Two Top Examples Of How To Use Facebook For Business
The movies have been around for over 100 years and in that time there have been many peaks and troughs in cinema going. In the last 5 years or so the film industry has really started to tap into the power of social media to sell their wares and when they do it right it can really make a difference at the box office.
Today I would like to talk about 2 films that are very different in many ways but very similar in others. The first film is Batman: The Dark Knight (a personal favourite of mine) and I chose this film for one main reason. This fanpage has been around since before the film was released in theatres and the number of people becoming a fan of the Facebook group has steadily increased over time and on 16th March it had around 4 million fans. Now here is the amazing part, the group added over 1 million fans in just 3 days!
How did they do this? Well now the Dark Knight film can now be watched IN Facebook and can be paid for using Facebook credits. This is something relatively new for Facebook and it has undoubtedly been a big hit with Facebook users. Because of the massive reaction to being able to watch the film IN Facebook you will definitely see this happening more and more with other films. Added to this great feature is the fact that the Batman fanpage is in itself a great place to visit if you are a fan. There is a lot of interaction and information from Warner Brothers themselves in the form of sneak previews of the new Batman game and behind the scenes footage from the filming of the Dark Knight. The fans themselves also have some very lively and insightful conversations going on the “discussions” tab which is always a good indicator that a fanpage is doing well.
The second, and completely different, film fanpage I have for you today is from the makers of Toy Story. This site may not be anything like Batman but the fanpage is very similar. It is very nicely designed and has taken full advantage of the new iframes setup for fanpages which is a change you definitely need to be aware of. The fanpage itself has a lot of content on it in the form of videos and these are the kinds of clips that you won't have seen in the film. My favourite video is “Ken's dating tips #24” - brilliant stuff!
As well as this there is a toy creator page where you can, as the name suggests, create your own toy and then upload your creation to your personal Facebook page. In this way Toy Story is excellent at tapping into the existing social network of its fans in order to publicise itself.
Do you give your fans a reason to tell their Facebook friends all about your fanpage? If not get on it! Added to this there is great interaction from the site creators and lots of polls and discussions as well as information about the Toy Story console game. If you are a fan of Toy Story then there will be lots to capture your imagination in this fanpage.
These two very different fanpages then can teach you a lot about how you might be able to jazz up your fanpage. When considering changes to a website or a fanpage I always recommend looking at what the biggest and best companies and people do and then learn lessons from them. These companies will have spent thousands of pounds researching and developing ideas for their social media platforms but by learning the lessons they have paid for you could get some amazing ideas for free.
The 3 top lessons I have learned from these two sites are: 1) Use video – and lots of it! 2) Know who your customers are inside out then deliver them something they will enjoy discovering. 3) Interact. It is no good setting up a fanpage and then leaving it to its own devices because this will not help you in developing your brand or finding more customers.
Written by Richard Hennessy
Richard owns and runs Focused Hypnosis which is a Sheffield hypnotherapy practice. He is a keen amateur SEO enthusiast and loves coffee.
Richard Hennessy provides the good people of Sheffield with Hypnotherapy on a daily basis and also blogs, tweets, flies power kites and photographs the world.