Marketing Like Bing: The Farmville Example

There are many ways to market your business through Facebook. Some are obvious, and others not so much. One thing you can pretty much count on is that there are incredible masses of people on the social network that you can potentially reach, and in ways that will allow them not only to engage with your brand in a comfortable setting, but with other Facebook ecosystems they are already engaging with.

A perfect example of this was recently demonstrated by Microsoft in one of the company's many marketing strategies for its "decision engine" Bing. I sat in on a Bing panel this week at SXSW, where some of Bing's marketers talked about a variety of ways they have used social media to gain users. One of these ways was through none other than Farmville (if you're a Facebook user, and don't live under a rock, you've at least heard of it).

More people use Farmville than Twitter, according to Bing, and People are sharing all kinds of activities within Farmville itself. That's why the company saw a great opportunity to experiment. What they did was offer a special offer inside of Farmville, that would give users free "farm cash" if they became a fan of Bing on Facebook, which would encourage continued user interaction with Bing. As a result:

- Over 72% of users who clicked on the engagement became fans
- 59,000 people published the story to their news feed
- Over 70,000 clicks were received on secondary feeds
- In 24hours, Bing had over 400,000 new fans to keep

Microsoft said its goals for engagement and social media efforts have been to:

- Add or create relevant value (stuff that's not even necessarily a Microsoft property)

- Add depth to Bing's personality

- Lead someone to a relevant engagement with Bing or each other.

- Yield passionate or emotional response from people

- Be intimate and/or scalable (can we be both)?

Bing's Farmville experiment achieved all of these. However, the point of this is not that you should go out and immediately start a campaign through Farmville (although maybe it's worth looking into if you think it's a fit). The point is that there are more ways to harness a massive social network user-base (Facebook recently surpassed Google as the most-visited site in the U.S. for the week), according to Experian Hitwise). That's a pretty impressive feat. Also consider that consumers favor brands who are on Facebook and Twitter, according to a recent study.

Really, it's not even about Facebook or Twitter. It's about getting out there wherever people are, and this is where they happen to be at the moment. That may change by this time next year, or the year after, but the principle will not. We're at a point in history where it's never been so easy for consumers and brands to engage with one another. Perhaps even better for brands, is that it has never been easier to reach customers in places they choose to entertain themselves, and I don't mean just get in their faces, but actually reach them and get that engagement from them.

Nielsen: Time Spent On Social Networks Up ~60% YOY

Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other such sites are - in general, anyway - doing quite well on a global basis, according to new stats from Nielsen.  Nielsen revealed this afternoon that people all over the world are dedicating a lot more time to social networks.

A report stated, "On average, global web users across 10 countries spent roughly five and a half hours on social networks in February 2010, up more than two hours from the same time last year."  Italians and Australians actually took the lead, too, beating the U.S. average of 6 hours and 3 minutes by 25 minutes and 22 minutes, respectively.

Then here are a couple more interesting findings: "Overall, the active unique audience to social networks grew nearly 30%, from 244.2M to 314.5M in the last year.  In the U.S., the average active unique audience grew to 149.M from 115M in February 2009" (which also works out to 30 percent).

Facebook made Nielsen's last points of comparison anything but close calls, though.  It beat the other social networks by wide margins in terms of "% Reach of Active Social Users," "Sessions per Person," and "Time per Person."

Facebook, then, would appear best positioned to find advertisers and generate revenue outside the U.S.

Nielsen: Time Spent On Social Networks Up ~60% YOY

Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other such sites are – in general, anyway – doing quite well on a global basis, according to new stats from Nielsen.  Nielsen revealed this afternoon that people all over the world are dedicating a lot more time to social networks.

A report stated, "On average, global web users across 10 countries spent roughly five and a half hours on social networks in February 2010, up more than two hours from the same time last year."  Italians and Australians actually took the lead, too, beating the U.S. average of 6 hours and 3 minutes by 25 minutes and 22 minutes, respectively.

Then here are a couple more interesting findings: "Overall, the active unique audience to social networks grew nearly 30%, from 244.2M to 314.5M in the last year.  In the U.S., the average active unique audience grew to 149.M from 115M in February 2009" (which also works out to 30 percent).

Facebook made Nielsen’s last points of comparison anything but close calls, though.  It beat the other social networks by wide margins in terms of "% Reach of Active Social Users," "Sessions per Person," and "Time per Person."

Facebook, then, would appear best positioned to find advertisers and generate revenue outside the U.S.

March Madness On Demand Player Sets Record

CBS and the NCAA said Friday their March Madness on Demand (MMOD) live-streaming video player attracted record traffic for the first day of the men’s basketball tournament.

In total, there were 3.4 million hours of live streaming video and audio consumed, over 20 percent growth compared to 2009, with 3 million more unique visitors to the MMOD video player. Both figures represent the largest single day of traffic for a live sporting event on the Internet.

The MMOD "Boss Button" was clicked over 1.7 million times on the first day of the first round of the tournament. The "Boss Button" was redesigned for the 2010 tournament, it hides the live video on the screen and mutes the audio replacing it with a flow chart image. The 2010 Boss Button was designed by cartoonist Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic.

"NCAA March Madness on Demand continues to regularly exceed our expectations," said Sean McManus, President, CBS News and Sports.

"It is the perfect combination of programming and the Internet. Our ability to successfully develop the product alongside steady growth in streaming programming for the Internet and wireless content provides many options and truly maximizes the Network’s NCAA bundled rights agreement."

Other highlights from MMOD traffic include:

*The most watched game on 3-18 was the double overtime Florida vs. BYU game with 521k hours of streaming audio and video. That’s up 50 prcent over 2009’s most watched game from the first day of the first round (Washington vs. Mississippi State) which had 348 hours of streaming.

*The most watch hour yesterday day waas 2:00-2:59 ET with 533k streaming hours (16% of the total for the day).

The MMOD is also available on CNN.com, ESPN.com, Facebook, TV.com and CNET
 

 

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