Have You Tried a Facebook Promoted Post?

Recently, Facebook has been offering a new, inexpensive way to advertise. I think you should give Facebook Promoted Posts a try. Here's how it works, and why you should test it for your page.

From Flickr user Sean MacEntee.

How it works:


For a little cash - usually, $5, $10, $20, or a little more, depending on how many Facebook fans you have, Facebook will make sure your post is seen by a larger percentage of your fans and their friends. Right now, if you have more than 400 fans on your page, you can promote any post for three days.

Why you should try it:

An average Facebook post will be seen by about 16% of your fans. One of my clients is doing better than that - their average post is seen by about 30% of their fans. They have a small, but very engaged community.

When we spent $10 to promote a Facebook post, we went far beyond that - our promoted post reached six times that many people - more than twice the amount of people than our total fan base. Many more people saw and shared our promoted post than usual.

What's more, we saw a doubling of engagement in the 10 days after our promoted post, gained some new fans, and we continue to see a 30% lift in engagement on Facebook, several weeks after the promoted post. 

What to promote:

I'd recommend testing something entertaining - a video, photo gallery, game, or something else fun. Inactive fans - those who haven't interacted with you in a while - are going to see this post and you want to give them a reason to rejoin your active fan base.

But Beware:

Yes, we only spent $10 and got some encouraging results. But those $10 posts add up. Make sure you're budgeting appropriately - you don't want to be spending money every few days to promote another post unless you're seeing good results. Your priority should be generating quality, engaging content to serve your social media audience - once you have great content, then work on promoting it. 

Let me know how this works for you. I'm looking forward to hearing your stories!

Does your Facebook strategy  need a bit of a facelift? Let me know. I can help. 

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A Neat Idea for Leveraging Your Facebook Fan Base

Facebook is good for a lot of things, but one of my favorite things about it is that it makes your birthday really, really fun. Even people who rarely use Facebook visit their pages on their birthdays - after all, who doesn't want to check out birthday greetings from friends around the world?

You can use this natural inclination for birthday greetings to help your business. Did you know that you can target Facebook ads to people with a birthday in the next week? This is a time when people are already checking their Facebook pages to see all the postings from their friends, so make the most of it.

When you're creating your ad, at  "Choose Your Audience," next to "Broad Categories," pick "Events," and then "Has a birthday in less than 1 week."

At this point, you're positioned to deliver some very targeted, relevant ads. You can deliver special offers with a message acknowledging your customers' special event.

Messages like: 

• Happy Birthday! Get yourself a little something nice this year. Click for your 10% birthday discount.
• It’s your birthday. We have a present for you – 10% off for your special day!
• Happy Birthday! Click to learn more about your special birthday deals.

As you can see, these ads reach your audience in a meaningful way. I'd encourage anyone to test a birthday offer on Facebook against any other ads. The results may surprise you.


How are you using customer data to deliver more engaging, relevant offers? Please share.


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Things You Can Do Now to Drive Sales, Traffic

It's easy to slip into the summer doldrums. People are on vacation, sales slow down, donations dry up, traffic disappears, and it's way too hot to do anything. Your business can't really take an extended leave of absence, so here's a few things you can do to get things moving again.

Lazy Summer: Flickr user Cali4Beach.

1) Borrow a move from Target's playbook, and have a summer sale. If you get their emails, you'll notice that they had a Cyber Monday sale earlier this week. What's cool about this is that no one else is having that kind of sale right now - Target's event really stands out. Check out this little website for a list of things you can celebrate with customers.

2) Have a secret sales event for your best customers. This doesn't necessarily mean you need to give them discounts, either. Do you have new products that you haven't put out to the larger market that you can promote just to them for a short time, or limited stock of certain items? This is a great way to say thank you.

3) For you nonprofits out there, what about a summer friend-get-a-friend campaign? All you need to do is ask your donors and members to recruit friends to your mailing list, or to your Facebook page (preferably both). Then, when it's time for you to do your next round of asks, you have plenty of new names with which to work.

What are you doing to beat the summer blahs? Please share!


