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Posts Tagged ‘Fan Page’

Did you set up a Facebook Fan Page for your business recently? Great! Do you know what and how often to post in Facebook in order to make the News Feed? Are you aware that Facebook has two news feeds and that if you are not active with your fan community, you may not even be shown based on the Facebook Algorithm?

OK – that’s a lot of questions, but, I’m trying to get you thinking. Facebook is a wonderful free tool you can use to market your business online. But, just creating a fan page is not enough to achieve success in social media.

Here’s 3 things you may not know about Facebook that can hurt your online marketing:

1. There is a Facebook Algorithm!
   Facebook, like Google, has an algorithm they use in order to determine who you see in your news feed. Have you ever wondered why in your personal profile you only see about 8 of your friends posts, when you have 178 contacts? Facebook has decided for you that you will, by default, see only the “Top News”. They determine who is part of this feed based on interaction (comments, likes and shares). To see every post by everyone and every business you are connected to, you must click “Most Recent”.

   If you have a business fan page, and you are not getting comments, likes and shares, you may NOT be making it into the news feed of your fans. This means no one is seeing your marketing messages and Facebook will not be effective in getting leads, building your brand and driving sales for your business.

2. Community Engagement is Key
   The only way to ensure you are part of the “Top News” feed is to get your fans engaged with you. By posting often (I recommend 3 times per day, spread out throughout the day, or when you know your fans are online); varying the posts with video, text and URL links; asking questions people will comment on, being shared, and asking people to “like” the post, you can improve your probability of being in the valuable Top News feed.
3. Live vs. Pre-scheduling
   I love pre-scheduling! It’s a time saver and great for those who have a small staff (or just themselves) as their Facebook Community Manager, but, automated and pre-scheduled posts all the time will not help you become part of Top News. Live posts are also necessary (ie. Log into Facebook directly and post from the wall).

   Also, when someone leaves a comment, you should reply in kind – and make it personal (ie. Use their name). This goes back to the engagement piece above. When your community is responding to you, you must also be involved in the conversation. Social media is not just online marketing, it is relationship building and your “fans” are your community. Nurture these relationships, and give them a reason to seek out your posts and come back to visit your Fan page often by entertaining them, providing good content they cannot get anywhere else and coupons for your products and services.

I hope this article provides food for thought. I wish you a successful day of Facebook marketing!

I recently had a chance to hear Mari Smith speak again at the Facebook Success Summit (#fbss10) this week and she gave a great presentation about Facebook Engagement and creating Superfans!

It’s so true that Facebook is a community, and your Fan Page is part of it. For your fans to enjoy interacting with you on your business fan page, they must feel valued and depend on your updates as a source of relevant information.

But, how can you engage them? The best posts that will get your fans “engaged” or participating, commenting and communicating with you will have a mix of text, URL hyperlinks, videos and photos (with photos being the most engaging). And, you must be posting content with frequency, not just once a week. You need to put a Facebook strategy in place for three posts per day, when you feel is the optimal time for your audience to be online. (Check Facebook.com/insights and click “details” to determine where most of your fans live).

Everyone likes to be acknowledged, so, when someone comments on your post, be sure to comment back and thank them. Use their name, be personal. Recognize fans when you can, such as randomly choose a fan of the day, or feature a fan who uploads the most photos to your Fan Page wall.

Most of all, be sure to ask questions in your posts. “What do you think?” “Give us your comments below.” Tell them “we want to hear from you” or “click like if you liked this post”. Let your fans know you are interested in what they have to say. Create a fun place that your fans will want to visit again and again and post great content they will look forward to reading.

Here’s wishing you successful Facebook marketing for business.

I’m so excited to attend the Facebook Success Summit #fbss10 this month. I’ll be posting to my blog with a recap of the key takeaways from the presentations. It’s very important to me to stay current on what is going on in the dynamic space of social media marketing, and that is why I am taking part in this virtual webinar series through the month of October. With people spending a 55 minute average amount of time on Facebook, you want to make sure your page is a great experience for fans and also “sticky” enough so they will want to keep coming back.

How to Create a Compelling Facebook Presence that Generates Profits
Social Media Marketing guru, Mari Smith gave a wonderful presentation with a 6 step Facebook strategy. Once you have set your goal for using Facebook, these are the steps to follow to achieve it:

1. Design – Make sure your Facebook Welcome page is designed to meet your goal (ie. Are you trying to get more people to opt in to your list? Make sure to include your email collection box.)
2. Content – Decide how often (frequency, time of day) to post good content to your fans and what kind. (links, videos, other people’s content.)
3. Promotion – Decide how often to run special offers, coupons and promotions.
4. Engagement – Make sure you are engaging your audience with questions and fun.
5. Conversion – Are the fans buying or doing the action you’ve requested of them (ie. Joining your list, commenting on your wall). Track as much as possible.
6. Scalability – When your fans grow into the thousands, do you have the internal support staff to continue your current level of service?

