Red Bull Default Landing Tab

As you can tell, the page has ported over to the new fan page design.  Prior to liking the page, there is a large graphical invitation that encourages the user to like the fan page.  With over 15 million fans, this particular call to action seems to be working.

After liking the page the default tab offers a prominent invitation to “Explore The World Of Red Bull At Redbullusa.com,” and to watch six of the latest Red Bull sponsored videos. It my opinion, it is a little strange that the largest call to action after becoming a fan is to visit the website, instead of continuing engagement with the brand on Facebook.

Red Bull Athletes Tab

The “Athletes” tab aggregates tweets from RedBull sponsored athletes and can be narrowed to view updates from athletes from a specific sport.  Although this tab brings content to Facebook, it provides links to visit the athlete’s website, official Facebook page, and link to follow the athlete on Twitter. Again, this user experience drives users once again off of Facebook, but in this case it drives users to several locations instead of just one.

Red Bull Games Tab

The “Games” tab is another custom tab that contains two main sections: the “Procrastination Station” and “Drunkish Dials”.  The “Procrastination Station” showcases six games that are launched in a new window instead of played within Facebook. These games accurately reflect the brand messaging but yet again the tab sends audiences to separate microsites for each game.

The “Drunkish Dials” section of the tab includes a collection of drunk messages that consumers have left on the brand’s toll free number. Red Bull uploads its favorites to this tab where others can listen and rate these messages. Some of these are actually quite humorous, and others are simply annoying. Either way, I’m happy to see that this adds fun on Facebook and reflects the carefree attitude of the brand.

Additional Tabs

The other two customized Facebook tabs are “Web TV,” which offers exclusive free round the clock video content like how to break dance, and “Careers,” an outdated job posting tab that has not been updated since 2009.  What is refreshing about these tabs compared to others is that they attempt to bring content to Facebook audiences.

Red Bull Content Strategy

As far as content frequency is concerned, RedBull is posting a few times a day every couple of days. This said, engagement from its audience is obviously lacking.

For engagement comparison purposes, we used Starbucks, since the two brands have comparable fan counts. Starbucks’ wall posts consist of a larger variety of content including videos, images, and links to specific pages on its web site, in addition to content about current events and occasions as they relate to the brand.

Red Bull’s posts are on the whole more about promoting Red Bull produced content, including promotional videos and athletes.  Although Red Bull boasts 14 million fans, the data above suggests that Red Bull should redefine its content strategy so that the page can continue to keep growing through increased newsfeed inclusions.

What are your thoughts on Red Bull’s presence on Facebook? Please share in the comments below.

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I was struck by the juxtaposition (I <3 that word) of the first two articles in today’s issue of SmartBrief on Social Media:

• Report: Brands are reluctant to spend on social-media campaigns and
• Early buzz saves big bucks, says Ford marketing chief.

The first one, which appears at E-Consultancy under the title of Investment in Social Media Still Modest: Report, lists a number of reason why companies are hesitant to spend money on social media, even though the budgets have slightly increased since last year:

• Lack of resources
• Lack of measurement
• Lack of understanding and
• Lack of budget all make the list.

Yet, over on Mark Collier’s blog, under the title of Ford CMO Jim Farley: Social media leading to ‘massive cost savings’ for Ford, Farley reports:

On the Fiesta Movement, we had higher unaided nameplate awareness than Fit or Yaris, and we spent 10 cents on the dollar, than a traditional tv ad campaign [their emphasis].  So by starting earlier and using social media to spread the word about the new product, we’re really reducing the amount of traditional advertising we have to spend.

Not every social media campaign is going to be as successful as saving 90% of your advertising budget, but how long are you going to wait on treating social media as a serious, measurable, tactic for increasing your online or brand awareness, driving more qualified leads to your site, and converting that traffic into business?

Hopefully you won’t wait until all of your competitors have already proven the model. Now get out there and experiment, people!

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And like any bank, you can make deposits or withdrawals. The problem is that too many people jump into social media, starting with a balance of $0.00 and start withdrawing like there’s a run on the bank.

Visit my website at www.idontgetit.com! they tweet. Like my Facebook page! they holler. Watch this video where I talk about how long we’ve been in business!

