If you’ve ventured into Facebook as an advertiser — social marketer, I should say — you know the hell that awaits as platform changes fly out from nowhere, guidelines vaporize before they can be found and apps that promise relief do little but confound your efforts. Well, you can rest now, weary Creative, for the fine folks at Facebook (actually a new crew brought in to create this new initiative) have brought you Facebook Studio.
This community site is “a place to celebrate the agencies and marketers who are creating and innovating with Facebook.” Actually, it’s an online space where agency creatives can submit work on behalf of their clients, comment on and “like” the work submitted by others, and with enough positive feedback make it to the “Spotlight” position and then on to the “Awards” area. For a publisher/portal that’s pretty much stayed hands-off when it comes to giving guidance and forewarning on rules and redesigns this would appear to be a welcome — and much needed — change.
“We need to do a better job of engaging with agencies,” said Blake Chandlee, head of Facebook’s newly formed agency relations team, adding that the site will focus on best practices and highlight quality campaigns uploaded by the creators.
One quick read, however, of the comments on a recent post shows that Facebook will need to do much more than throw up a creative “contest” and stroke those agencies that stuff the ballot box, so to speak. I pulled up the “Most Liked” and “Most Shared” tabs on my first tour of the site and was not surprised to see a Coke campaign sitting in the number one position. The beverage brand seems to have cracked the code early on and typically appears in how-to resources for “Build Your Brand on FB” along with other brands with enough firepower to make the social network “work” for them.
If your client does business in a highly regulated industry you may be charmed by the display of love and appreciation for “good” creative. Aren’t we all? But it’s something altogether different when you’ve finally convinced your financial services or pharma client to dip a toe into social and you’re on your own in navigating the space. It has not been uncommon for those of us adventuring out to be “on hold” indefinitely, given conflicting instructions or none at all, or surprised to find (just when we thought we had it down) that wholesale changes had upended our efforts. Made for quite a rocky ride.
It’s been a week and already there are plenty of submissions to review and remark on. Time will tell if this becomes the resource that is so sorely needed or if it’s just another creative cul de sac for self-reflection and snarky comments. Facebook’s continued involvement, pro-active engagement, assistance, and active listening will be the first hints that this might be real help and not hype.
………….Amazon has launched a new feature that and then makes product suggestions based on their likes and other activity on the social network but the online retailer also stresses that it will not share any of the data it has about its users or their purchasing behavior with Facebook. .After you click to connect your account which brings up the familiar Facebook Connect authorization window Amazon creates a profile page with product recommendations for example music suggestions based on your profile and related activity on Facebook such as bands you have added as favorites as well as items that are popular with your friends and social network on Facebook. .On the the first thing Amazon points out even before it gets to the benefits of connecting your account to Facebook is that it will not share any of your user information or purchasing activity with the social network.