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Try it Today: Customized Sharing Links

What makes sharing links better? Customized sharing links, that's what!

From Flickr user Krissen.

Do you work for a non-profit with no social media budget? This isn't that unusual, and non-profiteers have become experts in combining free tools to drive engagement, analytics, and action. I've just come across a new tool that can make your email newsletters (and your whole web site, actually) a better catalyst for social sharing.

When you send out your emails, you want people to share your content on their social feeds, right? Are you always happy with the auto-generated Tweets and Facebook posts that are created when people click your sharing buttons?


Is the resulting Tweet or Facebook post a little too generic for your taste? Is the Tweet missing your Twitter handle? Is the photo that comes up on Facebook the wrong one?

Wouldn't it be great if you could create better Tweets and Facebook posts for people who clicked on your sharing buttons?

OK, that was a lot of questions. The good news is that there is a solution to this problem - a brilliant little tool called Watershed Share.

How?

You can use Watershed Share to write your social media posts, including photos and shortlinks, and then link the resulting URLs to your sharing buttons.

Then, when people share your content, the Twitter and Facebook posts you created - with the right hashtags, Twitter handles, and photos, are populated right on folks' feeds. They can, of course, make some edits before they share with their fans and followers, but they are less likely to do that if you write better content for them.

This is a great tool for multi-article email newsletters, but also can work anywhere on your web site.

Why?

This is just one more way to better control your brand and your message, and one more way to better serve your customers by making it easier to share great content. So, thanks Watershed for the tool!

Have you tried this? How did it work for you? Let me know.

How to Connect Your Facebook and In-Store Marketing

European retailer C&A has introduced clothing hangers that display the number of Facebook "Likes" for each piece of clothing in their store in Brazil. This means that shoppers will already know what's trending when they walk into the store - a far more direct way of using Facebook data than we've seen so far.

Most of us don't have the money to invest in the technology to make this happen at our own retail locations, but we know that many shoppers use Facebook to check trends or share favorite looks with friends.

So what can we do to leverage Facebook activity in store without a major technology investment?

• First, make sure that items from your retail store are indeed being promoted on your Facebook page. For example, you could ask your fans, "What do you think of this dress?" Let them know that it's all about orange this summer and provide sample looks, or tell them that sunglasses are 2-for-1 this weekend only and invite them to come on in.
• Once you have that level of interactivity going, you'll then be able to use in-store signage to highlight items that are the most talked about on Facebook. It's lower-tech than what C&A is doing, but still an effective way to promote popular items for sale.
• Make sure you're set up on check-in apps like FourSquare and Facebook Places, and that you promote their use on your Facebook page.
• Also use in-store promotions to encourage people to join you on Facebook, and vice-versa.

Your customers are expecting a seamless experience these days. They want a consistent interaction whether it's on Facebook, their mobile, or in your store. You can help by integrating your message across channels and inviting your audience to join you, wherever they are.

Want to know more about what C&A is doing? Check out this video from Mashable:

Removing Barriers to Social Media Engagement

In your travels, you've probably seen some big brands who are barely active on social media. It seems weird, doesn't it, that a Fortune 500 company or a trade association with hundreds of thousands of members would only post on Facebook a few times a week, or that it would never retweet anyone, or never post a video on YouTube, right?

It's a challenge. Flickr user brewbooks.

Here's what's going on in these organizations, and if you work with one of them, what you might do to help:

1) The debilitating approval process. I have a colleague doing some work for a big company right now. There is a 5-layer approval process for Tweets. The end result? The product SME's responsible for generating content can't be bothered with Twitter, so the channel goes largely unused, except by HR, which retweets the same "We're Hiring!" tweet every few days.

How to help? If the approval process can't be flattened, sometimes it's possible to help the product people package Twitter with other content. For example, this company does a number of whitepapers and other reports. If each report was packaged with publicity  - perhaps including a blog post, press release, and then some content for LinkedIn, Google+, and Twitter - then everything could be approved in one process. At that point, five layers wouldn't be as much as an imposition, since everyone would only need to look at one package.

