Using Facebook for brand marketing

Matt Rhodes at The Future Lab has a post about how not to use Facebook for marketing. Essentially someone who he doesn't know sent him and 200 other people a friend request...and it turns out this someone is about to publish a book.

"Facebook is a very personal space. It’s the place I go to to find out about my friends, post my photos and read my messages. This can be a very difficult context for brands, or anybody trying to market a product, to enter. You are interrupting a user’s experience and need to do it sensibly and sensitively. Whilst some people will be happy to receive your updates to their news-feed, others will see this as an intrusion. "

This is worse than spam and I really hope that there isn't a brand out there looking to create some kind of fake profile (Dave Cola or something like that!) in a mass friending exercise.

A much better idea

Here's what brands should be doing though - using Facebook to face up to critics and talk to customers. A personal anecdote:

Because of where I live in London, I'm relatively fortunate that I can opt out of our creaking public transport system. Instead I travel via a river boat service called Thames Clippers (now owned by the people who run London's giant o2 entertainment complex).

A few years ago they had three boats, now they have 12, mainly high speed catamarans, shipped over from Australia.

When it works it's brilliant. But recently, a combination of staff shortages, changes in ticket policy, tourists using the service as sight seeing tours, and new travellers turning up as the underground breaks down, means you sometimes can't get on anymore without waiting for up to an hour. And it's made a lot of their regular commuters hopping mad - myself included.

Where am I going with this? Well, it made me test out the theory that most service and consumer facing companies will have a Facebook group or groups devoted to them. And Thames Clippers does. Currently there are 30 odd passengers on there sounding off about various problems. Doesn't seem like a lot, but of course we're not talking Coke here.

Plus as a soon to be published book says, a satisfied customer will tell three friends and a dissatisfied one will tell 3000 - it's true to say that this Facebook group is the tip of the iceberg with a lot of low level grumbling going on.

Recently I mentioned to a local journalist who had written an article about him, that the Thames Clipper's boss, Sean Martin, or one of his reps should actually make an appearance on the group and answer the critics head-on.

Which brings me to my point: What happens if you go onto one of these groups, stick your neck out, and get less than positive replies? This is a question I in fact got the other day from a client who works for a large multinational, and it was also touched upon in a discussion on Laurel Papworth's Silkcharm blog.

My reply, and it applies to both my multinational client and local London example, was that it doesn't really matter for three reasons.

Comments always represent the most heated opinions, there will be a body of readers who will still read what you have to say and will appreciate it.

Secondly, at the most basic level it gets you talking to people who have an opinion about your company or service. And thirdly, and most importantly, it shows you actually give a sh*t about what people think.

It's easy to dismiss people who post on these groups as having too much time on their hands, but actually they could just as easily become a brand's advocates. Leaving aside the 'brand X is cr*p' groups on Facebook (which you obviously don't want to engage), most of the people who post negative comments simply do so because they very much want a company to live up to its promise - and care enough to speak up.

In our London river example, it's because we want the service to be as it used to. As the local journalist I spoke to said to me, we feel ownership of it, and are angry that it's no longer London's best kept secret. It's sunk into having many of the problems that the rest of the transport system has.

They might be posting angry comments now, but ordinarily they should be the service's biggest fans.

As a result, if you represent a brand (either in an agency, or in house), it’s worth doing a little audit of Facebook groups that refer to you, if you haven’t already done so. Taking the ones that seem relatively rational, you could do worse than to make an appearance.

Don’t do it too often so you aren’t seen to be taking over, but give people a way to contact you, and address some of the points that are being made.

After all, what have you got to lose? They are going to be talking about you anyway, so you might as well be involved.

Photo -Avlxyz