Peter Yared has posted this excellent article covering what he's learned in four years of doing Facebook marketing campaigns for brands. First, he covers all the things which don't work:
- "Deep" campaigns by ad agencies
- Having lots of apps on one tab
- Sweepstakes
- Photo and video contests (unless done right)
- Requiring people to like your page to proceed (unless the goal is really very valuable)
- Requiring extended permissions
- Unbranded apps
So what does work?
Promotions and Consistent, Lightweight Engagement
(...)
A brand on Facebook should offer their users regularly updated, simple to interact with engagement features. Each of the engagement apps should be fully branded, and run in a separate tab with traffic driven from wall posts, newsfeed and Facebook ad units to increase engagement. Start with a personality quiz. Then two weeks later put up a poll. Then try a trivia app. For special events, put up a gifting app for Valentine's Day, or for the holiday season, a holiday song card.
Some brands, like media properties and well-known consumer brands, get an immediate fan base for this type of lightweight engagement. For the rest, building a fan base on Facebook is no different than building a mailing list in the previous generation of the Internet. It takes consistent engagement, and builds over time.
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