Be current

Create a contest that that is relevant to the current events. For example you could create a holiday contest with a virtual Easter Egg hunt. Hide Easter eggs on your website each day, for a period of time and invite your Facebook followers to join the contest. The first player to find an egg and click on it wins a prize. Perhaps it could be gift cards to the surrounding businesses within your community or your own products. All of the clues and hints to find the eggs could be posted on Facebook to drive people to your site!

People love photos

Run a contest using photos of your products, or business. Ask Fans to snap a picture of your products / business (or better yet, of them using your products!) and post the photos on your wall. As a reward give those that have posted the photo a gift card as a thank you.

Another option is to have Fans post a photo of themselves, could be seasonal such as Halloween or of them using your product. Then ask FANs to vote on the best photo and give a reward for those voting and a reward for the best photo.

Make them guess

Run a guessing game contest the same day of every week. The guessing game could be a word jumble of local businesses or landmarks, a picture of a local place where people guess where it’s taken, or old standby of how many items are in the container.

Ask for insight

Ask Fans to share tips on how they do things. The tip with the most unique comments or likes could win a prize. An example could be “what are your tips to growing a great vegetable garden”. Keep it light and fun, not to technical.

Favorite quotes

Ask fans to submit their favorite quotes. This is simple and can be applied to just about any business. The person who got the most likes or comments on their quote wins the prize.

Thank them for “likes”

Run a weekly contest where you’re giving away a prize for those Fans that have Liked something on your wall. Each week, put all the names of the “likers” in a list and do a random drawing to pull names.

Facebook offers a lot of ways to connect with customers, Friends and fans. Please share your Facebook contest success stories in the comments.

How often should you post on your business’s Facebook Page, and when?

Over the last six months we have been experimenting with the frequency of posting Status Updates on Facebook on the ServiceNoodle Facebook Page and the Small Businesses Facebook Page. From posting twice a day to only twice weekly, I have tested all levels of frequency in posting until finally settling on posting 3-5 Status Updates a week. At that rate “Unlikes” have minimal and the total number of “Likes” has grown at a steady rate.

But a recent change by Facebook has me reevaluating my frequency in posting yet again. Beginning November 1, users can now unlike your page directly from their News Feed. Previously users had to go to your page and scroll all the way to the bottom left to unlike your page. If users thought your content was boring or too frequent, many just hid your Page because it was easier. Now it’s just easy to unlike:

That said, now would be a good time for many Facebook Admins to step back and reevaluate as well:

1) Have a look at your Insights to see if your Unlikes have increased since November 1. If so, try posting less. I suggest 2-4 times per week although many customers will tell you even less than that.

2) If your Status Updates get very little “Thumbs Up” or “Comments”, then perhaps your content also needs to be re-evaluated. If all you post is marketing-related content (we’re awesome!) rather than a wide variety of content with a particular focus on offering special promotions and deals, then there is a good chance your customers are tuning you out. It just a  matter of time until they hide or unlike your Page. Your work is to find out through a process of trial and error what kind of content is interesting to your supporters. Much easier said than done, I know. It’s also worth noting that more Thumbs Up and Comments = More News Feed exposure.

3) Studies show that mornings are the best time to post on Facebook, but don’t just post in the mornings and never at the same time each and every day. If you want to reach all of your customers, then you need to mix it up. Not everyone starts their day with Facebook (though a lot of young women do). Try a Tuesday morning, a Thursday morning, and Friday at noon. An occasional Saturday morning post would be wise as well.

A final caveat: Large national and international brands have a different experience on Facebook and social media in general. They usually have a lot of fresh content, a product that people use in their daily lives, and a brand that customerts can whole-heartedly dedicate themselves to. Think Starbucks, Walmart, and Life is Good. These brands can (and usually do) post two or three times a day, and yet retain and even grow their Likes through frequent posting. But most small to medium-sized businesses  just will not have that same experience. You’ll have to experiment to see what works for your business, but I strongly suggest that in light of Facebook’s recent change, you err on the side of caution.

What are we doing in those 700 billion minutes? Probably perusing the more than 30 billion pieces of content that is shared each month. Or maybe visiting one of the 80 community pages and groups that the average user is connected to. There are over 900 million pages, groups and community pages that people interact with on Facebook.

What is a Facebook page? According to Facebook, “A Facebook Page is a customizable presence for an organization, product, or public personality to join the conversation with people on Facebook. Once created, you can develop and optimize your Page to ensure that it best represents your brand.”

Creating a customized Facebook page is a cost effective alternative to a website if you are just starting your business. With all of the customizations that can be made, it can be as effective as a website – especially if your target audience is already on Facebook.

Three Hats Marketing can set up a custom fan page for you, all you need to do is contact us!

As we become more and more of a “digital society”, how we communicate is changing and so are our communication habits. The Internet and the thousands of communication tools that have evolved with it (Email, Blogs, Facebook, LinkedIN, Twitter & many more) give us the ability to communicate 24/7 and with people all over the world, but are then enabling “bad communication practices”?

Are we using these tools improperly to communicate?

