Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Facebook Page Promotion Pointers

Some things to consider with facebook pages:

A client of mine has put up and is building a following for their FaceBook Page. Some discussion about that got me to thinking (again) about a few pointers to consider when spreading the word of your page. See list below. Some are rehashed from previous posts, some are new thoughts:

Make posts to your page in a slow steady pace. Don't dump a ton of updates at once
Try to make your updates relevant for your intended audience
Try to have some media as well (images and video are more interesting!)
Try to word your posts, from time to time in ways that are a little inflammatory (if appropriate for your image and audience) . A heated discussion is better than no discussion
Try to word your posts in a way that elicits a response. People need to be asked questions to get them talking and discussion and comments put the V in Viral!
You should send out updates to blast info to your audience but also replicate the info sent on the FaceBook page itself. This keeps the page looking fresh, new info is automatically placed at the top so new visitors see recent posting dates and will be more likely to decide that this is an active page and worth joining. Ding!
Another good reason for replicating on the page itself is that updates sent to your fan base lack a comment utility! Comments put the V in viral!
Leave comments on your posts or try to have a network of friends that do it for you.
Leave comments that try to elicit a response. The comment discussion is at the heart of the viral mechanics. This is when knowledge of your page grows beyond your circle of friends to your friends' circle of friends. Comments put the V in viral! Ding! Double Ding!!!
It's also a good idea to talk about more than just yourself in your updates. If there's no human element for people to connect with then it just feels like old fashioned marketing and people get turned off.

More on the last bullet item. Look, we're all grown up here and if you hadn't realized it yet you should have: "Social Media" is the new marketing tool. but having said that the game is slightly different. When you do your marketing on FaceBook, if you just talk about yourself, your accomplishments or otherwise about yourself, quite frankly you'll be putting people to sleep.

I haven't decided on an exact ratio but from time to time you do need to throw in some comments that are just your opinions on a current event, even something as simple as the the weather. Maybe even try to rile people up. Since this is marketing under the veil of "Social Media" you need to show them there's a person behind the page or people will just get that old "marketed to" feeling and vanish from your fan base. It's important to appeal to events in peoples' lives so that they get that warm and fuzzy connection to you.

You can also apply the list above to twitter and MySpace marketing. I can't tell you how many times I've tweeted for a client, then had the thought: Oh, this is too many posts about ME (the client) and gone and checked the fan base only to find that 2 or 3 people have stopped following. Conversely I have tweeted about things not directly related to the client but when people see it they feel connected by the human element of the comment, check us out and start following. Ding!

Labels: facebook, optimnize, page, promote

Friday, March 20, 2009

Twits and Tweets

A little about this Twitter and social marketing thing:

A recent comment from a client about Twitter made me realize it was time to poke around that place and see how the "Social Marketing" worked over there. I mean I hope you guys realize that FaceBook, MySpace and now Twitter have become the latest rage in marketing to you!
FaceBook has smartened up. We "Page" makers can even purchase Pay Per Click advertising on Mother F. now, they have become the latest marketing powerhouse. Probably not what Mark Z. had in mind when FaceBook got created. Or was it ;-)

It's actually the way i like marketing best. In this brave new world at least, the golden marketing rules basically seem to be:

1) Keep the interactions real!
2) Keep the content relevant!
3) Talk about the ups and downs of your product (and maybe learn from it)
4) Let the customers enjoy your online identity with humor
5) Let them participate in the discussion that revolves around you
6) Don't just pitch yourself. Can you say boooring!

Even Coke has figured out how to do it correctly. They have the second most popular FaceBook page on the site with something like over 385 Trillion fans (or was that the US deficit $). They have a nice looking page with constantly update imagery and comments.

I made a comment about friend or fan quantity not equaling quality a while back and added "except maybe for Twitter". Well scratch that. In a nutshell the only difference between marketing on Twitter and FaceBook is that you do it all in sentences no longer than 140 characters. So what does that mean??

How it's done on these different sites:

Well on FaceBook you get to set up a neat looking page (which they change the appearance of randomly, thanks) and upload media, start or participate in discussions, list events, etc and wait and build up your fan base. Once this fan base is built up you can blast the whole group with announcements and keep the love alive.

