Inside Facebook

Surprisingly, Subway did not have an official fan Page on Facebook until Christmas Eve. Since announcing the Page on Twitter yesterday, they have been running a Facebook ad campaign that has helped it quickly climb to 215,000 fans (at the time of writing).

We say surprising because Subway is one of the top advertisers in the food service industry with a $375 million annual advertising budget, and because very soon Subway will have more locations than McDonald’s in the United States. So it is a bit surprising that they’ve taken this long to get on Facebook, where many other fast food chains and food brands already have a strong presence.

Though late to the game, Subway seems to have thought out their Page, and are already running a video commercial sneak peak and a giveaway promotion. The exclusive video is a new twenty second commercial featuring Olympian Michael Phelps underwater with his hands a foot apart (for their $5 foot-long subs).

The company’s promotion is also pretty strong. Subway will give away ten $50 gift certificates every week starting from yesterday and ending January 24, 2010 (and per Facebook’s promotional rules, users do not have to be a fan of Subway’s Page to participate). [Update: In fact, you do have to become a fan in order to participate.]. With the general popularity of Subway (and its $5 subs) coupled with this promotion and Subway’s penchant to spend on advertising, we anticipate that this Page will see very strong growth over the next month.

“Have you ever lost your cell phone?” is the question Motorola is asking its fans in a contest to win one of 5 of their CLIQ smartphones. To enter the contest, here’s what Motorola is asking fans to do:

“Tell us your craziest story about how it happened and enter to win a new Motorola CLIQ with MOTOBLUR! We’re giving away 5 phones and will also feature some of the creative stories on our Facebook page…”

As per Facebook’s promotion rules, users do not have to become fans to enter the contest.

While the contest page itself is hosted off of Facebook and on Motorola’s website, we couldn’t find the promotion after a quick check around motorola.com; and, the page is titled “Facebook Contest Phone Giveaway.” So this seems to be an exclusive offer for Facebook users. As well as filling out contact information, entrants must tell the “craziest thing that has happened to your phone” in less than 1000 characters.

Other promotions that Motorola has run this month include their “12 Days of CLIQmas” which they promoted on their Facebook Page but which was run on Twitter, and another giveaway of NFL tickets to a Cincinnati versus Detroit game (which didn’t get much of a response from Motorola’s fans).

Motorola has also been running ads lately to get people to their fan Page, and has gained 97,165 fans since December 18.

The Financial Times reported this week that its sister publication, The Economist, is going to make a major social media push in the first part of 2010. This will include Facebook Connect integration on Economist.com, and trying to reach 500,000 Facebook fans along with 750,000 Twitter followers.

The Economist’s Facebook Page currently has 182,423 fans, so shooting for 500,000 shouldn’t be that tall of an order for a world famous publication, especially if they follow through with their quoted intention of spending “tens of thousands of (British) pounds”.

The Economist’s Facebook Page seems geared to drive comments and discussion about articles, both on the Page and by directing fans to Economist.com. The Financial Times quotes Economist.com publisher Ben Edwards, saying that he, “hopes that Facebook will help his site acquire new readers and develop a “deeper level of engagement” with existing ones,” which is a natural use for Facebook Connect. It will be interesting to see how deep Economist.com integrates Connect, as currently they only show a “share on Facebook” button to the right of articles, which isn’t that prominent.

Also, current comments on Economist.com do not feature profile pictures, which is a widely used feature when integrating Facebook Connect. The Financial Times piece mentions that The Economist plans to have an updated site in three to four months.

As far as the Economist’s goal of half a million fans on Facebook goes, as we mentioned, this seems reasonable. Ad spend alone could probably get them the 317,000 fans they need to reach that number, especially if they combine that with some form of offer, perhaps trial subscriptions of the print magazine, for example. In fact, the 500,000 number for their Facebook Page seems much more doable than the 750,000 followers they are hoping to get on Twitter where they currently have under 94,000 followers. Focusing more on Facebook may be a strong news move as well, as Facebook Pages are increasingly becoming a major battleground for breaking and debating news, as we recently saw with one of The Economist’s competitors, Newsweek.

Of course, The Economist reaching either of these numbers will be moot unless they receive a correlating increase in traffic and overall engagement on Facebook, Twitter and on Economist.com. However, as we’ve seen happen with other major news providers, social media can show very tangible results (especially around major news stories such as this year’s US presidential inauguration), and this should be a step in the right direction for the publication.

