by SEOMoz
So you think you have Facebook all figured out. You have your fan page with a couple custom tabs set up, you’ve started an ad campaign and every one of your products on your site has the “like” button installed (which increases revenue). Easy peasy, this Facebook stuff is a cinch! Well you’re right, it all is pretty easy to implement, but what else could you be doing? What other ways can you utilize Facebook (and its 500 million active users) to help market your company?
These four tactics we’re talking about today aren’t all new necessarily, but they’re fairly new to me. Which got me thinking, if I didn’t know about these (or why they were so great for inbound marketing) how many other people also don’t know. I’m not trying to claim that if I don’t know about it, no one does, because clearly there are people already using them. But the question is… are you? If not, could or should you be? Let’s dig right in and take a look at these four Facebook marketing tactics you might not know about (but now you will).
1. Facebook Insights For Your Website
Yes, you read that right. Now, I’m sure you have all seen Insights for your fan pages, but did you know that you could get Facebook Insights for your website? This is a great way to get information about content people are sharing from your site, user demographics, likes and other goodies. We recently set this up and were quite surprised at how much data you could get. Here’s a quick blurb straight from Facebook:
Facebook Insights for Domains offers a consolidated view of key metrics for any website, even those that have not implemented Facebook Platform. For example, if a user links to your site in their Facebook status message, that data is included in the analytics for your domain. You can access sharing metrics and demographic information per domain and per URL so you can optimize your content for sharing and better tailor your content to your audience.
First off, it’s super easy to set up. Go to http://www.facebook.com/insights/ and click the green “Insights for your Website” button in the upper right hand corner. You’ll get a pop up box like the one below, then you just simply add the meta tag inside the head tag of your site.
Once you have this in place, the next time you go to the Insights page, you’ll not only see your fan pages, but you’ll also see your website show up as an option. Below are a couple views of the data Facebook gives you about your site.
This view shows the organic shares of our content by days
This view shows the demographics on people who have liked our content. WHOA!
Additional information:
- Official Insights page on Facebook
- How To Activate Facebook Insights for Your Website from HubSpot
- Facebook Launches “Insights For Your Domain” from All Facebook
2. Facebook Comments
I’ll be honest here, I was a big skeptical about why anyone would want to use Facebook comments… that is, until I saw it in action. Let me just walk you through my reaction the first time I posted a comment on TechCrunch which now uses Facebook comments.
1. This is cool, it looks like my comment will get posted to Facebook. Hmm, I wonder what that means really?
2. Cool! It means my comment showed up on my wall.
3. But wait… what? It also showed up in my friend’s feed! This is what my boss, Jamie saw in his feed:
4. Within minutes, my boss and husband replied to my comment on Facebook. But not only did their replies show up on Facebook, they also showed up in the TechCrunch post. Whoa… imagine the possibilities!
What makes Facebook comments so great:
- Your comments get read by a lot more people.Neither my boss or husband would have ever read that simple comment I made on TechCrunch. But because it showed up on Facebook, they saw it and replied right then and there. TechCrunch ended up with three comments which they would have only gotten one in a different commenting system. Hello UGC!
- Cuts out a lot of spam!Facebook does all the work of figuring out if a real person is commenting or not. The person has to be logged in to Facebook in order to comment, so you don’t get anonymous users. Obviously there are some drawbacks to this since not everyone has an account (the horror!), but you could offer multiple ways to comment like TechCrunch does.
- Simple comment moderationFacebook makes moderation pretty darn easy. You have quick access to edit, ban and subscribe yourself to certain feeds.
Additional information:
- Facebook Rolls Out Overhauled Comments System (Try Them Now On TechCrunch)
- Why and how to use Facebook Comments on your blog from Raven
3. Local Business Listings
If you’re a small business owner or local business, you may have already noticed these random Facebook pages showing up for your company. These are pages automatically created by Facebook. Initially I was pretty annoyed by these, but then realized you could utilize them for your advantage. Let’s take a look at an example of a bar in NYC.
Run a search for “billy marks west” and you’ll see one of these pages in the SERPs
Ok so these pages can rank for your branded name, which could help you take over a SERP for your name. The crazy part though, is that Facebook lets anyone (yes… anyone) edit these pages.
Sure it’s a little crazy that the edit button is open to everyone, but if you keep it on your radar and remember to check the page often, you can ensure the information doesn’t get changed incorrectly.
Facebook is trying to get updated information about all types of locations, including cities. For example, when I went to the New York, New York Facebook City page, I got a pop-up asking me to edit it.
This page shows 3 of my friends have checked in at the MoMA
Which led me to the “community edit” page that asks me to add detail about New York City. Whoa… so I can add information about New York? Again, imagine the possibilities.
Of course, this could also lead to people adding incorrect information, trolling your company and many other negative things. But if you keep your local page up-to-date and keep track of the edits, you have yet another page in your marketing arsenal!
Additional Information:
Anyone have a good post about this I could link to? 
4. Facepile
I’m going to be honest here, I sometimes just like to yell out “Facepile!” It’s just a fun word to say. Ok, ok I’ll get back on the subject at hand. You may not know the name for it, but I’m sure you’ve all seen something the image below before, right? Facepile is the plugin that displays photos of your friends (as long as you’re logged into Facebook) who like the particular website you’re on.
But have you thought about taking this one step further and adding Facepile to a conversion page? Just how much do you think your conversions could increase if users saw their friends smiling faces right before they signed up for or purchased something? Foursquare does a great job of this if you go to one of their location pages not logged in.
I went out looking for other great conversion pages that use Facepile and I ran across the MailChimp sign up page. Sadly there’s a big huge “white space” area which could probably benefit from adding this feature. Here’s a (horrible) mock-up of what it might look like if they added Facepile to that bare area.
Additional Information:
- Official Facebook Facepile developer page
- If you can find other great information about using Facepile, please let me know and I’ll link to it
Now there you have it. Four Facebook marketing tactics you might not know about. For me it’s always fun to find these “hidden” gems, especially when there right there staring you in the face. What other tactics do you use that may not be very well known?
This post was originally a presentation I did for our meetup in NYC earlier this month. Feel free to check it out on Slideshare:
Rand, Rhea Drysdale and Avi Wilensky also spoke that night and you can find their presentations here:
Rand – Exploring the New Opportunity in Google’s Social Search Features
Rhea – Supplemental Hell – How to Fix “New” Indexing Issues
Avi – Google Instant – For Keyword Research, Content Generation, and Competitive Analysis
