Branding: the art of content strategy building on Facebook

"Please do get a content strategy before having a Facebook page," Jo Duxbury, content strategist for the Habari Group's social media strategy division Domino, told the audience. "Design without content is just a decoration," she pointed out, quoting Jeffrey Zeldman.

Create more effective Facebook campaigns

The Facebook Connects forum, hosted by Habari Media in collaboration with AdVantage magazine, aims at assisting agencies and developers to create more effective Facebook ad campaigns.

Considered to be the world's third-most populous nation, the Facebook population of 633 million users is increasingly being seen by businesses as a potentially lucrative platform for pushing their products. However, the lack of good content, let alone a credible content strategy, has been cited as one of the leading causes some brands have failed to move mountains on Facebook.

"Why is content strategy so important?" Duxbury asked. "Content strategy looks at your business goals and works backwards from these so that your page will help you achieve them. Content strategy also looks at what else you have got going on with your marketing. By doing an audit of your current marketing projects, it will soon be clear how you can utilise what you are doing on other channels on your Facebook page.

"Bear in mind that Facebook is a different type of platform - one on which you will be engaging in an entertainment space with your customers. So in most cases, your marketing materials will need to be purposed slightly.

"Part of your marketing mix"

"But you are unlikely to start from scratch. After all, Facebook is just another channel that should be part of your marketing mix. Make maximum use of marketing and expose people to it by using it cross-channel."

Furthermore, Duxbury said if a brand wants an effective and good page, it should have good, fresh, engaging and relevant content.

"You also need good content because customers demand it. Facebook is a social media space. People are there to interact with friends - and the kind of interaction they have with the brand they have connected with has to be in this vein, too.

"It is easy to 'unlike' [or hide] a brand on Facebook. And, if you don't have an outstanding content, and don't manage your interactions or simply fail to keep your pages up to date, you are going to lose what is a pretty captive audience."

"What do our fans want?"

She also deplored what she called "a lot of gap" in South Africa in terms of content. "You should ask these questions: what do we want? What do our fans want? This is social media, not broadcasting. It is about engagement and interaction, so you should ask them to spell out their needs.

"Stay away from boring content and make it look more editorial - like in a magazine. Create great and ongoing content that engages, educates and entertains. Remember that great content can drive promotions and trials. Great content can get people in-store and increase sales, and increase repeat purchases and loyalty.

"Great content can generate insights and build branding goodwill, and improve brand recall. Great content can increase marketing mileage, can correct and create perceptions, and can go viral - the holy grail of social media marketing."

Brand content, according to Duxbury, is made up of photos, video, polls, ads, audio, graphics, links, coupons, questions, answers, information, articles, offers and discounts. User-generated content (UGC) includes comments, questions, criticism, praise, photos, video, links and spa, she said, adding that content is not for "commitment-phobes".

You can download many of the presentations at www.habarimedia.co.za/facebook-connects.

Updated at 11.50am on 21 February 2011.