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Thursday, September 29, 2011

Facebook changes means brands need to update their thinking

by Jonathan Beeston

Facebook’s F8 conference threw up some interesting updates. While some of these in theory only apply to individuals rather than brand pages, if Facebook follows its usual form, they’ll be introduced to branded pages soon.

The most interesting (in my view) changes that brands should start thinking about sponsored stories and now apps are getting much more social.

Sponsored stories get more active
Consumers won’t be limited to showing they ‘like’ brands or apps any more; developers can give consumers a greater choice of showing how they are interacting with a brand or content by combining any verb with any noun. So a consumer’s timeline might show: ‘Jon is reading The Economist’, ‘Jon is listening to Radio 4’ or (less likely to those who know me) ‘Jon is supporting Stoke in the Premier League’. (At the moment, these actions are to be defined by the developer, not the consumers, so brands don’t need to worry about ‘Jon is deriding X-Factor’ just yet.)
This will give brands a great opportunity to create more relevant action-based commentary in users’ timelines, rather than the passive ‘like’. If a friend of mine likes the look of the paper I’m reading on Facebook,  they might launch the app straight from the relevant sponsored story, and take out a subscription; or buy a tickets to the next rugby game.
These kind of action-based stories will help marketers create ads with more relevant targeting, too: supermarkets could target those people who are ‘cooking’ regularly to suggest new food products, or a sports brand target those people running the marathon with me.

Apps need to get more social
Apps are the lifeblood of brands on Facebook, used for competitions, interaction, demos and more. The new focus on ‘social discovery’ by Facebook means that users will be able to see more easily what apps their friends are using and when they’re in an app.
So while previously the most common app was for one-off competitions and sweepstakes, brands might want to consider creating new lifestyle apps that give consumers a good reason to go back and use apps regularly, to increase the number of times friends of people using the app will see information about it in their timeline, news feed or the new ‘ticker’ bar.
The idea is that if you see a friend using a branded app every day, you’ll be more interested in what that app could offer you; and you can launch the app straight from the ticker. Of course, apps will have to be incredibly imaginative and engaging – and relevant to what consumers do every day within Facebook – for brands to pull this off.
Overall, the updates mean more ‘social discovery’ – finding out what your friends are doing, and joining in. This is good news for brands, but the pressure is on to create even more relevant content, and shift that content to be based around action, not information.
(For a full analysis of the updates, see the blog post by Lawrence Mak at Context Optional over in the US, here.)
http://wallblog.co.uk/2011/09/29/facebook-changes-means-brands-need-to-update-their-thinking/

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