What’s working for you? What can you share about publishing from your page? How your pages work together? Something about custom tabs? Have you been A/B testing using Facebook’s publishing tools? Does interactive content perform better for you in the stream? Feel free to share your insights in the comments of this post, or just shoot us a note at marketing@sproutinc.com. If we use something from your comments, you’ll be credited in the guide!

This guide will be published in the next month or so, in the mean time, here’s some interesting articles on creating successful Facebook fanpages that you might like:

• Facebook: tips and best practices
• TechCrunch: building engagement on Facebook
• Mashable: 5 tips to optimize your fanpage
• Mashable: 5 insightful case studies
• All Facebook: 13 strategies for building successful applications on Facebook

Thanks!

According to recent research by Hitwise, Facebook has become the most popular site in the United States, they even overtook Google in terms of hits at the beginning of March this year. This just reinforces the fact that Facebook is top of mind for advertisers. However, creating a successful brand presence on Facebook is not always easy, in part because of all the changes that have been going on lately. Late 2009, Facebook passed the break-even-point (as reported by Reuters) and the company is continually exploring ways to improve opportunities for advertisers. While this process can be jarring at times, Facebook has a track record for innovating through this process. 

The fact that Facebook innovates rapidly can make it hard to keep up. But more than that, some innovations don’t go over well with users or developers, leading the company to repeal changes shortly after announcing them. For instance, for some time Facebook has allowed users to create custom landing tabs, giving brands an opportunity to put their best foot forward on their fan pages. In other words, this enabled brands to direct visitors to a custom page directly instead of having them land on the wall first. About a week ago Facebook announced on its developers forum that they would stop allowing brands to set up custom tabs if they had less than 10,000 fans. But then, only 24 hours later they decided to take it all back due to strong objections from brands and developers.

Another example is the recent debate about privacy. When Facebook introduced the open graph platform at the F8 developers conference in April this year, users became upset and worried about how the site treated their private information. This again led Facebook to announce this week that it would roll back some of the privacy changes (as reported by AdAge.com).

This back and forth can be a challenge as brands define a strategy for investment on the platform, but being aware of how Facebook works should lead brands to take a more agile approach to their initiatives. As a Facebook Preferred Developer, we have unique insight into Facebook, but even we have to work hard to keep our platform up to date and consistent with Facebook. The good news is that the Facebook team is awesome and super fast to respond to changes.

The moral of this story? Don’t freak out when Facebook experiments with new policies, just express your opinion in an open forum and they’ll respond accordingly. And, if you’ve got questions about what’s coming next give us a ring, we may either know the answer to your specific question or get it for you from the Facebook team.

A Half Day Summit on Leveraging Social Networks for Your Brand

Are you an account executive, creative director at a brand or agency? If so, this event is the perfect opportunity to learn what it takes to be successful building your brand and driving sales on social networking platforms.

Presentations will focus on how social network platforms are evolving, what new opportunities are becoming available, and how to work with creative agencies and technology providers. Social media case studies will highlight campaign best practices and a panel discussion will address key topics such as moderation, metrics and reporting, social media strategy, and corporate policy around social media.

Lunch will be served after the presentations and participants will have an opportunity to network and socialize. Join us for an exceptional event packed with valuable insight for your brand.

Event Dates and Locations

Thursday. February 4th, 2010: San Francisco - REGISTER NOW $49

Thursday. February 18th, 2010: Silicon Valley - REGISTER NOW $49

Thursday. March 9th, 2010: Los Angeles – REGISTER NOW

(Sprout CEO will be presenting at this event as part of Digiday Social)

Wednesday. March 31st, 2010: Chicago – registration coming soon
Thursday. April 1st, 2010: New York – registration coming soon

Speakers (additional speakers TBA, lineup varies by event location)

Richard Jalichandra,
Technorati, CEO
Speaking about how brands can build buzz using Technorati and the evolving online display ad space.

Nick O’Neill,
All Facebook, Founder
Market trends from the author of the most popular blog about the most popular social networking platform.

Jeremiah Owyang,
Partner Customer Strategy, The Altimeter Group
Develop a Social Strategy Based on Business Objectives.

Here’s what Mike Spear, of Jones Soda, has to say about their social media strategy and how Sprout helped them out: “Our social media strategy is pretty simple. Listen to our consumers and communicate all things Jones to our most dedicated fans. We chose Sprout because we liked what Sprout did for other brands like REI and Dogpatch Labs. The Sprout pages are cool looking, easy to use and turnkey to set up.”

