Be the first to know. Get our weekly newsletter.

newsletter_popup Join 25,000 of your peers. Get our stories delivered to your e-mail inbox every week.
Edit Interests

Articles Selected for You

No unread stories
 
ViralBlog Logo
Close this box

Sign-up to get the content you like


Our readers can personalize ViralBlog in Zite alike ways, and schedule e-mail alerts to get the most relevant answers to their specific questions.

Choose your sign-up method:

Could not connect to Twitter. Refresh the page or try again later.

 

By signing-up you agree upon our terms and conditions

 
10/10/2013 by
7580 views

10 Facebook Lessons Learned From The Facebook Conference

In this article we’ve summarized the best Facebook lessons learned from the first Dutch Facebook seminar held in Amsterdam: The Facebook Conference.

facebook-conference-amsterdam

This very first edition, CMO’s and digital marketeers from brands and Facebook shared their tips and secrets around their Facebook marketing strategies.

Here are our 10 best Facebook lessons learned from The Facebook Conference:

‘5% of Facebook postings is advertising’

sponsored

Do you know that one out of 20 postings on the Facebook Timeline is a commercial posting?

Unfortunately, the question whether this is a lot or not, cannot be answered (yet) by Will Ashton of Nanigans.

Nanigans serves $250 million worth of advertising for clients on Facebook annually.

Ashton showed in a nutshell what has been changed on Facebook when it comes to advertising possibilities.

One of the important changes is that Facebook has launched is called custom audiences.

Custom audiences allow advertisers to target their sponsored story or ad to a specific set of users with whom they have already established a relationship on/off Facebook.

For example, audiences can be defined by user email address, Facebook UIDs, user phone numbers, or Apple’s IDFA (Identifier For Advertisers).

‘Drive on Life Time Value with Facebook ads, not just on CPA’

lifetime-value-facebook-fan

Don’t just focus on the costs per action model, also focus on the Lifetime Value (LTV)

LTV is the prediction of the net profit attributed to the entire future relationship with your customer.

Research shows that it costs around 2 US dollar to acquire a Facebook-fan.

Eventually this is worth 173 US dollar.

‘Facebook is not a friend -or content platform, it’s an advertising platform!’

heineken

A clear message from Heineken, which sounds ridiculous to many people, including me.

But Heineken is convinced that Facebook is one big advertising medium.

So that’s what their strategy is all about on their most important social media channel: the audience wants to receive commercial content.

The Dutch brewer was awarded for being the best beer brand on social in the US before, for having tremendous fan base with a high engagement.

Heineken’s objective for Facebook is purely awareness, not sales.

So perhaps their statement could be true, at least for them?

‘Facebook can humanize your brand’

people-facebook

Philips  has the opposite message compared to Heineken.

Facebook gives Philips the opportunity to really humanize the brand.

The brands wants to act as a real person as much as they can, not just by pushing brand messages, but also to interact with their audience.

Philips sees their audience as strength on social media, not a thread.

Transparency on these networks towards their audience really strengthens the brand.

‘Brands need to bring back Facebook to the people, because it belongs to the people’

klm

KLM (Royal Dutch Airlines) needs Facebook for the interaction with their audience.

Facebook cannot be compared with other social channels the airline uses.

KLM just follows where their customers and fans are.

Remarkable fact is that social media is not part of the KLM’s marketing department, but that the activities are placed between PR and Corporate Communications.

According to KLM, many brands are using Facebook as a some kind of email database 2.0: a place where you need to collect as many fans as possible.

But companies are just guests on Facebook.

Facebook is a platform where friends are talking to friends.

Companies should act like a civilized guest. So that means not just spamming around towards random audiences.

‘Content is is still King on Facebook’

facebook-content-is-king
We already knew that of course.

But remarkable was to realize again that fans are mainly seeing your brand messages on their timelines, not on your business page.

So it is important to be creative and relevant when it comes to timeline content.

Don’t just focus on likes, comments and IPM (Interactions Per Mille).

Take a deeper dive and look into insights such as the final reach of your content.

Compare that what you would pay for online media and calculate the possible savings.

