Social success with INERNET MARKETING

Social
Success
The Ultimate Retailers Guide To
Growing Your Business With Facebook


Copyright © 2012 by Wishpond Technologies Ltd.
All rights reserved.
Published, Edited & Designed by the Wishpond Marketing Team.

2


We have been working with retailers large and small for more than two years, helping them
to get the most out of their social marketing. During that time we have learned a lot, and
answered a lot of the same questions. We wanted to put together a simple guide to setting
up a Facebook Page for your retail business, and ensuring that you are getting the most
from your investment. While this guide is geared mostly to those who are just starting out,
we like to think that there is something in here for even the most experienced retailers. We
hope that this is useful for you, and look forward to seeing the results of your efforts.
Good luck!

4–7

8–12

13–17

Analysis & Research

Strategy

Getting Set Up: The Basics

Budget & Resources
Competitive Assessment

What will you use your page for?
How will you measure your progress?
Who will be responsible for managing your page?
What is your brand personality?
How will people find your page?

Anatomy of a Facebook Page
How to create your Page
Designing your Page

18–23

24

Community Management
and Basic Promotion

Additional Useful Resources

Posting & managing content
Analytics & insights
Applications
Advertising

3


1. Analysis and Research
Let’s start from the very beginning, after all, it is a very good place to start. Getting a handle on what you
have to work with, what you are up against, and what the most successful Facebook brands are doing is a
great way to get your Facebook marketing activities underway.

DID YOU KNOW?

0

50

100

800

50

80

70

8

37

Facebook has
more than

800 million
active users

More than
50% of active
Facebook
users log in
every day

Approximately
80% of
Facebook
users are
outside of
North America

Facebook is
available in
70 languages

The average
US-based
Facebook user
spends nearly 8
hours a month
on Facebook

There are
more than 37
million

Facebook
Pages with 10
or more fans

4
Sources:

/>
/>
Facebook SEC Filing


Budget and Resources
Before you get started you will want
to come up with a realistic idea of
what kind of budget and resources
you can allocate to Facebook
marketing. While many of the
activities you can engage in have no
monetary cost, they certainly have
a cost when it comes to resourcing.
This can escalate quickly, so it is best
to set some expectations before
getting underway.
Making managing your Facebook
Page (or community management in
general) a formal part of someone’s
role helps ensure that your presence
is actively and effectively managed.
It is unlikely to require a dedicated

person immediately, but adding these
tasks to someone’s existing role is a
great way to start.

If you are able to, you should consider
setting a budget to accompany your
efforts also. This budget can be used
for a variety of things, from useful
applications, to Facebook advertising.
Even a relatively modest budget (less
than $500 a month) can make a big
difference to the effectiveness of your
Facebook marketing efforts.
As you progress through this guide,
you will see how setting clear
measurable objectives is an important
way to ensure that you are getting
real value from this investment. These
objectives should relate directly to
how you measure your business
sucess.

5


See what your
competition is up to
Before you dive right in, it is a good idea
to take a look at what your competition
is up to. You can often learn a lot from

them by looking at what they do that
gets people interacting with their brand.
This can help you avoid mistakes, as
well as set some realistic goals for
your Facebook presence. It is also a
chance to look at ways in which you can
differentiate yourself.

Look for these things
How active are they?
Do they update their
page regularly?

Are they treating
Facebook as a purely
one-way communication
channel, or are they
actually listening,
responding, and
interacting with their
fans?

Are they using any
special applications to
run competitions, give
their fans special offers,
or anything else?

How many fans do they
have?

How many people are
‘talking about them’?

6


You might also like to take a look at some
of the biggest, most innovative brands in
the world. While these pages are often
dealing with millions of fans, you can still
learn some valuable lessons about what
works when creating a great Facebook
presence.



A brief list of brands you might like to check
out to start with

H&M

Redbull

Zara

Coca-Cola

Converse

Skittles

Starbucks

Victoria’s Secret

Walmart

You can see a list of the biggest Facebook Pages for brands by fan count on fanpagelist.
com. It is often good to get in a few pages and check out what some of the larger
challengers are doing on Facebook, as it is often a little more edgy (and effective) than the
biggest brands. You are also able to sort the pages by their rate of growth. Why not check in
and see what the fastest growing pages are doing right?

7


2. Strategy
DID YOU KNOW?
Having done your research it pays to sit down and
spend some time on your Facebook marketing
strategy before diving right in. This helps ensure
that the effort you and your team put in to your
Facebook Page is directed toward achieving some
specific, measurable goals.

