The following infographic from MoonToast shows how data flows through Facebook. What’s especially helpful is how the different types of fan engagement work to surface page content.

Presented by Emily White, Senior Director Local, Facebook.

Real estate agents are the original social networkers. Facebook just takes that online.

Local is social. We find out about what’s going on in our community through social.

People want to go to great places. Local is conversational. Businesses are affected by recommendations through local conversations.

Find a way to continue offline relationships online. Discovery is happening both on and off-line.

When someone sees that a friend is at a restaurant they’re more likely to do business with that place.

Word-of-mouth at scale. It’s WoM magnified through an online network.

Deals that are shared with friends are three times more likely to be taken up.

Pages product is the real meat of the local experience. Five best practice:

Create a page. Keep it interesting.
Connect the virtual and physical. Put your website and Facebook page on your card.
Engage with fans. Welcome them. Think about Facebook as a party. That takes effort. Keep them updated. Engage with them.
Acquire new fans. Give people the option to Like your page quickly.
Get them back to your store. Take something that’s action oriented and ask your fans to do something.

Research shows that Facebook fans want latest news, contests, discounts.

Facebook has found a sweet spot at around 3 updates per week.

The best place to promote a fan page is through a Facebook personal profile. It’s a place where you can transition people to a place where they can read real estate related information.

People focus too much on customizing their page and not enough on creating content.

Use Facebook advertising to build your fan numbers. Use a QR code as the ad image. When people use the QR code you don’t pay for a click.

Customizations are wasted when people view the page on a mobile device.

Don’t post more than once per day. It takes away comments on Likes on other posts and knocks them out of Top News.

Tweet as much as you want.

Facebook has just released the Send button. It’s designed for people who want to share a page privately or with selected friends in a group.

Whereas clicking the Like button sends a notification to all friends’ news-feeds, the Send button is a social plugin that allows people to share and comment on a web page via via email, Facebook Messages, or to a Facebook group.

Although it’s designed to sit alongside the current Like button a standalone version is also available.

The button has the potential to increase quality web traffic by allowing visitors to send a link to their friends that’s relevant to their needs and interests. Improving the quality of traffic typically leads to more leads and higher conversion rates.

And it’s easy too.

There’s no need to copy and paste a URL and no need to look up email addresses as friends auto-populate within the sharing dialogue box.

If you found this article helpful use the Send button above to share this article with some of your friends.[tweetmeme]

Are the interaction levels on your Facebook Page dismally low? If so a new feature available only to Facebook Page admins will help you turn things around.[tweetmeme]

Facebook have just rolled out a new facility that allows Page admins to access their Page notifications using their personal profile. Previously notifications were only available when using Facebook as a page. And that extra step meant that pages weren’t being monitored and Page fans were being left disappointed.

Notifications are now available from the View Notifications link  in the right sidebar of the Page you administer.  These notifications show the interactions on your page and include a link to the relevant story.

Admins can dramatically improve the experience of their fans by responding to fan posts and comments quickly. Doing so improves page interaction levels significantly and increases the likelihood of a story appearing in the all-important Top News tab.

If you found this story helpful please click the Facebook Like button below or leave a comment.

On The Australian the Queensland Police Service outlines how they used Facebook to proactively deliver news during the recent Queensland floods.[tweetmeme]

What stands out is the way the usually conservative QPS embedded social media into their daily processes. Social media was no longer an afterthought to keep Gen-Y’s entertained but a part of their core news delivery strategy. From these processes came faster delivery of news in a rapidly evolving crisis.

Managing Facebook and Twitter didn’t cause a spike in the media unit’s workload, but changed its responsibilities to include monitoring user-generated comments. “We’ve integrated social media into our ordinary (daily) 24-hour processes,” Charlton says.

And that’s something I’m yet to see agents achieve. All too often Facebook and Twitter is left to the whims of sales people or the receptionist when it could be used as a way to create efficiencies and improve customer service.

Have you seen an agency using social media for more than just pimping out listings? If so please share the story in the comments below.

Photo: martinhoward

Facebook has just released Facebook Studio highlighting best practice in all forms of Facebook marketing.[tweetmeme]

Studio brings together case studies of successful Facebook marketing campaigns in the one place. Just browsing them provides instant inspiration for new ideas.

A mention on Facebook Studio could provide an advertising agency with significant kudos leading to new business. That’s why Facebook have provided a link so that marketers can submit their success stories.

Submissions that receive lots of Likes are featured in the Spotlight section and thus become eligible for a Facebook Award. Awards are made by a Facebook judging panel. At this stage award categories and criteria haven’t been finalised.

Other campaigns can be found using a series of filters including Most Liked, Most Shared and by region.

