by Rob Paterson
December 18, 2009 at 4:00 pm · Filed under
Facebook, Marketing
A few weeks ago I posted about a clever campaign launched by Ikea using fans and a competition. Now I hear that the rules have been changed to prevent this. I post in full a status report from “Inside Facebook”. Sorry about being late on this. Hats off to @jmorris106 for the tip
Three weeks ago, Facebook announcedsignificant updates to its promo/sweepstakes policies for Facebook Pages that have very practical impact for marketers on Facebook. For a deeper dive on the rule changes, see our analysis. But essentially, the new rules:
- Require all marketers to get explicit permission from Facebook at least 7 days before administering any promotion inside Facebook.
- Prohibit running any contests or promotions that require users to become a fan, interact with a feed story, or do anything else outside an application tab or canvas page in order to enter.
This means that “become a fan” contests, “status update” contests, “photo upload” contests, and any other kind of contest that requires commenting on or responding to items in the News Feed are no longer allowed. Rather, Pages must send users to a custom application tab to enter contests. This is good news for companies building Facebook Page tools for marketers.
Now, agencies and marketers are trying to understand whether these policies are being actively enforced, as many businesses and organizations have been experimenting with different types of contests to drive traffic and engagement on their Facebook Page over recent months, and several promotions that seem to violate the policies have continued to appear lately.
For example, a few weeks ago, an Ikea store in Sweden ran a promotion on their Facebook Page in which users who tagged photos of furniture with their names first won the items as prizes. A Facebook spokesperson told us today that the promotion was indeed in violation of the new policies and would not be allowed to run today.
And last week, Gillette, one of the biggest brands in the US, announced a promotion on its Facebook Page, saying, “Become a fan today and you’ll be entered to win a free Fusion MVP,” a clear violation of the new policies. Gilette is also redirecting members from a sweepstakes tab to a signup form on Gillette.com to enter the contest, but the status update still exists on its Page, and is confusing to multiple marketers we’ve heard from. A Facebook spokesperson said he was not able to comment on individual campaigns beyond the Ikea case when we asked earlier today.
by Joe McKendrick
September 9, 2009 at 3:11 pm · Filed under
Facebook, Social Networking, Twitter, YouTube
My colleague over at Insurance Networking, Pat Speer, has just published an account of a major health insurance company that is employing social networking to communicate with its members/customers.
For starters, Pat reports that Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Wisconsin is piloting a program which employs Twitter to “identify members who may have questions or concerns about their health benefits.” The use of Twitter enables the insurer “to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, real-time conversation, and respond to each tweet about Anthem.”
Anthem is also using its Twitter channel to help members with healthy lifestyle choices such as weight loss programs. If that isn’t enough, Pat reports that Anthem has also formed a Facebook channel and a YouTube channel to promote wellness and member interaction.
As Kate Quinn, VP of corporate marketing for Anthem, puts it: “Social media provide a great opportunity for us to engage our members, listen to them and be more responsive.”
At a time when the viability and future direction of the health insurance industry is under debate, social networking is providing a means for insurance companies to reach on on a very personal level to their customers. The perception of “big, bad, greedy insurance companies,” however rightly or wrongly earned, has been part of the discourse for years, and came about because of the sense of impersonalization that created a very high wall between the companies and their constituents. Social networking may be just the right tool to tear down this wall.
by Jon Husband
September 6, 2008 at 9:42 pm · Filed under
CNN, Change, Culture, Emergent, Facebook, Public Media, Social Media, Twitter, User Revolution, Web 2.0
I’ve just been watching an interesting new component of CNN prime-time news, wherein Rick Sanchez, one of the current anchors, flashes cherry-picked items from Twitter (Rick’s Twitter Feedback) and from Facebook (Rick’s Facebook Feedback) in order to counter or reinforce the story he has just introduced.
I’m (still) all for Web 2.0 and listening to the voices of the great unwashed, but there are key aspects of using this approach that leave me skeptical or cold. He and his colleagues get to pick which items they want to use add emphasis or colour an issue.
Nevertheless, I applaud CNN for actually paying attention to what is happening on the Web.
Mashable has more.
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by Sean McClowry
February 7, 2008 at 4:25 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, Facebook, Social Networking
Facebook and MySpace are the world’s most popular Social Networking sites, but are they the best model for bringing these web 2.0 concepts into the enterprise?
My view is trustedplaces is perhaps a better model to use as a reference. Its a collaborative site primarily for reviewing restaurants, clubs and pubs. The community effectively has jobs, and their social network forms as a by-product of the work that they do. It can still be a social network on its own, but you probably wouldn’t go there unless you were interested in the outcome.
Building the “bottom up approach”
Trusted Places does some particularly interesting things:
- Featuring contributors on the front page
- Providing “award points” for contributions
- You can interactively build your tastes
- Providing recommendations for new connections based on common interests
Combined with a great UI, I’m a big fan of what this team is doing.
Yes, Facebook has Applications
The lines are, of course, a bit greyer than I have painted them. Facebook applications can be used to find other people with common interests and help people build new connections. The Facebook platform can be used to build any functionality that TrustedPlaces has, and more. But since Facebook is so large and completely open in scope, I find it more difficult to relate to a work context. Facebook and MySpace may be more fun, but work, alas, is not always fun. And while there are plenty of focused product review sites, I’ve yet to see any that form social networks better than trustedplaces.
What public site do you think provides a good model for explaining Enterprise 2.0?
