New Facebook Features for Brands March 5, 2012 Page 1 of 12

LiveWorld Point of View New Features for Brands Announced at

Facebook’s Feb 29, 2012 Marketing Conference

March 5, 2012

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Table of Contents

Executive Summary................................................................................... 3!

Focus on Pages.......................................................................................... 4!Page Cover Area Detail ...................................................................................................................4!Timeline Detail..................................................................................................................................5!Admin Panel ......................................................................................................................................6!Personalization of a Brand Page.....................................................................................................7!

Ad and Distribution Options..................................................................... 8!Offers .................................................................................................................................................8!Reach Generator...............................................................................................................................9!Premium on Facebook ................................................................................................................. 10!

Insights ..................................................................................................... 11!

LiveWorld Recommendations.................................................................. 11!

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Executive Summary At its first-ever marketing conference on February 29, 2012, Facebook presented a number of changes that the company positions as natural outgrowth of its perspective that “Stories are more powerful than Ads, and a Brand Page is where the brand creates stories that fans then share and create mini-stories on top of.” At a big event in New York City, streamed live across the web, Facebook announced new features: • Timeline for brand Pages, which allows brands to treat their fans to richer storytelling and

entices users to participate in the process. • New ad venues that enable brands to reach more fans and non-fans, while monetizing the

Facebook services. LiveWorld Recommendations Having looked into the new Facebook offerings, our initial take is that brands should: 1) Embrace your Page and its Timeline, as well as the concept of storytelling. Make yours a

shining example of your creativity. 2) Use the new admin tools to curate and highlight the content on your Timeline. 3) Continue to create engaging stories, earning the attention of your fans with strong

content. 4) Pilot the new distribution methods, tracking the success of your content, and use that

data to decide if you’ll continue to invest in the new methods Facebook provides you. 5) Plan for the resource impact of the additional content you’ll have on Timeline, the need

to watch for and respond to private messages (if you allow them), and the option to curate user content for featuring on Timeline.

New Facebook Features Detailed later in this document, the specific Facebook announcements include these: • Enhanced Pages, with a prominent cover photo option, private messaging between

fans and brands, and better admin controls • Timeline for brands, a new profile that provides many more options for storytelling • Personalization of brand pages for individuals viewing them • Offers, Reach Generator, and Facebook Premium, new advertising and distribution

platforms • Insights, introduced earlier this year, but reviewed now in light of new engagement

options. • Permissions for moderators (a feature often requested by brands), which is announced,

but not yet released. Facebook specified that 5 levels will be available.

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Focus on Pages Facebook positions Brands Pages as mission control for your business on Facebook. This is where you tell your fans who you are, show them your new products and offers, and hear what they think of what you do — as well as more about who they are and how they use your products. Now, it’s also where you can create content that can also be used as ads. Facebook is providing options for your content to be more widely viewed, with the potential to engage much larger segments of your audience. Currently available only on the desktop devices, Pages will also be on smartphones later this year. Page Cover Area Detail The cover area of your page gives far more opportunity for branding than was previously possible. It includes these features (as illustrated on the next page): • Cover photo: A large space for photos or graphics at the top of your Page, the cover

sets the style and tone of your page. Because it’s easy to change, you can coordinate it with your campaigns or change it to be seasonal or timely. Naturally, you’ll want this space to be as appealing and expressive of your brand culture as possible. Although it can be changed, it should always be consistent with the cultural tone you’ve planned for your Page.

• Logo: The logo space, smaller and to the bottom left of your cover, is meant to provide consistent brand identification. It’s the image that shows when you post, conveying brand credentials to the users, and so shouldn’t be changed.

• Business Description: A short (2-line) overview of your business, so people can see who you are and what you do at a glance.

• Apps Panel: Depending on the apps you use on your page, you can put the 5 you most want to emphasize in this panel under the cover photo. Note that 2 of the 5 have to be the “About” and “Photos” apps, so take care to choose the most valuable apps for the other 3 slots. A drop-down menu lets you pick them.

