There are three things you need to be thinking about as a marketer on Facebook:

1. Building for connections

Gokul made a very elegant point. You don’t want to just build connections. It’s not about the number of fans you have. It’s about what you offer them and it’s clear that the company’s focus has shifted from growth to engagement.
You need to publish content and experiences that people care about. Don’t build around your business. Build around your customers’ interests. If you sell cameras, focus on pictures and not your products. If you sell stoves, focus on the food and not your steel products.
Put content out there that becomes a part of users’ identity. The question you need to ask is: how can you build experiences and publish content that consumers will put into their Timelines and make their own? Focus on stuff that adds meaning to people’s lives and not distract their lives.
Think lighter versions of the Nike+ running application. The app focuses on running and not shoes but Nike gets the credit for adding value.
The key metric going forward will be closer to how many people added your content or application to their timeline than how many connections you have. This is a radical shift to actions and engagement and away from reach and impressions, though they are tightly aligned.

2. Letting users tell your story

Building for connections basically means publishing content that people will share, either directly or indirectly. Letting users tell your story deals with a new language you need to incorporate in all that you do on Facebook.
What does this mean? It means you NO LONGER NEED TO USE THE WORD ‘LIKE’ IN ALL THAT YOU DO ON FACEBOOK! Let’s be honest, people. ‘Like’ was a blunt instrument. We used it because it was all that was given to us.
You will now be able to build language that expresses the stories being created by the connections you are building, for that is more closely aligned with the action itself.
This new expressive language means you will be able to add whatever verb you so choose. You can start to use words like read, watch, listen, buy and more in the stories that get shown to friends of your “engagers.” You no longer have to just use ‘Like’.
If someone signs up for a test drive on your Facebook Page or website, you will be able to tell that to their friends. Using “custom verbs” more closely aligned with how consumers interact with you, which will make your business more personal, open and user friendly.

3. Unlocking business value through consumer value, or people value

Lastly, how do people find out about all the actions consumers are taking with you? There are now four primary ways: News Feed, Ticker, Timeline and Sponsored Stories.
The first three are great for social discovery. They are to Facebook’s ad ecosystem what organic search is to Google’s paid search product. They’re free and based on user engagement. The better the content, the more engagement. The more engagement, the higher you will appear in each user’s Graph Rank.
If you like the organic channels, which we all do as they are free, you will LOVE the new Sponsored Stories framework. It’s all the greatness of organic discovery with massive tonnage – the reach and frequency we love as marketers. Basically, don’t wait for your content to be discovered. Buy and accelerate the discovery.
Very simply, any action that users take with content (or “objects,” in the Facebook developer world) that you own across your Facebook Pages, applications and Facebook-connected web sites can be bought. And more importantly, if you own the objects, you can buy them actions generated by the objects even if you don’t own the applications that generate the actions.

To read the full article visit AdAge.com

Author: Michael Lazerow

Article Source: AdAge Digital

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