I just saw a great tweet by my brother @iamseanmcdonald “Serious question: Anyone have recent examples where a brand has made a MEASURABLE impact with its presence in Facebook?” I keep thinking to myself that the applications for corporate Facebook presence are mostly in the consumer brands area. We love to tell everyone how great our coffee is and why not mention that it is brand X.
I’ve had several discussions about creating Facebook groups for both corporate and professional groups and the answer always comes back as NO for several reasons. The first being that most employees don’t want their Facebook information available to possible clients, future employers and others. I know that you can create groups but I spent about 20 minutes on Saturday trying to create a group in Facebook and it crashed. Then I was challenged with having to set security options for all the groups. Most users are not willing or know how to do it.
The other issue is how to measure. Yes we can see how many followers, fans and friends we have but what is their impact. The real answer is when we can track instances where our community recommends our product or service to a potential customer. The value of their recommendation is better than that of another person that is not known to them and carries the integrity of the person recommending. But measuring that is a full time job or you need a heavy duty analytics application like Ripple6!
That’s not to say that there are not some examples out there. I had the opportunity to hear Jane Collins, Director of Consumer Insights for MySpace.com explain her attempt to measure friending impact. As social networks deepen existing relationships and allow users to rediscover old friends and sustain relationships, users now want brands to be their friends instead of advertising to them. This has led to a new trend of “Friending,” a new communication strategy between brands and consumers. It’s more than just offering special offers and coupons, brands can create a community and offer topics of discussion, tell friends about events sales and special offers. Click here for the expanded article.
Another challenge is when your company offer business and professional services of a unique subject matter. I work for two companies in business intelligence and site selection software. There already exists Facebook groups for SAS Users and Chamber of Commerce Executives, so what can my company’s group bring to the community that we are already not doing on LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube?
So back the question posed at the beginning: Anyone have recent examples where a brand has made a Measurable impact with its presence on Facebook?