Facebook Studio also provides a blog and a marketing resources centre containing informative videos and PDF tutorials. The video below explains how Sponsored Stories work as both advertising and social recommendation.

Not surprisingly there’s a self-serving and self-congratulatory overtone in the Facebook Studio initiative. There’s no ‘mistakes to avoid’ section and nowhere for people to outline initiatives that went wrong. And as much as success stories provide inspiration it’s also helpful to be able to learn from other peoples’ mistakes.

[tweetmeme]As if Facebook isn’t scary enough soon you might be seeing product ads based on the realtime contents of your status updates.

Yes, that’s right, post a status update now and a related ad appears – now! Imagine that! Type something about going for a run and up pops an ad for Nike. Or casually mention that you’re having a blue with your partner and bam!, an ad for a divorce lawyer.

Here’s how AdAge Digital put it:

With real-time delivery, the mere mention of having a baby, running a marathon, buying a power drill or wearing high-heeled shoes is transformed into an opportunity to serve immediate ads, expanding the target audience exponentially beyond usual targeting methods such as stated preferences through “likes” or user profiles. Facebook didn’t have to create new ads for this test and no particular advertiser has been tapped to participate — the inventory remains as is.

Privacy issues aside it looks like it’s going ahead. Facebook is currently beta testing the idea with a paltry 1% of its users. But that still amounts to a sizeable 6 million people. Not bad!

Although Facebook have been delivering ads based on keywords contained within status updates and wall posts for sometime now, it’s never been in realtime. And that’s going to scare a lot of people.

I can see the headlines already: “Facebook Embroiled in New Privacy Fiasco”. It’s just a bit Big Brother-ish but I’m betting that much of the fear will come from a lack of understanding of what happens with private information. Or perhaps I don’t know enough and should be scared!

From a marketer’s perspective it’s pure gold, with a silver lining. Imagine being able to go from partially articulated to desire to gratification in an instant! Talk about scratching the itch!

Image credit: Julien Haler on Flickr

It’s a rhetorical question. Most marketers know the importance of owning a brand presence. A brand web site gives a brand complete control over message and method; and that’s important. While ‘leasing’ space off Facebook is quick and easy that ease comes at the cost of a loss of control.[tweetmeme]

Still, maintaining web traffic when Facebook is gobbling up so much online attention, is difficult. And often traffic to a Facebook. That’s why Jeff Bullas says.

While Facebook is becoming the biggest relationship marketing tool for brands, it seems like that instead of increasing traffic to the company website, Facebook is actually absorbing it. Marketers across the globe are wondering whether their brand websites will disappear and if there will still be a need for an official website in five years. Will the users still visit the company websites or will they only use Facebook and apps to check the news and offers?

Using iFrames, Pages can now include many features that were previously difficult to achieve.

Bullas goes on to say that there are a number of ways marketers can develop synergies between a Facebook Page and a brand web site. These include:

1. Providing links back to the brand web site from tabs and pages
2. Using blog excerpts containing a “Read More” link to build traffic to the brand blog
3. Displaying links to other social media platforms
4. Giving people a reason to leave their email address on the landing page
5. Creating a Facebook competition which requires finding information on your website or blog. Announce the winner will be published on the brand web site (I love this idea).
6. Create a special Fans Only offer that is available from the web site.
7. Offer Fans Only specials available only from the web site
8. Re-think a brand web presence as a social media destination.

What are you doing to build your web traffic with a Facebook Page?

Edit: Facebook Comments for WordPress plugin has released an upgrade (now version 3.1). As can be seen in the comments many of the problems I encountered persist. The upgrade accommodates many changes to the Facebook Comment plugin, which is now at a buggy version 2. The changes made to the Facebook plugin are summarised here. I’m still firmly of the opinion this plugin has lots of potential but I’d wait until some of the many bugs have been ironed out.

I tested the new Facebook Comments for WordPress plugin over the course of a few hours yesterday. My interest was to see if it could replace Disqus, the commenting plugin I’m currently using on this blog. Sad to say, it wasn’t up to the task.[tweetmeme]

The WordPress plugin, which shows a lot of promise, relies on the functionality of Facebook’s Comments social plugin.

I first saw the Facebook plugin in action on Techcrunch. It looked pretty cool. Then again I’m a sucker for all things shiny and new.

In theory the plugin improves the experience of blog commenting. It allows users to comment on a post using their Facebook credentials. This is not new. Disqus and other commenting systems have been providing multiple login options for some time now.

Comments made on a blog using the Facebook comments plugin are pushed through to the commenters Facebook profile. The user can opt out of this by unchecking a check box.

