The changing face of Facebook and what it means for brands

Last week, a huge amount of people were thrown out of their comfort zone. Not because they had a significant life changing moment such as leaving their job or becoming a parent. But because Facebook made some updates.  The barrage of mixed opinion which followed was only to be expected because bizarrely, even in our rapidly evolving, digital world, change makes people uncomfortable.

It means we all have to make small adjustments and use something in a new way, which we aren’t used to. We are creatures of habit and, as such, Facebook has just thrown a large spanner in the works.

So, I won’t bore you with the lengthy descriptions of what changed and where - what we as an agency are particularly interested in is how the changes will affect brands using Facebook and how they can move quickly to benefit from the updates whilst mitigating any negative effect.  

There are three areas which we feel may impact brands with a presence on Facebook:

1. Newsfeed changes

2. User data

3. Targeting

Newsfeed changes:

• Top stories – With the new updates for ‘top stories’, brands now have an opportunity to cut through the noise of the news feed.  Post updates which generate lots of likes and comments will go to the ‘top stories’ section where they are much more likely to be seen and interacted with, generating an even stronger engagement.
• Ticker - Posts which do not generate a good level of interaction will be moved to the new ‘Twitter style’ news ticker where there’s less real estate for your post, meaning your message is more likely to get lost.  
• Permissions - Users can now post on a page without liking it, meaning brands need to provide a strong reason to compel a user to take action and like the page. The main concern voiced by our clients about this is that the growth of their ‘likes’ has slowed. However, it’s yet to be seen if the interaction level increases as you would expect from this.
• Photos - Users’ photos have been given much more prominence on the newsfeed, meaning brand photo real estate is reduced and photos are less likely to be noticed and engaged with.

Brand learning: It is now more important than ever to offer engaging content due to the risk of not appearing in the newsfeed. It’s not just about having a posting plan with plenty of content, but providing engaging content users will take the time to interact with and want more of, justifying  their ‘like’ or connection with your brand. When posting photos, brands should ensure they post more than one to maximise the real estate they capture. White backgrounds, bold text and people shots will all make the images stand out more from the feed.  

User data:

• Share - A nice new addition for brands is the ‘share’ metric on pages they admin. You can now see who has shared your links/content.
• Long term connection – The new timeline opens up a lot of data, helping brands to get a complete lifetime view of a user and their interests and motivations in life. It also brings apps to the forefront of the Facebook experience. If a user connects with a brands app, it is connected until removed, providing brands with an opportunity to foster a permanent connection with the user.  

Brand learning: The key is to build an app which helps people ‘tell their story’ and creates a reason to have an ongoing relationship.  It is important, however, that you don’t just build an app for the fun of it -you need an engaged fan base to start and a good seeding budget to broaden your reach. It is yet to be seen how brands can use this, but the new data this offers provides a better picture of the Facebook user than ever before. We would recommend brands keep an eye on their post shares and use them to identify and reward potential brand ambassadors on their pages.

Targeting:

• Advertising - We were one of the first agencies in the UK to run a sponsored story advertising campaign with our client PriceRunner, and had some great results including a 0.9% click through rate.  The latest updates have opened up a new sponsored story opportunity for brands. They can now promote stories produced by their app to increase the reach of the action. So, for example, if someone reviews a product on your site, running a sponsored ad on this action will ensure their friends see it, and they will be more likely to look at the review and then purchase/also review the product.
• Verb targeting - Brands are now also able to target people not only based on their likes, but according to their actions and habits. For example, they can target someone who is reading Tribes by Seth Godin with ads for a digital event.

Brand learning: If you are a brand thinking of producing an app to reap the benefits of the new timeline, it’s important to plan with an understanding of how to tap into the open graph and what it has to offer. When we recently met with Facebook to discuss the updates, it is clear we’re only at the beginning of the opportunities that will be presented to brands as more verbs are introduced to the graph. Whilst this is still unknown territory, there’s a big opportunity for brands to weave verbs into their app development or even lead development with verbs in mind. They can then even start to ‘own’ a verb like Facebook owns ‘like’.  These are few we have thought of in the office:

• McDonalds – Lovin’

• Nike – do it

• Honda – dream

• HP – invent

• Red Bull – wings

• Pepsi max – max

• Mars – work, rest, and play

• Nokia – connect

• Lonely Planet - discover  

The changes last week have been a bit of a double edged sword for brands. On one hand, it may be much harder to drive interaction through the newsfeed and convert users to fans. But on the other, brands now have a host of new features which can provide more data and better targeting, enabling them to reach qualified users who are more likely to interact in the first place.

It remains to be seen exactly what impact these updates will have, but brands that have an active user base are well placed to harness the opportunities.

This blog post was written by Gemma. If you want to discuss this post, why not follow us on Twitter?