2. WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW. RIGHT NOW.
In today’s virtual world — like it or not — Facebook conversations are having a direct impact on
your sales and your brand’s reputation. Every day, customers are questioning their product options
and making product choices based on the likes and dislikes of their friends and family members
online — and much of it is based on un-edited, un-qualified user-generated content.
With the increased popularity of tools such as Twitter, Facebook — and now Google+, among
other social networks and online communities — families and teens are able to interact with each
other from across the globe, in unprecedented numbers at unprecedented speeds. For many
people, the first place they seek purchasing information is online, and increasingly on Facebook.
Trouble is, most brands still haven’t found a credible way into these personal conversations. Like
the least popular guests at a dinner party, many brands are finding themselves all too often on the
outside looking in — awkward at best and unable to find the after-party.
US+Partners would like to help you with that problem. We have shattered the “can’t-be-done”
barrier when it comes to catalyzing credible, consumer-generated conversations about brands
within key Facebook communities. That’s right. We understand the technology and know how to
use it to build communities and guide their most influential consumers around positive brand ex-
periences. We utilize techniques that generate great content — in-the-moment, grassroots
engagement that creates authentic advocacy, moves products off shelves and provides continuously
measurable consumer insights that, ultimately, keep good brands from wearing out their welcome.
And best of all? We’re already doing it. We can do it for you. Read on>
US+PARTNERS Steve Stepanek, Co-Founder and Managing Director, T 313-701-9172 steve.stepanek@usandpartners.com www.usandpartners.com
The ideas, concepts and processes expressed on this page and throughout this document are the property of US+Partners LLC.
They may not be duplicated, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or retransmitted without the express permission of US+Partners LLC.
Copyright 2011, US+Partners LLC.
3. LET US HELP YOU MAKE UP FOR LOST TIME.
Getting the attention of 800 million Facebook users is still a puzzle for most brands. Most spend
time and money trying to convince Facebook users to visit the company’s Facebook page. We —
at US — reverse that approach. We point brands away from themselves and into the pages and
stories of their most influential consumers. Our Newsfeed Optimization Model offers a proven
way for good brands to work within already established Facebook communities to promote their
products — fan-to-fan. On consumers’ terms. In their words and worlds and through “right now”
experiences. US+Partners gets good brands inside consumers’ newsfeeds — where people are
most actively and authentically engaged. We guide and influence active consumers to share their
brand experiences through their photographs, words and video stories.
To be sure, this kind of content and engagement doesn’t happen easily — or overnight. We’ve
spent years building and sweating the relationships to get them just right. Trusted. With US, you
can make up for lost time — and then some. Consider the latest numbers, which confirm what we
already know about your need for speed:
* Consumers absorb more content from their own Facebook newsfeed far more than content
posted on a brands’ Facebook pages (Amex/comScore November 21, 2011)
* People are twice as likely to remember an ad if their friend is in it or is part of its distribution
(Nielsen Co., November 2011)
* A person’s intent to purchase rises fourfold when they see “social” ads that involve people they
like or know. (Pew Research 2011) That’s twice the recall, quadruple the purchase intent. More
product flies off retail shelves; more donations flood into nonprofit coffers.
US+PARTNERS Steve Stepanek, Co-Founder and Managing Director, T 313-701-9172 steve.stepanek@usandpartners.com www.usandpartners.com
The ideas, concepts and processes expressed on this page and throughout this document are the property of US+Partners LLC.
They may not be duplicated, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or retransmitted without the express permission of US+Partners LLC.
Copyright 2011, US+Partners LLC.
4. * There are 800 million people on Facebook worldwide with 12% now able to instantly contact
their communities via their smartphones and tablets. Say what? We repeat: Right now, hundreds of
thousands of people are beginning to livestream video on everything from their climb up El Capitan
to their latest tailgate party -- directly to their Facebook newsfeeds. In real time, as it happens. That’s
live broadcasting, social media-style. Me-feeds. [Don’t just watch the game. Watch Seattle Seahawks
fans watching the game as they share live insights and brand experiences you just can’t get from
sitting in front of a TV or in the stands.]
* Social “streaming” gets you into multiple brand experiences simultaneously — on the field, in the
stands and at fan gatherings and news events. You don’t just watch the newsfeeds. You become part of
them. Your brand becomes part of the cause-and-effect.
