Part 3 of my article series examining the effects of Facebook's redesign and what the future holds for brands and consumers.
Following the announcement on Thursday September 22nd that Facebook would be rolling out a number of significant changes to the platform, there are a number of key considerations for brand marketers to ensure that the efforts invested in their brand profiles to date, are not wasted. In the third instalment of this evaluation of the Facebook F8 announcement, we will cover the role of content from a brand marketing perspective:
The age old maxim that Content is King has been placed squarely at the heart of the Facebook F8 announcement. With the functional change that users no longer have to have liked a brand page in order to interact with the content displayed on the page, the onus is on brands to ensure that its content is engaging enough to pull in and capture non fans.
Naturally, there are a number of considerations before a brand can do this. Firstly, brands need to ensure that the content provided is engaging enough for its existing fans to share and interact with, which in turn will increase the visibility of that content across user’s extended networks (in short using existing fans as a Trojan horse to deliver content to new, unengaged audiences).
Secondly, the content has to go that extra mile to encourage these new audiences to interact with what they see and draw those users into the brand page. It’s a double-edged sword that requires some very careful balancing in terms of brand content calendars. For a start, it’s important that brands continue to provide the type of content that core fans signed up for in the first place (and is at the heart of brand engagement; typically product or brand specific with direct appeal to core fans), but also that there is sufficient incidences of wider consumer relevant content to reach out to greater audiences of non-fans and draw them in.
Whilst the message to consumers was one of increased personalisation and care, the message to brands was one of increased opportunity and user integration, but only on the basis of a strict adherence to relevancy in all its forms. There is little for brands to argue, but in the quest for increased audience size and engagement (not to mentioned leveraging commercial value from brand love), there is a realistic requirement for brands to marry the more tactile perception with something a little more pragmatic, strategic and tactical particularly in terms of content generation.
Certainly, there can be little denying that content is king, but beneath that, the key message for brands is to ensure the balance is right.
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