The Altimeter Group recently conducted research gleaning input from 34 vendors, agencies, and experts, to determine success criteria and develop a roadmap for Facebook page best practices. They identified Eight Success Criteria for Facebook page marketing, and then tested the maturity of 30 top brands across six industries.

Their evaluation revealed that brands fell short – nearly half of the brands reviewed (14 out of 30) did not fully leveraged social features to activate word of mouth, the hallmark behavior of social networks. Within this immature landscape, a few brands were on the right track to successfully harnessing Facebook page marketing. Brands like Pampers, Macy’s, Kohl’s, and AXE increased engagement and activated word of mouth through advocacy and peer-to-peer interactions, or solicited business call to actions that result in transactions.

According to Comscore’s latest ranking of top online properties for the month of May, Facebook users in the Asia-Pacific region engage in social media frequently and for long periods. During May 2010 Facebook users in the region visited the site on an average of 21 occasions, viewing 318 pages over a period of 217 minutes. Compared to the 4 hours of TV per day watched on average in the US this time investment is small. But Facebook was only founded in 2004 whereas we’ve had TV in Australia for just over 50 years.

Blog posts don’t need to be long to make sense. Here’s Seth Godin’s latest.

A car is not merely a faster horse. And email is not a faster fax. And online project management is not a bigger whiteboard. And Facebook is not an electronic rolodex.

Play a new game, not the older game but faster.

How is your game new?

A new user interface is being trialled by Facebook. Gone is the Top News/ Most Recent options. In their place is simply Newsfeed. But the big change, as can be seen in the pic below first published on Hotlou, are large images highlighting interesting stories. It’s understood that Facebook wants those with few friends to become more connected and engaged.

A recent arrival in my inbox was a missive from Facebook. In short it warned fan page owners to monitor and control what gets posted on their Page wall. Their directives include:

1. Limit what others can post on your Page: If you go to edit your Page and select “Wall Settings,” you can choose what types of content fans can post to your Page under “Fan Permissions.” For example, you can prevent people from posting videos or photos if you like.
2. Remove content: Administrators have the ability to remove any content from a Page. To do so, just select “Remove” next to the piece of content.
3. Ban fans that are being abusive: If a fan of your Page is repeatedly posting inappropriate content, you can go beyond reporting the fan by banning them from your Page by following these instructions.

I tell you what, Facebook, how about finishing the job you started instead of wasting time with such obvious suggestions. Anyone who’s had anything to do with Pages will know they have some glaring problems. Get the following done and make Pages live up to their hype.

1. Change the settings so that the person who created the page can be deleted as an administrator. Face it, staff move on. So do consultants. I don’t want one of my opposition being the administrator of my fan page.
2. Provide notifications to Page administrators when fans interact on the page wall. It’s a no-brainer.
3. Allow Page administrators to interact as fans. Let’s face it sometimes we wear both hats. Legitimately.
4. Allow Pages to be renamed. Let’s say I change my business name – or get married and take on my partner’s name as often happens – why force me to hassle my fans to switch over to a new Page, or even worse, to continue building a brand that’s no longer relevant.  Sure, restrict the number of times a Page can change names, but, please recognise that at times it needs to happen.
5. Allow genuine competitions that require fans to write on the wall. These types of competitions happen in the real world you know.
6. Provide “add a note” for Page suggestions. Rather than a suggestion appearing in a person’s notifications it would then show up with a note – possibly in their inbox – explaining why the Page suggestion was made in the first place.
7. Change the sharing options to give Page administrators the ability to share an item direct to their Page wall.

What else do you want Facebook to add to their Pages to-do list?

On Facebook yesterday I received yet another suggestion from a “friend” to join their fan page. It was the umpteenth such suggestion. As I was exhausted from hitting the Ignore button I decided to send a direct message. It said simply:

Hi Kim (not their real name),

I’m really happy to be your FB friend but would you mind not sending me invites to your FB page.

Thanks

Peter

Sure I could have gilded the lilly, wrote some crap about how lovely their page looked and how I just can’t possibly add another page to my newsfeed. Perhaps I should learn to be more diplomatic. Instead I chose instead to state clearly the action I wanted them to take. Their response was to de-friend me. Instantly!

It was an immature response. Rather than simply respecting my wishes their choice was to cut me off completely. It’s not how the “social” part of social media works.