How to Build and Manage a Loyal Fan Base
Amy Porterfield and Cindy King, managers of the Social Media Examiner Facebook Fan page, gave a great talk outlining how they keep their fans engaged and happy. Here are their 5 tips:

1. Engagement – Respond to every post and use their name so it is personal.
2. Ask Questions – You don’t always have to ask something specific to your brand (ie. What is your favorite frosting.)
3. Use @ Tags – If your fan page has a personal profile behind it and you are “friends” with the fans, you can “tag” their name in a post to build relationships.
4. Use 3rd Party Articles – Reference someone else’s article and then pose your own question or comment about it.
5. Negative Comments – If you receive negative comments, don’t ignore or delete. Use it as a time to shine.

The Power of Facebook Advertising
Facebook has exceeded Google in the weekly market share of total internet traffic. Facebook is now the largest display advertising in the world as of 1st Quarter 2010, surpassing Yahoo. Chris Treadaway told us about how you can easily test Facebook ads and how extremely targeted and cost effective they are.

Chose to show your ad based on geographics, gender, age, birth date or marital status. Pick keywords people display in their profile. Choose to exclude those already following you. You’ll see the estimated reach numbers before you make the ad live. You can choose from the self service option spending as little as $1 per day or sponsored ads, with a $5k minimum. Be sure to run your ad for at least 7 days to get results, before deciding to change copy, headline or photo images. Track results over time to determine the ad that works the best for conversion.

Again, before you can get the results you want using Facebook for business, be sure to set a clear goal then follow some of the suggestions above to achieve it. If you need social media training or help with social media strategy, I can help.

As the Social Media Success Summit #SMSS10 webinar series continues, I wanted to share with you some tips and ideas to consider for your social media strategy.

“5 Social Media Case Studies”

@marketingprofs Ann Handley spoke about companies using social media and what they were doing well. Her main point was that your social media efforts should be Friendly, Focused and Fertile. Make sure you reach people on a lifestyle level, not just focusing on your products and services. Find out what people care about and create your social media campaign around that. A great example was a Fan Page from FiberOne called “Coping with Disbelief Clinic”: the disbelief is that the product is “high in fiber, but still tastes great”. They use videos and the branding for the product is low key, but, it’s very creative and 22,000 people are participating and creating characters to interact at the “clinic”.

“How to Bring Raving Customers to Your Local Business”

Groupon’s @andrewmason and Four Square’s @tristanwalker were on the panel for this discussion. Groupon harnesses the power of group buying with a daily offer to their subscriber list of 5 million people, in 60 cities. This service is great for a business because Groupon only gets paid if the deal goes live, which is set by the response rate. So, it’s a great alternative to newspaper ads. Something to look into if you are a brick and mortar.

Four Square is a mobile social application which “makes cities easier to use”. You are incentivized to explore your city and “check in” where you are. Consumers get points and businesses offer special offers to the “mayors” or, those who visit most frequently. Starbucks saw a 15 – 20% increase in check-ins when they launched a Four Square campaign offering free coffee.

“Creating Buzz With Social Media Contests”

@mike_stelzner spoke about why to hold social media contests. They: drive traffic, sell products, excite customers, increase exposure, provide goodwill, engage customers and are fun and memorable! Bottom line is that it should offer a compelling reward and make them very easy to participate in. To see big results, you need partners and those with a large following to help spread the word.

Wednesday May 5th was the first full day of webinars for the Social Media Success Summit 2010 #SMSS10. Here’s a quick recap of some the great social media marketing takeaways from the three webinars:

Optimizing Your Facebook Fan Page
@MariSmith gave a great class on “Optimizing Your Facebook Fan Page”. What I loved the most was seeing all the great examples of Facebook welcome pages. Did you know that your Facebook Fan page does not have to be just your wall of posts? You can have fans land on any page you like and if you have access to a great graphic designer, make use of Faceboook Markup Language (the FBML app) and create something that meets your business objectives like one of these:

1. This one makes you click “like” button to see it interact with you: facebook.com/CarrotCreative
2. This one uses video to engage you: facebook.com/stevespangler
3. This one lands you right on a product page to purchase and has the “like” widget next to each item: facebook.com/threadless
4. More video and a great example for a company that is not product oriented: facebook.com/EZINEARTICLES

The main goal of your Fan page should be to create a call to action. What do you want someone to do when they visit you? Become a fan? (or, now, show they “like” you?) Collect their email address? Order product? Use your Fan page to meet your business objectives. Plus, you can split test welcome pages, as each one has a unique URL. See which one works best for you!