70% of active adult online social networkers shop online, 12%
more likely than the average adult Internet user

47%

Active adult social networkers are 47% more likely to be heavy
spenders on clothing, shoes & accessories than the average
Internet user

60%

60% of people who use 3 or more digital channels for
researching products learned about a Retailer through a FB or
Twitter post

53%

53% of active adult social networkers follow a brand

23%

23% of companies offer customer support via Facebook

10x

It costs five to ten times more to attract a new customer than
retain an existing one

67%

The average spend for a repeat customer is 67% greater than
a new customer

Sources:

/> /> />
8


What will you use
your page for?
This might seem like a silly question, but setting some high level
objectives for your presence on Facebook is extremely important.
Having checked out your competitors you have hopefully got a
rough idea of what you might be able to achieve (although don’t
let that constrain your ambitions too much!). You can very easily
spend significant time and money building a Facebook community,
so you want to make sure that you are devoting these resources to
achieving objectives that are closely tied to those of your business.

Some questions that you might like to ask
1

Am I trying to make
more people aware
of my business?

2

Who do I want to
attract with my
Facebook page?

3

What kind of
impression do I want
them to have?

4

Do I want to try and
get my existing
customers to spend
more with me?

5

Will my Facebook
page be a place I
actively encourage
my existing
customers to get
help or support?

9


How will you measure
your progress?
Once you have defined the objectives for your page, you need to come up with some
metrics to measure your progress toward achieving these objectives.

Some examples of measures that you may want to use:

Number of
fans, or fan
growth

Engagement
with content

Referral traffic
to your website

Sales

revenue or number

10


Who will be
responsible for
managing your
page?

What is your
brand
personality?

It is important to define some clear roles and responsibilities
when it comes to managing your presence on Facebook. If
you are an owner/operator then this is obviously a simple
task, but if you are expecting multiple people to contribute to

and manage your page then this gets a little more difficult.

Getting a collective understanding of your brand personality is
particularly important if you have a team contributing to your
Facebook Page.

In general, it is a good idea to give one person overall
responsibility for the management of the page, and ensure
that they have enough time to do this job properly. If you are
getting more people involved then this person will need to
ensure that content posted is appropriate, timed correctly,
and contributes to your overall objectives.

One of the best ways to get your fans engaged is to show some
personality, and not be afraid to have some fun. Ensuring that
all those involved in creating and managing content for your
Facebook Page have an understanding of what is appropriate
(and what isn’t) will ensure that they are able to show that
personality without damaging your brand.

11


How will people
find your page?
Something that is often forgotten in the rush to create your shiny new
Facebook Page is just how people will discover your page.
There are hundreds of great, creative things you could potentially do to
get the word out, but you should always start with the basics, things like:

1

Invite your friends to
become fans

5

Link to your Facebook
Page from your customer newsletter

2

Invite your staff to become fans, and ask them
to invite their friends

6

Write a blog post encouraging your customers to become Facebook fans

3

Add a link to your
Facebook Page on your
website homepage

4

7

Add a note to your printed receipts or invoices suggesting that your customers find you on Facebook

Add a link to your
Facebook Page on your
company email footer

It is also worth noting here that the search function on Facebook is far
from perfect. Don’t rely on people being able to find your new page by
searching for it.
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3. Getting Set Up: The Basics
Anatomy of a Facebook Page

Time to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. This
section takes you through the basics of getting your Page
set up just right.

Admin Panel

Click this button to display the admin panel for your Page. This gives
you a quick overview of the page activity, insights, and any messages
that you have received. Only visible to page administrators.

Profile Image

This square image will display at either 125px square or 150px square
depending on the size of the person’s screen who is viewing it. You
should upload a square image larger than 180px by 180px. Your logo
is a great choice, as this image is used around the site alongside any

content you post.

Cover Image

The single biggest opportunity you have to make visual impact with
your Page. Pick something that looks great, and really shows off your
brand. The dimensions of this image are 851 x 315px. You may not
include:
•
•
•
•

Price or purchase information
Contact information (no web, email, or physical addresses)
Any reference to Facebook features e.g. share or like.
No calls to action e.g. “get it now”, or “tell your friends”.

Mini Timeline

This is a quick way for people to jump backwards and forwards to
specific points in the history of your company

Page Stats

On display for the world to see: the number of likes, people talking
about you, and people who have checked-in at your business.