Providing an opt-out option is fairly typical for Facebook. That it could see inappropriate comments posted to a Facebook page as a result of an oversight appears to be of little concern to Facebook. There are plenty of marketers who love this type of web marketing, but there are plenty of web users who find it invasive and annoying that Facebook know so much about their every move. By contrast Disqus requires an opt-in for people to post their blog comments to Facebook, Twitter or other connected social profile.

The plugin allows people to switch between posting with their personal profile and their business Page. That’s a cool way to help brands get the most out of the new look Facebook Pages.

When posting with their personal profile the comment includes links to their profile, job title and employer (see screenshot from a comment I made on Techcrunch). The employer link takes the visitor through to either a Facebook business Page or an Interest Page. In my case it’s called Self (I’ve listed myself as self-employed). (Edit: I’ve since changed my employer to show as my Facebook Page. The link now takes the visitor through to this page, a much better alternative.) Just what Facebook think they’re achieving sending people to an interest page is beyond me.

The promise of the Facebook Comment box plugin is that comments are synchronised no matter where they’re entered. At least that’s how I understand it.

Here’s what Facebook Developers have to say:

Comments Box is a social plugin that enables user commenting on your site. Features include moderation tools and distribution.

Social Relevance: Comments Box uses social signals to surface the highest quality comments for each user. Comments are ordered to show users the most relevant comments from friends, friends of friends, and the most liked or active discussion threads, while comments marked as spam are hidden from view.

Distribution: Comments are easily shared with friends or with people who like your Page on Facebook. If a user leaves the “Post to Facebook” box checked when she posts a comment, a story appears on her friends’ News Feed indicating that she’s made a comment on your website, which will also link back to your site.

Friends and people who like the Page can then respond to the discussion by liking or replying to the comment directly in the News Feed on Facebook or in the Comments Box on your site. Threads stay synced across Facebook and on the Comments Box on your site regardless of where the comment was made.

The idea of a conversation synchronising across multiple platforms and places is appealing to say the least. Let’s say I share a post on Facebook and one of my friends clicks through and posts a comment. In theory that comment would display on the blog, it would show up on my profile (or Facebook Page) where the article was originally shared, and it would show up on my friend’s profile. No matter where the link appeared on Facebook any comments would follow. And no matter where the comments were posted on Facebook they would show on the article.

That’s the promise. Unfortunately it didn’t work for me.

I installed the WordPress plugin on this blog and ran it in conjunction with Disqus. I then posted a number of comments both on one of my blog posts and where I shared it on Facebook.

What I found is that some comments disappeared completely only to show later. Some failed to show up on Facebook (see screenshot below). The synchronisation thing just didn’t work for me.

I then deactivated Disqus thinking there may be a conflict. The same problems persisted.

Next, I posted the Techcrunch article on my Facebook Page (not my profile) and left two comments on the link. Neither showed up on Techcrunch. This *may* have been the result of Facebook burying my comment at the bottom of the comments. Their love affair with “social relevance” means that comments they believe are the most relevant to a user – comments from friends, comments from friends of friends, and comments that have received lots of Likes and comments – are surfaced to the top of the comments pile. Comments that are spam or low value – and that’s how they might have classified the post from my Page – are pushed to the bottom. And that’s a problem because the View 277 More link at the bottom of the comments pile just wasn’t working. It’s hardly ideal.

It appears these problems are Facebook specific. I added a comment on the same post using Disqus and selected the Post to Facebook toggle button. That comment is yet to arrive on my profile. The Post to Twitter option worked fine, although I’m not sure why Disqus prepend tweets with “RE:” then the user’s Twitter handle. My closest guess is that it’s the best way to add some context to the tweet.

At times the Facebook comments were slow to load. Very slow. These slow load times weren’t perculiar to my site. The Techcrunch article experienced similar problems as the following screenshot shows.

For some reason there are three versions of the Facebook plugin that can be activated within the WordPress plugin. Only one of them allows the user to Like the post. The others provide different functionality but there wasn’t one option that delivered the goods as a package.

The other problem with this plugin is that it sends all the traffic from a link on a comment through to Facebook. Most commenting systems allow the commenter to add a link to a website but that’s not an option on the Facebook Comments plugin. For anyone using commenting as a way to build web traffic it’s an out-and-out fail.

Others argue that not providing a link to another website is a benefit. But with Google giving links in comments very low weight it leaves me to wonder how this argument could be sustained. I’m all for providing people with options and the Facebook Comments Plugin doesn’t do that.

At this stage it’s the better commenting platform by a long shot. But the Facebook Comments plugin provides some significant improvements not the least of which are comment synchronisation and posting as a Page. I’m now keen to see how Disqus responds.