This session is all about Facebook and is run by Danny Sullivan, who has segmented off the speakers by topic (advertising, search, events, groups/pages).   The panel has some great speakers who give up some really actionable takeaways, so read up!

Dennis Yu from Blitzlocal is up first and his topic is Advertising on Facebook.  When advertising on Facebook, you need to consider the mindset.  Unlike Google, you need to think about targeting a user (or group of users) who is part of a demographic rather than keywords.  It is a very important concept – it’s about identity, not queries.

Now why would you advertise on Facebook?  It can be cheap and targeted.  Dennis states that the average CPC across the board is around 20-30 cents.  So for someone like a hosting company  this works well compared to something like a $10 click for “hosting”.  Also, many of the advertisers are affiliates, so going with international traffic can be MUCH cheaper (int’l advertising can breech many affiliate terms).

So how else can you be sneaky?  Well, Dennis states that one of the benefits of the Facebook ad platform is that it isn’t really clear on what someone might be buying.  For example, if bidding on keywords in Google, it would be pretty easy to tell what type of keywords you are buying.  When this comes to branded terms, you can really tell if you’re bidding on a specific brand in Google/Yahoo!/Bing; however, this is NOT the case in Facebook.  By leveraging “interests” for advertising, you can bid on users that might like your competition, and it would be nearly impossible to find because it isn’t query based.

Local is also becoming huge in Facebook advertising.  Right now Dennis stated that 74% of FB advertising will come from local – 20-30 cent  CPMs.  You can really go out and plaster the local space and get your message out there on the cheap.

When running ads, you should always test.  Test everything.  Different landing pages, different phone numbers – make sure that you can track conversions from the different ads.  People think the CTR on Facebook is terrible.  Not the case, you just need to make sure that your messaging is on point.  Dennis has seen a 3-4% CTR if targeted right … it’s all about targeting.  Now, things can get a bit crazy if you really scale it out as ‘ad multiplication’, which can be huge.  If you try ad testing with 10 different images, 3 different types of body copy, 5 unique demographic targets, and 2 landing pages you would have over 3000 different items to track, so make sure you can stick with something manageable.  Interest targeting can be good, but watch out for burnout.  Sending the same message to the same group of people over and over again can stop working quickly.

The secret? Send people to your fan page because you get higher viral multipliers.  By taking them and turning into a fan, you can get more and more life from your spend.

Marty Weintraub of aimClear is up next and is talking about Facebook Search and how to leverage it.  The new Facebook search is better (maybe?).  No external engines are allowed to search Facebook, making the Facebook search even more powerful.  With Facebook search, privacy levels are really important.  You can really restrict what is put out there or allow people to see everything.

When showing Facebook search results, it isn’t all about profiles.  Groups can trump profiles many times for popular words, and popular apps can trump most if they’re really popular.  For an example of this, try a search for ‘music’.  If trying to rank for groups the member count is really important.  Do whatever you can to get as many people on your page and groups.

Now like Twitter, you can sort by posts to see interests (for those without privacy settings).  This can be really helpful for finding those interested in your brand or company.  Look around and see what people are saying.

The overall message is – use keywords, leverage anything and everything to get followers and crowdsource your friends!

Will Scott from Search Influence follows next and is covering Facebook Events.  Facebook has some interesting ways to target – for example, by birthday.  Many restaurants offer free cake or offers for your birthday.  This is great because you would probably bring an entire party along.

Another cool trick that Will shares is the ability to hit people right into their inbox for events.  By sending an invitation (or responding to one), you can get the direct message (and email if turned on) to the user.  This can be great for direct response – or for local.

Rebecca Kelley from 10e20 (wahoooooooo!) is up and talking about Facebook Pages and Groups (and how to leverage).  She states that groups are the forums of Facebook.  They were the original pages and many legacy groups exist and are very strong.  Groups can help your branding and traffic and are a very powerful messaging tool.  You can message right into a user’s inbox.  An example of this is the original Search Engine Land group from the times before pages.  If a group is < 5000 in size, the admins can message members directly so keep that in mind if you want the most powerful communication from your group.

Facebook pages are great for branding and for traffic.  Seems like there is more attention to fan pages than from Twitter … it seems like the message sticks a bit more.  Facebook pages can be created for people, companies, local settings, or causes.  When creating your pages, you have a few different flavors when creating the pages; you can create branded pages or non-branded pages.  What is the difference?  Branded pages really are about the company and the branding and communication, where non-branded pages can take off in a viral fashion through a targeted demographic.  If you are a tool company like Black and Decker, maybe creating a page called “girls who can use power tools” could get a broader array of people following you.  Think outside the box when creating non-branded pages, but make sure you execute tastefully.  Something like being a fan of “Laughter” would be great for a comedy site and would have the ability to spread virally.

Rebecca has a real life example from Shoemoney’s fan page and how to leverage it for conversions.  On a page with about 2,000 fans he let people know about a special offer and saw a 19.63% conversion on all of those visits.  To build up his fan page he had spent a few thousand dollars, and then converted enough to make $2,500 profit.  Now that is only with the first promotion, so you can see how valuable a fan could be over the life of the page.

To finish off her presentation she mentions that you have to really be part of the community – be active, be helpful and most importantly be creative.

This was a great panel with loads of information and I think everyone really tossed out some actionable ideas that can start getting you goin’ on Facebook.