However, for a big brand, Facebook can and probably should be used a lot more cleverly. Since opening up to allow the creation of bespoke pages, the platform offers brands a huge number of possibilities.  This means companies have the potential to offer their fans a far richer fan page/group, keeping members more interested and engaged.

Why should brands care?  Well, Facebook is a captive audience.  From my experience, once you’ve successfully attracted a fan to your page the drop-off rate over time is actually very low.  If you’re a brand and people take the time to become your fan then you have to do something pretty bad for people to actually take the choose to leave.  So once attracted to your page, you have the opportunity to engage your fans with branded content and product initiatives.  In terms of generating new sales, this will depend on your company and strategy, however, it may well be that positive interaction on the page sways the individual to your product at point of sale.

Of course, there’s also the advantage of the price… free!  So the next time you pay for an ad campaign which lasts 2 weeks, and then costs the same again next month, just think if you had converted these people into fans of your Facebook page instead – free outreach to many engaged advocates from then on.  Which brands do well?  Here are a few examples;

adidas Originals

Overall the use of the adidas Originals page is very good, one part in particular is brilliant — the Your Area tab.  This tab is geographically created, meaning that people in England see adidas products and events targeted to them, and people in Japan see different products and events targeted to them and so on.  A great tool, enabling adidas to keep its fan group integrated, whilst at the same time tailoring the experience to its global fan base.

Red Bull

Red Bull is one of the most innovative players when it comes to their Facebook offerings.  They link up with all their sporting activity, enhancing the association of their product with sport, and in particular the more extreme sports.  Their Facebook activity varies, at the moment they have a snowboard game embedded on the site, a ‘twitterfall’ tab showing tweets from all the sports people they sponsor, and the Red Bull Stash tab – a bespoke page for a pan-USA treasure hunt for Red Bull. Great fan interaction and user generated content.

There are many guides and lists of tips on how to maximise your use of Twitter.  I want to focus on a few things out there which can really work for you.

Twitter – Followers

Increasing your number of followers is high up on the agenda of most users.  If this is important to you it’s likely you are a small to medium business, blogger or an individual covering a niche area.  As big advertising budget is probably not available, a good way to increase your followers lies in participation within the Twitter-sphere.  For example, finding and following others who share your interests is an excellent option – since they are likely follow you back (no really, they are).

Here’s a few key ways to approach this;

• Use ‘Twitter – Find People’ to search for keywords that relate to your business, for example, ‘media’- this search will show you everybody who mentions ‘media’ in their bio/username
• Find large existing players in your industry and follow their followers
• Use a product like TweetAdder to help automate the process of finding relevant people and adding them – the demo is free and it’ll significantly cut down on the time it takes to follow people

If you’re a larger player in your field and have a large audience, perhaps through website traffic or email distribution numbers, then this enables you to be less granular in your approach.  Instead you can take advantage of a (your) large audience by adding a ‘Follow Me’ message on your;

• Website – a prominent position is necessary
• Email send out – go for more than just a non-descript line in your signature to see strong results
• Facebook page
• LinkedIn Profile/Group – new to LinkedIn
• When you leave a comment on a blog
• Etc

This will allow you to reach a significant percentage of your potential target audience, enough to gain you a great number of followers.  Even if you don’t have a large existing ‘fan-base’ advertising your Twitter feed in this way is still very much advisable.

Twitter – Tweets

The viral nature of Twitter offers more potential for increasing follower numbers, so facilitating this is always a good idea – i.e. writing your tweets in a way which encourages retweets.

• Incorporate photos, by using apps such as TwitPic or for mobile uploads use Tweetie or Twitterific.  Photos are often heavily retweeted and people can comment on them
• If you have an event coming up make sure you hash tag the name of the event.  Hash tags work by creating trending topics, so this approach may give you additional exposure in the trending topics list on the homepage
• Tweeting passwords or offer codes is great for maximising retweet potential

Increasing your exposure on Twitter involves a concerted effort and there are many thoughts on best practise.  Try the tips above for an immediate impact, after that it’s all about engaging, regular tweets… and remember, encouraging engagement is the key to success.