2) The feeding of the content beast. Some organizations  just don't have a lot of new content every week. In fact, MOST organizations don't, unless they traffic in the news and current events. Belief that you can a) only broadcast your own content, and b) you can only promote each piece of content once, can really hold you back.

What to do? Twitter, especially, is a community full of people interested in any number of things who support each other in what they do. Find some organizations with similar goals and retweet some of their tweets. Also, find some news outlets in your industry and retweet important industry news. Last, anytime you get positive media pickups or people from your organization are quoted in the media, post it. Facebook is a wonderful place to engage with your customers - while you'll definitely want to share your media pickups there, it's also a great idea to request user-generated content. Ask your Facebook fans how they feel about issues important to your organization, how they are using your product, or run a video or photo contest. Finally, consider the stock and flow social media strategy. That way, you'll always have content but you'll be ready for breaking news.

3) The fear of true engagement. Many people work in organizations where they aren't allowed to thank people for comments or retweet their followers, or even follow most people back on Twitter. It's not surprising that executives from organizations like this don't see a lot of results from social media - how can they when these tools aren't being properly used?

What's your strategy? You've got to be firm in explaining to your organization that it's violating the social contract implicit in social media by not showing any love. Does that mean you have to follow back everyone who follows you on Twitter? No, but follow more than you've been following, especially influencers. When there's multiple comments on a Facebook post, thank the commenters for their support and feedback, and provide more information if needed.

How are you helping your organization grow with social media? Let us know in the comments.

How Facebook Ads Can Work for You

If you've tried online advertising and you're having trouble seeing any returns, you might want to give Facebook Ads a whirl. I think you'll find, like my clients have, that the targeting is easier to manage, easier to test, and can even be more affordable than other ad networks.

Creative Advertising Photo by Flickr user rooneg.

Say, for example, like the people installing a new window in my dining room, you run a local home improvement business. Like them, you're not seeing a lot of results from advertising in the phone book.


Here's what to do:

First, write the ad. Keep it simple. Use a headline that pops - I like to try a question, and then a call to action, like "Great deals on quality home repairs - windows, floors, more. Click for current specials."

Then, add an engaging photo. I like pictures of people. If you don't have any good photos of people, consider a membership in a site like iStockPhoto, where you can choose what you need from millions of photos with practically any subject matter.

Now, let's talk targeting. This is what's so amazing about Facebook ads, and one reason why people are valuing its upcoming IPO so highly. Anyone, yourself included, can deliver highly targeted ads to a group that's self-identified as interested in what you might be offering. How?

• First, you can target by location - by country, then by state, city, and/or zip code. For a business like this, I'd target by city - you're free to chose more than one.
• Next, you can target by demographics, including age, sex, interested in (for dating purposes), relationship status, and language. For an ad like this, I might choose people 30 and up, since they are more likely to own a home, and maybe test ad response for single vs. engaged or married people. I might change the photo to something more group or family-related for the engaged and married folks.
• Then comes the most exciting part - I can target this ad by likes and interests. I can choose fans of things like the DIY Network, Martha Stewart, Home Depot, and HGTV, since people interested in these kinds of things might want to fix up their houses. After I do this, Facebook will continue to suggest more opportunities for targeting. As you can imagine, this makes Facebook a powerful way to identify and connect with very targeted audiences.
• Finally, you can target by education and work. You can target people by level of education, by school attended, and also by where they work or worked in the past. I don't think we need this kind of targeting for the ad we're working on today, but it can come in handy for other things.

All that's left to do is set our budget by impressions (how many people see your ad), or clicks. Facebook provides suggested bids. We'll also set a daily budget for each ad campaign.

And finally, once your ads are up and running, Facebook provides reporting on who has responded, by gender, age, and location, to further help your future targeting. How cool is that?


So, are you advertising on Facebook yet? Why or why not? 

Let me know in the comments, or send me a note and I'll help you get set up.

Do Some Spring Cleaning for Your Online Channels

So, this week is the beginning  of spring, and if you’re here in DC, the Cherry Blossom Festival is getting well under way – the warm weather we’ve had has them blooming earlier than usual.