With the holiday season in full swing, we wanted to bring you some highlights of what Page owners from various verticals are doing with their Pages this season. We say highlights because there are hundreds of Pages that are featuring some kind of holiday content.

As we recently detailed, one of the fastest growing Pages this month has been ABC Family’s 25 Days of Christmas, which just passed half a million fans (currently at 508,190). Along with high engagement and a very useful set of tools on the site, since we last covered the Page, it has launched an app called “Missiletoe Jam” which is kind of a like a Jib-Jab greeting card app, in that you can create funny greeting card to  your friend. However, instead of JibJab’s elves, you get cartoon toe-shaped missiles to put you and your friends faces into (get it?).

Bob Dylan’s official page has been promoting his “Christmas in the Heart” album, proceeds of which go to feed the homeless.

Dylan’s Page has been featuring his music videos from the album and is sending people to Amazon to purchase and view more content. Other music acts promoting their involvement in the holidays include gospel act Mary Mary which talked about their Christmas special, and country act Sugarland, which has been discussing its holiday performance in Washington DC for President Barack Obama.

Non-profits have using their Facebook Page to generate donations this holiday season. For instance, the Special Olympics has a promotion that if a fan donates in the name of a friend, the Speical Olympics will send them a free music download.

The American Red Cross, with more than 95,000 fans, has been sharing a number with a fans a number of holiday and winter time initiatives on their Page, including sending fans to Causes for donations and with Notes such as their “The Twelve Days of Holiday Safety“. The Salvation Army has been discussing their various holiday drives and new on their Page, such as sharing the news that a person left a gold coin worth $1,200 in a red Salvation Army kettle in Chicago.

Of course, many brands and retailers on Facebook have integrated some kind of holiday content into their Pages. Gap has two apps running, one to send a holiday “cheer”, which 45,634 people have done so far, and another fun app that analyzes your profile and customizes a holiday for you.

Neutrogena recently offered its fans a coupon for free lipstick if they visited the cosmetics brand’s holiday website, Target has been adding in holiday videos to its Wall stream as well displaying promotions offered on their website, and Best Buy has had their dedicated tab to the holidays up since Thanksgiving.

For everyone preparing holiday meals, the Food Network (as they did for Thanksgiving) has a quite thorough tab on holiday cooking that sends users off to their website, and Betty Crocker has been sprinkling holiday cooking tips and recipes into their stream over the last few weeks.

As we mentioned above, we found dozens of official Pages with holiday focused content (and many, many more unofficial Pages were Facebook users can become Fans of different parts of the holidays), but we thought we’d leave you with two more tidbits. First, Disneyland’s Page, with 1.02 million fans, has a nice looking tab that includes a “Santa’s Survey” of which Disney character fans would like to have over for a holiday dinner (Donald Duck leads as the choice of 46.15% of respondents) as well as a slideshow of Disneyland dressed up for the holidays.

Finally, while Facebook gave this guy the vanity URL www.facebook.com/holidays, Facebook hasn’t assigned anyone the vanity URL www.facebook.com/christmas – so if you’re an organization or brand that is focused around that holiday, you may want to drop Facebook an email.

This week’s biggest Page movers and shakers were Facebook, ABC Family’s 25 Days of Christmas and (RED). As Page Data showed last week, Verizon also continued its steady climb towards a million fans (although it’s taking a little longer than we anticipated), and with his open letter to all of Facebook, CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Page also saw an 11.42% up-tick last week.

Top Gainers This Week

Name Fans Gain Gain, % 1. Facebook 6,223,923 +418,552 +7.21 2. ABC Family 25 Days of Christmas 412,104 +282,491 +217.95 3. (RED) 417,131 +225,660 +117.86 4. Big Prize Giveaways 2,301,578 +199,996 +9.52 5. Verizon 773,202 +194,581 +33.63 6. Texas Hold’em Poker 4,875,439 +192,646 +4.11 7. South Park 3,242,698 +154,832 +5.01 8. Mafia Wars 6,038,981 +131,157 +2.22 9. Disney 2,502,332 +115,271 +4.83 10. New Moon: The Movie 1,039,204 +65,175 +6.69 11. Twilight 4,389,285 +59,991 +1.39 12. Alicia Keys 1,288,624 +49,990 +4.04 13. Modern Warfare 2 440,743 +43,713 +11.01 14. Justin Bieber 1,078,595 +41,371 +3.99 15. Celebs on Facebook 2,145,759 +40,775 +1.94 16. Mark Zuckerberg 372,266 +38,156 +11.42 17. Toy Story 350,401 +37,156 +11.86 18. Playfish 1,649,917 +36,839 +2.28 19. Lady Gaga 4,428,235 +36,653 +0.83 20. Starbucks 5,149,326 +35,514 +0.69

