In a single day, Bing has increased the number of fans of their Facebook page by 500 percent. How? By using clever social media advertising embedded within the popular Facebook application Farmville.
The advert appeared yesterday inside the game Farmville, encouraging players to become a fan of Bing in exchange for free farm cash (the virtual currency used within Farmville). As an incentive for players to act, Bing positioned themselves as the ideal search engine to help them win the game with tips and solutions for how best to use their crops and animals. Probably the cleverest part of the promotion was the fact that users could fan the Bing page without interrupting their game.
As a follow up, Microsoft’s social media team then set about creating dedicated updates for Farmville users on the Bing Facebook page.
The Bing Facebook page started the day yesterday with around 100,000 fans and that figure is now well above 500,000.
It was a very nice try from Bing’s side, but I do think that David Naylor got it right with his write up. http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/bing-left-hand-right-hand-get-your-shit-together.html
While poor in execution, a good lesson on how to think outside of the box… or should that be farmyard?
Wow, what a great result for Bing and it just proves even more that social media is very important. I can’t wait to see the how the Ying or Yang (sorry was trying to be cleaver with the words Yahoo and Bing) partnership pans out, I can really see Yahoo becoming popular again with the help of Bing.