On Wednesday, I attended the Facebook Marketing Conference organised by Chinwag and Our Social Times. It’s great to be able to immerse yourself in a specific area for a whole day and it certainly sparked off some great ideas that I’ll try to be putting into practice soon.

I’d definitely recommend the conference to others in future. It was made up of quite a few relatively short talks and ranged from a keynote from Facebook (actually one of the less interesting sessions of the day) to best practices, technical insights and, of course, case studies.

One of the really positive themes coming out of the day, right from the Facebook keynote onwards, was a focus on using data within Facebook to inform and improve campaigns.

Facebook Insights really is a very powerful tool and, unlike other social networks, Facebook is really going out of its way to give marketers access to really interesting information. As we all know though, it’s not just about the data, it is about how you use it. And so I was equally pleased to see that the general focus has moved from measurement of quantitative metrics like number of fans to qualitative metrics such as engagement scores and even ROI.

There’s still plenty of work to be done in this field but it seems as though we are finally moving in the right direction. Facebook is a fascinating platform and there is plenty of opportunity out there for brands of all shapes and sizes.

Check out the presentations from the day and I’ll try and share some more specific insights on here in the next few weeks.