SMK attended Social Media Club Melbourne’s event where representatives of Facebook Australia presented local information and  took questions from social media professionals.

Connect, engage, influence, integrate

Facebook sees the platform as a tool for brands to connect with people, engage on the site, create influence and integrate people’s feedback into their business.

Talk about things related to your brand, not just your brand

Facebook representatives used the example of Toyota starting conversations around people’s first cars. It’s an authentic, personal conversation which although related to Toyota, isn’t about Toyota.

Resources

Professionals are directed to Facebook Marketing for best practice information and Facebook Studio for user generated case studies.

Private messaging

Use private messaging on your brand page (rather than your wall) to resolve complaints.

2/3 of people who Like brands actually like them

It is believed the other one third only like the brand so that they have access to comment on the brand’s page – potentially to complain.

16% organic distribution of content is global benchmark

The benchmark for organic distribution of content is 16%. Images and video consistently perform higher than other content.

Use 90 characters or less. Avoid blue and white images

Facebook reported that the content which is most engaged with in terms of text is updates of less than 90 characters. Images and video are also popular, and Facebook advises using colours other than the site colours of blue and white.

Facebook for B2B

Facebook highlighted Amex as a case study for B2B. Amex asked their community to support small businesses. In return, small businesses were more likely to support Amex. For FMCG and other products, Facebook popularity is a useful indicator when approaching potential stockists.

Australian Facebook users

Australian Facebook users are the most engaged segment of any users in the world. Australian users spend on average 25 minutes per visit. There are 10 million active users per month and 6 million users per day, with an average of 113 page views per user.

Australian case studies

Whilst not many Australian case studies were provided, Facebook representatives pointed to fashion blogger and fashion store MIISHKA as a great example of Facebook use for business in Australia. MIISHKA currently has over 83,000 fans. 

Peruse tweets from the evening on this storify.