‘Always be authentic with your content’

anwb-sont-speed

The ANWB, The Royal Dutch Touring Club, advices us to be authentic on Facebook.

Create content that breathes your heritage.

But instead of just pushing out your brand, try to claim an experience or theme, which fit your brand values.

This will get your audience enthusiastic, will bring value to your brand and is scalable towards a large audience.

‘CEO’s finally realize what Facebook can mean for brands’

hunkemoller

Hunkemöller, the number 1 lingerie specialist in Europe mentions that their Facebook budget will increase in 2014.

Probably this will be at the expense of the current TV budget.

“Our CEO has a little girl, who is on Facebook all day by using her smartphone”.

“So he understands what social channels can do for our brand”.

‘Facebook advertising & A TV Campaign result in 28% more’

facebook-tv

The first insights from a research by GFK shows that a Facebook advertising runs simultaneously with a TV campaign, they extra reach can be up to 28%.

“The Facebook app is being used numerous times per day, perhaps most of all apps on our smartphones”.

“In the evening we can see a peak.”

“TV advertisers who advertise on Facebook as well have a double reach on a part of their audience , but also reach a new audience.”

The market research institute will share the full outcome of the research with advertisers.

‘Mobile is far more bigger mass medium than we think’

facebook-mobile

Facebook now has over 800 million mobile users per day.

Yet there are still many brands that haven’t optimized their content marketing for mobile.

Launching a Facebook app that is not available on mobile as well, means missing a big, big opportunity.

My Opinion?

I think it was a useful conference, definitely will visit it again next year.

Perhaps a bit disappointing were the keynotes of speakers from Facebook.

Basically they had just one message, all using pretty much the same slides: spend advertising budget in order to succeed as a brand on Facebook.

The keynotes from the other speakers has learned that there’s a lot more than just advertising.

What About You?
What do think of these lessons? Do yo agree with it? And what would you add to it?

Follow & Share
Want more stories on breaking with the status quo? Browse our category Viral & Social Video, join us on TwitterLinkedInFacebookPinterestRSS and get our weekly E-mail Newsletter for updates and free bonus content.

About the Author
Laurens Bianchi is an independent online (sport) marketing professional from the Netherlands and has been blogging on ViralBlog since 2008. Currently Laurens is also the Social Media Consultant for the Royal Dutch Football Association.

Follow him on Twitter  or contact him on LinkedIn.

 

Follow Category?

Follow Author?

Laurens Bianchi
53 more

Follow Tags?

advertisingFollowUnfollowAIDAFollowUnfollowamsterdamFollowUnfollowANWBFollowUnfollowapplicationFollowUnfollowappsFollowUnfollowautomotiveFollowUnfollowawarenessFollowUnfollowBeneluxFollowUnfollowbrandingFollowUnfollowbrandsFollowUnfollowcampaignFollowUnfollowceoFollowUnfollowCFOFollowUnfollowconferenceFollowUnfollowcontentFollowUnfollowcpaFollowUnfollowcpcFollowUnfollowcpmFollowUnfollowEmerceFollowUnfollowfacebookFollowUnfollowfactsFollowUnfollowfiguresFollowUnfollowGFKFollowUnfollowheinekenFollowUnfollowheinzFollowUnfollowHunkemollerFollowUnfollowklmFollowUnfollowleadsFollowUnfollowlearnedFollowUnfollowlessonsFollowUnfollowlifetimeFollowUnfollowLTVFollowUnfollowmanagerFollowUnfollowmarketingFollowUnfollowmarketplaceFollowUnfollowMAUFollowUnfollowpercentageFollowUnfollowPhilipsFollowUnfollowpolicyFollowUnfollowpostingsFollowUnfollowreportFollowUnfollowresearchFollowUnfollowsalesFollowUnfollowsecretsFollowUnfollowSocial MediaFollowUnfollowstagesFollowUnfollowstrategyFollowUnfollowtabsFollowUnfollowthe netherlandsFollowUnfollowTimelineFollowUnfollowtipsFollowUnfollowtricksFollowUnfollowtvFollowUnfollowukFollowUnfollowUSFollowUnfollowvalueFollowUnfollow
 

Comments (29)