The Facebook Marketing Book [Paperback]

Dan Zarrella (Author), Alison Zarrella (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 12, 2011

How can Facebook help you promote your brand, products, and services? This book provides proven tactics that you can use right away to build your brand and engage prospective customers. With 500 million active users worldwide, Facebook offers a much larger audience than traditional media, but it's a new landscape loaded with unfamiliar challenges. The Facebook Marketing Book shows you how to make the most of the service while skirting not-so-obvious pitfalls along the way.

Whether you're a marketing and PR professional, an entrepreneur, or a small business owner, you'll learn about the tools and features that will help you reach specific Facebook audiences. You'll also get an in-depth overview, with colorful and easy-to-understand introductions to Profiles, Groups, Pages, Applications, Ads, Events, and Facebook etiquette.

• Approach Facebook's complex environment with clear, actionable items
• Make sense of the social networking world
• Be familiar with the technologies you need for social network marketing
• Explore tactics for using Facebook features, functionality, and protocols
• Learn how to set specific campaign goals
• Determine which Facebook features are relevant to your campaigns
• Plan and execute Facebook marketing strategies
• Measure the results of your campaigns with key performance indicators

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Dan Zarrella has written extensively about the science of viral marketing, memetics and social media on his own blog and for a variety of popular industry blogs. His work has been featured in The Twitter Book (O’Reilly), and many leading newpapers and periodicals. He is a popular speaker and was recently awarded Shorty and Semmy awards for social media and viral marketing. Dan currently works as an inbound marketing manager at HubSpot.

Alison Zarrella currently works as an interactive copywriter and social media consultant for clients ranging from small, local businesses to big name brands. She has written for industry blogs such as Mashable and been featured as a social media and Facebook expert in radio interviews and guest lectures.

Product Details

• Paperback: 286 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (January 12, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1449388485
• ISBN-13: 978-1449388485
• Product Dimensions: 5.9 x 0.6 x 9.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #653,580 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dan Zarrella is a social, search, and viral marketing scientist with a background in web development who combines his programming capabilities with a passion for social marketing to create applications like the social URL shortener Votrs.com, Link Attraction Factors keyword tools, as well as TweetPsych, TwitterBrandSponsors, TweetBacks and TweetSuite.

His Link Attraction Factors report helped readers determine which topics, days, times, and keywords attract links in social media stories for semantic content optimization, while his Viral Content report details the motivations, preferences and habits involved in online content sharing.

Dan has written extensively about the science of viral marketing, memetics and social communications on his own blog and for a variety of popular industry blogs, including Mashable, CopyBlogger, ReadWriteWeb, Plagiarism Today, ProBlogger, Social Desire, CenterNetworks, Nowsourcing, and SEOScoop.

He has been featured in The Twitter Book, The Financial Times, NYPost, The Boston Globe, Forbes, Wired, The Wall Street Journal, Mashable and TechCrunch. He was recently awarded Shorty and Semmy awards for social media & viral marketing.

He has spoken at PubCon, Search Engine Strategies, Convergence '09, 140 The Twitter Conference, WordCamp Mid Atlantic, Social Media Camp, Inbound Marketing Bootcamp, and The Texas Domains and Developers Conference, and he currently works as an inbound marketing manager at HubSpot.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 43 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Way out of date already, unfortunately April 21, 2011

By A. M. Concepcion

Format:Paperback

The authors could not have foreseen that shortly after this book was published, Facebook did a major overhaul of profiles and more importantly of Pages, which is a huge part of the book, as it is the main way for businesses and brands to market themselves. This happened on March 11 and by mid-April, all Pages have been moved to the new interface and design. None of this is covered.

So the book goes into detail about how to do things with your Page that don't exist anymore (such as tabs across the top) or aren't offered anymore (Static FBML app) but doesn't cover the new features like the Photostrip, iFrames (replaced FBML), the importance of Edge Rank, using the new Questions app, switching from acting as yourself to acting as your Page, the new ad set ups, and so on.

Also, right around the publication date, Facebook stopped the creation of new Groups (as described in Chapter 4), though existing ones remain unchanged. Facebook's new concept of Groups - the links you see at the left side of your Profile - are more like Friends Lists than old-style Groups, and the book doesn't mention them at all.

Some of the information is still good, such as some of the Cross-Promoting chapter and I think the entire chapter on Events. But I would hold off on buying this book until they release a 2nd Ed., which I'm hoping they are fervently working on right now.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Like? or Not? January 11, 2011

By Brett Merkey

Format:Paperback

Pro: fast read, full of tips, things to remember, connections to make, and routes to features Facebook does a lousy job of making discoverable.

Con: somewhat abstract, lacking real anecdotes to give pop to the marketing narrative.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An all-in-one resource to build your Facebook marketing strategy. February 7, 2011

By Don Metznik

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Finally, an all-in-one resource to help you build your Facebook marketing strategy.

If you want to understand how Facebook really works and how to manage it effectively, but have been frustrated with incomplete or dated information, pick up a copy of The Facebook Marketing Book by Dan and Alison Zarrella.

While there is no lack of content to be found about Facebook, much of it exists as fragments of the big picture. The Facebook Marketing Book is both the forest and the trees, the big picture and the smallest tactics.

The Science of Social Media
It's an easy read, a comprehensive guide and a how-to manual with no fluff. This is probably because Dan, who calls himself a social media scientist, is driven by data rather than the feel good, sounds right stuff that characterizes much of Facebook conversation.

In addition, Dan's quantitative bent reveals itself in results-driven analyses he's done. For example,

* Articles with digits in their titles tend to be shared on Facebook more than articles without them.
* Content with positive linguistics (language) tend to be shared more often than content with negative linguistics.

The book is richly studded with colorful examples of the topics being discussed, and this helps to quickly communicate the points being made.

If you are a business owner who wants to grasp the opportunities and complexities of Facebook marketing, this is the book you need today.