Facebook has become so viral since 2008 that it has become a common term for the average American households and also in many other countries. With so many users, it is the most visited site of 2009. It is a great way for companies and organizations to directly interact with their customers and keep them interested in their product or brand.
The graph based on the statistics given by Facebook describes the growth of Facebook by the amount of users
within 6 years. It has been said that if
Facebook is a country, then it will be the 3rd largest country in the world. Looking at the growth of Facebook, we can spot the
business
opportunities
Figure 7- Facebook Users Dec 2004 - Dec 2009available if this medium is used properly.
Since Facebook hasn’t yet developed a platform for businesses and corporations, therefore how it is going to work out is still a variable. On Facebook, the only thing that will interest people will be the ones that are most creative and interesting. There is no doubt that to success on Facebook, you need to prepare the most well-thought creative strategy.
The definition of “Viral” on Facebook is determined by the number of fans who are following you. For average Facebook users, a special system of optimizing your own profile is provided. You can personalize your Facebook page with hobbies, likes and many sorts of different things. Facebook automatically introduces your hobby and your likings to your friends. They can simply click on the button “like” or “become a fan” to join the same interest.
If you can provide valuable information to your fans then they will be able to influence their friends to become your fan.A successful Facebook managing technique is to avoid talking about your products and services. If it is necessary, slightly introduce about it and provide a link for people to go to if they are interested. This should be done in a third-person’s perspective to decrease the commercial intention behind it.
Just like how we share messages with MicroBlogging, we have to be informative but short and concise. Providing links to articles on your official website is a simple yet very effective way to market on the web. Always have your customers within your area of control.
The Taiwanese 7-Eleven has used a creative way to get their customers to be involved with the company. This had increased its overall Brand awareness and increased their sales.
What 7-eleven did was to create an activity called the “Little Angel”. Completing this activity will allow you to send gifts to your friends.
The picture shown is a step by step approach for the event. First, you will have to become a fan of the 7-Eleven page. The objective of this is to increase the fan amount of the fan page, thus easier to spread messages to the public afterwards. The
Figure 8- Step by step illustration of the event
second step is to select a gift provided by 7-Eleven. There aren’t many options to choose from, but hey, This is free! therefore people share the news around. The third step is to choose a friend to send your gift to. In the end, you friend and you will receive a serial code that will enable you to go to any local 7-eleven shop to obtain a tester of microwave food. This will enable customers to taste the food and so 7-elven will be able to collect the responses can make adjustments to their products.
Within five months the fan page of 7-Eleven grew by 300 thousand, becoming the fan page with the most fans in Taiwan. The actual event only ran for 10 days and it was estimated that about 800 thousand to 1 million people viewed the event and 60 thousand people joined as a fan.
How did they become so popular? Well, excluding the creativeness of the event
Figure 9- Mapping of 7-Eleven Websites
They have their Youtube channel, Blog, Plurk(famous
Taiwanese social platform), MSN robot(automatic system that talks to people) and their official website (shown in figure 9). They have used these mediums and provide hyper-links that links them all together, generating inwards linking (linking within the company’s websites, like talked about earlier,
keeping the customers in your own control), increasing traffic and making people aware of the event that is happening on the site.