Web 2.0 Expo New York Session

Creating and Sustaining Winning Fan Pages on Facebook

This post is long overdue, but I did want to provide a brief overview of what my Web 2.0 session was about.  As we all know, Facebook, is becoming an increasingly important marketing channel.  The session name is obviously how I submitted it earlier this year, and Im well aware that its a “like” page now, :)  I have some takeaways from other sessions that I will share in another post.

The purpose of this session was to provide some examples of what winning facebook business pages look like and how we can incorporate them into our current pages that we are marketing for clients and our organizations.  It was important for me to demonstrate that this approach, coupled with some of the tools discussed, are very much doable for the non sexy, smaller, not so visible brands.  It is exactly why I chose to feature a case study that emulated great engagement, and provided immediate ROI from an unknown brand in the marketplace.

The below diagram, which is featured in the embedded slide at the end of the post, is one that I put together based on my observation of pages that did an excellent job of interaction, growth,  user experience, etc.  In its simple form, all these pages share these elements.

Conversation starters at its best are generated from some type of content creation that is fed into the page and ideally lives within your main property.  If the conversation starters are generally successful, it leads to feedback, which leads to likes on the page and out in the open social graph.  This positive feedback leads to more fan acquisition and it continues the loop.  Some of the supporting elements include facebook ads, and exclusives (which can also be supported by ads).  Exclusives can come in the form of content, contests, promotions, etc., some type of value that would be exclusive to brand page loyalists.

And of course its a two way street when it comes to web traffic.  Facebook can provide it, but so can your web site back to your page along with conversions.  Those who already are familiar with your brand and or have purchased from you would most likely be liking your page on facebook.  There was certainly more discussed beyond this diagram including page architecture, apps, app providers, along with examples.  I also went over examples of how to implement the 3 e’s of facebook of engagement -Educate, Entertainment, and Exclusives.  Slides of the session are below, which happens to be lite on actual copy.  It definitely would have been nice to have been on the session if you missed it, :)