Opinion: Facebook strengthens commitment to consumers and marketers

Facebook recently re-launched its advertising platform at an event at New York City's Natural History Museum and made it crystal clear that one's Facebook Page will be the centerpiece of one's paid, owned and earned strategies moving forward.

The social network not only reinforced its willingness to listen to marketers but also presented a slew of offerings that increase the value and effectiveness of paid advertising, earned engagement, and owned pages, which now have come together in a radical new way.

Brands in Asia, especially those that have long taken the wait-and-see approach when dealing with social media marketing, will find this very beneficial. They will have better visibility and control over their pages, and are assured that Facebook will deliver on its promise of better customer engagement and extensive exposure.

Reach Generator: Significantly more reach

Facebook's new “Reach Generator” product provides brands the option to pay Facebook for guaranteed newsfeed distribution.

In fragmented Asian markets, where different cultures, languages and traditions heavily influence marketing decisions, tactics tend to become very market- or project-specific. It is not uncommon for a brand to have multiple or different Facebook pages. Another recurring grievance from brand marketers is the lack of distribution of posts to fans. In Asia, this typically results in brands deciding to pull the plug on their page promotion efforts as they take up so much time and effort.

With Reach Generator, brands are able to engage consumers in different markets, spawning user engagement to full capacity, and churning value for money. Through Reach Generator, brands are assured that their posts reach at least 75 percent of fans every month, which is triple the average reach. Engagement is expected to multiply further as more fans engage and enable exposure of posts on their network.

Your content and your ads are now the same

In 2011, 80 per cent of companies listed on The Wall Street Journal's "Asia 200 Index", reported having a corporate social media presence—be it a Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn account.

When brands started to penetrate into the social media scene, the lines between what they refer to as paid, owned and earned media started to blur. And now, with the Facebook changes, they will officially be gone. As brands can now turn any post into a premium ad, this means that instead of just appearing on the homepage, as they did in the past, they now actually appear in four places: Newsfeed, right-hand side, mobile newsfeed and the logout page.

Social media is becoming the main source for consumers to learn about everything, from the latest brand promotions to where to get what they specifically want or need. On Facebook, people express views and preferences in the form of the “like” button, the comments they leave, and so on, and these are ways by which people will judge brands as well. A completely different ballpark from most traditional advertisements, brands have to create exciting content for their page in order to generate the most buzz and activities among their target markets. They need to be prepared to buy distribution for the content that becomes most engaging to the right audience.

Brand Timelines

In Asia, India is the country with most Facebook users, having recorded 41 million subscribers early this year. Indian businesses Tata Docomo, Kingfisher and Vodafone Zoozoos have the highest number of fans on their Facebook pages, while BMW India, Volkswagon India and MINI India have the highest user engagement rates on their page. In Singapore, Asia's leading concert promoter LAMC has the highest number of fans (203,000 as of March 2012), while Blackberry Singapore and Starbucks Singapore hold the second and third ranking, respectively.

The most important factor that leads businesses in Asia to engage in social media is to reinforce and extend ongoing media and influencer outreach. Facebook's announcement that all brands can now have Timelines just like people's Facebook pages creates an opportunity for brands to have a more personal relationship with their target market. Brands will be able to create cover photos and logos for tabs and other applications. But while tabs get increased visibility atop the Timeline, Facebook is eliminating the ability to make a tab the default landing page when non-fans visit the page for the first time. As of today, brands can still “likegate,” which is an attempt to force users to become a fan. But moving forward, this will be less of a strategy. This is part of Facebook's effort to streamline the user experience while still providing brands the ability to program content and host any content on their Facebook pages.

Facebook is strengthening its commitment to the social media marketing platform, which is to provide brands, advertisers and businesses the ability to generate the most from what the social network is today: big and growing even more massive by the day. This new platform provides companies the best of digital and traditional advertising integrated into one global platform that has more than 1 billion consumers, half of which log in every day. As a result, brands will start to see more customer engagement and will have the exposure they need among their target users.

With these additions and changes, Facebook got rid of very little, and gave brands an entirely new arsenal of weapons.