This topic is setup for people who wants to learn about Facebook Marketing, the latest features that helps you in marketing your blogs or website in Facebook and also in sharing your ideas about Facebook to be used as a business and marketing tool.

I personally find using Facebook Groups is effective as you can build niche markets members into the group and later send them to your blog or website which is in the relevant market.

What do you guys think?

personally i joined group for fun and never came back to check on them! i only check them maybe once in a month. plus most people use FB like they use friendster. Just to add friend and send messages around. as a marketing tool i dont think it will work well. thats my opinion. like the adverts on the site of the page. i usually ignore them

You can do that, however last time when I was using friendster, whenever anyone I did not know messaged me about anything that sounds like an advert/business proposal, i would report them.

In my opinion, using fb for business networking is abusing the system. So far fb is "clean" from these sort of things. I would advise you not to abuse the system however others might have other things to say

I guess different people has different opinions. Maybe the misunderstanding comes from the message inside the Message which is sent out using the Message all members features.

Normally, people set up group would straight away send out message like a Promotion message. I hate that too. What I meant by sending a message would be something like this. Assuming this is a gardening crowd in Malaysia.

"Hi guys,

Thank you for joining this Malaysian Gardening group. Today I would be sharing a tip on gardening.

--- FOr the next 3 paragraphs, you may be sharing some tip for gardening . This is valuable gardening tips which they joined so that they can learn more about gardening from this group and also from the founder of the group . Then after that, you end with this under the message --

If you want to find out more about gardening, you can visit my blog at http://yourgardeningblogOrWebsite.com

" - End of FB Message-

Therefore, from there, you would not be a spammer, but more of a value giver, who invites people to your blog.

What we do on our side here at JeVince, is we run contests, for example, we have tied up with solid companies like GSC and MPH to give out vouchers and tickets so that they will join the group and also our website on book reading and movie lovers.

Marketing on the web should not be limited to links only, but supported with a solid business model, so that the website or blog does not appear to only TAKE from the users or visitors, but also GIVE. In that sense, we have truly lived out the true spirit of any social media, which Facebook is part of a social media.

This is my 2 cents worth - always give first when you want to receive. For us, we give out vouchers by investing time to talk to companies to give out freebies, and we receive by the members willingly joining, and supporting as well as reading our messages from the group and our newsletters. In that sense, it is compliant to the CAN-SPAM Act enacted in the United States in year 2003, whereby, these are actually solicited commercial emails.

What do you guys think?

Ok now that is much better, since it is relevant to the person and that it provides the participants benefits. well at least that is what i believe.

if that is the case then go ahead as the members are willing and the execution puts the members into consideration.

Hi exsea,

Thanks. It is my fault that I was a bit vague when I said Facebook to do marketing. And thanks for seeing my view.

A lot of marketers out there is still old school as they have yet to understand it is no more about TV, Radio or Newspaper MASS MARKETING style which will get the people to notice them.

It is really about ENGAGEMENT. Engagement in this sense is about talking about a relevant topic without bombarding them with commercial messages. In all our websites and social networks, what we do is we give the visitors some free stuff which is relevant to their topic of interest. In that sense, we have to GIVE first before people trust us.

MASS MARKETING with a commercial promotional message does not work in Social Media. In that sense, what I mean by Social media is these:

1. Social Networks like Facebook
2. Blogs
3. Wikis
4. Forums

Social Media is about sharing RELEVANT things so that people see that we are not infiltrating their lives and promoting our products. Social Media, like Facebook is about conversations, and in conversations, i mean Natural conversations.

Just like selling any product now, we just can't push any product down people's throat. We need to let them see the benefits first before we even push the brand. Marketing in Facebook demands skill, not just a short email saying "Visit my blog" without gaining the trust first.

My two cents is that, the SOCIAL word is the more important word in SOCIAL MEDIA.

What do you guys think?

I think people join groups so that they can connect with like minded people and share ideas.

If I join a group and the admin provides good tips, I believe he or she is doing society good as they are educating the public. Of course the topic has to be relevant and I would appreciate and welcome these messages.

I often wonder why people join groups if they are not going to participate in discussions and if a group is dead (not active), I would leave as there is no reason for me to be there. It is like attending a SILENT PARTY where everyone is gathered in a room and not talking to each other, how boring is that.

This post has been edited by joanneqpk: May 20 2009, 01:18 PM

vckloong is that you in disguise?

oh barrack obama. i think you are dead wrong. He didnt win the election to to FB. i was priviledged enough to attend the talk by Robert Fisk, the guy who managed Barry Obama campaign a few months back. He reiterates that it is a myth that obama won due to strong online campaign. In fact the online campaign only took off after 2 years of solid grass root campaign. they actually use personal emails more than FB or Youtube. This is to give the impression that Obama wants to have a personal relationship with you. yes each and every email is "personalised" so to speak but those are written by the intersn and not by obama. HA!

they budget for traditional marketing is also bigger that the ones he spend on FB. they will buy out full page news on newspapers ( yes you can BUY front page news in the US) giving Obama exposure to the people.

so dont try to sell me the idea that "obama use FB so FB must be teh awesomez". i might be a young lady but i know my stuffs. i am not that shallow or gulliable you know!

