Are Social Platforms Turning Into Visual Platforms?

March 13, 2012

The fact that internet is not more public and open is simply not deniable. Due to the virtue of social networks, people are able to maintain better connections with their friends and business contacts.

It can be observed these days that social platforms are transforming into visual platforms. Pinterest is one the top of the list which is considered as one of the fastest growing social and visual networks around. Facebook recently contributed to the list of visual platforms by lunching the Timeline. Infographics are everyone’s favourite and we like to check out one or two on daily basis. It is clearly visible that content in the form of visuals is taking over the social web.

Many of us claim these days that we are not fond of Television anymore. Do we really need a TV when we can watch more on the Internet? It is more attractive for us to browse images, videos and graphics on the internet than watching programs on the television. The question still remains, why are social platforms becoming more visual now?

pininterest

Pininterest

Comments and suggestions are user-generated content which enhance the engagement in a brand’s page. Community managers and page admins use these types of content (comments and suggestions) to carry out the sentiment analysis. Facebook also wanted the brands and marketers to think like publishers and that is the reason why Facebook launched the Timeline.

I had the experience of handling a couple of Facebook pages and I was able to see that Pictures and Graphics is the form of content attracts instant feedback from the users. Cameras and albums were used by people to compile photos before hits like Facebook, Pinterest and other photo-sharing platforms got introduced. Infographics are also a great way of distributing substantial data and users find them not at all boring to look through. Infographics make it easy for people to understand a particular subject by creating a visualization of a data or a process. Even if the subject of a particular infographic is not familiar to the users, they enjoy getting themselves informed on the subject by interacting with the mixture of text and pictures.

Visual social platforms is the next step in the field of social marketing where customers will interact with other customers and increase the brand awareness as well as PR. Soon the user-generated content will contain more of pictures and videos rather than simple or plain text and it would not come as a surprise because the number of photo-sharing platforms is on the rise.

Brands like Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts are encouraging the fans of their pages on Facebook to post not only comments and suggestions but also photos related to their products. Coffee and doughnuts is not the only thing their fans are getting, visuals are being served as the major part of the meal. Sharing photos and videos is a human instinct and brands should understand that being visual is the key to user engagement.

By Best Marketing Techniques

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How Facebook Timeline Can Enhance Marketing

March 12, 2012

Facebook has recently launched the Timeline for brand pages. Many marketers and brands are looking to enhance their customer relationship management and user engagement with the help of Timeline. Brands like Coke and Starbucks are first in the line to introduce their interactive and good looking Timeline pages and soon many other brands would have to follow as Facebook would make the change as mandatory. Facebook has also provided the option of Preview to the page admin in order to check how the page will look like. This makes the task of planning and assessing much easier and useful. One of the visual temptations of Timeline is the cover photo. This approach of Facebook shows that Brands can use the visual approach to connect with their customers. This post is going to discuss why Timeline can make or break a Facebook brand page.

1.       Leveraging Content Management

Content is the most useful asset and the soul of the internet. Content in the social media is not only about a couple of sentences or text. The world we live in is instant where people or in other words users share content with the help of mobile devices. The most shared content on Facebook comes in the form of videos, photos, site links and locating sharing pins. Facebook Timeline is a useful tool for brands to spread content. It is important for brands to know which content will drive the most engagement. Dunkin’ Donuts is making an effective use of Facebook Timeline in the sense of the content. There are more than 5 million fans of Dunkin’ Donuts page and the reason is that it is highly customer-centric. Visual is not the only thing which comes with Facebook Timeline, brands should also allow their fans to share content.

2.       Leave The Tabs Behind

Landing pages have always been a great help to brands and page admins. The landscape of brand pages has undergone a transformation after the introduction of Facebook Timeline. Before there were tabs which could be controlled by the users to get the desired impression but with Timeline, there are none. This leads to less instant likes and fan-gating. The advantage is that Timeline lets the users to get lost in the pages and explore to learn more about the brands. The disadvantage is no call-to-action likes such as ”Like Us Now to View More” which helped brands to get instant fans. It’s totally up to the brands to customize their pages in such a way that users would like to share them.

