Facebook community building

When one is trying to engage with users on Facebook for marketing purposes, it is always recommended to keep them within the platform as opposed to tearing them away to other sites.  It is best to make friends and build rapport with users before even considering selling to them.  Facebook is about relationship marketing, not direct sales. It’s more important to build a relationship with a potential client or an existing customer than closing a sale right away.

How does this relate to Centrality Media’s services?  Most obviously, it is through the purchase and management of the aforementioned social ads.  We can set up Facebook ads to tunnel through directly to Pages (known as ‘engagement ads’).  Through these ads, users can become a fan or ‘liker’ of a Page directly from an ad.  At that point, one has the opportunity of interacting directly with that individual and building a relationship. If we had directed a user to a client site, we would have been forced to have them enter a form or make a purchase right away. The odds against users filling out a form or making a purchase immediately are far higher than on them becoming a fan of a Page.

In addition to having an increased conversion, we are also now able to reach out to individuals directly if we wish. For example, if someone joins a Page controlled by us, but we don’t know who they are yet, we can send a message welcoming them to the Page and enquiring more about them. This form of relationship building is used to create lasting customers, not one time purchases, and it is core to Facebook marketing.

As well as building Pages on behalf of our clients, we can populate these communities with relevant fans via organic seeding, social ad buying or a mixture of both.  Centrality Media can also grow communities via the creation of customised FBML landing pages.  Most people don’t realise that Facebook Pages are as customisable as they are.  When people think of their structure and layout, they consider it to be fairly uniform.  In fact, you can create an incredibly rich user experience that goes far beyond the limits of posts, photos, videos etc.  With customisable FBML tabs, we are essentially able to create a mini website within a fan page.

One can set it up so that non-fans see the FBML tab when they first visit the page.  After becoming fans, they will have the standard wall set as the default landing page – where they can comment on and share content as they usually would.

Centrality Media can also take the function of the FBML landing pages further by creating ‘viral squeeze’ codes that operates as follows:

In order to be eligible for a discount / free download / voucher etc. the new visitor is first encouraged to become a fan of the page.  Secondly, they are encouraged to share the page with those who they believe will be most interested in this offer.  Whether or not they complete these steps (you can’t force them!), they will they be given access to the voucher / free download, etc.  This is a system that is truly viral in nature.  If one can generate an initial surge of fan acquisition through seeding and social ad buying, this ‘viral squeeze’ mechanism can take care of itself and will spread only to relevant leads via peer-to-peer endorsement.  This is a call to action far stronger than any direct marketing or advertising can hope to achieve.

If you want to find out more about these or other services then please do get in touch.