Hi Butterfly,

Hilson is a different person. I guess you may have received many spam mails till you may be accusing and taking out on other people who are genuine marketers. We speak from experience and credibility. I have consulted MPH and GSC and the Branding Association of Malaysia.

I hope that you will tone down the way you speak as I am not here to create an argument, but to share sincere marketing ways which is in line with what is happening in the market.

I hope you will not be aggressive in yoru replies and attack me personally.

In fact, I spoke to Roger (not Robert) Fisk personally in a meeting after their seminar in Obama Magic KL in Lim Kok Wing Institute as I was representing Branding Association of Malaysia.

The whole Obama campaign started with a Low Dollar campaign, where they used myBarackObama.com as an engine of self organizing the community to have them structure themselves into small groups in houses, like 20 to 30 of them. The money, which is in low dollar format, like in denominations of USD 5 to USD 100 was donated to the Obama campaign, and there are thousands of these low dollar groups.

Roger shared with me further that they then used the money to create LARGE dollar campaigns in halls. You may want to notice, apart from the message he sent out, Obama used Facebook wisely to engage the American people.

Again, Butterfly, please do not attack anybody or accuse anybody in forums without proof, as this is violating the terms of service of this forum yeah. I am still in good spirits and forgive your indifference before this. Hope we can be friends and share more positive things.

This post has been edited by vckloong: May 20 2009, 01:48 PM

First of all, I am hilsonyeap not vckloong.
I am vckloong's business partner.

You got your point. obama's online strategy is part of his winning strategy. He uses social media marketing strategy throughout his online campaign. you can check it out at http:///www.barack20.com on the case study.

Social media is the next generation of internet. Facebook is the tool to social media. You can still deny that FB is purely for friends to check out on each other, then you need to check out Malaysian Business Network on Facebook. We got success story to tell.

At this point, can we say that social media marketing works and facebook is the tool to social media. You can dislike facebook but you can't say that social media does not work.

By the way, Miss Butterfly, actually Roger said the front pages was not purchased, it is what he calls as FREE media.

How he did it was that he catch an angle, with what he calls as a Mug Shot of Obama and bring the journalist and photographer in some position in a very strategic distance to capture Obama. I actually did ask him about 5 questions which he was amazed from a marketer's point of view, focusing only on the Mug Shot Marketing technique which he shared with us.

These are some of the statistics to prove our point of Obama's Online Marketing Strategy, apart from being a successful and effective Public Speaker with a great message of "Hope and Change". I hope that you see that I am here posting in good spirits of learning and sharing with other marketers or people trying to generate qualified traffic to their websites using Social Media and Facebook.

Senior Analyst at Forrester Research, Jeremiah Owyang, compiled the data one day before the election:

Facebook
Obama: 2,379,102 supporters
McCain: 620,359 supporters

Obama has 380% more Facebook supporters than McCain

MySpace
Obama: Friends: 833,161
McCain: Friends: 217,811

Obama has 380% more MySpace supporters than McCain

YouTube
Obama: 1792 videos uploaded since Nov 2006, Subscribers: 114,559 (uploads about 4 a day), Channel Views: 18,413,110
McCain: 329 videos uploaded since Feb 2007 (uploads about 2 a day), Subscribers: 28,419, Channel Views: 2,032,993

Obama has 403% more YouTube subscribers than McCain
Obama has 905% more YouTube viewers than McCain

Twitter
Obama: @barackobama has 112,474 followers
McCain: @JohnMcCain 4,603 followers

Obama has 240 times more followers in Twitter than McCain

Internet Usage in United States
United States Population: 303,824,646
Internet Usage: 220,141,969
Penetration rate: 72.5%
Growth from 2000-2008: 130.9%
Stats from Internet WorldStats (Census, Nielson)


The statistics clearly shows that Obama had a plan in terms of his Message of Hope and Change, but also, he had an online marketing strategy in place, where he has more of his content message spreaded online than his competitor, McCain. This is not about politics, but about marketing strategy yeah.

Butterfly, hope you see that I am here to learn and share, not to win or accuse in arguments. I appreciate your honest feedback.

This post has been edited by vckloong: May 20 2009, 02:18 PM

nice discussion of online marketing technique.vckloong, is facebook pages is good for SEO since FB itself has very high page rank (PR9) ?

Whow......Thats a whole load of information. As per my previous post, it is good to learn and we should never stop learning.

Looks like social media or facebook marketing works. Perhaps Malaysians or Asians as a whole should be more open minded about new ways of marketing. This is because people are evolving to go online more than watching TV. Yes, I speak for myself as I am online like 80% of the time when I am at home and hardly watch TV even if I want to read the news, I browse the online newspaper instead of buying physical paper (doing my part to save trees ).


