SMSS: Mari Smith on spiffing up your Facebook presence
Mari Smith, social-media business coach and “the Pied Piper of the Online World” (according to FastCompany.com), stepped up at the Social Media Success Summit on Wednesday to divulge her top tips for creating a customized, brand-boosting fan page on Facebook, including advice on how to maximize profile pictures, use Facebook Markup Language and custom tabs, and invest in applications to promote other platforms.
To start, she made the case for paying attention to Facebook, noting that if you’re not there, you are missing a huge opportunity. As she pointed out, the data speak for themselves. Currently, Facebook:
- Is the No. 1 social network in the world.
- Has 500 million active users (half log in daily).
- Is used 55 minutes per day per user.
- Has tremendous global reach, with 70% of users located outside the U.S.
- Has immense potential for social shopping, as 68% of users said they were more likely to purchase a product on a positive Facebook friend referral.
Here are a few of her tips for getting started:
- Begin with a checklist. Discern your target market and goals, understand what technology you need to acquire or learn, and figure out how to track your efforts.
- Make the most of your profile picture. Use the maximum picture size (180×540 pixels) and have a strong call to action in the small box below the picture.
- Create a landing page for nonfans. Design a landing page (ultimately, a Facebook page tab) where people will automatically land when they search for your company, brand or product. Use creative design and multimedia on this tab to create a call to action to “like” your page.
- Add an e-mail opt-in box for the left side of your wall. Allow your fans the option to sign up for extra content from you. If they are your fan already and receiving content via a news feed, they might be willing to receive more.
- Start discussion topics. Use the discussions tab to listen to your fans and give them a place to talk and promote themselves without sacrificing your wall.
- Promote your other networks. Use third-party applications to promote your activities on other social networks, including Twitter, YouTube and blogs. Free and low-cost applications she likes: Involver.com, Wildfireapp.com, Fanappz.com, and Buddymedia.com.
Smith’s session highlighted Facebook marketing basics. She will return this month to dive deeper into promotion and engagement on the medium at the Social Media Success Summit, a monthlong, 100% online webinar co-hosted by SmartBrief. For access to the whole session and many others, sign up here.
Image credit, MariSmith.com
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Posted by trishaj on May 6th, 2010 at 9:56 pm
Great tips for FB. Question though…I thought that the maximum picture size was 200×600? It's not that big of a difference from 180×540 but I just wanted to be sure one way or the other. Thanks!
Also, do you have a resource for the "checklist" that I could refer to?
Posted by EmilyMolitor on May 7th, 2010 at 1:19 am
Hi Trisha, thanks for your comment. The maximum picture size is currently 200×600 but that will be changing shortly so Mari encouraged the group to stick with the new size, 180×540 to be prepared for the change. Also, the FBML tabs will be changing to 540 wide instead of 720–so keep that on your radar!
As to a resource for the checklist–I do not know of a great one off hand, but that sounds like a GREAT idea for a post here on SmartBlog on Social Media. I'll get to work on that one. Stay tuned!
Posted by fresnopma on May 7th, 2010 at 3:13 am
That is the safe zone (180×540) FB was suppose to tailor this to 180 but never did.
Posted by Woody on May 7th, 2010 at 4:15 am
Doesn't the Facebook Like social plug-in effectively change the whole fan page dynamic?
As I understand it, by adding the Like social plug-in to my website (corporate or personal) I will capture the same benefits as if I had a fan page in Facebook. If a Facebook user "Like"s my site I will publish to their newsfeed. By virtue of having a Like button on my site I will be found in Facebook search. In essence, doesn't the Like button enable me to make my beautiful blog my Facebook fan page presence?
Posted by @MariSmith on May 7th, 2010 at 4:22 am
@Emily – thank you sooooo much for this lovely review. I'm honored. And thanks for your tweets – delighted to know SmartBrief is benefiting from my trainings!
@trishaj – currently, the max picture on personal profiles and fan pages is 200x600px. However, at some point this year, Facebook reduce the size to 180x540px. I'm advising my clients and students to go with the smaller size to save their picture either getting squished or having to go back and redo later.
You can keep an eye on the Facebook Developer Roadmap at: http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Dev…
and here's the link specifically to the profile pictures: http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Roa…
Facebook just updated on May 3 to move the estimated time to mid-2010… which isn't far away.
Regards the checklist, here's the one I used in the SMSS10 slides and I'll be blogging with a much longer one at some point soon on marismith.com.
*Identify your target market
*Set a clear objective (see ideas below)
*Select strategies to implement
*Learn the technologies available (e.g. HootSuite.com, Objective Marketer app, etc.)
*Set up systems to track and measure results (can use a simple excel spreadsheet as a dashboard for plotting data)
What is your primary objective in building a presence on Facebook?
*Create an "outpost" for our fans to connect with us.
*Build our email list.
*Increase product sales.
*Improve customer service.
*Raise brand awareness.
*Crowdsource new products.
*Other.
Hope this helps!
My recent post Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day – Virtual Launch Party May 3
Posted by @MariSmith on May 7th, 2010 at 4:35 am
@Woody – aha, excellent question and one I'm seeing come up from a few folks. Indeed, of the new changes announced at Facebook's f8 Developer Conference, the Open Graph API is certainly a game changer. Facebook in one fell swoop dominated the entire internet… more so than before! It is, essentially, the next generation internet.
With Facebook's partner sites (like Yelp, Pandora, Docs.com), those sites are helping to compile data of all the individual "digital footprints" and helping to map out the social graph en masse.
As a Facebook user surfs the web and clicks on the Like button on third party sites, that data dumps into Facebook's database, pushes onto the user's wall and out into their friends' News Feed.
In addition, for example, clicking on the FB Like button next to movies and music adds to the user's Info tab section of their personal profile. (I'm sure we'll see the FB Like button on Amazon.com and BN.com before long, and our Liked books will show up under Favorite Books on our FB profile. There's no end to how many favorite categories of things we can have, when you think about it! I'm sure FourSquare & Gowalla will be integrated into the FB social graph and our checkins will be logged and categorized on our profiles!)
The two big differences, as I see it, between the Like button around the web (its subsequent actions) and having a compelling, active fan page is 1) the fan page provides a place for community and 2) fan page owners can push significantly more content into the stream.
Also, many Facebook users either prefer to keep their personal profile limited to known friends or they have maxed out the 5,000 limit. Therefore, having a fan page is the ideal place to send those users on Facebook looking to connect with you.
Besides, 250M Facebook users are staring at the site for an average of 55 minutes a day – that includes people on for 5 minutes and those on the site for 3+ hours! Whilst all those eyeballs are staring at Facebook, you may as well direct some of the attention to your page.
My recent post Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day – Virtual Launch Party May 3
Posted by Cindy King on May 7th, 2010 at 7:44 am
Hi trishaj, On Mari's FB page she says it's actually 520px and not 540px See the FB wiki for details:http://bit.ly/cmnNLL
Posted by EmilyMolitor on May 7th, 2010 at 3:38 pm
Thanks Mari for all of your added advice! This is really helpful as we are all trying to figure out what Facebook's recent changes mean for our marketing strategies.