3.       Spread The History

Timeline is a great opportunity for the brands to engage their users with not only the user-generated content but the brand-generated content as well. There is no difference between a Timeline page for brand and a Timeline for a user profile. Every brand owns a rich history and Facebook Timeline enables brands to expose their history, achievements and milestones. Timeline for brand pages acts like a Wikipedia with everything documented in and readily available for the users to know about. A brand with an open history can definitely drive more fans and ultimately customers.

Facebook Timeline BestMarketingTechniques

4.       Better Customer Relationship Management

Facebook is now serving as more of a customer relationship management tool than a social networking website. Brands are able to communicate more effectively with their customers. With Facebook Timeline Page, customers are able to exchange private messages directly with a company which turns the experience of customer relationship management into something more personal and it is appreciated by every customer

5.       Real-Time Social Analytics

Real-Time Analytics were launched by Google in 2011. Facebook was missing this feature until the release of Timeline for brands. The Timeline for brands has provided the community managers and admins with the tools to enhance their experience of social monitoring.

Real-Time Social Analytics

The Real-Time Social Analytics of Timeline enables the page managers and admins to get the data in the form of Engaged Users, About, People Talking and Page post metrics. This also provides the brands and marketers with the opportunity to act instantly regarding replacements of content or ads in order to make it less stressful and more interactive for the users. It is still important to discover if Real-Time Social Analytics of Facebook is a game-changer or just hype.

By Best Marketing Techniques

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Facebook – More Than Just a Profile

September 10, 2011

By Zia Ul Aein

Facebook Marketing

Undoubtedly, Facebook is one of the most famous websites over the internet. With every passing day, thousands of people join the powerful online community of Facebook, fill up their profiles, add friends and chat with their loved ones. But, according to my perspective, Facebook is a lot more than just a profile and chat. For business owners, marketers and advertisers, Facebook is a pipeline of achievement and one of the best marketing techniques to flow through and prove to be successful.

There are a number of ways on Facebook using which you can promote your business, products or services.

Let’s start with Facebook Profile. The first thing you will need to create on Facebook in order to utilize other marketing techniques of Facebook is the Facebook profile. You can add the URL of your website or blog in the provided spaces along with a brief bio of your business. Make sure that you fill everything completely and wisely in your profile as empty or incomplete profiles are easily ignored.

After the creation of your profile, start adding Friends. Do not aim for adding 100 friends at a time because you can easily get flagged as a spam by Facebook and most probably your account will be blocked permanently. Add not more than 15 to 20 friends per day or every second day in order to keep it natural and secure. This way, you will easily be able to reach 500 friends in a month.

If you are looking for something like a forum, then Facebook Groups is the best way to go for. The best thing about Facebook Groups is the easy way to add people. You can add all of your Friends in your group and there is no need for them to approve it.

Facebook Groups

The only issue with Facebook Groups, just like that of a forum, is that you can only see the discussions or the content if you are a member of the group. This is because of the reason that Facebook Groups are not indexed by the search engines. Here I will recommend that you keep just a little part of your focus on Facebook Groups and more on the other marketing techniques of Facebook.

Facebook Pages are my personal favourites. I consider Facebook Pages as one of the best marketing techniques over the internet. Facebook pages are easy to promote because they are indexed by the Google and anyone can view the content.

You can make your Facebook page as attractive and interesting as possible. Fill out all of the necessary and important business information along with the URLs. Make sure that you use the most important keyword as the title of your Facebook Page in order to make it SEO friendly for search engines.

Facebook Pages

Facebook page is the perfect marketing technique to put the maximum amount of your focus on. You can make your Facebook page as viral as a Facebook group. Whenever you will post something in your Facebook page, each and every member of your page will get it displayed in his or her Newest Feeds section.

Facebook Applications is one of the most interesting developments of Facebook to this day. Anyone can create a Facebook application to engage users in different kind of activities. Some Facebook Applications are based on fun such as games whereas some are made for the sake of business promotion and they are proving to be useful for the users.

facebook-marketing

There are many Facebook applications which are having thousands of active users and if you want to create one for your business, product or services then check out the Facebook Developers page. After the creation of your application, you can market it in your profile, page or group.

Facebook Advertising is another great way to advertise your business. You can get unexpected CPC and CPM outputs with Facebook Advertising. If you haven’t created a Facebook Page yet then you can advertise an external website otherwise you can direct the traffic directly to your Facebook page. You can always target your audience according to age, gender, interests or locations.

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