But the biggest need-to-know? The best, most successful ads on Facebook aren’t ads. Not in the
traditional sense. They’re bits of consumer-generated content — photos, videos, livestreams —
that mention or refer to your brand as part of a group’s ongoing experience. When produced by
the most influential people in any one Facebook community — whether NFL fans or mommy
bloggers — this content can go viral, passed on to friends and their friend’s friends. According to
comScore, friends-of-fans groups, on average, are 34 times larger than original fan groups.
And that’s just for starters. While email and texting remain popular and important ways to share
content, incorporating Facebook communities into brand emails, coupled with incentives to share,
can dramatically enhance distribution. In 2012, Facebook communities will produce even more
dynamic and engaging content as newsfeed access goes increasingly mobile, becoming portable —
or even wearable.
Clip from live video “share-stream” of NFL Fans
watching game, shot from an iPad in a sports bar
and streamed live to multiple Facebook newsfeeds,
simultaneously — November 2011
US+PARTNERS Steve Stepanek, Co-Founder and Managing Director, T 313-701-9172 steve.stepanek@usandpartners.com www.usandpartners.com
The ideas, concepts and processes expressed on this page and throughout this document are the property of US+Partners LLC.
They may not be duplicated, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or retransmitted without the express permission of US+Partners LLC.
Copyright 2011, US+Partners LLC.
5. CASE STUDY: Fan Nation
We don’t just talk ‘social.’ We monetize it. US+Partners is the exclusive liaison for a community of
15 million NFL football fans across 5,000 fan pages. These groups represent a cross-section of
American consumers — with 38% Millennials, 27% GenXers, 16% teens and 17% Baby Boomers.
Nearly three-quarters of them are college-educated or higher; 75% attend tailgate parties; 64%
travel to attend community events, and more than half learn about new tailgate products online
and from each other. Fan Nation is local and global, spanning 8 languages, 10 countries and dozens
of American cities, from Dallas to Boston. It can target local and national markets.
These Fan Nation communities
share strong community values.
They bond not only over their
common role as fans, but also as
demographic subsets, from
fashionistas to moms to social
entrepreneurs; their interactions
are rules-based. Monitored by the
community, for the community.
Members meet frequently offline.
They’re cause-oriented; highly
social but not overtly political.
And they will promote brands
that respect them.
US+PARTNERS Steve Stepanek, Co-Founder and Managing Director, T 313-701-9172 steve.stepanek@usandpartners.com www.usandpartners.com
The ideas, concepts and processes expressed on this page and throughout this document are the property of US+Partners LLC.
They may not be duplicated, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or retransmitted without the express permission of US+Partners LLC.
Copyright 2011, US+Partners LLC.
6. Think of it. Hundreds of thousands of local “buying clubs” across America. Virtual sports bars
and stadiums. United by their passion for the game, their shared values and their willingness to
experience your brand.
Peer-to-peer. Trusted. Credible. Powerful. Real. Community members continuously sharing their
food, clothing and lifestyle choices with each other. With US+Partners. With you. 24/7.
“People share what works; what they trust to be true. If your mental model is that you need
established marketing techniques to help your brand become and stay healthy, that’s not how
the market works anymore. There’s been a dispersion of activity; networks of individuals versus
institutions and established brands. These informal, social networks are the most trusted and
comfortable ways to explore new product breakthroughs; they are the most influential in
purchasing decisions. They carry the most clout as sources of consumer information.”
- John Palfrey, Co-Director, Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society
US+PARTNERS Steve Stepanek, Co-Founder and Managing Director, T 313-701-9172 steve.stepanek@usandpartners.com www.usandpartners.com
The ideas, concepts and processes expressed on this page and throughout this document are the property of US+Partners LLC.
They may not be duplicated, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or retransmitted without the express permission of US+Partners LLC.
Copyright 2011, US+Partners LLC.
7. HOW WE DO IT.
US+Partners utilizes proprietary technologies to
identify the most influential consumers on Facebook
and create and sustain their affinity for good brands
— on customers’ terms. US+Partners identifies, tracks,
measures and manages the relationships with the most influential consumers in target communities.
