Top tips for Facebook brand marketing – part 3

We conclude our three-part series of recommendations for Facebook brand marketing (part 1 | part 2) with six more smart responses to this question: “What is your No. 1 piece of marketing advice for brands looking to establish and maintain an effective Facebook presence?”

B.L. Ochman

Managing director of emerging media, Proof Integrated Communications
Blog: What’s Next Blog
Twitter: @WhatsNext

“Facebook is NOT a broadcast medium. Use it to listen and respond to fans as part of your overall marketing strategy. Talk about what people want to know about your brand, not just what you want to tell them. And always talk like you’re talking to people — because you are!”

Julien Smith

Blog, speaker, and co-author of the New York Times best-selling book, Trust Agents
Blog: InOverYourHead.net
Twitter: @Julien

“We loved using our Trust Agents Page to help people acquaint themselves with our book and ideas. It has about 3,300 fans right now and was really active when the book came out.”

“Aside from that, I think brands need to emulate humanity. They need to act as human beings (empathy, humour, and other traits) to be treated as part of the conversation instead of being intruders. That also means they have to sometimes go after something else than the bottom line, because that’s what humans do, too. If they fail to do this, they’ll miss the boat on being part of the community they want to be involved in and won’t get any special treatment from them. In other words, if they don’t make sacrifices for their community, they are obviously not community members; people will see that.”

Aaron Strout

CMO of Powered, Inc.
Blog: Citizen Marketer 2.1
Twitter: @AaronStrout

“My one piece of advice is to be prepared for what happens AFTER you start to drive fan traffic. Many companies (T.G.I. Friday’s comes to mind) spend a lot of time and effort encouraging members of Facebook to “Like” them but then fall down when it comes to actually engaging them once they are there. To that end, given a choice between low follower numbers and low engagement, I’d pick the former over the latter ANY day of the week.”

Laura P. Thomas

Senior consultant at Dell
Blog: Laura P. Thomas on IABC
Twitter: @LPT

“My advice would be to not discount Facebook for B2B marketing. All business are made up of individuals, and by the sheer size of Facebook’s, audience the chances are good that the individuals that make up your business customers are there. It’s a great place to build the relationship that is so important with business customers, who generally have a longer purchase cycle. That’s why we recently launched www.facebook.com/DellBusiness.

“There’s been talk lately of how Facebook is not good for generating leads for business based on the fact that Facebook users are more likely to click on links to the “About” section than the product or commerce section of a company’s website. What this misses is the long-term view of building a relationship with your customer. I think it’s great when they check out the company’s informational or learning content. It shows they are researching, and that means consideration that could pay off later when they are ready to make a purchase decision.”

Zena Weist

Director of social media at H&R Block
Blog: Nothin’ But SocNet
Twitter: @ZenaWeist

If you are going to build a Facebook presence, remember three things:

1) Customer service first. Customers are all stakeholders, including associates, customers, prospects, investors and the media. Listen and respond.

2) Conversation second. Be there for the long haul, have a content strategy that focuses on sparking conversation, respond to all questions, react to comments, let your customers and fans know you value their input.

3) Marketing third.

You can screen scrap our page for an example…facebook.com/hrblock

Jenna Woodul

Chief community officer at LiveWorld
Blog: Jenna’s posts on SocialVoice
Twitter: @JennaWoodul

“I’d advise carefully planning what you want to do with the people who sign up to your page and how you’ll keep them engaged.

“What your reasons for collecting “Likes”? Are you looking to get their e-mail addresses for leads? Have you figured out what kind of an incentive you’ll provide to persuade them to give you that? Are you introducing a new product you want them to check out? … Read the full post for the rest of Jenna’s Facebook brand marketing advice.

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On Wednesday, July 28, 2010, LiveWorld will host a free webinar on Facebook marketing best practices, featuring new research from the Altimeter Group’s Jeremiah Owyang.