The Work of Society

We were lucky enough to sit in on a presentation from one of the global Facebook representatives this morning and these are some of the notes:

What’s singing out very clearly is that we’re a mobile lead market (alongside others such as Nigeria and soon to be mobile-led markets like Ghana and Kenya). At the current rate of growth there is likely to be more Facebook users than (desktop) internet users and we’re going to see it spreading down to lower LSMs. Interesting times.

Africa is a mobile led market

• There are now 5 million+ on Facebook in South Africa and it’s still growing rapidly
• Of these more access via Mobile than Desktop (although many access via both, lower LSMs are often mobile only I assume) *missed the exact stats though will update when I get them
• They don’t have easy stats on smartphone vs notsosmartphones yet but important to note you don’t need a smartphone to access Facebook
• Nigeria has 3.89 million desktop users and 4.73 million mobile users
• Kenya has 1.47 desktop users and 1.26 million mobile users
• Same picture in Ghana which is probably the next biggest Facebook market

In the pipeline

• Facebook timeline will be available to all users in the next month
• It’s “likely” that brand pages will look similar to the timeline
• The lead/headline picture may also be a video rather than just a picture (lots more space for brands to play with)
• The ability to email fans directly will be opened up soon
• More demographic data including Likes and interests coming soon to insights
• Facebook is considering launching a coupon service for discounts (possibly to replace deals) and you won’t need a smartphone to use it

Content and ads

• About 16% of page posts are seen by the fan base
• Post engaging content regularly or lose your edgerank
• Photo albums, individual photos and videos get the best responses for content (i’d also add polls to this)
• Page post ads (new ad unit) are getting great responses and the direction Facebook is going with ads (likely to drop more “ad like” units in favour of these end of next year)
• Burberry is a great case study of a good content strategy and driving growth by targeting friends of fans with ads https://www.facebook.com/burberry