FB has nothing to do with market approach

[Maria678]

According to the last study by Syncapse company, 78% of the brand fans on FB are existing clients. So, first of all a customer should try the product/service and then he probably becomes the brand fan.
Thus, social promotion works just for regular clients, doesn't it?

[LukeC]

I don't think that those metrics would be the same for gambling companies - at least not those who are doing paid advertising to increase their fans.

[Rostick]

Well, I wouldn`t say 22% is "nothing", but otherwise I think you are right, FB is more about customer retention and I`m not surprised by the percentages you posted. But that doesn`t mean it can`t still attract new customers, so it`s still useful from any point of view.

[Maria678]

Well, FB is still useful for promotion different apps, or it could be useful for blog promotion. Currently, hashtags are available, so hashtags are gerat tools for marketing

[xecutable]

Considering gambling is a taboo in a lot of countries, I believe a gambling brand whether it's an affiliate or an operator will not gather as much likes as something like Coca Cola. I truly hope more and more people will be all right to share with the rest this leisure activity and will not be perceived as a "sin" or something extremely bad.

As for promotion, as I mentioned in another thread, especially if it's paid advertisement isn't worth it. Lot's of people seem to lie about their age and location and you end up paying for traffic you are not really interested in.

I agree that fb is great for retention and word spread. Apparently there is a Coca Cola game around with free gifts if you share. In less than 2 hrs my status was full of people sharing.

[Oracle]

The problem with promoting gambling related material I have found on facebook in my short 9 months is that there are over a thousand of these pages spamming their fans with nonsense to the point where the people might not want to trust another sports betting advice page they see... and the taboo of gambling also.

I am currently trying to combat this by turning the facebook in to a conversational area and while the conversation is mainly about sports betting it also has enough banter about the teams to bring people out of their shell and engage in the conversation like an internet forum and like the page.

Its slow going but I will stick with it as it is a topic that I am very interested in so it does not seem like 'work'.

To give you an example of what I mean, I posted a link to a fantasy football competition with a jersey given to the winner when I was starting out... that competition got 7 times the number of entries than the number of likes I got in the same 2 week period.

Use facebook to drive people to your website, don't treat facebook as a stand alone product.

[edgarf76]

Like everyone said gambling is looked at so differently. Also some people may not be so public to like a gambling site if they do not know their spouse to know what they are doing or anyone else. Some people tend to keep their gambling very private.

[Maria678]

As for me I tryed to use FB to drive attention to my service/site, it brought some traffic, but eventually the page was banned. I don't undrstand why as it wasn't spammy at all to compare with many gambling pages, besides, my service is for gambling webmasters, not for players. I was disappointed.

[LindaH]

I used FB for featuring products and services. And I guess its effective as long as you caught the attention of your targets. Its a great help

[Oracle]

As for me I tryed to use FB to drive attention to my service/site, it brought some traffic, but eventually the page was banned. I don't undrstand why as it wasn't spammy at all to compare with many gambling pages, besides, my service is for gambling webmasters, not for players. I was disappointed.

Have you any idea why this happened so that others could avoid it?

Did you post affiliate links on facebook?

[edgarf76]

Have you any idea why this happened so that others could avoid it?

Did you post affiliate links on facebook?

NO, do not post your aff links direct. Make a sub-domain on your site and forward your aff link to that. I think that is a better idea IMO.

[Maria678]

Have you any idea why this happened so that others could avoid it?

Did you post affiliate links on facebook?

The point is, that I didn't post anything except news about my service and blog.

[Nick.RevenueJet]

I think most gambling companies/affiliates just don't have the knowledge of how to build a community on their FB page, and how to utilize their fans for traffic generation.
If you generate good content, people will get used to sharing what you publish on their timeline. Only then can you start dropping in some content that is more on the marketing side - but it really does have to be something special. You have to make sure what you offer is relevant for both the referrers and the new traffic that you hope to attract, otherwise people will either not share, or their friends just not have any incentive to get to your site/fan page.

[Maria678]

but it really does have to be something special.

That's a point. Now it pretty difficult to create smth new and special especially if you restricted by 1 particular area. There are a lot of news portals, guides and authoritative sources. So there is severe competition, that's why we need additional methods.