Facebook Social Media Campaign: Embrace Connections

The theme of my social media campaign for Facebook is "Embrace Connections." The campaign centers around Facebook's purpose, connecting people and calls for a user experience which is more similar to real life rather than digital. It allows users to use current Facebook products to play games in real life, share stories, and connect in ways that were once not possible. Facebook is currently dominant in the US market but has significant competition globally and is fighting for differentiation from these sites and an increase in global presence. Perhaps one of the most troubling matters is that Facebook earns their revenue from advertisements but they are struggling to get users to click on ads which is the only way they get paid.

The key challenge/objective of this campaign is how can Facebook, a leader in social media use its current site and other social media sites to prevent advertisers from leaving and using other sites like Google with much higher click rates. Also how can Facebook think of creative social media uses for a social media site to increase user experience, become a vital part of the users lives, and also target specific regions and create value in these regions with mature competitors.

The campaign is focused on using Facebook and their tools as one of the main social mediums but also increasing their presence on Twitter, YouTube, and on their Blog. The campaign also calls for significant focus on using SEO and Google AdWords to target specific regions. My main focus is trying to create a life like experience for Facebook users. They currently have a lot of content on their Live Feed, most of which is just Facebook status updates. I want to fully incorporate all social mediums and make Facebook a "Life Feed" which is completely integrated with Twitter, YouTube, Blogs, and other sites and organizes and shares with you what your friends are discovering, what they are listening to, and what they are sharing.

For the campaign to be successful Facebook should look for an increase in market share in regions such as Germany, parts of Asia, India, Japan, and other regions with mature competitors. Also Facebook should look at the increase in # and @ mentions, traffic to the website, increase in use of new apps, increase in advertising/click rate, and blog subscribers.

The budget for this project is rather modest and quite do-able for such a large company. Facebook would need to hire on some extra developers for the new social apps and integration, and a social media/marketing team to help content go viral.

This is my slide outline and what I would say for each slide:

1. Title page- How can Facebook, a leader in social media find new and creative ways to use social media to increase Global presence, user experience, and advertising revenue? My name is Craig Bisson and I am here to tell you about the "Embrace Connections" Social Media campaign for Facebook.

2. Facebook’s Background- Facebook was launched in 2004 and was originally exclusive to Harvard University and since then has acquired 600 million users to date. There was a tremendous opportunity to connect the entire world and this campaign is designed to embrace that connection and to further the connections already made on Facebook. Facebook is much more than a Social Media site. Customers value it as much more than an online communication tool and we have to convince all users that it is a way of life.

3. Facebook’s Challenges- Facebook has tremendous global competition such as StudiVZ with 50% more users than Facebook in Germany, Bebo.com in the UK and Australia, Orkut.com and Hi5.com in South America and India, and Xiaonei and Mixi in Asia. Facebook is also banned in several countries such as China. Facebook’s revenue comes from ads yet they experience about 1/5 the number of clicks in comparison to other sites on the web. Users click ads approximately 0.04% of the time on Facebook and about 8% on Google. Successful ad campaigns are not generating much traffic.

4. Current Social Media Situation- Facebook runs their own blog at blog.facebook.com and has 36,856,416 likes on their Facebook page. They also have 808,883 followers on their Twitter page. They generate thousands of likes on their Facebook page and are getting great news out to their users. They also have a channel on YouTube offering user stories, and information for businesses but they only have 8,051 subscribers.

5. Objective and Theme- The objective for my campaign is to increase global member presence and awareness along with increasing the user experience with ad quality, increasing user clicks, and ad revenue through creative ways. The theme for the campaign is "Embrace Connections." Connecting countries, connecting foreign businesses to new markets, connecting ideas from Italy to Paris to New York, connecting all aspects of your friends lives by pulling from all social media outlets such as Twitter, YouTube, and Blogs to create a "Life Feed", and connecting the user to more targeted ads to increase clicks.

6. Share Life- The success of the campaign will depend heavily on Facebook’s integration with other social media sites. Currently you can share certain information on Facebook but I want to change The Live Feed to the “The Life Feed”. The Life Feed is totally integrated with all other sites and allows users to see what their friends are Tweeting, watching on YouTube, and blogging about. This will be an option that users can choose not to participate in for privacy reasons but the idea is a highly integrated sharing of videos, music, news, and blogs. Along with the theme of increasing connection, instead of just the text chat option with friends on-line, Facebook should also access the users web cam to allow for face to face communication.

7. Search Engine Optimization- Search engine optimization is going to be a huge part of Facebook’s success in Global regions. Facebook needs to heavily focus on which words are being searched in specific regions for social media sites. Facebook also needs to offer some sort of value to users currently using competitive sites globally. Facebook should increase their mobile app presence/quality and ad quality. For ads, if someone mentions a certain movie, category of movie, or artist in their status update offer ads based on what that person likes. Facebook should also have a Global YouTube video challenge in which users share amazing stories and experiences in the hopes that the winners video will go viral.

8. Key Components Continued- To become further integrated into the users life, Facebook should use their check-in feature to create fun user experiences such as games, scavenger hunts, and objectives. If you’re visiting Paris, you get 500 points for checking in at the Eiffel tower. Companies can participate in this game and use the points for redemption at their store local to where you just checked in. Ads can also be served through the check-in feature allowing for promotions and targeted ads depending on where that person checks in.

9. Measuring Success- To measure the success of their social media campaign, Facebook can look at the number of users joined in particular regions. They can also find out the increase in the click rate for ads and also look to see if there is an increase in new ad clients. They should monitor their Twitter @ mentions and #'s to see if there is a positive response to new initiatives as well. An increase in fans and likes on their blog is also a good indication of a successful campaign.

10. Budget/Time Allocation- To implement these new features in ad quality, integration, and increase global presence there will be a lot of re-design in the mobile app, advertising on the website, check-in feature, and the live feed. This will require a team of about 10 coders. There will also need to be an advertising/marketing team to work on the SEO and viral marketing and global promotions campaign. This will require about 10 more employees. These expenses would add up to approximately $1,500,000 of which 60% goes to the SEO and viral marketing campaign in the 1st through the 3rd quarter, 20% goes to the re-design of the mobile app and advertising in the 3rd quarter, and 20% to the check-in feature and Life Feed in the 4th quarter.