This post has been edited by joanneqpk: May 20 2009, 02:25 PM

Hi cyberfly,

Nice to have you drop by.

Facebook pages are actually closed from spiders. You need to research this a bit more. But the acid test here is this. Try and google your Facebook page, assuming, your page is called CyberFly Fan Page. You just type "CyberFly Fan Page Facebook" (notice how I appended Facebook as part of the keyword). If your page is listed on the Google Search results page, then, I would say, it is good for SEO. If it is not, then it will not affect any SEO.

On the other hand, SEO is one of the ways you can leverage the FB page with PR9. Nevertheless, marketing online has shifted from Search Engines to Social Media. What I mean is this.

When you SEO for a particular keyword, you may be losing on something called the Long Tail keywords.

Example:

If you are into real estate, then what you do is you may want to SEO "real estate Malaysia". But if you SEO real estate Malaysia, you will then have to lose traffic on "real estate damansara Malaysia" or "real estate selangor malaysia" or any other keywords which is not so famous, but collectively, it will harness more traffic than "real estate Malaysia"

Long Tail keywords are more targetted users and they are more ready to take action. YOu can learn more about Long Tail in Wikipedia here - > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail

which I believe Wikipedia will better explain the Long Tail phenomenon and how it affects SEO and Google's way on running their search engine Business. Even Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google is actually saying that Long Tail aura is affecting they way they run Google.

You may also wanna check out this book called The Long Tail, written by Chris Anderson, the Chief Editor of the WIRED magazine (a tech magazine) which you can get in MPH bookstores.. http://www.mph.com.my/search/nsearch.cfm?d...code=1401309666 ( I can lend it to you if you PM me, no probs man).

Please do ask more questions and if you are interested, you can come to my seminar on Google and Facebook Marketing at http://www.sales2marketing2.com.

Appreciate your feedback and your questions, please keep it coming yeah.

Cheers.

---

Added on May 20, 2009, 2:46 pm

Hi joanneqpk,

Yeah you are right.

People nowadays are still ignorant about the power of online. Attention has been shifted from websites in the 1990s to Search Engines in the early 2000s.

Now, it is about social community, and that's where Facebook is getting big.

I have talked to many people on this topic and this question, "If I place a computer and a newspaper in front of you, which one would you pick if you can only choose one?"

Many will reply that they would want to pick the computer.

I asked them why, and they will tell me that, they would like to actually INTERACT with a media, which they mean by being able to click on communicate with the media, rather than just sit back and read, which is not so exciting.

Our generation of X and Y, has shifted from traditional media to social media like Facebook, where it is more fun to interact with. There are currently 200 million users in Facebook, and 1 million in Malaysia alone, and growing at a rate of 30,000 new users every 2 weeks. This is more than any local newspaper we have here in Malaysia.

y would like to actually INTERACT with a media, which they mean by being able to click on communicate with the media, rather than just sit back and read, which is not so exciting.

Our generation of X and Y, has shifted from traditional media to social media like Facebook, where it is more fun to interact with. There are currently 200 million users in Facebook, and 1 million in Malaysia alone, and growing at a rate of 30,000 new users every 2 weeks. This is more than any local newspaper we have here in Malaysia.

This post has been edited by vckloong: May 20 2009, 04:58 PM

online marketing also helping PKR win on this country....

haha...

youtube....

using other tag but wrong content...

this the easiest way to earn traffic...not quality traffic but just go and out traffic...

facebook, myspace and other social network sites are very popular to making online marketing...

but i suggest facebook and friendster...dun use myspace...myspace have too much entertainment and not it business....

Hi hankaze,

Your analysis is spot on and CORRECT!

Youtube is a part of social media. As the thread focuses on Facebook Marketing I will comment on Facebook yeah.

Facebook and friendster is good for Malaysian market. The main difference I guess is that Friendster is a younger crowd or lower income group ( this is just my personal opinion and I could be wrong) and Facebook is a more sophisticated crowd with a higher income.

You are also correct in the sense that Myspace is Entertainment based, and if you wanna launch a rock band or into acting, then its cool to join MySpace to promote your band.

Great job, hankaze.

I join in group but never visit them. lol.

sorry TS for off-topic, but I have to say: you need a proper trained web-designer for your website, simple HTML just too old-school...

well, i would say.. FB is a future (or current) marketing tools..

there are some oversea companies even ask their staffs to logon FB for few hours a days just to keep contact & maintain relationship with customers like collecting their product feedback, opinion ..

bsides that, FB also can be used for exploring new market worldwide..

do u think so?

yes it worked sometimes, but however getting "customer" to back is the ultimate challenge. if u planned to do CSR using facebook it will cost problems but however if it is used to create awareness regarding a particular issue then it would be good as well.