Facebook enhancing marketing efforts

Despite its massive user base and overall success, Facebook's marketing efforts have, for the most part, been below par.

"Facebook's been having challenges coming up with effective advertising," Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst at EMarketer Inc, tells Bloomberg.

But as Facebook evolves, it seems to have placed a greater emphasis on making the site more marketable for brands.

Mashable notes, for instance, that the inclusion of bigger, more visually appealing pictures on Timeline is an effective way to advertise your business because, well, people like looking at photos. High-quality images of, say, a certain menu item sold at a restaurant are more attention-grabbing that merely writing out the name of the meal and the ingredients.

Facebook is also taking a page out of Pinterest's playbook.

"Intuitively, [making photos larger] makes sense," Adam Schoenfeld, CEO of Simply Measured, tells the news source. "Pinterest is hot right now, and content presentation can be really powerful."

One example of a company taking advantage of larger images is Subway, which uses the huge cover photo space to market its new subs as sort of a banner ad to provide instant exposure of the product.

Another business embracing Facebook for marketing purposes is Coca-Cola, which has, among other efforts, included URL riddles with pictograms into status updates, creating a more interactive experience for users.

What's more, JetBlue went with a gamification technique with its updates."Fill in the Blank" posts asked fans questions such as "If your city could be any ("Hunger Games") district, it would be _____," notes the media outlet. The measure generated 182 percent more comments per post than the brand's typical updates.

Bloomberg adds that Facebook has taken things a step further to assist marketers with Facebook Exchange, which give advertisers information about fans' browsing history from third-party cookies to allow for more targeted ads.