Facebook Marketing: Behind the scenes of the Meteor Facebook Page

Posted by: Krishna De | Posted on: May 3rd, 2010 | 25 Comments | Posted in: Facebook, Ireland, Marketing online, Social Media Ireland, social media marketing, Social networking

Have you ever wondered what big brands consider when developing a Facebook application or their Facebook page? Recently I met with Caitriona O’Connell as she was at one of my social media marketing workshops. Caitriona is a Marketing Executive with Meteor.

When I noticed Meteor have developed a new Facebook Page and have been running some effective Facebook engagement adverts I invited Caitriona to answer some questions about the Facebook marketing plan that Meteor are implementing – so here is the interview.

Krishna: What inspired Meteor to implement their new Facebook Page?

Caitriona: Before the launch of our new Facebook page Meteor had previous successes on Facebook. We had 5 separate pages which supported promotional activities like our sponsorship of The Apprentice and the Meteor Ireland Music Awards. However, these pages had largely become inactive as the promotional activity came to an end.

With our new page we wanted to create a central ‘hub’ for Meteor on Facebook – a page that is inherently Meteor and a place where customers can engage with us and get to know us better.

Our new Meteor page will be ‘the’ page for Meteor on Facebook from now on and will house all things Meteor.

Krishna: How are you managing your social media marketing across Facebook and Twitter (and any other channels in social media?) and what kind of time commitment is this taking?

Caitriona: Since October there has been a new Head of Online role introduced and so there has been much more focus on the online channel generally and social media in particular.  As this focus on word of mouth and social media has grown my role has changed to working full time on social media. We also have another resource working on this part time. Between us we manage Facebook and Twitter internally.

Managing Facebook and Twitter does take time. We check the page several times throughout the day to ensure a real time interaction with customers where possible.  We also spend time gathering the content, posting the updates and planning future activity for these sites.

Krishna: How do you determine the content for your Facebook page?

We think it is important to strike a balance between fun, relevant content and promotional messages. Facebook fans would tire easily of being bombarded with sales messages so we try to post interesting and engaging content too. We want to give customers an insight into the people behind the brand and get away from the ‘corporate’ side of things.

Krishna: You have only launched your Facebook page in April so can you give us some ideas about how you have attracted almost 4,000 members of your community?

Caitriona: We’re really happy with the number of fans so far.

Our ‘Kiss, tag, tell and win’ quiz has a great viral element. Each time someone takes the quiz an update appears on their profile. Also, as the quiz involves ‘dishing the dirt’ on your friends, an update appears on the wall of certain friends too.

We have also used Facebook ads to promote the page, including one with a poll embedded, to encourage interaction.

We posted an update on Twitter telling followers about our new page as well as letting members of our online forum know that we had a new Facebook page.

To make sure our existing Facebook fans didn’t lose out we also posted on the wall of our older pages encouraging them to move over to our new page.

Krishna: How are you as a business now looking at Facebook as part of your integrated marketing and social customer relationship management?

Caitriona: We have had successes with Facebook so far and it is a good fit with our target audience so we are planning to continue to use it as part of our mix.

Krishna: How will you know if having a Facebook page has been a success for your business – what kind of metrics are you tracking?

Caitriona: We are monitoring the page insights provided by Facebook; we are tracking the growing fan base and interactions and we hope to integrate further with our own website and track through analytics.

Krishna: What top three tips have you for other marketing managers if you are looking to integrate Facebook into your marketing and communications programme?

Caitriona: Make sure there is a fit between Facebook and your potential customers. If they are not on Facebook, do you need to be? Secondly don’t use your Facebook page as a platform to bombard with sales messages. And finally have some fun with it!

I am sure you will agree it’s great to have the opportunity to learn from other businesses about their marketing on Facebook. So thanks Caitriona for sharing your insights and experience.

Remember to post your questions over at the Biz Growth Media Facebook page – I’ll be looking to answer as many of your questions as possible in the forthcoming Facebook for Business Webinar taking place the week of 17 May as part of the IIA Digitise the Nation week of events.