1) Create a social media marketing Calendar:
When it comes to building an engaged fan base, regular interactions like daily status updates and weekly promotions are hugely important but so too are seasonal marketing opportunities like holidays, events and other widely-known annual milestones. There are all sorts of days throughout the year that provide opportunities to engage consumers — from holidays like Valentines Day, Easter and Hanukkah to ‘cause-related’ days like Earth Day, May Day and ‘bike to work’ day. There are also seasonal ‘events’ like ‘back to school’, Black Friday, the start of the football season, and there are even special events like the Olympics and the presidential elections. All of these provide powerful opportunities for companies to build a relationship with consumers and to market themselves. Unless you have a plan, however, it's easy to forget these holidays and events until it's too late. We recommend that you put together a calendar of all the holidays and events that you’d like to market around this year, that way you wont forget. Remember, planning for these kinds of marketing campaigns should start several weeks or even months in advance so don’t forget to mark on your calendar when you're planning for a given holiday should begin. As for what you should do to celebrate these holidays, promotions like contests, coupons, sweepstakes and giveaways continue to be the #1 method for successful fan growth and engagement on Facebook and they are particularly relevant when it comes to holidays and events.
2) Start measuring and optimizing your brand presence now:
As with all forms of online marketing, to be successful in social media marketing, you’ve got to measure your activities to learn what works and what doesn’t. For example, you should try messaging your fans at various different times of the day to see what results in the highest engagement, that way you’ll know the best time to message your fans going forward. There are various different tools that you can use to measure your social media marketing performance. Within Facebook itself, you can use the “Insights” tool to see all sorts of metrics about your Brand Page interactions including your post popularity, its reach and the amount of impressions it generated. Outside of Facebook you can monitor your brand presence in comparison to other brands (like those of your competitors) to get an idea of what they might be doing right, so that you might draw some inspiration for your own page. For example, if you see that a competitor has a sudden acceleration in its fan growth you can look at this company’s fan page to see what they did to boost the growth. Wildfire provides a free tool that can be used to monitor brand presence on both Facebook and Twitter, called the Wildfire Monitor. Use tools like Facebook Insights and Wildfire Monitor to understand what works best for you and your competitors and then incorporate this into your marketing plan!
3) Keep users engaged in between campaigns
While promotions are the #1 reason that consumers ‘like’ brands and are a great way to keep consumers ‘coming back’, it’s important that you keep users engaged in between promotions with interesting and regularly updated content. Update your brand page consistently, at least several times a week, with interesting content such as links to relevant media stories, interesting news about your brand, information about the industry in which your brand operates or about the community in which your business exists. For example, if you’re a gym or a spa you could provide health and wellness tips. If you’re a hotel why not message fans about great events happening in your region? Content you link to doesn’t necessarily need to be specifically about your own brand—in fact, recent studies have shown that Facebook dominates sharing in general, with 44% of all sharing volume occurring through Facebook. People are using Facebook to broadcast interesting things to each other— your brand can be a part of that, all the while encouraging interesting conversations and raising impressions.
Another excellent way to encourage interaction and sharing among your social media fans is to reward them for committing to “Like” your brand! Rewards can be tangible or intangible— for example, exclusive access to special deals and discounts is certainly a reward for a fan’s commitment. Companies like Rue La La and Sprinkles Cupcakes have great examples of fan rewards: Rue La La announced a surprise Facebook Fan Only sale that could only be accessed from its Facebook Page by fans of Rue La La (even website members, if they had not yet committed their “Like” on Facebook, could not access the special deal!). Sprinkles Cupcakes posts a daily “Secret Phrase” to their wall (which can only be seen by users visiting their Fan Page) that, if whispered to a Sprinkles cashier, earns the first 25 people doing so a free cupcake! Both of these exclusive rewards served to drive sales for both brands at a minimal cost to each company.