ABC Family’s 25 Days of Christmas Page has had strong growth over the last few weeks, including a gain of 159,283 fans on December 2 – which makes sense as that was the day following the first day of the programming. The Page continues to have high interaction among fans, and is far and away the fastest growing holidays-focused Page on Facebook.

(RED), which brings together a number top brands to help fight HIV in Africa, had an understandably positive gain in fans last week around World AIDS Day.

Verizon has been going all out over the last few weeks to attract fans to its Facebook Page, as part of the company’s end of the year media and marketing blitz supporting the launch of the Motorola Droid (and attacking rival AT&T). Last week according to PageData, the company had the third-highest growth among official Pages, gaining 195,003 fans for an increase of 50.4%. However, that growth is not nearly as fast as what we saw it do yesterday for Cyber Monday.

Throughout the day, Verizon must have been spending copious amounts on Facebook Ads. It grew from Sunday’s 584,649 fans to 666,083 fans by 3:26 PM PST yesterday (when we noticed our first Facebook Verizon ad).

By 10:52 PM PST, as the second screenshot shows, the Page had reached 738,963 fans for a one day gain of more than 150,000 fans.

As far as what is going on on the Page itself, Verizon is offering a deal on their FiOS broadband/TV/phone package, has exclusive Green Day concert footage “for fans only” and of course has all of its commercials available in the Page’s video tab.

Obviously, no brand can pay for this kind of growth all the time, but coupled with Verizon’s constant stream of TV commercials and the start of the shopping season, Verizon is making a strong push to build out its Facebook Page as a major messaging channel. If it keeps up this pace, it could reach the million-fan mark in a week or so.

With the amount of time people spend in coffee shops — especially people on computers — it’s not too surprising that many local establishments have Facebook Pages. Last week, we looked at how the largest coffee shop chains are using Pages, and today we’ll focus on what local shops are currently doing with their Pages and offer suggestions to better engage local customers.

While we are only able to skim the surface of all the Facebook Pages devoted to local coffee shops, a number of patterns emerge on what owners are doing. For one, even though they may only have one or a few locations, many Pages have more fans than some of the largest chains we covered in our previous post (one Philz Coffee location, for instance, has 2,350 fans while the Tully’s chain with over 100 locations only has 1,593 Fans).

Here are some key things all coffee shop Page owners should remember:

1. Make sure your contact information, especially address, is completely filled out on your Page. Make it really obvious where people can get your coffee.

2. Share menus and latest coffee creations/flavors by linking to their menu on their web site, publishing changes within the Wall (as Jitterbug Coffee Shop did) if not adding the option as a tab.

3. Include the Reviews app as a tab on your Page so users can provide their own feedback, like what LIFT Coffee Shop & Cafe has done.

4. Encourage fans to upload pictures taken in your establishment, and make sure to do the same as a Page owner. See Murray Street Coffee Shop as one example; this is one of the easiest and most obvious ways to create interaction with fans.

5. Unfortunately, many local coffee shop Pages have tabs that also have no content – Page owners need to keep tabs (sic) on this and remove application tabs that aren’t being properly managed.

6. Remember to get your vanity URL.

7. Make sure to post any events happening at your store on your page, and invite your fans. As Coffeecat shows, the Events tab can also be used to announce poetry reading, acoustic performances and other de rigueur cafe events.

8. Providing incentives for fans in-store is a great way to build Fan loyalty – just remember to stick to Facebook’s new rules about promotionsConsider splitting your Wall into Page owner posts and Just Fans in order to clearly communicate to your fans

Readers: if you are a fan of a local coffee shop(s), what would you like to see improved on their Pages? Please answer (especially if you are reading this right now from a coffee shop) in a comment below.

[Photo via Wireless Coffee.]