Messages

If you have messages enabled users are able to contact you privately
directly. We recommend having this feature turned on as it offers people a way to get in touch without posting on your wall for all to see.

13


Facebook Apps

Up to 4 applications will display along the top of your Page. The Photos
app is always the first app on the left, you are able to choose the other
3 that will appear here. If you have more than 4 apps the remaining
apps are accessed via a drop down menu (up to a total of 12).

About

You should make sure you write a short, punchy about blurb that
captures people’s attention and accurately sums up what you do. You
define the text for this in the ‘Basic Information’ section of the page
admin interface. Adding a link to your website here can be a good idea
to maximize click throughs to your website (if that is something you are
working toward).

Friends Who Like This

When people visit your page they will be shown any of their friends
who already like you here.

Posts by Others

All of the recent posts from fans are collected into a single box on your

Timeline.

Likes

If your page likes other pages then they are displayed here. This can
be a great way to network with your customers (for B2B businesses) or
suppliers.

Pinned Posts

You are able to pin a post to keep it at the top of your Timeline for 7
days. This means that it will not be pushed down by any subsequent
updates that you make, and will get significantly more views and
engagement. Use this to promote special offers or important
announcements.

Regular Posts

Regular posts (not milestones, pinned or starred) show up on either
side of you Timeline. If there is an image (or images) associated with
them then this will be displayed underneath the post. You can choose
to hide posts that you no longer wish to display.

Starred Posts

Starred posts highlight content by displaying it across both the columns
in your Timeline. Use this feature on great visual content to get more
engagement.

14

Milestones

Milestones are a great way to show off important dates in your company history. Use these to show off the date you were founded, when
you launched new products, or any other important dates. These are
displayed with an image which is 843px by 403px.

15


How to create your Page
Now that you know what is what, it is time to
get down to business.
Creating your page is simple. Head over to
/>and follow the instructions that Facebook gives
you. The first step is to choose which category
your page will fit in to. Be sure to choose an
appropriate category, as it will help your fans
find you. I know, we have all been tempted to
jokingly list our business as a political party, or
religious organisation, or something equally
kooky, but in general this isn’t nearly as great
an idea as it first seems.
Once you have chosen your category
Facebook does a great job of taking you
through getting the basic building blocks of
your Page set up. We would advise you to
provide as much detail as you can during this
set up phase, as it will limit the amount of time

you need to spend going back and adding and
changing information in the future.

A couple of handy things to remember

1
2
3

Be sure to provide links to your own website, and your other
social profiles when they ask you: Twitter, Yelp, Flickr, Google+
etc.

If you have physical stores provide the location and opening
hours details. Specifying a location will mean that your fans are
able to check-in when they visit, promoting your store to their
friends.

Complete the ‘about’ section details thoroughly. These are very
prominent in the new Facebook Timeline for Pages layout, and
so you want to be sure that they represent your business as you
would like to be represented.

16


Designing your Page
The most important piece of real estate on your profile is your header image. This is
your chance to capture your potential new fans attention, and show off your brand
personality. The dimensions for this image are 851px by 315 px. Be sure to upload an

image that is at least this large, or your image will be scaled up to fit (and therefore
appear low quality).

There are some limitations to
what you can do with this image.
According to Facebook you may not
include:
• Price or purchase information,
such as “40% off” or “Download
it at our website”
• Contact information, such as web
address, email, mailing address
or other information intended for
your Page’s About section
• References to user interface
elements, such as Like or Share,
or any other Facebook site
features
• Calls to action, such as “Get it
now” or “Tell your friends”

The next most important space is
your profile image. This is the smaller
image that sits partially inside the
cover image. The display dimensions
for this are either 125px by 125 px or
150px by 150px depending on the
screen size of the person viewing
your profile. However, you should
upload a square image that is at

least 180px by 180px to get the best
quality result.
Our recommendation is to go with
something bold, eye-catching, and
interesting for the larger cover
image, and reserve the smaller
image for your logo. If you can come
up with some way to integrate the
two together this can be a great
way to provide a little bit of an extra
surprise factor to delight your fans.

You are also able to specify up to
12 apps that are displayed in the
tile spaces at the top of your profile
(more on applications a little later
on). You are able to specify custom
icons for some of these apps depending on whether the app
developer allows this. This can be
a great way to drive people to do
things that you are not able to do on
your Timeline ‘wall’.