There are a couple of lessons here for Page owners. First, don’t piss your friends off by constantly inviting them to join your page. Sure, suggesting your page to friends builds fan numbers. It’s a proven strategy. But once you’ve invited them, back off. Don’t push it too far. If you do you’ll start alienating people.

Second, if you get a message asking you not to send page suggestions don’t take it personally. Respect your friend’s wishes and look for other ways to grow your fan base. Remember, thick skin good, thin skin not so.

There are ways Facebook could help page owners. First, they could add an “invite pending” indicator to a friend’s profile pic. Currently when suggesting a page to friends those who are already fans are displayed with a slightly opaque profile pic and can’t be added to the invite list. Facebook could add a similar function with the invite expiring after a period of time, say a month or three.

Facebook could also add a “block page suggestions from this person” button. This would mute out serial page-suggesting admins. They’d never know their message wasn’t getting through. But then again they probably wouldn’t care.

This article was originally posted on The Real Estate Marketing Maven

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/barelyfitz/ / CC BY 2.0

I accepted your friend request. I didn’t recognise your name, nor your face, but I was excited. Were you an old school friend? A work colleague from years gone by? Or perhaps someone with an interesting story to share?

I looked forward to your status updates, to learn about your adventures and  be teased by your Bali holiday photos. I wanted to be your new friend on the other side of the city, on the other side of the country, on the other side of the world.

Then you started sending me Facebook Page suggestions, which is great; if the pages had been relevant to my needs. They weren’t. You suggested I become a fan of pages about cosmetics and clothing, even a page about yourself. I scratched my head.

I began to question why you “added” me in the first place. Was it so you could get to know someone new? So you could make a lifelong connection? So we could meet up for coffee and discuss changing the world? Or was it that you saw me as a number, as just another fan?

I soon guessed that you were the one behind the Pages you were touting. Why else would you send me recommendation after recommendation? You could see I hadn’t joined but still you persisted. You never bothered to send me a message, to write on my wall, to ask about my interests. No chat, no conversation, no attempt to get to know me. Did you assume I’d be interested in your Pages? Or is it that you really didn’t care?

What you may now realise is that I see your behaviour in the same way as I do a spammer. You know, the kind that assumes I need Viagra or Cialis or the $27 million locked in an overseas bank account. The spammer cares nothing about what I need or want, about what’s good for me. All they care for is themselves, their sale and their own petty existence. And I’ll bet that you’re really not like that.

So tell me, just why did you add me as a Friend? I really want to know.

Photo credit:

I recently linked my Facebook fan Page to my Twitter account. The thinking behind the move was simple. First the audiences for both my Page and Twitter accounts are similar making the content of the Page post and tweet relevant in both cases. Second, when I update my Page Facebook creates a tweet giving me one less thing to do. Sounds simple enough, but it’s not.

I imagined that any link contained within the Page post would be sent (probably in shortened form) in the tweet.  Instead Facebook send Twitter a link to the post on the Facebook Page (here’s an example), and not the link posted to the Page.

What this means is that users are taken to a page on Facebook  that contains the original post. From there they must then click through to the article. It’s a long way around.

Facebook may be trying to help Page owners by driving traffic back to the Page post and therefore the Page. I’d like to think that’s the case. A more cynical view is that Facebook is attempting to grab a few extra ad-carrying page impressions. Maybe that’s going too far.  Whatever their reasons it’s a clumsy arrangement that doesn’t work well for the end user.

As of yesterday I’ve unlinked my Facebook Page and Twitter account until they get it sorted out.

Photo credit:

Just posted to The Real Estate Marketing Maven:

I’ve scoured the Internet for the top 10 tips to help grow your Facebook Page fan base. Here they are in no particular order.

1. “Call your Fan Page a Fan Club and include an invitation to join your Club on your email signature file.” – Mari Smith
2. “The best way to grow your fan base on Facebook is to interact with them often and regularly, and to keep your Facebook page fresh!” – Social Surrogates
3. “Make sure you use a Fan Box to publicize to your customers your presence on Facebook. Once you do that, watch for your numbers of fans to increase.” – Brand5 Blog…read the full story.

A recent article from Mari Smith highlights the dangers of putting all of your marketing eggs in the Facebook basket. Imagine for a moment that you’ve started a Facebook Page, added an attractive landing tab and started building a fan base. You decide to run a competition offering a prize for the best photo uploaded to your Page or profile wall… read full story on The Real Estate Marketing Maven.