Facebook Page Growth: 30-40% attributed to earned media

Facebook is really helping to close the gap between advertising and social media. It now gives brands the opportunity to incorporate and track both paid and earned media in the one place.

Doing some analysis over three Pages (The Contender Australia, Grinspoon, Vanessa Amorosi) I am currently working on I worked out that for every three people that join a Page through paid media, they will indirectly influence two friends within their network to join the Page via the suggestion box/highlight or news feeds of their friends pages.


Lode cash in on the indirect earned media 'Suggestions' spot

In my opinion Facebook is the only social platform that has an advertising model that is worth investing in. We are seeing some of the smart agencies in Australia pick up on this and really launch some big exciting campaigns through the platform Telstra Digital Mums (DDB), The Skinny Cow (Publicis Digital), 5 Seeds (Holler), and Lynx (SOAP).

Methodology: Since the upgrade to Facebook Ads in June 2009, they now give you action rates which is how many people become a fan directly from the ad. So subtracting this action rate number from your Page growth gives you the viral growth rate, I then made that number into a percentage (Grinspoon - 34%, Vanessa Amorosi - 39% and The Contender - 40%). I would love it if anyone else would like to share their stats

Case Study: Victoria's Secret Facebook Page and Monash Uni's Electronic Marketing Course

Here is a great case study of Victoria's Secret Pink Social Marketing/Facebook Campaign

The video was created by students Mark and Natalie as part of the Electronic Marketing course which lecturer/legend Peter Wagstaff is teaching at Monash University.

Fellow student/blogger Rick Clarke and James Moran are also doing the subject so I asked them for a few words on the course.

'Instead of writing an essay, one of our tasks was to create a short instructional video, and share it with the class (and the world!) via YouTube. We made our video on the evolution of the web from Web 1.0 through to Web 2.0, and speculated what Web 3.0 might be like.'


In related news, Lode a graduate recruiting company have a great little Facebook promotion going on at the moment. They are giving graduates the chance to score one of three summer internships at Lonely Planet, Thiess or PWC. All you have to do is explain in 100 words or less, why you think you are the best candidate for the job.

Speaking in October

I am pretty sure Sydney is getting sick of hearing me speak however I have a few more speaking engagements coming up in October.

1. Networx Marketers – Online Marketing event on Tuesday 20th October
I will be on a panel with Nic Hodges and Ben Phillips talking about the latest trends in online communication, developing digital strategies and blogger outreach.

Key blogs posts on this topic;
Blogger Outreach - Dosh Wallets Case Study
Facebook Pages vs. Groups
Six Practical Tips to getting your video onto Youtube Honour Board


2. AIMIA event ‘Getting inside Gen Y’ on Thursday October 22nd
I will be talking about the trends that are occurring online for Gen Y also on the panel will be Jye Smith.

Key blogs posts on this topic;
Marketing to Melbourne Hipsters – Nelson Beer Case Study
I party farkin hard wif me mates and I got photos to prove it
7 traits of cool kids online

3. Australian Marketing Institute Annual Conference on Thursday October 29th
I will be speaking about the key leanings marketers can take away from how the music industry has evolved with social media.

Key blogs posts on this topic;
Grinspoon Case Study
15 Australia Musicians using social media
5 practical learnings from working in social media

Top 10 Australian Viral Videos and The Mumbo Report

I featured on the Mumbo Report talking about memes and virals, so I thought it would be fitting to do a '10 to 1 Australia's Best Viral Videos.'

10. Teenage Affluenza - World Vision


9. Where the bloody hell are you? - Dan Ilic


8. Beached Whale- Handsomity Institute


7. True History of Australian Football - Aktifmag


6. Get into any nightclub - Sprite Truth Hunters


5. Corey Delaney, Party Liason - ACA and Crikey Media


4. ChkChkBoom - Nine News


3. Free Hugs - Sick Puppies


2. Trent from Punchie - Trent


1. The Big Ad - Carlton Draught

Case Study: Dosh Wallets – Blogger Outreach

Problemo: Dosh Wallets were releasing their second range of wallets but no one knew about it. Online had worked great in the past to build awareness.

Strategy: Get the top male fashion and design sites to write about the new product.

