Facebook New Marketing Rules – A Cheat Sheet

By Kfir Pravda | Published: November 4, 2009
Facebook, Inc.
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Facebook is slowly removing many of the elements that made it a marketer’s wet dream.

Facebook announced several major changes that affect marketers using the platform to promote their services:
1. Splitting feeds to news feed and live feed – users see, as defualt, a feed with only content and comments from their friends. Information about groups etc was moved to a separate feed.
2. Removal of app notification - Facebook apps will not be able to send notifications to users.
These changes reduce the virality of the platform in a major way.
For example, if in the past one could invite friends to become fans of a page, and his friends would have seen that he joined, now they wouldn’t see it unless they look for it. This effect was crucial for virality of fan pages and applications. The same goes for notifications.
While many users rejoice, as they see more relevant and focused information on their feed and notification tab, marketers should rethink the way they interact in Facebook.

The two most important consequences for marketers are:

1.  Advertising becomes more important in creating traffic to Facebook applications and fan pages - without virality, paid advertisement within the platform, or in other channels, is an important part of any Facebook marketing activity

2. Fan pages and apps should provide more value to users, as it will be more difficult to attract repeat visitors.

In the next part we will discuss additional changes in the platform and what are the opportunities for marketers in this area.
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  • that's it? darn. I thought you were gonna get to some meaty ideas here. You barely got beyond stating the obvious.

    But this comes back to the basic principles of the more evolved new media marketing/awareness campaigns: if youre relying on an interruptive model - you're days are numbered.

    The app-ecosystems and organisms of social media will by nature of the free-market tendency towards value and away from spam. Users dont want spam. They want value. The will readily flock towards environments, stories, and events that serve their actual evolution and exploration - serve that, provide for that, and you will magnetize your content, feed, etc.

    ***

    I do however think that by empowering the pages, facebook was adding a lot of social momentum into their site. Brands were getting involved, it was a justifiable destination during the work-day, it was becoming an actual social utility of value as brands, non-profits, musicians, artists began having access to the 'feed' - if facebook can structure this back in, it will be a plus for users.
  • Thanks for your comment - and you'll be amazed how some of the things you might take for grunted are still a challenge for many marketers. I agree with your notes - but they are a major challenge to many brands. Providing value, persuading people to come to your site, are not natural to many advertisers.
    In the next post on this topic we'll talk a bit more about some of the new connectivity options the platform offers.
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