Facebook has been in the news quite a bit this week. They started off the week with the announcement that they have acquired the social-identity aggregator, FriendFeed. I just wrote an article about this here on the Examiner. Oh by the way, I think I forgot to announce here that I recently became the Social Media
Marketing Examiner writer for the local Rochester market. So please check it out and I invite you to subscribe to me there.
So later in the week we head about Facebook Lite, which the message accidentally got released to more users than it was intended to. It's supposed to be a stripped-down version of the Facebook platform and from what has been speculated it will be almost like a Twitter stream. Mashable got a hold of some early screen shots and said "you can see your most recent status updates and the updates of your friends. There is a left-hand navigation with four main categories: Wall, Info, Friends, and Photos & Videos. It does little more than that."
Next was the news that NBC is utilizing Facebook to promote one of it's new Fall comedy series, Community, and making it available online free-of-charge. The show is being streamed commercial-free only on Facebook through just today, Aug. 14. It's not on NBC.com or Hulu, so get on over today if you want to watch it. The show stars Joel McHale and Chevy Chase.
This is a first I believe for a TV show not only to be broadcast free on a social network, but also premiered there. Facebook users must become fans of Community first before being able to watch the pilot episode. They can then also send links to friends or place them on their Facebook profiles.
Then, according to another Mashable post, it was revealed that Facebook now has over 50 million users that have signed up for vanity URL's. That milestone was passed several weeks ago so it could be much more than that by now. It was just about two month's ago that Facebook announced they were allowing vanity URL's and millions were claimed in just the first 24-hours.
Just a couple of week's ago I wrote this post about Starbucks becoming the number one brand on Facebook. How did they do it? With fun, engaging promotions that connect with their consumers.
So what does this all mean? It's hard to keep up, but it's clear that Facebook is quickly becoming a mass media and marketers and advertisers need to learn how to embrace this social network. Social Sweeps, which is what I define as promotions that integrate with at least one social media platform, enable consumers to easily inform their friends about promotions they like and think their friends will enjoy as well who in turn can share with their friends. So now by integrating a promotion with the viral features of a social networks, marketers can spread the word about a promotion and their company far more widely and cost effectively than ever before.
I believe it is this type of marketing that can create positive brand awareness and is a perfect fit with many types of social media, especially Facebook. Again, these are the types of promotional marketing campaigns that I would love to write about here, so please let me know of any that you may currently be working on. And if you want help creating one, please contact me.
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