Facebook’s remarkable statistics have become a cultural touchstone: over 500 million active users have joined the social network since its launch in February 2004. The latest round of investment in the Palo Alto-headquartered company valued its worth at $50 billion, and more than 30 billion pieces of content – links, stories, posts, photos etc – are shared each month on the site. Rob Blackie, head of digital at Blue Rubicon, may believe that “Facebook’s strength isn’t just in its scale”, but the scale is pretty impressive. 

 

It’s part of what makes Facebook into an impossible-to-ignore communications channel. But businesses are still struggling, for the most part, to use Facebook in ways that harness the frankly awesome potential of the medium. The marketing possibilities of Facebook might be the first that spring to mind, but social media communications can outstrip the simple sell. 

 

Internal relations; environmental issues; dealing with NGOs; recruitment; media relations – when done well, these forms of communication can be carried out on Facebook in ways that not only demonstrate a company’s social media commitment, but also improve on traditional outputs. 

 

“On Facebook, the interaction between people and the brands that they love means that personal endorsement is automatically built into every campaign. The best campaigns use this endorsement from their existing fans to shift public opinion”

 

Facebook has recently rolled out its revamped business pages as part of its ongoing commitment to building relationships through the site. Agencies are also getting in on the act, with Econsultancy publishing How To Create Amazing Facebook Pages, a 90+ page report that aims to provide guidance on organisational use of the platform. The best practice guide covers the business case for investment in Facebook, content creation, and external moderation, amongst other areas. 

 

Chris Lake, director of innovation at Econsultancy, says that Facebook reminds him of the early days of commercial internet: “Some brands jumped and launched transactional e-commerce sites while others dragged their heels. They then spent years – and small fortunes – catching up. Make no mistake: as far as Facebook goes, the time is now.” 

 

If companies are to seize the opportunities offered by Facebook, they need to do so in interesting ways. Tetley has moved its brand into the social media space in recent months by relaunching its beloved animated characters, the Tetley Tea Folk, now established on Facebook and Twitter. However, Tetley’s Facebook presence extends beyond marketing – it’s also a channel that is helping the brand to demonstrate its ethical credentials. 

 

Tetley has committed to sourcing all of its tea from Rainforest Alliance Certified farms by 2016, and its ‘Farmers First Hand’ Facebook campaign is designed to communicate that commitment. The page provides SMS updates, photographs and video clips from a panel of selected smallholding and estate workers on the Lujeri Tea Estates in Malawi. Tetley’s consumers can now communicate directly with the farmers responsible for growing the tea they buy, and Tetley’s approach to sustainability is showcased through its commitment to social media and consumer connection. The Facebook wall provides a centralised location for the communications from producers and this benefits from existing in a known forum, rather than requiring Tetley’s customers to visit external websites that aren’t in their normal browsing patterns.

 

 

 

 

 

Facebook’s potential for internal relations balances on a fine tightrope between good communications and intrusion into internal stakeholders’ privacy. The communications team at Thames Valley University achieve this balance through its TVU Guru page, primarily because their largest internal and external audiences – current and prospective students – tend to embrace social networking in all areas of their life. Rather than functioning as a student recruitment tool, the TVU Guru is a student support mechanism: the team recruited current students to act as ‘Online Student Ambassadors’ who engage with people on the Facebook page, giving the TVU Guru a credible, independent voice. 

 

As the social media strategy integrated with university departments such as Admissions, the role of the Ambassadors expanded to provide quick, accessible responses to student concerns using Facebook Chat, wallposts and private messaging. The Facebook page tackles issues ranging from fee payment to course structure, and the Ambassadors circulate any questions that they are not sure about to the communications team. The comms team holds workshops for departments to encourage them to make the most of the university’s social media connections, and focus groups with students that focus on developing future activities.

 

 

 

 

Another organisation to have tapped into Facebook’s appeal to students is IBM, whose Graduates page is focused on recruitment – but rather than acting as a broadcast of job opportunities, students are encouraged to use the page to network and share experiences, as well as bring up queries about internship and job application processes. The IBM team running the page are quick to respond to the concerns of potential employees, thus bolstering IBM’s reputation as an employer and laying the groundwork for good internal relations once graduates are taken on board. 

 

Facebook also allows savvy organisations to develop relationships with media influencers by asking them to become brand advocates. Blackie says that Facebook’s strength lies in its potential for personal endorsement. “The interaction between people and the brands that they love means that personal endorsement is automatically built into every campaign. The best campaigns use this endorsement from their existing fans to shift public opinion.”

 

 

 

Turning Facebook into a media relations channel in order to get those endorsements is complicated by the issue of directing relevant content. Threepipe was approached by Rachel’s, the organic dairy products brand, to improve its media relations through social media, with the objective of increasing brand awareness. The agency drew up a strategy that wasn’t focused on quantities of ‘Likes’, but on building a community of highly engaged influencers who would become advocates for the brand. 

 

Together with Rachel’s, it built a network of mummy bloggers and then harnessed these relationships to recruit people to the Facebook page, setting up competitions through Facebook to attract new bloggers and social media advocates. The Facebook page is now focused on producing individually relevant content for each of their brand advocates, ensuring that new members of the Rachel’s Facebook community are welcomed by bloggers who are passionate about the product they write about. 

 

 

Facebook played a crucial role in the 2010 General Elections, as many communications professionals had anticipated. At the heart of this was the Democracy UK campaign, created for Facebook by Blue Rubicon. Democracy UK aimed to be a neutral hub for users where they could share political debate. Facebook 

enabled the page to be constantly reactive to the news agenda, as new and interesting content was regularly posted, and live debates with journalists were hosted to respond to users’ questions. 

 

Democracy UK played to Facebook’s strengths by acknowledging that rather than just using the page to publish news, content was already being produced across users’ Facebook walls and in groups. The campaign harnessed the activity already happening on the platform and built in creative applications, such as a polling day ‘rooster’ where users could show that they had voted. 

 

This Facebook Rooster garnered 1.8 million clicks on Election Day, and over 1.1 million then used the Democracy UK page to state a preference for a Labour/Lib Dem coalition after the results were announced. The Electoral Commission also teamed up with Facebook to run a campaign encouraging the ‘Facebook demographic’ to register to vote, and over 14,000 electoral registration forms were downloaded via the platform. Facebook allowed the Commission to tap into an audience that may have otherwise gone under-served in the 2010 elections and promoted a sense of social citizenship that aligned with its other activities around the elections. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Facebook is a hive of potential for businesses, but it’s easy to appear successful by generating volumes of responses without actually engaging with the people you’re trying to reach. Working on genuinely innovative ways to use the platform and apply its incredible reach and accessibility should be a communicator’s dream job, and for organisations such as Tetley and Thames Valley University their application to originality has been highly rewarding. It remains to be seen how Facebook will be used by businesses in the future,