Brands that redefine Facebook marketing

Discounting Facebook’s own pages, these are the brands that have the highest number of fans on the social media powerhouse -

Red Bull - 42,999,910

Oreo - 40,024,608

Converse - 37,516,461

Playstation - 37,060,412

Nike Football - 36,375,950

So what makes them so popular? Most importantly, how can you apply their successful strategies to your own social media marketing?

Update regularly

Nobody is going to “Like” a Facebook page that looks like a wasteland. Post fresh content for viewers to enjoy and like and fans will surely follow.

Oreo mastered the art of frequent updates. To celebrate their 100th birthday, Oreo launched a campaign called Daily Twist, where every day they would upload a new post featuring something relevant from pop culture with an Oreo “twist” to the post.

Host contests

Nike gave fans a shot at winning the opportunity of a lifetime with their “The Chance” campaign, which gives youth around the world an opportunity to train with world-famous players at the Nike Football Academy for a year. Your brand can give people a chance to participate in a contest or give-away which will increase brand loyalty and get you more positive attention on social media.

Remember, everybody likes to play along – if your contests are fun and give people something to look forward to then user engagement will increase organically.

Interact with your audience

Listen to what people are saying about you on Facebook and respond back to them promptly. Fans will feel like their voices are being heard and your brand will be seen as the good guy.

For how to deal with fans over social media, look no further than Sony during the PSN Network Outage. Nobody looks forward to a crisis, but Sony handled themselves with class when their Playstation Network Services were attacked and brought down by hackers. They used social media to keep customers updated on their efforts to fix the hack and offered several freebies to those affected, taking much of the sting out of a bad situation.

Offer exclusive content

Proving that they are always willing to stay on the cutting edge of extreme, Red Bull recently launched a campaign featuring a death-defying leap over a volcano by motocross star Julien Dupont. They gave fans that interacted with them on Facebook access to exclusive footage of the event. Apply this strategy to your own social media campaigns. You could tease a new product launch, ad campaign or upcoming event by locking it behind a like wall.

Reveal more information about the event for likes and encourage fans to share with their friends and get them to take part as well.

Stay trendy

Artistically-inclined people have been drawing on their Converse All-Stars, or “Chucks” as they are fondly called, as a way to express their individuality for years. Converse embraced this trend with their Design Your Own campaign, letting people make their own designs for the iconic sneakers. The customers could then buy actual sneakers with their designs and upload said designs for the world to see.

You can make your brand seem young too, with something as simple as using memes, hashtags and current events in your Facebook posts. But don’t try too hard to force an association, because that could alienate people.

To help you start planning your Facebook Strategy immediately and get ahead of the overly cluttered environment, we at Social Samosa are hosting a Facebook Marketing Workshop of 2015. Over the past few years of hosting this workshop, we have witnessed brand managers, agency leaders and business owners transform their Facebook strategies and effectively use the platform to deliver significant ROI. For more details on the workshop, click here.