• Messages: Fans have always been able to Like your Page. But if they wanted to send you a message, they had to write on your Wall, in full view of everyone else on your Page. Now, just as individuals can do with their Facebook Friends, your fans can send you a message, and you can reply within Facebook. This gives you a new option for customer support messaging, and you want to make sure it’s monitored and answered. (Note that the fan has to message you first; you can’t initiate an interchange.) At this point, we see no reporting for this feature, which may be a drawback for brands hoping to use it.

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Timeline Detail Timeline is a beneficial innovation for Facebook brand pages. While it provides a chronological look at interactions with the brand over time, it also gives you an extraordinary opportunity to tell the story of your business in a much more robust and visual way. It shows your brand posts, of course; but you also have these new abilities (some of which are illustrated on the next page): • Curate Timeline content. You can decide if fan posts should appear on your Timeline,

but you can also choose which of them appear. You’ll want to pick the best, of course. • Highlight your posts. You can Star stories, giving them more visual prominence

(across both columns of Timeline), Pin them at the top up to a week, or even designate some lucky individual as a Fan of the Week.

• Tell your story. Timeline lets you backdate posts. So you now have the option to use graphics, photos, and text to tell the story of how you got where you are. Fans can use this historical feature to navigate back and learn about the most important, interesting, or entertaining moments over the period your brand has been around. For the really key moments, you may want to use the Milestones feature, which spreads a story across both columns of the timeline, lending more visibility and importance to the episode.

• Personalization is now provided for people viewing your Page. (More detail on this on page 7.)

All these features let brands lend personality to Pages, bolstering the potential to entice users to engage more actively with a conversational and personable brand entity.

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Admin Panel The admin panel offers many options to create the most favorable impression you can. The new layout is more friendly than it was in the past, giving you a quick view into your Page. It also has these new features (as illustrated on the next page): • You have a central place to look at the notifications for your Page, with the ability to

take actions on the posts. • You can respond to people when they’ve sent you a private message. • You can peek into Insights to get a top-level sense of how your posts are performing. • The Manage function lets you edit Page content and view the Activity Log to get an

overview of what’s going on. • Build Audience lets you share your Page, invite friends to it, or create ads.

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Personalization of a Brand Page Your Page can now appear more relevant to individuals because of new features that make it easier for them to see how their own circle of connections may be interacting with your brand Page: • When people arrive at your Page, they’ll see pictures of any of their friends who are also

your fans. • Visitors will also see content about you that their friends have shared or initiated — (but

it’s seen only by those visitors, not by all your fans). • Finally, people viewing your Page can filter posts to see only brand content, only content

about you posted by their friends, or both. Besides being more interesting for individuals, personalization is also good for brands, as relevance and credibility come from the implicit recommendations of friends — presenting potential encouragement to Like your Page. It’s a whole new way for people to “check out” a brand on Facebook.

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Ad and Distribution Options Facebook introduced some new options for boosting your ability to reach fans with your discounts and your content designed to spur fan engagement. Pricing wasn’t outlined in the conference, so we’ll expect that information to be forthcoming. Offers Representing a new content type for brands, Offers provides brands with an easy new vehicle for delivering discounts. As illustrated on the next page, Offers shows users which of their friends have used the discount. The offer itself can be time-bound, and it’s quite simple to access and read from both browsers and mobile. Because people can share the offer, the potential exists for you to reach and sell to friends, their friends, and so on in an efficient Facebook viral pattern.

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Reach Generator An option that Facebook recommends to be “always on,” Reach Generator content appears to fans in the Sponsored Stories format, and to non-fans as ads. Reach Generator content is positioned in the right-hand column of the Home page. Facebook guarantees higher fan reach, charging a flat fee, depending on the number of fans a Page has. Noting that Reach Generator is available only to “qualifying clients,” we’d expect it to be pricey. It’s also important to keep in mind that, assuming no changes to the current Sponsored Stories format, your update needs to conform to its limited character count, followed by ellipses. Get the meat of your message across succinctly, or you’ll reduce potential audience pick-up.

