In today’s digitized world, marketers are finding new, innovative ways to reach and connect with targeted audiences. Effectively utilizing social media such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the blogosphere has proven to be a necessary and critical competitive advantage for companies hoping to successfully communicate with consumers. One such social media tool that offers vast potential to help companies interact with consumers and gauge their personalities is the Facebook ‘Like’ button. The ‘Like’ button lets users share content about a company or product with friends and become automatically connected to its Facebook page. The ingenuity behind this tool stems from the fact that people like what their friends like. Once a few people ‘Like’ a brand, others are bound to follow, and the cycle continues. The ‘Like’ button provides an opportunity for businesses to increase awareness about their brand, generate buzz, promote new products, and learn about the specific types of people who are interested in the brand. For what has long cost millions of dollars and taken years of market research, Facebook’s ‘Like’ button offers easily and freely to anyone who decides to create one.
The first step to effectively use this tool is gaining an understanding of what motivates users to ‘Like’ your company. According to a survey between Exact Target and CoTweet, 40% of Facebook users are motivated to ‘Like’ a brand in order to obtain discounts or special offers. Another 36% of users are apt to ‘Like’ a brand that offers freebies such as free samples or coupons. Other users ‘Like’ brands to show support, get updates about future products and upcoming sales, and get access to exclusive content such as company insights and education about company topics. Go ahead and prepare a sweepstakes that can only be entered with a click of the ‘Like’ button, offer ample coupons for your company’ services, or provide educational tools for businesses exclusively to fans. Once you have an ample number of ‘Likes’, the next step is retaining fans and using Facebook insights to create successful, targeted advertising campaigns.
Facebook insights provide page administrators with detailed information on demographics and psychographics of fans. By understanding the types of people who like your brand, and how they interact with social media, you can develop advertising campaigns on Facebook and elsewhere that are aimed directly at target consumers. Be attentive to the types of interactivity on your Facebook page in order to incorporate special offers, coupons, and freebies most effectively.
Keeping hold of current fans is another vital task that can be accomplished with one word, “share-ability.” This social media buzzword refers to content that can be easily shared by users because of originality, insightfulness, or compelling offers. When updating fans on your Facebook page, keep this word in the back of your head as you send out messages, videos, pictures, and articles that users will want to pass on to others. Offer coupons and freebies sparingly and at random to create excitement and viral buzz. Increase page activity by sending customized messages to specific genders, ages, or locations within the page’s fan base. Provide highly active users with special coupons in order to reward them and incentivize other fans to increase their involvement.
Mastering the Facebook ‘Like’ button will give your company a guaranteed edge amongst the competition. By skillfully promoting your company online, and grasping a better understand of the target audience, you will indubitably become more successful as a whole.
To create a Facebook Like button for your company, follow the steps at this link: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like/ or contact a social media marketing agency.
Thanks to Allison Cossman for this contributed post.