Tulip. Photo: Leah Ibraheem.

It’s also time to start your Spring Cleaning – clear out the clutter that’s been accumulating since last year, airing out the rooms, and get a fresh start.

Yes, your online properties could also use some decluttering. 

Let’s start with your web site: 

1) Is the contact information correct? Did you add or change any locations, phone numbers, or social media feeds since your last update? Don’t let missing or incorrect contact information stand in the way of a great customer experience.

2) Are the products current? Remove any items you’re not selling anymore. It’s also a good idea to suppress things you don’t have in stock right now, but might bring back later. You always want to point customers to things you have on sale now – things they can get right away.

3) Do you need to refresh your imagery? If you’ve had exactly the same images on your web site for several months now, you might want to refresh your hero photos and stories. A web site that doesn’t have rotating content can seem stagnant, like you aren’t really paying attention.

How about your Facebook page? 

1) Have you updated with the new timeline structure? Do you have the images and other content you need to do this? Here’s a handy primer from Social Media Examiner on the new look and feel, and how to make it work for you.

2) Are you using Facebook Insights? Facebook’s reporting can tell you the basic demographics of your fan base and how engaged they are. You can use this data to get more fans by advertising to people who are similar to your fan base. You can also use this data to talk about things that will interest your core demo in a way that appeals to them. It’s critical to know whether your Facebook fans are 20-year-old guys or 40-year-old women, and if they are in Topeka, Trenton, or Tuscon.

3) Are you using Facebook Ads? I find that Facebook ads can be more effective than Google ads at driving traffic – I have the option on Facebook to advertise to fans of other brands and of specific topics, so it’s can be easier to identify prospects on Facebook than on Google Adwords, where I have to decide what keywords my audience might be searching.

What about your Twitter feed? 

1) Should you keep tweeting? I love Twitter, but it can be a time-sponge. Now’s a great time to decide if you want to invest a little more time in Twitter by tweeting and retweeting every day.

2) Are you using twitter management tools? I use HootSuite to schedule and monitor tweets, but there are other tools that help you do the same. Scheduling tweets ahead of time can save you a lot of time, and keep you from ignoring Twitter for days at a time, which can be tempting.

3) Have you thought about a Twitter event? Hosting a Q&A with a product expert can be a highly effective way to get new followers. Try it and see what Twitter really can do.

How’s your spring cleaning going? Share in the comments and let me know.

Which Social Networks Should You Be On?

We're all pressed for time these days, and it can be challenging to figure out how to spend our limited resources. With so many social networks out there - from Twitter to Pinterest to Ravelry to Orkut - where should you be? Here's a quick guide.

So many networks. From Flickr user socialmediahq.

Facebook - if you're a business-to-consumer operation, you'll need a Facebook page. You can target people by age, location, and interests to draw more fans.

LinkedIn - if you sell to other businesses, if you're a consultant, if you need to hire some new employees or vendors, or you're looking for people with whom to make business deals, you'll need a LinkedIn profile.

YouTube - YouTube is a great way to reach people with videos about your products and services. Teach people new ways to use your offerings and they'll value it more.

Twitter - Twitter is another way to connect to fans with current news and to follow trends. Hold events on Twitter and you can generate tons of traffic. It's a perfect place for flash sales and a must if you run a business that changes locations frequently, like a food truck. But if you don't maintain it and engage with it frequently, Twitter is useless.

Pinterest - Currently taking the world by storm, Pinterest is a place where people collect photos of things they like. Whether you're selling clothing, cars, garden supplies, or something else, put your products on Pinterest and inspire people. Pinterest has everything from home decor to hair style to pet costume ideas for you.

Google+ - To me, Google+ seems like a bit of an echo chamber. While hangouts with famous people (like the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu) draw big audiences, the site doesn't seem to be sticky for most regular folks. At the moment, power users of Google+ seem to be software developers, bloggers, marketers and other technical or communications types. It's a good space to watch to see what develops. The interface itself is great - it's just a matter of convincing people that they need to visit more often. Using Google+ can also help your search results, and it's a channel to consider for that reason.

