Unlike other social networking sites, Facebook is focused on improving communication and sharing among existing of Fan Pages, brands have incredible options for targeting and connecting with their consumers. The Facebook Platform is the set of APIs and tools which enable people to enhance websites, applications, or devices with the social graph. Marketers can find great value in Facebook:
Data Mi
ning/Targeting: Facebook members fill their pages with critical profiling information that the network’s algorithms can use to target ads to specific consumers. Networking: Facebook is a community of friends. It is innate human nature to share opinions and referrals. Facebook makes it simple and convenient through intuitive features and the automated News Feed. Fan Page: Similar to individual member pages, marketers can create distinct, customized profiles on Facebook’s website to represent their brands. Social Ads: With sophisticated targeting options based on deep user profile data, marketers can reach and potentially influence thousands of individuals. Applications: Brands can also use the platform to build stand-alone applications or
widgets on a brand’s page. Facebook Connect: The possibilities for leveraging Facebook Connect are practically limitless and range from simple ‘Share’ functionality to advanced features such as socially contextual content, which is based on what users’ friends are doing. Social Advertising represents ad formats that engage the social context of the user viewing the ad, whereas in traditional, non-social, advertising the ad is targeted based on what it knows about the individual person or the individual page, in social advertising the ad is targeted based on what it knows about the individual user's social network. "Social actions are powerful because they act as trusted referrals and reinforce the fact that people influence people,” said Zuckerberg. “It’s no longer just about messages that are broadcast out by companies, but increasingly about information that is shared between friends. So we set out to use these social actions to build a new kind of ad system.”
Facebook 2011
Social media is no longer an add-on to the marketing budget. According to eMarketer four out of five companies will use social media for marketing in 2011 and budgets are still rising. The web is getting more personal, more open and it’s getting really intelligent. More and more marketing budgets will move towards Facebook. The social graph connects everything and social data is everywhere. As new technologies are integrated with this growing body of social data, you can expect search capabilities to rise to breathtaking levels, giving more accurate, more personal and timelier search results. A new frontier in social commerce is being explored as retailers leverage customers’ Facebook profile data to deliver personalized shopping experiences on their sites. Fueling this trend is web retailers’ quick adoption of social sign-on, which allows consumers to log in to their Facebook account instead of registering on an ecommerce site. Location will give Facebook a new way to target and sell advertising. Mobile hasn’t been a part of Facebook’s ad offerings until now, but that will change. By offering ways for marketers to target Facebook users not only on the online service, but also when they are on the go and using Facebook on their mobile phones, opens up all-new avenues for interaction.