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Assuming it is available to your brand, and that your budget allows it, Reach Generator should boost the potential for engagement of any content you’re currently posting. Naturally, the more personally engaging the content, the greater effect you can expect. Premium on Facebook The Premium package encompasses Reach Generator and some other options. While Reach Generator is recommended as an always-on booster, Facebook recommends Reach Generator plus the other Premium components as appropriate for special events and activities such as product or campaign launches, movie releases, or promotional events. The additional features include: • Distributing a post into the Newsfeed of your fans. While it wasn’t specifically stated

at the marketing conference, we assume Facebook is boosting the EdgeRank formula, forcing the post into the Newsfeed in cases where EdgeRank may have left it out. Facebook trials indicate an estimated 5-10x click-through rate above a regular brand post that has no Premium option added. Brands can choose this option for Newsfeed on both desktop and mobile.

• Feature the post in the Facebook log-out experience. When users are logging out of the system — and Facebook specified that 37 million people do this every day and 105 million every month in the US alone — they’ll see your content, if you opt for this feature (which will be available in April).

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Four positions are thus available to brands for Premium posts: • The right side of the Page (either as a Sponsored Story or an ad) • The Newsfeed on both desktop and mobile (two positions) • The log-out experience Your choices will doubtless increase your normal engagement levels. However, using these options only makes the stakes higher for your content. It’s got to be appealing and enticing enough to earn Likes, comments, shares, and clicks. Otherwise, you won’t make the most of your Premium investment.

Insights While changes to Facebook Insights were released in Q4 2011, it’s worth reviewing them in light of the new capabilities to increase engagement: • Your likes and the number of people “talking about” you (engaging with the content you

share) are now visible right on the brand’s page — to you and to everyone. The information shows up underneath your cover photo. If you’re just “using a bull-horn,” and not inviting (or getting) much engagement, it will be obvious here.

• Your dashboard shows many different metrics that give you more granularity into the way your fans engage with your content. For each type of content you post, you can see its reach — both to your fans and to their friends.

• While Insights provides you numerous interactive graphs, the capability to export via their data exports offers an opportunity to analyze even more deeply.

The features in Insights track the performance of your content. Paying attention to them is key to maximizing your ability to create and select the best content for engagement. When posts do well, do more of those kinds of posts. Even though you’re able to purchase a larger reach via the new ad/distribution options, you’ll want to make optimal use of those dollars for the greatest engagement.

LiveWorld Recommendations For brands on Facebook, it’s still all about your personality, your conversational skills, and your ability to build relationships with people. Here’s what we’d suggest you do: 1) Embrace your Page and its Timeline, as well as the concept of storytelling. Make yours a

shining example of your creativity. Let the culture of your brand shine through; it’s the emotional connection that makes people want to connect with you beyond discounts.

2) Use the new admin tools to curate and highlight the content on your Timeline. Find the best content and un-bury it. Make sure that when people come to your Page, they see great examples of the regard with which their friends and other people hold your brand.

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3) Continue to create engaging stories, earning the attention of your fans with strong

content. Ask people to engage with you, and give them something to talk about. When they respond, acknowledge them. Be there for them. Treat your Page like a social venue, not a marketing brochure.

4) Pilot the new distribution methods, tracking the success of your content, and use that

data to decide whether you’ll continue to invest in them. Look at your most engaging posts, and decide what they have in common; then do more of them. Compare the results you get with and without the new options; it may be well worth the money to get new energy and interest going for your Page, your discounts, your launches.

5) Plan for the resource impact of the additional content you’ll have on Timeline, the need

to watch for and respond to private messages (if you allow them), and the option to curate user content for featuring on Timeline. To do this well, you’re going to need to pay attention. Let us know if we can help.