We curate, seed and help distribute original, consumer-directed content that directly or indirectly
references dynamic brand-related experiences.
In short? It’s not about pushing a few one-offs. Our communities aren’t interested in being used that
way. For one, they don’t like being told what to do. And more importantly? They’re not for hire. At
US, it’s about leveraging trusted relationships to target, identify, build, cultivate, manage and sustain
authentic connections with highly influential consumers across multiple networks. For your brand,
category exclusive:
Community creation. Count on US to spend the hours, weeks and months that you can’t invest
yourself to identify your most influential consumers, spawn relationships with them and garner their ongoing
trust and affinity. We help cultivate their willingness to experience your brand — up close and personal —
and to share it creatively with others. For every community we build for you, we’ll generate a unique
‘scope-of-work’ roadmap, outlining the path, spelling out the timelines and pinpointing the deliverables.
Community content management. Hundreds of thousands of photographs, video clips, event
invitations, conversations and online/offline meetups and parties comprise the voluminous content
newsfeeds of our Fan Nation “Influentials.” We monitor this steady, continuous stream of content and can
curate the best of it for your pages; we can encourage the best producers to do more. We’re also experts
in mobile social media; we can catalyze Fan Nation influentials to generate live videostreams from their
smartphones and iPad/tablets for broadcasting community gatherings around live games and other events.
Community insights. Our community news teams pore through continuous streams of popular
newsfeed content generated by target Fan Nation communities to cull unique and valuable consumer
insights and attitudes that your analytics tools might miss and can’t respond to effectively or quickly enough.
Success in Fan Nation is about brand content worth sharing and worth talking about — the kind that
encourages dialogue. Being able to listen and respond is key within these communities. We can help you
catalyze, generate and expand conversations that sell — and help you avoid any mis-steps in the process.
US+PARTNERS Steve Stepanek, Co-Founder and Managing Director, T 313-701-9172 steve.stepanek@usandpartners.com www.usandpartners.com
The ideas, concepts and processes expressed on this page and throughout this document are the property of US+Partners LLC.
They may not be duplicated, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or retransmitted without the express permission of US+Partners LLC.
Copyright 2011, US+Partners LLC.
8. Community analytics. Our careful approach to measuring engagement, conversions and “what people
are saying” metrics — combined with proprietary tools that closely track when, where, why and how best
to engage with influentials from one day to the next — can translate into higher sales and measurable
impact, boosting social media ROI for your brand. Additionally, visitors driven to a brand site by influential
Fan communities are four times more likely to convert compared with visitors from other sources.
Community partnerships. We combine human and machine intelligence to find new ways to
connect with influentials across the social graph and its ever-expanding network platforms, based on
community needs and behaviors unique to your demographics and consumers’ needs. We help brands
respond to outside events and help you convert this awareness to relevant engagement opportunities.
Community incentives. With the ability to combine detailed, dynamic data with human response to
your most influential consumers, US+Partners can match needs, wants and aspirations across the Web. We
can integrate incentives to act, to buy, to test and to innovate on behalf of the brand in unprecedented ways.
To make social media marketing effective, we need to reward our “super influentials” — Fan Nation’s top
catalysts, and we ask participating brands to help us do so. Fan Nation’s interest in NFL teams offers the
opportunity for brands to offer enticing travel, clothing, food, and other deals that not simply encourage
them to convert, but to share those deals with others.
WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?
US+PARTNERS Steve Stepanek, Co-Founder and Managing Director, T 313-701-9172 steve.stepanek@usandpartners.com www.usandpartners.com
The ideas, concepts and processes expressed on this page and throughout this document are the property of US+Partners LLC.
They may not be duplicated, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or retransmitted without the express permission of US+Partners LLC.
Copyright 2011, US+Partners LLC.
9. When you bring an idea alive and it
fuels a movement, you are no longer
doing advertising.
You are making change happen.
www.usandpartners.com
US+PARTNERS Steve Stepanek, Co-Founder and Managing Director, T 313-701-9172 steve.stepanek@usandpartners.com www.usandpartners.com
The ideas, concepts and processes expressed on this page and throughout this document are the property of US+Partners LLC.
They may not be duplicated, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or retransmitted without the express permission of US+Partners LLC.
Copyright 2011, US+Partners LLC.
