This week on the Marketing Revolution Podcast I talk to Derek Wu. I’ve had the pleasure of being friends with Derek for a while now and have worked with him several times. Of everyone I know, no one knows more people than Derek Wu. And not in a sleazy used car salesmen type way. Derek sincerely takes the time to get to know people every day.
This is part one of two in the wonderful year end wrap-up. If you haven’t seen it yet, here’s part two: “7 Marketing Predictions for 2012″
1. Most Businesses treat Facebook wrong Simply hosting a contest on Facebook doesn’t cut it anymore. People are finding that after the contest is over they don’t understand how to interact with the community they’ve developed. Inevitably they continue to push their “company news” as updates on their Facebook page because someone in the marketing department thought it was a “good idea”. Eventually people see the meaningless one-way communication and quickly find the ‘Unlike’ button.
Businesses treat Facebook wrong.
No one starts a Fan Page and instantly has thousands of likes and people commenting on the wall regularly. Facebook takes time, a lot of effort and you better have a plan. 99.999999% don’t go on Facebook to find a brand, company or product. Even if I do find your brand and you some how enchant me into “Liking” your page I’m probably not coming back anytime soon.
Think of Facebook as a platform to communicate on, not a marketing strategy
Just because you’ve read some tool is “ubiquitous” doesn’t mean it’s a smart option for your company.
Just because “everyone’s on there” doesn’t always mean you need to be.
Just because something is technically “free” to use doesn’t mean you’ll have the time to use it effectively.
Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
Coming as a surprise to most people (including myself), it is in violation of Facebook’s Terms of Service to hold a contest on Facebook. Now you can still hold a contest or promotion but must be contained within it’s own app, and entries can only be accepted via the canvas page of the app or an application box on a tab on the Facebook page.
Another violation of the Facebook TOS is asking people to post to the page’s Wall, upload photos or change their status update for entrance into a contest. As well, a promotion can’t require entrants to post a comment to a Wall item, since that would artificially increase the item’s importance and effectively lead to it spamming users’ News Feeds.
What is it?
The Credit Unions of British Columbia put together an amazing campaign titled “Be Remarkable“. The strategy is to give away $100,000 but let the community on Facebook determine who receives funding and how much. Kind of like “crowd-sourced charitable giving”. Pictures like this are uploaded:
That’s right, you read correctly, every person to “tag” themselves in a picture will have $1 donated to a charity in the region on the picture. Once 50 people have been tagged in a picture another picture begins the tagging process.
How I heard about it:
A friend (David Tapp) from Eclipse Creative in Victoria had one of these pictures in his stream on Facebook and I had to check it out.
Why it’s important:
The world of charitable giving has been flipped on it’s head. With just a couple clicks I am a part of a group in BC giving $100,000 to a variety of charity’s. Just being on Facebook allows for amplification of the message as well. Looking at how many “Likes” these photo’s below have, multiply that number by 130 (the average number of friends people have on Facebook) and that’s how many times that photo will come up Continue Reading