Other special networks - If you're in to fiber arts, check out Ravelry. If you sell black eyeliner and and ankle-length leather coats, then it's time for VampireFreaks.com (note: NSFW). And if you want to establish a closed network for people who work at your company only, give Yammer a try. If you operate outside the US, do a little research - people in other countries may use different social networks than they do here in the States.

I'd recommend that most businesses try to maintain a major presence on only three or four networks - maybe Facebook, YouTube, (if you have the video assets), and one or two more.  The most important part about your social networks is that you maintain them regularly. Networks like Twitter and Facebook require daily posting to be effective. Be realistic - if one social network is all you can manage, do that, and do it right.

Where's your social space? Drop me a line and let me know.

Epic Social Media Fail - Atlanta Restaurant Calls Customer B***ch on Facebook

This week, learn from this crash-and-burn social media mistake - an Atlanta restaurant called Boners BBQ wrote profanity-laced Twitter and Facebook posts directly naming a specific customer, Stephanie S., after she apparently did not leave a tip (the customer said she did), and also left a negative review on Yelp. Here's the original post (pardon the language). Boners also posted a photo of Stephanie so people would know her identity. Wow.

Image: Huffington Post/Facebook.

The company has posted several apologies on its Facebook page, but customers continue to visit Yelp to post in support of this customer - calling out Boners BBQ for bullying and a lack of professionalism. For a restaurant that appears to be struggling anyhow - their original excuse for this behavior was that employees have been working without pay and the missing tip was the last straw - this is not going to help.

What did restaurant do in this situation? 

The posted apologies were a step in the right direction. I hope they have also taken the time to chat with Stephanie S. directly and personally apologize to her. This Facebook Post is a good one:

Image: Huffington Post/Facebook.

This one is a little less on the mark:

Image: Facebook.

Boners is just going to have to put up with reaction to their epic social media fail for as long as it takes. They should continue to apologize and eat crow until people are all complained out.

The owners of this business should also learn from this experience and institute a few rules and regulations for their social media content.

So what's our takeaway?

The takeaway here for your business is that Boners is an organization in dire need of a social media policy. If you don't have a few rules for your own accounts, here's what I'd recommend for any business with a public social media presence:

• First and foremost - NO bullying or aggressive language.
• Second - NO profanity. 
• Third - protect customer privacy - don't name customers unless replying to their post or they authorize it.
• Fourth - react to complaints with empathy and respect.
• Fifth - posts should be positive, engaging, relevant, and actionable. If a post doesn't pass this test, then it shouldn't be published. Boners created this whole firestorm themselves with their own post. If they'd just left the negative review alone, they wouldn't be making the news in Iraq.
• Finally, seriously read and consider each negative review. In this case, complaints included Stephanie's opinions that dishes arrived cold, and that some of the preparation was not up to snuff. These problems are solvable for most restaurants and Boners should concentrate on that. Stephanie did praise the flavor of several dishes - strengths on which the restaurant can capitalize. 

Your customers are your lifeblood. A loyal customer isn't your right, it's someone you earn. Learn from reviews and respond with a measured approach if you feel they are inaccurate. Please don't abuse the people who post them - negative feedback helps you identify problems and fix them.

Words of the week: 

Honor your customers' privacy, respect their opinions, and just be decent human beings. Let's all resolve in 2012 not to repeat this kind of thing.

Need help crafting your social media policy? Let me know. I can help.

Five Steps to a Better Facebook Feed in 2012

Like two thirds of small businesses, you probably put up a Facebook page at some point in the past couple of years. Maybe you're not keeping it up so much anymore because you don't really see the point, and your management doesn't see the results.

From Flickr user Max-B.

This is kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy - if you don't see the point of your Facebook page, then you'll never see any results.

Re-evaluate your Facebook presence and determine how to use your feed more effectively this year.

