beautiful bytes – Facebook Fan Pages, mobile time and HTC: a very social Valentine’s
Cost of a Facebook Fan
According to research referenced by The Wall Street Journal, a single Facebook fan costs on average $1.07 (£0.66) to acquire. However, the price is rising due to a combination of lower click-through rates in 2010 (compared to 2009) and increased competition for ad space. Although there are no concrete reasons as to why click-through rates are in decline, possibilities range from having boring or uninteresting ads, or poorly targeted ads, to Facebook users simply tuning them out because they’ve become used to them (A.K.A. banner blindness).
Despite this, Facebook is expected to make $2 billion in advertising revenue this year (as mentioned in beautiful bytes – Christmas edition). Clearly, organisations are not shying away from this medium just yet. So why is this?
Fan cost vs. Fan value
For brands, the value of a fan can be far greater than the cost of recruitment – for charities, JustGiving calculated this could be around £5 per Fan/like. That’s not a bad ROI…
But what certainly makes the difference is how engaged fans are with a brand or organisation on Facebook and that very much depends on how much the brand invests in building that relationship.
The good news is that Facebook introduced a new Fan page layout a few days ago, which will make this easier:
New Facebook Fan Pages
Styled in the same way as your own Facebook profile, the new fan page aims to be more engaging for both the organisation and its fans. It has introduced a co-tweet-like ability for admins to post to other pages as organisation’s page and signals the end of constant signing in/signing out of different profiles. This is especially useful to those that are admins of more than one page.
The new system also gives page admins notifications when users post items on your wall. Very useful.
A lot of pages I have seen on Facebook illustrate how easy it is set up Facebook pages and let them just gradually attract fans, with little, if any, dialogue between the owner of the page and those that ‘like’ it. In truth, these pages are of little value to either.
Notifications should be an incredibly powerful tool to help add value to fans by increasing, and encouraging, dialogue between fans and brand.
By increasing dialogue, you can build a happy, active fan base, as well as earn yourself some yummy Open Graph data on your most engaged fans – data that can then be used to target future ads and recruit similar fans in future:
And all this from a little notification to tell you a fan wants to interact with you!
Facebook mobile time on site
Following on from last week’s post, which mentioned Facebook having the largest share of time on site across the web, it appears the same trend can be seen in mobile sites:
Over 2.5 billion minutes have been spent on Facebook’s mobile site, adding more fuel to already fiery debate about Facebook Deals and Foursquare Specials, and which of the two will be the more attractive platform to launch location-based campaigns on.
Facebook and HTC
The front page of this morning’s (Wednesday 16th Feb) City A.M. contained further proof of Facebook’s commitment to mobile services and user experience while using them, as well as Facebook’s increasing ubiquity.
Facebook and HTC have been working in conjunction to produce a phone that integrates Facebook functionality with Google’s Android OS. Data is pulled directly from Facebook (such as status updates) and used in conjunction with contact lists; the phones even have a dedicated Facebook button. I wouldn’t be surprised if Places data eventually made its way into ‘map’ applications. This gives Facebook Deals the potential to grow exponentially, especially since more smartphones with Facebook integration are set to hit the market over the next year.
This news has also got me thinking about future statistics regarding Facebook usage. Where will the line be drawn between the time people choose to use Facebook, compared to time spent interacting with Facebook content in the course of every day life?
Valentine’s Campaigns
Whether you’re single or one half of a couple, there was no getting away from Valentine’s Day marketing this year. Countless commercial promotions, on and offline, urged me to part with my hard-earned cash on gifts for my sweetheart (my favourite – Valentine’s m&m’s).
This year though, we’ve seen some great examples of how charities are adapting to the occasion to generate donations for Valentine’s Day.
Among others, Oxfam, Greenpeace and – in the example below – WSPA created tailored offerings from their their virtual gifts catalogues for the occasion:
This is a very cost-effective way of extending the value of virtual gifts campaigns to boost revenue after the Christmas buzz has died down. Most, if not all, virtual gift sites have the infrastructure to support the small changes required, and cost relatively small amounts to implement, especially if supported with associated social media and email promotional activity.
My Twitter feed was full of Valentine’s messages from many different types of organisation. Some were using it just to wish a happy Valentine’s Day (our favourite from @savetheorang) and some suggested making a donation (@childrensociety) or sending an e-card (@stdunstansnews).
Support and advice charities used the day to promote tailored campaigns (@everyman_cancer) or to release relevant content (@thesite).
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Whatever the message, what this shows more than anything is the shift towards use of social media within the sector – and yesterday was a brilliant example of the different ways it can be used.
NFPtweetup 10
A quick notice regarding NFPtweetup 10(!) which will be taking place tonight. For those lucky enough to have managed to get hold of a ticket, the agenda has now been published.
For those of you who couldn’t get hold of a ticket or live too far away, do not fear – the event is being live streamed again, for the first time in over a year, so you wont miss a minute of the action. To view the stream, visit the NFPtweetup Facebook Page from 6pm this evening.
Oh, and we hope you like our beautiful new site! Blog comments will now actually be read and published – courtesy of a new spam-blocker, removing all the noise for us – so comment away and we promise to respond…
Until next week,
Ash
P.S. Oh, and do you like my new beautiful bytes logo? 
