Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land

Speakers:
Ty Downing, CEO, SayItSocial
Greg Finn, Chief Marketing Officer, Cypress North
John Yi, Strategic Program Manager, Marketing APIs, Facebook (Q&A Speaker)

John Yi is up first.

He is asking that we not take pictures of the slides because they have not been approved by marketing. People are laughing. That’s disappointing because the first slide is pictures of In-N-Out.

Fans are more valuable when they impact their friends. Website visitors are more valuable when they impact their friends.

He is talking about the light boxes that pop up after a transaction and how you can share it with your friends on Facebook. Then, friends can see what he bought, and do the same. He is talking about a ski trip he planned in this case. His friends did end up acting on it as well once they saw the update.

He is going over some numbers about the value of Facebook shares ($14) and likes ($8). We should be measuring these kinds of things.

Optimization goes beyond just the ads that drive people to the offering. He is now talking about ShoeDazzle [Susan!]. He says ShoeDazzle optimizes the “share” text to make it more appealing. Makes it easier for people to want to share.

How do we measure? It’s fairly complicated. Here are a couple resources:

• Techlightenment
• KISSmetrics
• Kontangent

Next is Greg Finn. He is talking about how to get likes to your page.

Why does it matter? The average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events.

All about quality: The most important thing about your fans is that they are targeted. There is no magic bullet; work is required.

He is showing an example of the share buttons on a website. There is a like box and a share button. That gives the user options.

Off-page fans. A “find us on Facebook” sign in a window is challenging for people if there’s no URL. If you are a retailer, you can put it on your receipt with the URL. You can also use QR codes [check out the SMX mobile session I covered earlier today for more on QR codes]. You can also have people text “like daggle” for example to 32665 to like Danny Sullivan on Facebook.

Now he’s talking Facebook Places. Lots of people are missing out on this. You can merge your place to your page. Your existing likes will merge over to it. You can use Facebook Deals for your Places as well.

Create fan-only info (reveal tabs). This can boost likes. It’s a specialty tab on your Facebook page that offers exclusive information to your fans.

He is talking about the fact that FBML is going away March 11. So, what do we do now? A couple options are:

• ShortStack
• NorthSocial

Promoting fan-only content on Facebook:

• Facebook ads. People can like the page right from the ad. Some ads can take the person to the Fan page or any particular tab.

Promoting fan-only content outside of Facebook:

• E-mail blasts.
• StumbleUpon Ads. This is his favorite way. It’s only a nickel a visit and is very targeted.
• Use deal sites to promote it such as DealsPlus.com.

He ends the presentation with a picture of a cute dog with a Trump comb-over.

Finally, we have Ty Downing. He is going to talk about tools, case studies and best times to post.

Tools:

• Epicenter (his company created that)
• BuddyMedia
• Involver
• Pagemodo
• Vitrue

Like-gating is the act of encouraging people to like the page to see what is behind the gate. This increases likes by 50 percent to 90 percent in his experience.

Case Studies

Two clients, they both launched a contest. This is key in getting your page to go viral.

Bald Head Island: 1) Like us for a chance to win a getaway 2) Call to action to enter 3) Rules to enter . Then they created Facebook Ads: For a small amount of funds, you can push your contest even further. Results: Before the contest, the business page got six likes per day. During the contest: 110 likes per day. Yielded 220 leads per day. Good for e-mail marketing.

Papa Johns: Similar steps as the Bald Head Island. The results: Went from five likes per day to 34 likes per day. Not as high yielding but this is the restaurant business.

What time of the day you post can impact your viral buzz. Depending on your industry, products and services, it changes.

Facebook users are most active on weekdays between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. EST (study from Vitrue on 1,500 random streams). (Most of Papa John’s likes were after 5 p.m.)

The biggest usage spikes are on Wednesday. The data also shows that 55 percent of users access the site when they’re not at work or school.

That wraps up today’s coverage of SMX West 2011. Tune in tomorrow for more!

Jessica Lee is the founder and chief creative for bizbuzzcontent Inc., a marketing boutique that focuses on digital content strategy and professional writing services for businesses.

See Jessica's author page for links to connect on social media.