To answer this question, ask yourself these two basic questions:

1. Who am I communicating to with this tool – the target audience?
2. What information do these people want to receive?

We are seeing a lot of people communicating the same message, via multiple tools, to various audiences. Frankly, that’s just bad communication! Some of the more prevalent tools we see this happening on are Facebook, LinkedIN & Twitter. We commonly see people linking their Twitter accounts to the Facebook and LinkedIN accounts – and vice versa. Each of these tools has a different purposes, different audiences and function differently. As a result, you shouldn’t communicate the same across all of them.

To illustrate the point – would you share the same information to your mother on Facebook as you would with a potential employer on LinkedIN? Or better yet, would you share the same drunken college story with your buddy on Facebook as you would with a business partner in Twitter? Probably not. I don’t mean to pick on Facebook – that’s just the easiest example as it is one of the most common tools.

Below are some real world examples that we’ve seen on Facebook, LinkedIN and Twitter.

Facebook Example
Would your Friends on Facebook understand a post like:

“Thanks @SomePersonsName for the @SomeOrganizationsName mention at #QRS! Thanks @ SomePersonsName & @ SomePersonsName for tweeting about it!”

Unless you are an active Twitter user, the above looks like Pig Latin to you and your Facebook Friends.

LinkedIN Example
Would your professional contacts on LinkedIN appreciate a status update like:

“It’s impossible to flirt with the bank tellers because they see how broke I am #tfln (awesome!) 3 days ago from Twitter”

I’m going to go out on a limb and say your business contacts don’t really care about you flirting with anyone and probably have a different perception of you after reading this!

Twitter Example
If you work for a nationally recognized PR firm, would your company, colleagues, peers or fellow citizens appreciate a Tweet like:

“Fine New Orleans. Go back to your stupid flooded sh#t hole of a city with the trophy”

I know for a fact that the person who tweeted this is perceived much differently now!

Should you communicate this way?

These types of bad communication practices are becoming more and more common and are “cluttering” up our lives even more than they already are. If I am connected to you on LinkedIN (a professional networking website) I don’t want to hear about you “flirting” with anyone. And as a result of you telling me that – I probably don’t want to be networked with you anymore.

It is imperative to understand what the purpose of the tool is, whom we are communicating to and what information they want to receive from us.

Why is this important

Why is this important to your business? Because if you don’t understand this point, your customers might not want to be networked with you anymore either! Remember, you do have some control over how you or your business is perceived.

If you want help understanding how to use these tools to better communicate for your business, give us a call. 888.694.0646

Should I be using these tools to market my business?

We suggest the answer to this frequently asked question be a resounding, definite, straightforward, MAYBE!

Let me explain. First let’s start off with explaining that Facebook and Twitter are “social media tools”. Social media appears to be an ambiguous term and there are many different definitions floating around. Our interpretation of social media is web-based technologies used to stimulate social interaction and communication. At the end of the day, Facebook and Twitter are simply “communication tools”, and there are dozens of other “tools” just like them under the social media umbrella.

Now, back to the question at hand: Should I be using these tools to market my business? To answer this question, we refer to our three principles of marketing.

1. How are you different and why would someone what to buy from you?
2. Who is your target audience (in most cases, your buying audience)?
3. How does your target audience prefer to be communicated to?

Answering these three questions is the first step to every marketing initiative, and evaluating an investment into Facebook and Twitter is no different. It is easy to succumb to the peer pressure of Brian Williams and jump right into using Facebook and Twitter, but we are here to tell you….MAYBE!

The marketing principal of “How are You Different” is vitally important, but for this article, we are going to focus more on the “Target Audience” and “Communication Preference” principles.

The biggest attractions to these communication tools seems to be:

1. Everyone else claims they’re doing it, and
2. It’s free…we’ll, kinda

There are a tremendous amount of people, possibly even your target audience, using Facebook and Twitter but you must determine if they are the “right people”. So, you must ask yourself, “Is your target audience on Facebook and/or Twitter?” Both of these tools are Internet based, which means we have a tremendous amount of data to help us answer these questions. Spend some time defining your target audience, and performing research to determine if they are in fact using these either or both of these tools.

This is where the free part comes into question. The tools are free, but there is time required to determine if they are appropriate communication tactics for your business and what your plan is for reaching your target audience. Furthermore, there is time associated with setting up these tools, and actively using them to communicate and participate in conversations with your target audience.

That’s right, having conversations! An important aspect to both Facebook and Twitter is interaction. These are not your traditional one-way broadcast tools like TV or Radio. Those that are your Friends/Fans on Facebook and Followers on Twitter expect to have a virtual conversation with you. If you approach these relationships by just broadcasting information and not interacting, you’ll soon find that no-one is listening!

There is time associated with defining and building the measurement system to evaluate the effectiveness of your social media marketing plan and if you are receiving an appropriate return on investment. There may not be a cost to purchase these tools, but they certainly require planning and strategy along with time to use them properly – and time is money!

So MAYBE! Make sure you address the three principles of marketing and if you conclude that social media marketing is right for your business, spend the time to plan your work and work your plan.
If you are not already, follow us on Facebook and Twitter.