Before partnering with Sprout on their Facebook Fan Page, REI felt like they didn’t have a solid way to grab new Fan Page visitors’ attention. Sprout used the assets provided by REI to create a bold-looking page that grabs users’ attention and encourages them to interact. To attract new fans, REI hoped to use their Fan Page to make a statement as more than a retailer. With that goal in mind, Sprout included expert advice, contests that gave fans a chance to get involved, and content from REI’s Twitter feed, YouTube videos, and Flickr photo streams on the page. REI wanted their fan page to help them achieve their retail goals, too, so Sprout implemented an REI Outlet deal of the day feature as well. The expert advice and deal of the day features have proved most popular on Facebook, helping REI to achieve two important objectives: educating new and old fans alike about the unique facets of REI that make them more than just a retailer, and boosting retail sales.

REI keeps the content on the page updated constantly, with new posts, a new deal every day, and other cutting edge images, advice, and videos. REI knows it’s important to show visitors they’re putting in the effort so that visitors feel it’s worth their time and effort to contribute and fan the company. Since the Sprout-designed Facebook Fan Page launched on October 16^th, REI has added 5,000 fans to their page, putting their total at 30,000 fans, a number they are extremely happy with. REI includes links to their Fan Page on their website, newsletters, Twitter page, and YouTube page, but they have not paid for any traditional advertising to drive users to the new page. 5,000 new fans in one and a half months represents a significant increase in the rate of organic, viral Facebook fan growth since the launch of the Sprout-designed page.

REI has plans for the future, too. Next up they hope to make the deal of the day section truly shareable so that users can add the section to their home page or site. REI understands that it’s critical to keep refining the page to keep content fresh, relevant, and shareable, so that fans understand what differentiates them from the competition. We at Sprout are thrilled when we have the chance to partner with a client who so fully embraces the power of Facebook and social advertising.

Two of the changes in particular that will affect your Facebook Fan Pages is the removal of boxes and narrowing of application tabs from 760px to 520px.   This will result in Fan Page administrators only being able to customize content in application tabs and those tabs being narrower.  The narrowing of the application width is a result of changes to the upcoming design of profiles and pages.   If you read the posts on Facebook’s developer wiki, you’ll see more explanation as to why they are making these changes and what’s in store for the future.  There are two posts on this topic: Facebook – Tabbed Profile and Roadmap Profile. According to the roadmap, these changes will take effect in late 2009/early 2010.

What does this mean if you have already customized your fan page and created a custom tab?  Chances are your content will be cut-off or appear distorted. If you used Sprout to create the custom content on your fan page, you can make the appropriate size edits to your sprout and then republish it.  The FBML code has a height and width attribute which will also need to be changed.  We will create a video tutorial for this when the time comes.

If you are developing on the Facebook Platform, as we are, I highly encourage that you keep a close eye on the Facebook developer’s roadmap.

The rush to create engaging Facebook fan pages is on, and we’re thrilled to leverage our platform to bring great brands to Facebook. Moving forward we’ll be showcasing some of the best fan page examples through our blog to get you inspired. For example, the band 311 just launched a new fan page to showcase their new album entitled Uplifter. Check it out and take a moment to listen to the entire album through the Sprout. We’re also happy to see REI’s page that features the latest deals from the REI outlet.

And, you can always see our latest examples in our Facebook fan page gallery.

We’re proud to launch this new product with Disney, whose ‘Gift an Alien’ campaign is live and populating Facebook. Here’s where you can find the Gift an Alien on campaign Facebook.

A free, Sprout-branded version of Sprout Publisher is available with templates for common branded content such as coupons, frames, event notifications and news flashes simply by adding the Sprout Builder application to your account. Sprout also offers completely customized creations like ‘Gift an Alien’ on a fee basis. Contact us for more information about how we can work together.

Here’s a demo of how the Gift an Alien campaign works:

If you’d like more information about the product launch and how you can start using publisher, check out the Sprout below. This Sprout also includes an addition demo that shows how Publisher works with Facebook fan pages.

Facebook

Sharing and brand affinity is a huge part of what’s changing.  Sharing status updates and pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc) is happening 40 million times per day and 2 billion times per week, respectively.  That means a tons of content is finding its way to the stream and driving more interest in the stream for users,  thus brands are doing their best to get into the conversation.  Therefore, Facebook has changed their focus with Fan Pages (with the last pages redesign) to get brands into the stream and create branded experiences.

Some of the other stats that stand out in their latest release, relate to the application and connect platform.  Over 70% of users have engaged with a Facebook Platform application in the last month and there are over 350,000 active applications.  One number that seems very low is the number of Facebook Connect enabled web sites at 15,000.  I definitely see an opportunity for more web sites to enable Facebook Connect functionality. We have done this with some of our latest engagement applications, see our work with MTV.

What is the most interesting statistic that you have seen from Facebook lately?