Here's five easy steps to a better Facebook feed:

1. What are you hoping your Facebook page will accomplish? Do you have a goal for the number of fans you want, their level of engagement, or how much they buy? 
2. How much traffic is Facebook giving you each week, and what do you want those people to do once they get to your web site? If the path is unclear, help people find their way to where you want them to go. 
3. Add more variety - post special deals, videos, blog posts, contests, photos, questions, and surveys to add interest to your page. 
4. Post more often - if you've only been posting once a day, try posting 2 or 3 times. If you don't post on the weekend, consider trying a weekend post to see what happens. 
5. There are many ways to customize your Facebook business page. Think about adding some graphical interest for your fans. 

Need help making your Facebook presence work for you? Let me know- I can help.

PS - on a related note, a recent article in eMarketer discussed a BzzAgent study which found that social campaigns give a long-term boost to brands. Brand advocacy and purchase intent can remain elevated for a year following a social campaign. Food for thought.

How Do Your Customers Use the Internet to Find You?

If you haven't seen it yet (and even if you have, it's worth another look), check out this great infographic from Business Insider - Incredible Things That Happen Every 60 Seconds On The Internet. 

Infographic by Shanghai Web Designers.

Among other things, there are 98,000 tweets, 695,000 Facebook status updates, and more than 1500 new blog posts.

How much of this action are you getting? If you're like most smaller businesses, probably not much.

And that's OK - you don't need to own Twitter, you just need enough people tweeting about you to dive traffic to your site.

The best way to get people tweeting about you? Tweet about them. If you don't do much on Twitter, think about setting a new year's resolution to spend 10 minutes on Twitter each day. Tools like Hootsuite and Buffer can help you to schedule your tweets and better understand your traffic.
In the mean time, there's a new version of Twitter out there that's generating some positive buzz - here are the highlights from Social Media Examiner.

If you feel like kind of a Luddite these days, don't despair, among other things, people send 168 million emails every minute. If you don't have a robust email program, you probably need one, unless you're letting coupon sites like Groupon and LivingSocial do your email marketing for you.

Even if you are, do you really want to pay for your email by discounting your product by 50 percent? It's time to price out this tradeoff - there are a number of email services geared towards list building for smaller businesses, including Constant Contact, but there are others.

Do the math - how many customers have you gotten through these coupon sites and what did it cost you in discounting? What would happen if you invested this amount of money on an email program?

Need an experienced eye on your email, Facebook, and Twitter strategies? Wondering what the heck Pinterest is? I can help. Drop me a line.

News This Week: Google+, Facebook, Gifting

What should you be paying attention to this week?

News - Google+ has opened access to everyone - no more invites required. It now also has search functionality, which really seemed like an odd oversight to begin with - a social network created by a search company that doesn't have search? Glad they resolved that one. This also means the war for stickiness between Google+ and Facebook is officially underway. (Mashable)

Meanwhile, Facebook has changed, among other things, the way your news updates appear, and it's now unclear whether users are getting all of their friends' updates - the "most recent" news option is gone (though you can get it back by un-designating all of your stories as top news), and Facebook now decides what's important, ticking off millions and millions of people. In cooler news, Facebook will be launching "Facebook Gestures" which means you'll be able to read, watch, and do other things in your status updates besides just "like"-ing everything. (Mashable, too)

Your takeaway: It might be time to take another look at Google+, which might be more useful now that more of your friends are on it.


At the same time, good advice from Harvard Business Review to practice a little temperance when it comes to social media. Users are feeling social network overload. Do we all really need to maintain a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Klout, LinkedIn, ReferralKey, Bebo, Ravelry, Google+, and Yammer? HBR recommends you take a good look at all of your social properties and make sure you're adding value for your followers on each one. Figure out why people are following you and tailor your content appropriately.


Finally, watch this space for more on gifting innovators like Giftly, which allows you to give a gift certificate for anything, whether the merchant is set up for gift certificates or not, Treatly, which is focused on fine dining, and LetsGiftIt, which takes the complexity out of group gifts. (FastCompany)

Your takeaway: The holiday selling season will be upon us before you know it. What are you doing to encourage more gifting this year, and how can you participate? Check out what these innovators are doing for inspiration.

Have a great weekend, and thanks for reading!

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