Posts tagged facebook

Friending Brands for Deals & Offers

12-08-2009 BY bbulman

Razorfish recently released it’s third yearly FEED report. The FEED report, is a study focused on online consumer behavior that focuses quite a bit on social media and network behavior.

With yesterday’s post about Walgreen’s use of Facebook reciprocity, I found some of the statistics in the report quite interesting:

Over 40% of the 1000 study participants said they have “friend” a brand on Facebook or mySpace, and the deals and offers were the primary reason why consumers “friended” a brand on Facebook(36.9%).

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What really interested me was that only 25% of Twitter users followed brands, but over 40% follow these brands.

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I wish Razorfish had dug further into this data and would loved to have seen how consumers engaged with the brands they friend on Twitter. Do they spend considerable time on the brand’s Fan pages, or is their primary interaction via their News feed?

I’d love to see how other brands are using a quid pro quo model like NBC or Walgreens.

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Walgreens wants to be your Facebook friend

12-07-2009 BY bbulman

With my previous example of how some brands are using the behavior of reciprocity on Facebook to quickly build their fanbases. This morning I woke up to an email from Walgreens, a US drug store retailer, where they offered me free shipping today, if I became their fan on Facebook.

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It seems to be working for them as their Fan #’s have jumped quickly into 300,000. It seems like Free Shipping is valued enough by consumers for them to friend Walgreens. I am starting to believe this trend is going to backfire as more and more brands push for share of the consumer’s social graph, they become invisible, like banner ads have become. This example of reciprocity is sort of a quick hit situation, as the offer is only good for today(Monday, December 7th).

I think “REAL” success in the “Facebook Reciprocity Model” will involve these brands rethinking the value of a “fan” and finding ways to make the reciprocity continue as consumers are going to start asking Walgreens what have you done for me lately…

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Reciprocity on Facebook

08-14-2009 BY bbulman

A recent trend I have been seeing with brands on Facebook is to offer some sort of value in exchange for the consumer to “Fan” their brand on Facebook. While we could talk about if there is a real value of a consumer “fanning” your brand in Facebook, that is for another time.

Early adopter brands like Starbucks and Coke have been on Facebook for a while, but recently brands have really started to more heavily invest in presences on Facebook. An interesting example of how brands are building followings on Facebook is NBC, which has started promoting many of it’s new shows via Facebook Fan Pages, such as it’s upcoming fall show Community.

NBC is giving visitors to the Community fan page access to the new show’s pilot a month earlier than it’s premiere on air in late September. All visitors have to do is become a fan of Community on Facebook.  It’s a classic case of Balanced Reciprocity, when one agent gives away goods/services to another with the expectation of something in return at a later date. In this example, the value being given way is exclusive access to the pilot earlier than most of the public, and the expected return is that the consumer will be receptive to future marketing message from NBC.

NBC's Community Facebook Page

The site tells consumers they must become a fan before watching, but instead of building functionality to limit viewing to fans only, NBC uses messaging to try and influence consumers to become a fan.

I expect this to be pretty successful, and expect to see more and more brands trying experiments like this on Facebook as they try to find new ways to engage with consumers.

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