There’s nothing wrong with talking about yourself and your business. However, every time you do, you’re making a withdrawal. And if you’ve got nothing in your savings account, what are you drawing off of?

Start making deposits.

Start promoting other people’s stuff. When you see a friend, customer or even a competitor talk about an award they’ve won, a webinar they’re putting on, or a clothes drive, retweet it, share it, like it.

If people take the time to comment on your blog, respond to them. (Something I need to work on myself.) If someone asks a question on LinkedIn, answer them with the most detailed response you can think of. Speaking of LinkedIn, when was the last time you recommended someone without being asked first?

With every retweet, comment and engagement, you’re making deposits in your social media bank. And don’t feel like those deposits are burning a hole in your pants. Don’t promote someone in a quid pro quo fashion; rather, just do it because it’s the right thing to do. If you are exclusively tuned into radio station WII FM (what’s in it for me), then consider this: by sharing and promoting OPS (other people’s stuff) you become the trusted conduit, and build a following based on your knowledge of what’s going on.

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Engagement is a pretty serious thing right?  Traditionally engagement has really been used in two very important historical contexts:

1. A promise to marry, and also the period of time between proposal and marriage – which may be lengthy or trivial. During this period, a couple is said to be affianced, betrothed, engaged to be married, or simply engaged.”
2. When Captain Jean Luc Picard from Star Trek was about to blast off into warp speed he would always say, “engage!”

So have we really gone from marriage proposals and intergalactic battles for world peace to now simply clicking a button?

I’m not saying there is a right or wrong way here to define engagement but I think that this all comes back to defining the objectives and success metrics for a brand/company looking to get involved in social anything.  It’s meaningless for a brand to say it wants to be more engaged unless it defines engagement and says, “we want more comments, links, conversations, or whatever.”  Personally, I always viewed true engagement as a type of collaborative relationship where a conversation or flow of information takes place between a customer and a brand/company – something that hopefully turns into a long term relationship.  This means that instead of “liking” a facebook fan page that I would have some sort of conversation or interaction with the brand on the page.  Otherwise what we are talking about is participation aren’t we?

It really doesn’t matter what I or anyone else says about engagement, what matters it that your organization defines engagement so that it knows what it is trying to do and how it is trying to do it.  It’s also important to keep in mind that various departments and employees at your organization are going to define and understand engagement differently.  Understand this form the very beginning.

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Smart marketing teams are applying the two major levers ( their budget and their marketing database) to turbocharge their social media efforts in 6 ways:

1) Content as Advertisement: Instead of spending ad budgets to promote high level branding ad spots, smart marketers are spending ad budgets to share the rich contnt their team is creating with a much broader audience of potential viewers.

2) Social Content as Nurturing: Rather than creating separate content for each nurture campaign or newsletter, leveraging the best content that the team has created (measured by the number of tweets, for example) gives you a sure win in terms of audience engagement, and lets your content be discoverable by the broader audience in your marketing database.

3) Hiring for Content Creators: If the subject matter experts in your organization are not creating a steady stream of rich content, hire a journalist to facilitate the process (credit for this idea goes to David Meerman Scott). A daily stream of interesting and inspiring content should be no problem for a professional.

4) Sourcing Data for Insight: If the ideas for what to write about are running dry among your content creation team, fund a survey to provide data and insights on topic areas that they suggest. Most organizations surprise themselves with how much mileage they can get out of unique and interesting survey data.

5) Fanning the Flames of Engagement: When your subject matter experts do write content, the marketing team can fan the flames of engagement. Sharing and promoting each new piece of content in the networks it’s relevant to (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Delicious, etc) helps build awareness, and motivates your subject matter experts to continue creating more great content.

6) Leveraging Search to Showcase Content: Rather than use your search marketing budget to drive traffic from the same set of terms to the same set of landing pages, leverage your search budget to help each blog post, video, or eBook “get found”. The content on each post is very likely long-tail or niche oriented, so the traffic volumes for each one will not be large, but the relevance will be very high.

Done well, the marketing team facilitates the growth of a healthy and vibrant community that is aware of and engaged with the rich, relevant content your subject matter experts and social media team are creating.

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