Facebook changes affect marketers

NEW YORK: Brands looking to utilise social media must adapt to new tactics on Facebook, following the platform's recent introduction of new marketing tools, a report has argued.

eMarketer says that responding to changes on the social networking site is essential in order for brands to secure optimum return for their outreach efforts.

Despite questions over how to quantify the value of Facebook engagement, 83% of all companies with at least 100 employees will do some form of marketing on the site in 2012. 

Further estimates from eMarketer indicate that this number is set to rise to 90% by 2014, suggesting that brands who fail to utilise it may suffer from a competitive disadvantage.

Changes to Facebook's marketing tools include the roll-out of its "timeline" to all brand pages. Data from Simply Measured, the social media analytics tool, show the timeline feature has boosted user interaction on brand pages.

However, information revealed at the Facebook Marketing Conference 2012 suggests that fans may only see 16% of a brand's status updates. This is due to content filtering by the algorithm that determines what is shown on users' newsfeeds.

Brands can boost the visibility of their status updates by paying to have them integrated into the feed as part of their marketing strategy. Incorporating paid advertising with organic efforts on Facebook will be key to gaining maximum traction on the site and ensuring brand content does not get lost amidst wider chatter, claims eMarketer.

Grady Burnett, vice president of global marketing solutions at Facebook, advises brands to start with "a good page post, a good strategy, and then figure out how to amplify that."

"Paid and earned, when used together, perform best," he added.

Data sourced from eMarketer; additional content by Warc staff, 29 August 2012

SIMILAR NEWS