While promotions are the #1 reason that consumers ‘like’ brands and are a great way to keep consumers ‘coming back’, it’s important that you keep users engaged in between promotions with interesting and regularly updated content. Update your brand page consistently, at least several times a week, with interesting content such as links to relevant media stories, interesting news about your brand, information about the industry in which your brand operates or about the community in which your business exists. For example, if you’re a gym or a spa you could provide health and wellness tips. If you’re a hotel why not message fans about great events happening in your region? Content you link to doesn’t necessarily need to be specifically about your own brand—in fact, recent studies have shown that Facebook dominates sharing in general, with 44% of all sharing volume occurring through Facebook. People are using Facebook to broadcast interesting things to each other— your brand can be a part of that, all the while encouraging interesting conversations and raising impressions.
Another excellent way to encourage interaction and sharing among your social media fans is to reward them for committing to “Like” your brand! Rewards can be tangible or intangible— for example, exclusive access to special deals and discounts is certainly a reward for a fan’s commitment. Companies like Rue La La and Sprinkles Cupcakes have great examples of fan rewards: Rue La La announced a surprise Facebook Fan Only sale that could only be accessed from its Facebook Page by fans of Rue La La (even website members, if they had not yet committed their “Like” on Facebook, could not access the special deal!). Sprinkles Cupcakes posts a daily “Secret Phrase” to their wall (which can only be seen by users visiting their Fan Page) that, if whispered to a Sprinkles cashier, earns the first 25 people doing so a free cupcake! Both of these exclusive rewards served to drive sales for both brands at a minimal cost to each company.
4) Ongoing interaction is the key to a sustained conversation with your followers:
While planning campaigns around holidays can be highly effective, so too can running small, regular campaigns that consistently remind fans about your brand page and keep them coming back. For example, if you're a clothing retailer, make it a tradition to have a clothing item giveaway or a clothing photo share day once a week, every week. Your fans will come to know that Friday’s are “Fashion Tip Fridays” on your Fan Page, and they’ll interact readily with your brand when you post pictures of stylish fashion items or ask them to post their favorite fashionable looks for that week.
Do you do Taco Tuesdays or Half Price Cocktail Wednesdays at your restaurant? Translate these weekly ‘specials’ into your Facebook marketing to keep fans engaged, encourage in-store visits and facilitate sharing. For example, to celebrate Taco Tuesdays you could offer a weekly 2-for-1 taco deal for the first 50 consumers to grab your coupon. Or, to celebrate cocktail Wednesdays you could share a different cocktail recipe every week and offer up this cocktail for half price to any Facebook fans who order it on the featured Wednesday. No matter what your brand does, find a way to engage your users in a consistent interaction with your brand, using quirky and fun social initiatives and constant messaging.
While planning campaigns around holidays can be highly effective, so too can running small, regular campaigns that consistently remind fans about your brand page and keep them coming back. For example, if you're a clothing retailer, make it a tradition to have a clothing item giveaway or a clothing photo share day once a week, every week. Your fans will come to know that Friday’s are “Fashion Tip Fridays” on your Fan Page, and they’ll interact readily with your brand when you post pictures of stylish fashion items or ask them to post their favorite fashionable looks for that week.
Do you do Taco Tuesdays or Half Price Cocktail Wednesdays at your restaurant? Translate these weekly ‘specials’ into your Facebook marketing to keep fans engaged, encourage in-store visits and facilitate sharing. For example, to celebrate Taco Tuesdays you could offer a weekly 2-for-1 taco deal for the first 50 consumers to grab your coupon. Or, to celebrate cocktail Wednesdays you could share a different cocktail recipe every week and offer up this cocktail for half price to any Facebook fans who order it on the featured Wednesday. No matter what your brand does, find a way to engage your users in a consistent interaction with your brand, using quirky and fun social initiatives and constant messaging.
Now that you’re armed with some of the greatest tricks of the trade, get to work! Are you planning any initiatives for your marketing calendar that we didn’t mention in this post? Share them in the comments!
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