Some resources that you might find useful:
Free download of a PSD (Photoshop file)
of the Facebook Timeline for Pages user
interface
How to change your application icons with
Facebook Timeline for Pages (and a free set
of icons for you to download)

17


4. Community Management
and Basic Promotion



DID YOU KNOW?
Someone once said “build it, and they will
come”. That person was not a Facebook
Page admin. Community management is the
foundation of great Facebook marketing. Don’t
worry, you don’t need to be a tech whizz to get
this right, you just need to understand a few
basic ground rules, and have an appetite for
experimentation.

Facebook recently made a major change to the
Pages platform, rolling out Timeline on the 30th
of March, 2012
On average, your posts will be seen by
approximately 17% of your fans
Females are responsible for 62% of the
pageviews on Facebook
Sources: /> />
18

Posting and
Managing
Content

Content is the lifeblood of your Facebook community. Those Pages that are most
successful provide their fans with regular, interesting content that keeps them engaged.
This is the simplest and most cost effective way that you can reach new fans.
You will want to get into the habit of updating your page regularly with new content. How
regularly depends on your fan demographics, but a general rule of thumb is to aim for
between three and seven updates per week. You need to be careful not to update too
frequently and annoy your fans. Fewer posts of better quality trumps a large number of
low engagement posts.
In the end there is no substitute for experimentation. Think about the various things you
could do that are relevant to your audience, and then try them. With Facebook’s built in
insights (which we will cover next) you will be able to see very quickly what is working
and what isn’t.

What makes a great post?
The right posts for you to get engagement will again depend in your audience, but there are some insights that apply universally:
1. Posts with (relevant) rich media perform
much better than those without. If you
can include a picture or video with
your post you will get much more
engagement than just posting a simple
text update.
2. Treat Facebook as a conversation
platform. In a conversation there are two
(or more) participants. Each needs to
listen to one another, ask questions, and
interact. The same principles apply on

Facebook. Ask and answer questions,
encourage debate, get involved.
3. Use the built in polls function. You will
be surprised at how enthusiastic people
are about making their opinion heard.
Polls are easy to create, and easy for
people to participate in. This low barrier
to participation often means you can get
really great engagement with the right
question.

4. Pin and highlight your best content.
Pinned content (content that stays at
the top of your Facebook Timeline) gets
substantially more likes, comments,
and shares than nonpinned content.
Similarly, highlighting your great images
and video (which displays the content
in the full width of your timeline) also
helps get more engagement from your
community.
Other resources to help you with posting content:
Facebook’s best practices for Pages Admins

19


Analytics
& Insights

Understanding Facebook Insights is
extremely important for effectively
measuring the impact of your efforts.
Luckily Facebook Insights is a
relatively simple tool to use. The
hardest part is getting your head
around their terminology.

Accessing
Your Insights
When you visit your page you will
see a button in the top right corner
that says ‘Admin Panel’. Click this
button and your administration
options will drop down. From here
you can see a mini graph of your
latest insights, which you can click on
to get access to your full insights.

Understanding Your Insights
Aggregate Insights

Individual Post Insights

The main graph you see is the aggregate
insights for you page. Here you can
quickly see how your content posts (the
pink dots) impacted your ‘reach’ (how
many people saw your content), and the
number of ‘people talking about this’ (this is

Facebook’s indicator of engagement, and
counts people liking, sharing, commenting,
answering your polls, responding to
your event invitations, checking into
your location, or tagging you in photos).
Generally the higher these numbers are,
the better you are doing.

If you look below the main graph on
your Insights home page you will see a
breakdown of the performance of your
individual posts. For each post you will see:

You can then break down your aggregate
insights to look just at your reach, likes,
or people talking about you. Within these
categories you can get useful information
about their demographics and geographic
locations.
Facebook also differentiates between paid
reach, and organic reach. Paid reach is
the exposure you got due to advertising.
Ideally you want to generate as much
organic reach as possible - that is people
sharing and interacting with your content
because they find it interesting and
relevant, rather than having it pushed to
them.

•

reach - the number of people who saw your
post

•

engaged users - the number of people who
clicked on your post

•

talking about this - the number of people who
interacted with your post (like, comment, share,
etc.)

•

virality - the proportion of people who ‘talked
about this’ out of the total number who saw it

You are able to sort your posts by any of
these different measurements, so you are
able to quickly see which of your activities
are performing best. This is the information
you need to act on when evaluating your
Facebook Page performance.