Implementation:
Step 1: Identifying Bloggers
We used Google Blog Search to identify bloggers who had already talked about Modern Designed Wallets (Dosh & competitors). We then used Technorati to find bloggers who were writing on the topic of design and male fashion.

We took this list of thirty potential bloggers and ranked them in terms of importance using Alexa and Technorati. This helped us to clarify who we would offer product to for a review and who we would just inform about the launch.

Step 2: Creating the outreach
We tried to keep the first email to one paragraph. More than a paragraph and the respondent would lose interest. Once we received a response we told them about the product. We also set up an Easter Egg/30% Discount for all the bloggers to tell their readers about. It was hidden in the ‘O’ of Dosh on the website (still live).

Result:
Sales: For the eight weeks that we were involved with the blogger outreach we were able to double the number of online sales of the product.

Traffic: We brought in over 4,000 interested punters from 30+ external linking sites. Including the top International style blogs of Kanye West, Yanko Design, Like Cool and Australian blogs Lost at E Minor and Gizmodo.

SEO: We were also able to get their site to number one in the search results from the strength of all the in-links that we provided through these sites.

Learnings:
Just go for the big boys
When we hit the big blogs we noticed that about four or five other blogs would follow suit and write about the wallets. Which suggests you only need to target the ones at the top to have the biggest effect.

Straight to the point
Our initial email started out with three paragraphs of copy we ended up writing just one paragraph. You also need a direct call to action in the subject header.

The Facebook Tattoo story

February - Mardi Gras
In 2050, I will sit my grandchildren down and I will tell them the following story of how I had the chance to join Corey Delaney and ChkChkBoom girl in the ranks of Australia’s biggest online idiots… and I blew it!

So this whole idea started with Zoe Scaman. She is a colleague who works as a Digital Strategist for The Population but she is also the only one with Media Trading experience in our team.

Unfortunately, she is now tasked with the labourious job of trafficking all the media we book - one of the most boring tasks going around. Being the nice co-worker I am, I have reveled in her disdain for this task and poked fun at her at every chance I have got.

So when Cate came back from a client meeting and re-told the story of how she told the client that ‘Julian loves Facebook so much that he has a tattoo of it on his bum.’ This was Zoe time to strike ‘That is a great idea, Can we start a Facebook Page to get 500 fans and then will you get one?’

My fateful words ‘Yeah, whatever and then when it gets to a 1,000 I will get a tattoo on my face.’

With those words she was off creating a Facebook Page. Her media skills would come back to haunt me, as she got in touch with Carat, MediaCom, Allure Media, Fairfax Media, Media Smart, Tongue, Ninemsn, Facebook Sales Team (Australia and International) Mumbrella, B&T and pleaded that they send it around as a group email to their workforces of around 2,000+ people. It was pretty much sealed on Thursday when Mumbrella wrote a post on it.

I could tell the 500 fans were like a pack of starving wolves they wanted to see blood/ink so seeing as though I am not completely immune to the idiot strain, I decided to get a 2 month semi permanent tattoo.

Thanks to the awesome photographer/art directing combo of Jye Smith and Michelle Carter, I now have a full calendar worth of photos.
May - Mothers Day

It will be the perfect Christmas present for your Facebook addicted friends. I will write a personalised message in every calendar so that your friend will never look at Facebook the same way again. It will probably cost around $20 and I will donate all the profits to Bowel Cancer Research. More details and photos to come.

With the request for photos of the tattoo, I thought I would give people more than they can handle. I decided to make a calendar to help Facebook Addicts.

So the moral of this story don’t piss off english people or you may get stuck with a Facebook tattoo on your bum for the whole of summer.

If you are disappointed or angry and wish to protest simply unfan the Page.

January - Summer

Social Media Advertising - SM integration.

I really like this new campaign from Soap for the Lynx Superfresh range – Party across the Internet. I think it shows the evolution of where social media can sit within digital advertising.

Soap have created an amazing interactive banners on the QuicksilverPro, Ralph Magazine, Myspace and Heavy sites which then all link through to the Lynx Facebook Page.

They have Facebook acting as a net to catch all the fans of the banners. Facebook currently offers the best direct marketing recruitment vehicle online.