Black Friday promotions and the increasingly heated competition between wireless providers helped drive Facebook users to become Facebook fans of brands such as Kohl’s, Verizon, AT&T Share and Gillette this week, according to PageData. As we saw last week, Twilight: New Moon, 2012 and Modern Warfare 2 continued to attract more fans as well, and Texas Hold’em Poker continued it’s steady rise towards five million fans to become the 8th largest fan Page on Facebook.

However, Will Ferrell’s Page took the top spot this week. It appears to have gone on an enormous one day roll of 429,173, almost certainly from Facebook adding unofficial pages for the actor in with his official page. On its own, the page only gained only a handful of fans directly.

Name Fans Gain Gain, % 1. Will Ferrell 891,637 +429,197 +92.81 2. Texas Hold’em Poker 4,710,836 +213,309 +4.74 3. Verizon 581,887 +195,003 +50.40 4. Kohl’s 863,351 +133,831 +18.35 5. Disney 2,403,084 +131,224 +5.78 6. New Moon: The Movie 986,654 +125,941 +14.63 7. Wawa 319,899 +118,968 +59.21 8. Big Prize Giveaways 2,115,870 +110,081 +5.49 9. Mafia Wars 5,912,186 +98,094 +1.69 10. Twilight 4,337,237 +84,104 +1.98 11. Gillette 143,512 +70,874 +97.57 12. Türk Bayrağı 1,952,904 +69,897 +3.71 13. 2012 610,840 +62,501 +11.40 14. The Pulse Smartpen from Livescribe 103,903 +61,525 +145.18 15. Modern Warfare 2 404,830 +55,898 +16.02 16. AT&T Share 138,943 +55,198 +65.91 17. Walt Disney Pictures Backlot 124,792 +50,983 +69.07 18. Cake Boss 246,910 +48,722 +24.58 19. Vodafone it – Mobile people 118,870 +46,028 +63.19 20. Facebook 5,811,336 +43,002 +0.75

The two most interesting Pages this week, however, were certainly Gillette’s and Kohl’s. Gillette posted a message on its Wall on November 24 saying that anyone that became a Fan that day would be “entered to win a free Fusion MVP”, which received 571 Likes and 170 comments, which is good engagement. The problem is, however, that this promotion almost certainly violates Facebook’s latest promotional rules. We suspect that Facebook is giving brands a grace period, as this is not the first apparent violation that we have noticed, and we are currently checking into it.

Another interesting Page this week was Kohl’s. Kohl’s apparently offered a number of email-based in-store coupons as well as 15-30% off online. They’re also running their “Kohl’s Cash” promotion (for instance — buy $50 of merchandise and get a $10 gift certificate, etc). What Kohl’s has been doing with their Page, however, isn’t to use these discounts to attract fans – rather, they are using their Page as a customer service portal, and a rather active one at that. That’s not to say that they aren’t using their Page to broadcast out these offers – they are – but as far as we can see, they are in no way directly leveraging these offers to increase their number of fans. Facebook users are just signing up as fans because Kohl’s is making these great offers while offering good customer service on their Page.

With about 27,000 coffee shops in America, and 11,000 or so accounted for by chains, it is no surprise that there are dozens – even hundreds – of Facebook Pages dedicated to coffee serving establishments. In this post we’ll cover coffee shop chains, looking at each of the five largest pages and what they’re doing well, or not. In a subsequent post, we’ll feature local coffee shop Pages.

Starbucks

With over 5.1 million Fans, Starbucks – as it is in business – is far and away the most dominant coffee shop chain on Facebook. In our previous coverage of Starbucks we’ve detailed how the company has used Facebook, and especially its Page, to become one of the top brands on the site (currently at #7, about 1,000 Fans behind Megan Fox).

Currently, Starbucks is promoting its Via instant coffee packets through a vague contest, asking people to become Fans, upload pictures and write on its Wall without any real clear incentive. This is a rare lapse in what is usually a stellar page, one that Facebook itself honored earlier this year.

McDonald’s

We’ve included McDonald’s in this post because it dedicates a tab on its Page to McCafe — which, if you haven’t been in a McDonald’s since childhood, is their espresso line.

The McCafe tab runs a “McCafe Theater” which sends you to an interactive Flash page on McDonald’s website and which isn’t all that interesting. However, with over 1,453,695 Fans, anytime that McDonald’s wishes to highlight McCafe, they have a strong channel to do so.