20

Applications
There are quite literally thousands of applications that you could
potentially use to help your Facebook marketing efforts. If you
are looking for a specific application it is worth shopping around
to find the one that best fits with your requirements, and your
budget.
Wishpond offers two Facebook applications that are specifically
built specifically for retailers. In our opinio, these are must have’s
as part of your Facebook Marketing Toolkit.

SocialStore

Wishpond Social Store is the
fastest, easiest way to create a
great-looking storefront for your
Facebook Page. With one click you
can import your products from your
existing e-commerce store, and
then keep your inventory up to date
automatically.

SocialOffers

SocialStore

Wishpond Social Store

SocialOffers

Wishpond Social Offers allows you to

create exclusive, limited-time offers for
your Facebook fans that then spread
organically as people participate. As
people subscribe to your offers you are
building a valuable database of customers
that you can continue to make offers to in
future. You are also able to get valuable
customer insights - demographics,
interests, and more.

Wishpond Social Offers

21


Advertising
DID YOU KNOW?
Focusing on being interesting, relevant, and engaging will
definitely help you grow your fan base. If you want to really
accelerate it, you may want to support your activity with
advertising. Facebook advertising, when combined with the
other principles outlined in this guide, can be an extremely cost
effective way to not only acquire new fans, but acquire new,
real, moneyspending customers. With a relatively modest spend
you can focus very closely on acquiring fans that are most likely
to convert into customers.
There are a few things you should think about when creating
your Facebook ads:

> $5 Billion

Facebook is on track to achieve more than $5 Billion in
advertising revenue in 2012 - including more than 6.5% of the
total online advertising spend in the US
Sources: />
Target your customers
The more you can narrow
down your target market,
the better results you can
get. Facebook allows you to
target users using a range of
variables. It often makes sense
to create different ads that
specifically target different
groups.

Geographically

Demographically

By interest

Facebook allows you to
target a specific geographic
area. Targeting those people
who you are able to service
is obviously an important
thing to do to avoid wasting
advertising spend.

You are able to target your

advertising by age, gender,
relationship status, sexuality,
language, education, and
employer.

You can either select from
broad interest categories,
or provide specific interests.
This is an extremely
powerful feature for retailers,
as you are able to target
users who have explicitly
declared an interest in your
products.
22


Exclude your
existing fans

Target friends of
your existing fans

In most cases you will want to exclude your existing
fans from your advertising. Facebook allows you to
do this by ticking a simple checkbox while creating
your ad.

A great way to grow your fan base is by targeting
friends of your existing fans. As the old adage goes

“birds of a feather flock together”. Hopefully your fans
have already told their friends just how awesome you
are, so a compelling ad might be just the prompt they
need to make the leap and become a fan themselves.

Use ads to help
spread your best content

If you are using our Social Offers application ads are
a great way to get new customers participating in
your offer even faster. Supporting your Social Offer
with a small advertising spend, targeted strategically
at those most likely to be interested in our offer can
make your offer spread virally even faster.

Use ads to help
support your special offer

If you are putting time and effort into developing
and curating great content it makes sense to
expose that content to more people. By supporting
your best content with ads it will help you reach a
whole new audience, and provide them with a great
introduction to your brand. An ongoing program of
ads with a relatively small spend supporting your
content can provide a huge boost to your fan base.

23

5. Additional Useful Resources
It pays to keep abreast of what is going on with
Facebook Pages to make sure that you are always
getting the most out of your investment. The following
resources will help you stay on top of developments
with Facebook Pages.
Facebook Pages Help Center
Facebook Best Practices for Pages Admins
Facebook Ads and Business Solutions Help Center

Facebook Marketing Solutions Page on Facebook

We regularly post content that helps you get the
most out of your Facebook presence, and your social
marketing in general. If you would like to keep up
with the latest follow or join us:

Facebook + Commerce Page on Facebook

Wishpond on Twitter

Facebook Pages Page on Facebook

Wishpond on LinkedIn
Wishpond on Facebook
Wishpond Customer Group on Facebook
The Wishpond Blog

24

Thanks!
Thanks for downloading our Facebook Marketing
Guide. If you enjoyed reading it, why not share it with
some friends:

Wishpond develops applications that help thousands
of businesses use the power of social media to reach
new customers and grow their revenue.

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SocialStore
SocialStore
Wishpond Social Store



SocialOffers
SocialOffers
Wishpond Social Offers

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