5 Ways to Measure Social Media
@JasonFalls spoke about “5 Ways to Measure Social Media”.
I liked these 3 points regarding how to measure social media success (besides just strictly sales and google analytics):

1. Community: Fiskars has a great example of how they created a “community” of ambassadors for their product at: http://www.fiskateers.com/ Always good to keep people singing your praises!
2. Customer Service: You can measure effectiveness of social media if your customers are using it to get answers so you get less contacts to customer service, or your call center. Plus, the more ways a customer can contact you = happy customers. Compare survey results for more concrete results.
3. R&D: Use social media to help you come up with new or improved product/service ideas. No cost way to generate market research. Ie.) Dell “Idea Storm” http://www.ideastorm.com/ has received 13,000 comments. 415 ideas were used and many were revenue generating. Also, Joffrey’s Coffee http://www.joffreys.com/ reached out to bloggers and said “what coffee flavor do you like?” and created a new one based on their input called “coffee 2.0” which was then in turn blogged by them out to their followers.

Creating Ravings Fans with Social Media
And, finally, @Ramon_Deleon the Chicago Dominos Pizza owner who uses social media to WOW his customers daily talked about “Creating Ravings Fans with Social Media”:
Ramon has a huge audience of college kids on twitter and Facebook and as these kids move into corporate life, he keeps in touch with them regularly. He’s built a strong brand for himself and really keeps customers engaged in his social media spaces. I like these tips he shared:

1. Think about how you can help the customer and give them positive reasons to talk about you.
2. Promote them so they will tweet about you and share.

For example, he prints up a flyer that he puts on his pizza boxes with his favorite customers twitter handles on it, it has big impact. This is a case of doing someone a favor before they ask, so, you are on their good side when you need something. He also volunteers at many events in Chicago and always has a big Dominos sign along to get lots of photos taken to share in Facebook. He’s also great at quick videos to thank customers and even apologize for errors if needed. All these techniques using social media keep him top of mind to the customer and when someone thinks of pizza in Chicago, they think of him first.

Think there’s no power in Social Media Marketing? Think again! The blog “5 Minutes for Mom” is in their fourth year of hosting the Ultimate Blog Party UBP#10 and do they know how to drive traffic. Their “party” started last Friday April 9th and runs for 1 week until April 16th. As of today, they are reporting that the hashtag #UBP10 stream has had 15,704 tweets from 1,204 attendees, with combined reach 1,159,469 followers, and 29,397,282 unique messages! That’s some powerful stuff!

What’s an online blog party?
For @5minutesformom, hosted by @susancarraretto and @janicecroze, it’s a way to drive traffic to your blog, and the best part is that it’s for FREE. There are two ways to participate in #UBP10.

1. Give away a prize on their site.
2. Giveaway a prize on your own blog.

And, of course you can do both! It’s simple to fill out their online form with the prize you are offering (which had to be completed before the launch date) and once you have posted your “party” on your own blog, you just visit their McLinky page where you add your blog party URL (and your Facebook Fan page and Twitter URL as well if you like) and you have the ability from there to get tons of free exposure to your site.

The latest stats show they have over 2000 bloggers participating, and this is just half way through the party week! How’s that for activity on a free online marketing promotion?

What does this mean to you?
Social media is hot, it’s viral and it’s spreading like wildfire. If you’re not using twitter, facebook and a blog to drive traffic to your web site, you are missing out on a huge opportunity to not only generate new leads, but also make strong business partnerships that can further your reach into your target market.

My Party Blog Giveaway
If you are visiting me from 5 Minutes for Mom, thanks for coming to my party! I hope you’ll take a few minutes to explore my web site and blog and leave me a comment below telling me what you LOVE about social media. I will be giving away 1 FREE Hour of Social Media Training.

Want extra entries into the contest? Do one or all of the following!

• Follow me on Twitter and send me an @howdoimarketbiz message there telling me what you love about Twitter.
• Become a Facebook Fan and post on my wall what your favorite thing is about Facebook.

Make sure I have a way to reach you, by either enabling your email through wordpress, or leaving your email in the comment. One winner will be chosen at random by using random.org. The contest ends April 16th at 11:59 Pacific Time. I will announce the winner Monday April 19th. The winner has 72 hours to contact me, or another winner will be chosen.

And, don’t forget to head over to the Ultimate Blog Party (#UBP10) on the 5 Minutes for Mom web site! Besides having links to lots of great blogs, they are also having giveaways. If I were to win, my top three picks would be:

1. Tupperware Prize Pack – the winner will receive a box filled with fun Tupperware goodies.
   Provided by: Heather @ Marine Corps Nomads
2. 1 Month Subscription to Netflix. 2 DVDs out at a time and instant viewing to your computer.
   Provided by: 1stopmom
3. A $25 e-gift certificate to the Disney Store.
   Provided by: Kristin @ Couponing to Disney

Prizes 95, 83 and 71 would also be great! Enjoy the party!