During 2013, With 36 million fans on Facebook, PlayStation’s strategy was a “best of the best" content curation for late-breaking PS4 information, videos and pictures. The social media team at PlayStation created multiple photo albums on Facebook for the PS4 launch, with pictures of the actual console, photos from events and images from PS4 games. The albums were used to interact with fans that could not attend launch events and to give them a glimpse of what to expect from the console. PlayStation posted 44 PS4-related posts on its brand page during the launch period. These posts reached 75.4 million Facebook users, 106 million impressions, engaged in 708,798 total fan interactions, and on average, each post received over 16,000 engagements from Facebook fans. The total number of likes for the PlayStation Facebook page has nearly doubles in the last two years, and PlayStation is now the 11th most Liked brand on Facebook, according to Fan Page List. In 2013, PlayStation engaged twice as many users per month as it did in 2012. Objectives PlayStation’s Social Media team is driven to curate the best and brightest content across PlayStation and its partner’s channels (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.). The Facebook page (www.facebook.com/PlayStation) was created primarily to stimulate valuable feedback from fans and to engage the PlayStation nation through highlighting games and content that may have slipped through the cracks or that are huge hits, and to also crowd source community content such as game tips and questions that come from the gaming community. Feedback from fans is vital to PlayStation and Facebook is just one channel the social media team utilizes to listen to gamers and help inform internal decision making processes to bring the best gaming experiences to the gaming community. The social media team values all questions and comments, especially “Shares," which are the highest compliment to PlayStation’s involvement on Facebook. It all centers on gamers, who are the most valuable to PlayStation, and the social media team is an integral part in ensuring we remain true to gamers by increasing transparency of the PlayStation brand and engaging fans to help make us the best place to play. Strategy While the PlayStation.Blog serves as the central hub where news from all social channels point, PlayStation’s Facebook page is a strong tool for communicating and spreading information to the gaming community. The social media team aims to keep content “the best of the best" on the page to give fans the latest and most exciting PlayStation news, which is why the page has nearly 36 million likes to date. Facebook is one of the most trafficked and most engaged social media networks, which allows the team to use it as a primary channel for news and information. Fans are eager to know what’s happening with PlayStation and want to share news with their friends and Facebook enables us to engage with our fans in this way while also allowing us to link readers back to the PlayStation.Blog our official news source hub. Tactics The social media team is highly motivated to engage fans with the very best content and follow a basic rule of thumb to focus on quality over quantity. PlayStation is for gamers and in order to bring fans the most immersive and engaging experiences, the social media team knows that, first and foremost, we have to share the latest and greatest news and content from PlayStation with fans. In order to do so, the team takes a mostly organic approach when engaging fans on Facebook and other PlayStation social media channels. The team only selects paid media surrounding major events and even then the team uses very little. The primary focus is to stay true to fans and the best way to do that is to engage creatively and with authenticity. To make Facebook one of PlayStation’s primary engaging social media tools, the social media team took careful analysis of past engagement numbers and decided to disengage topics that did not resonate with the brand or engage with fans. The team wanted to use Facebook as a highly engaging tool to share the best news with PlayStation fans and took measures to make lasting improvements that lead to the popularity of the page to date. The team initially pilot tested content they felt would garner positive feedback and engagement with fans on Facebook through other channels such as the PlayStation.Blog and on Twitter. Once engagement was strong and healthy on Facebook, the team began Geo-targeting to help build more engagement with fans across the nation. Now PlayStation’s Facebook page has more than 36 million likes and continues to grow as the brand continues to evolve with the best place to play. Execution Experimentation: 2009-2010. During the early days of Facebook brand pages, nobody knew what Facebook was good at. The social media team tried a “fire hose" approach that mirrored their Twitter page strategy, where every PlayStation.Blog post or news bit was published on Facebook. This inhibited the growth and engagement of the page, which drove the team to try a different and ultimately successful approach. Refinement: 2010-2011. The social media team began to be more selective about what was published to PlayStation’s Facebook page. This focused approach drove steady growth, as they were able to more carefully produce posts with visuals and video, and refine the language, to achieve optimal performance. Mastery: 2011-2012. This period saw breakneck growth as PlayStation hit its stride in terms of engagement, content output, and new tools that enabled powerful abilities such as post scheduling and geo-targeting. Global: 2012-2013. An increased emphasis on global engagement became key as more regional pages were rolled into the master Global page. This enabled the global teams to be more streamlined and communicative internally, which helped with increased engagement with fans worldwide. During 2013, With 36 million fans on Facebook, PlayStation’s strategy was a “best of the best" content curation for late-breaking PS4 information, videos and pictures. The social media team at PlayStation created multiple photo albums on Facebook for the PS4 launch, with pictures of the actual console, photos from events and images from PS4 games. The albums were used to interact with fans that could not attend launch events and to give them a glimpse of what to expect from the console. PlayStation posted 44 PS4-related posts on its brand page during the launch period. These posts reached 75.4 million Facebook users, 106 million impressions, engaged in 708,798 total fan interactions, and on average, each post received over 16,000 engagements from Facebook fans. The total number of likes for the PlayStation Facebook page has nearly doubles in the last two years, and PlayStation is now the 11th most Liked brand on Facebook, according to Fan Page List. In 2013, PlayStation engaged twice as many users per month as it did in 2012.