Dunkin’ Donuts

Next up is another chain that really isn’t a coffee shop, but Dunkin’ Donuts is a caffeine fixture on the East Coast and the Page is quickly approaching the million Fan mark (currently 957,570). Two things that we like about this Page: a nice looking promotion for free coffee for a year; and the very inventive Fan of the Week pictures.

The Fan of the Week is displayed right under the logo on the Page homepage, so we imagine that quite a few Fans have uploaded a picture of themselves to the Wall (which is the only requirement to be chosen). After seeing this, we would encourage just about any brand to do the exact same thing.

Tim Hortons

We’ve decided to include Tim Hortons in this list even though most of their stores are in Canada, but with 460,809 Fans they come in as the second largest solely-coffee-shop Page, which is significant (also, they have a number of rather large unofficial Pages that will at some point most likely be rolled into the official one, so they could see a large spike at some point). Overall their Page is pretty straightforward, but we did get a kick out of their Curling Story Contest tab.

The Coffee Bean

The Coffee Bean, which currently has 65,183 Fans, has a pretty informative Page that includes a store locator (which all the chains should put front and center on their Pages), a “Flavor Finder” which helps fans to find the perfect bean for their tastes, and a “Buy Online” tab which is just an iFrame of The Coffee Bean’s website, which is a smart idea for any brand.

And More…

Among the rest of the top coffee chain Pages are Peet’s (30,527 Fans), Seattle’s Best (3,824 Fans and which is also owned by Starbucks), Dunn Bros Coffee (3,674), Port City Java (1,822 Fans) and Tully’s (1,593 Fans).

Over the last week, we’ve watched as Sarah Palin and Newsweek have fought a battle of words over the magazine’s controversial cover image choice of Palin – with the battlefield being Facebook Pages. What is especially interesting is that both Palin’s and Newsweek’s Pages have seen significant bumps over the last two weeks – in Newsweek’s case at least, we believe this is in large part due to this controversy. Here’s some background and stats.

Sarah Palin, who has been using Facebook heavily to grow her fan base since last fall, has a new book out called “Going Rogue.” The book and its associated tour have not only been a boost for Palin supporters, it’s helping attract people to Palin’s Facebook Fan Page as well, with the page passing the one million Fan mark last week. For a national figure and former VP candidate, this popularity isn’t too surprising.

You may remember that Mrs. Palin gave John McCain a big bump in the polls when she joined the ticket last year – apparently, she can provide the same kind of bump for Facebook Fan Pages (especially when controversy is involved).

According to our PageData stats, prior to November 10, Newsweek’s Facebook Page had pretty flat growth for such a recognized brand, only gaining 2,100 Fans in the previous two weeks to sit at just over 40,000 Fans. The following day, November 11, the Page nearly matched that two week growth in a single day, gaining 2,000 Fans. In total, Newsweek’s Fan Page has gained over 58,000 new Fans with last week’s growth at 34,195 (or +52.96% – see chart below).

If all of this growth on both Pages had just happened as an indirect result of all of the exposure of this controversy, it would have been worth noting in and of itself, but there is another layer to this story – both sides have used their Facebook Pages as their choice medium to fight this battle.

On November 16, Mrs. Palin used her Facebook Page to respond to what she found to be a tasteless choice by Newsweek:

The following day, Newsweek – which is using the Palin cover as its Fan Page profile photo – then wrote a blog post pointing out that, “Palin denounced it—and us—to her million-strong Facebook following last night.”

What’s really interesting here is that Newsweek only wrote this response after Palin went directly to her Fans, even though there was plenty of other commentary on the issue prior to this (Newsweek of course also posted this on their Fan Page). Newsweek.com has integrated a Facebook Connect widget on the site.

Facebook Pages and Politics

When we look back on this episode, we might see this unfolding of events as a turning point where Fan Pages began to become the first choice online to rally the troops and put out a message. Even though Facebook’s recent News Feed redesign has throttled down the reach of less engaging feed stories, the potential reach and impact that posting to a Facebook Page has can be tremendous, and broader in many cases than is possible on Twitter or your own website. Add in recent tweaks such as Page owners being able to target Fans by language and location, and it looks like future “discussions” like this one could increasingly take place on Facebook Pages.