Facebook is the hot story in social media circles, so I went looking for a company that has successfully used Facebook to market its products or services. Thanx to an Adweek article I was able to find a successful Facebook marketer (Target) and an unsuccessful Facebook marketer (Wal-Mart). I will cover the problems that Wal-Mart faced in their campaign tomorrow.

Target took its first steps in social networking by sponsoring a page on Facebook as part of its back to school campaign. The Target social media campaign was run by AKQA and they made some very smart decisions throughout the campaign

Adjust Message to for Audience:

Target adjusted its traditional marketing approach from storytelling to make it fit better with the Facebook audience.

Pay attention to what is being said:

AKQA art directors and interactive designers visited Facebook and other social networks at least once a day. This is an often overlooked aspect of social networking. By visiting social media sites, AKQA became in tune to what the different communities were saying.

According to Jeremiah Owyang, a Forrester Research analyst who specializes in social computing, all brands should research the conversation and community before jumping in: ?Just like going to a cocktail party, the savvy attendee will know how to dress and won't jump into any conversations before understanding the context.?

Talk Like Your Audience:

Target made sure to talk like Facebook members and not like a typical advertiser. Charlie Taylor, group account director at AKQA pointed out that Target chose not to use its TV campaign's tagline ?Hello, Goodbuy? on the site. Instead, words such as ?awesome? were used with more frequency.

Converse Don't Shout:

To help create acceptance of its brand on Facebook, Target kept its online sales pitch low key. The ad campaign included the sponsored page and banner ads placed elsewhere on Facebook and everything linked to Target's Facebook page, not its e-commerce site. Discounts and promotions were also kept off the sponsored page. ?We learned that in this social environment we had to talk to people first, before trying to sell anything,? Taylor says.

Results

By Sept. 31, the site had attracted 7,176 members, 409 photos, 483 posts and hosted 37 discussion groups. Most of the feedback was positive and discussed good deals to be had in Target's brick-and-mortar stores, from which had coffee shops to which had shorter lines, and gave kudos to the dollar bins of discounted merchandise.

Other Campaign Learning's

A vibrant social network like Facebook has its own ecosystem that advertisers need to be aware of. In a social network, there are people who join to grab information, those who like to distribute material to others, those who want to simply look around and those who want to shape the activity in the group, says Cavalletti. By watching the discussion threads, Target could identify the people who tended to serve as mentors for future marketing efforts.

They also learned that networks are not the ideal place for its normally bold and stylish presentation. ?Visual cues needed to show students that Target was respectful it was in the Facebook environment,? says Cavalletti. In Target's traditional ads, ?people expect to see design and polish, but on a social network the ? site has to reflect the visual language of its members,? he says.

There are some great takeaway's here on how to successfully market on a social networking site that are not specific just on Facebook. Common themes that kept popping up were:

* Adjust your message to the audience

* Converse and don't shout

You might want to get a program to automate sending out messages, friend requests, wall post, Etc. This will save you long long hours of time. So far the best FaceBook tool out there is FaceBot Pro at facebotpro.com .

Read tomorrow how Wal-Mart failed to follow these points and how they failed once again at social media marketing.