With Twitter you get to (and have to BTW) do all those things. You just do it in said 140 characters. So one might ask, how do i upload my 200MB video if all i get is a little box that accepts only 140 characters?? Well one answer is FaceBook. Everything you upload there can be linked to. But have you seen the size of their links. ouch. I think most are about 200 characters long, so where's the room for the marketing message?

Well I'm glad you asked.

Thanks to a tweet from my SEO Mentor Jill Whalen at High Rankings I found out about a great short URL service called "Cligs". It's like tiny url but it gives you analytics tracking so you can tell how many people used your link. Yay. You can turn a huge link into a few characters and have plenty of room for your short, sweet and relevant comment.

A little wrap up:

I did an expirement and had some pretty interesting "short cycle" results. I found that if you search the topic your marketing on search.twitter.com, find really relevant results that you can @reply to and point out your clig url you can get about 50 hits in a day with about 10 minutes of work. Since this is taking advantage of the search on Twitter and activity happens at a fast rate, your reply will drop off the charts quuickly too. But the point is you can have a direct impact with little effort a day and get youself noticed. 50 hits/day X 365 Days = 18,250/year hits for 10 minutes a day. Not bad ROI and not a bad way to build that fan base.

That stratergy should be part of the bigger goal to do on Twitter what you do on FaceBook, build up a fan base. On Twitter your building up a "following". Same animal. Like the best practices of any social marketing you should do the following:

Reply to only relevant tweets. If you reply to a tweet about someone not feeling well with a comment that points out your vacation web site, you'll get a resounding go F... yourself. If you reply to a tweet about not feeling well with a comment that is real and point them to this great site you know of with self help remedies for their ailment, you'll get a thank you and widely noticed. Maybe even pick up a few followers
Worry about your Twitter reputation. That means talk about something besides your product. Talk about your life, be part of the "community" not just a marketer. That later will bore and annoy people. Actually contribute.
Follow people and get people to follow you. This is one of the more important long term goals with Twitter (and the others). When you have a big following and you make that comment that mentions the wonderul web site with the self help books, your followers get it right in their Twitter homepage.
Remember with all social marketing, put it out their as a friend not a seller of something. How would you feel about your FaceBook friends loading you up with a sales pitch??

Labels: facebook, myspace, social marketing, twitter

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Marketing in the brave new social site world.

Social Media, Social Marketing, Blah, Blah, Blah.....

This is a little byte about using FaceBook to market yourself. There's a little difference between FaceBook and other mediums. There's also a different attitude you need to have when you work this route.

Although marketing is always about reaching people who are interested in what you've got, and that will never change. The methods with social marketing are sort of counter intuitive to some. You don't ant to use a medium like FaceBook to blast as many unknown people as possible about your great new widget.

That's just social spam.

The idea here is the "tell two friends" method. And the pinnacle of using that method is to get FaceBook friends to comment on your shared links and posts (more on that later). The unspoken contract here is that you respect your friends, and your friends friends and their friends. So you don't treat them like a flock of sheep.

People come to FaceBook to get away from that.

In this medium (and on other social sites except maybe twitter):

Quantity != Quality

There's some simple truth's you need to decide for yourself before you do the "Social Marketing" thingy:

Is your new product or service really that interesting?
Does it appeal to people emotionally?
Are you prepared to be open to criticism on your efforts?

The wider the appeal the better you will do. I dabble in this for my Web Design, that's almost a waste. I only appeal to people interested in finding a web designer.

I also do this for a local Boston band, their appeal: anyone who likes music. aahh ha!

People won't be put off by status updates about a band they like. They will be about my Web Design Company blog postings. uhh oh.

So, anywho back to this thing about the pinnacle of the Facebook posting. Here's the deal kiddo's. For the "tell two people" thingy to work. You need your friends to comment on your postings.

Try to share your links and other posted items in a way that elicits comment. That is the viral hook to move beyond your "circle of trust" to the greater FaceBook world outside. Better yet, craft your postings so that people will want to share it themselves and tell two friends, and so on, and so on, and so on........

Labels: appeal, facebook, marketing, myspace, social marketing, social media, twitter

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