Social Media Marketing Tools - Back At You

Ok, so this blog is for the beginner.  This is for the those businesses that do not have a Facebook Page yet. I know, it’s hard to believe, but there are companies without a Facebook Page.  It’s ok, better late to the game than to never jump into it.  For these companies that are first jumping into social media, Welcome!

I put together a video just for you. Helping you walk through creating a Facebook Page and the importance of each step during the creation process. Here is a step by step walk through of creating a Facebook Page.  Enjoy!

Hope you enjoyed this simple video of the Beginners Guide to Setting Up a Facebook Fan Page. I summed up the video with these 7 steps:

1. Create FB Page – go to Facebook.com/Pages, on the upper right of the screen click on Create Page. Go through the steps of adding an image and description;
2. Add your friends. Invite your friends manually by selecting each friend of yours to invite. Also invite people you know from your address book. Whether it’s Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, etc. The goal is to invite as many people as possible to your page to get a following started;
3. Send out a personal thank you message for each new “Like;”
4. Do a Wall Post. Make it catchy and have a cool image associated with it;
5. Continue engaging your audience. Ask them questions, post images and ask for some comments or responses…your job is to create loyalty before you sell them;
6. If you want to get more sophisticated, create a “Like Promotion“. This provides an incentive for a user to like your page and rewards existing users. It allows your page to become viral. For every one participant, it reaches 200 people; and
7. Then take your promotion and post it in local forums.

Now that your Page is all ready to go, you need to get users and then engage them.  Make sure to read this articles to kick-ass in both!

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So you want more Facebook engagement?  There are some simple actions you can take to better engage your Fans.  Remember, engagement is the key to ensure your Wall Post are seen by your Fans on Facebook.  If you are not engaging your fans, you are wasting your time.  This is especially true with smaller brands that have fewer than 1,000 Fans.

According to AllFacebook.com Pages with fewer than 1,000 fans had a 11.64 percent decline in likes and comments during the 1 month time period following Facebook’s changes announced at f8.  During this time period, pages at or above 1,000 fan count had at least 1.73 percent of an increase in likes and comments.

The median changes for the brand pages EdgeRank Checker analyzed during this time period were:

• Views of brand pages dropped 22 percent;
• Likes rose by 16 percent; and
• Comments went up 14 percent.

EdgeRank Checker concluded:

Regardless of the impact of the new news feed, having high EdgeRank continues to provide visibility within the news feed. Ultimately, engagement drives EdgeRank, which should cement engagement as a top priority while doing Facebook page marketing.

So, let’s get your Fans better engaged in your brand.  Here are some ideas to get you going:

1. Ask your user questions – get them involved;
2. Use pictures- people love pictures. Pictures can be old and vintage or new stylized;
3. Send out a thank you message – if you have tones of new followers that is tough;
4. Do a weekly or monthly sweepstakes or contest – reward existing customers with the chance to win something and provide an incentive for new people to like your page; and
5. When doing a wall post, make sure you have a catch headline and thumbnail! Walll posts on average get a 6.5% click through, FB ad’s get .05%.

Following this easy tips and doing them on a consistent basis, should easily drive your engagement rate much higher!

Good luck.

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Every day I talk to people trying to build an online audience of potential customers, but their efforts mostly fail.  Why, because when it comes to social media people get confused.  I don’t blame them. Understanding marketing, technology all the latest trends and tools is a lot to handle for someone outside of the Internet industry.   Hell, I am in the industry and keeping up with the latest trends feels like a full time job to me too.

So I want to make it easy for someone with little to no “social media” experience to succeed in marketing their business online.  Therefore, I have created a 5 step process for social media beginners to succeed on Facebook.  Follow these steps and I can almost guarantee you will build an audience you can market to and monetize. Your friends will be asking you how you did it!

1.  Create a Facebook Page.  For now, forget about creating your own website that no one will find.  Instead, go to where over 700 million people are at and create a Facebook Page.  Once on that page, click “Create Page” in the upper right hand corner. When creating a Page, don’t forget to add an image and description.  During the set up process, it asks you to invite friends.  Hold off on that for the time being until after step two.  If you already have Facebook Page, well done.

2.  Go to BackAtYou.com and create a Facebook Like Promotion.  Yes, this is self-promoting, but this page converts 3-4x more effectively than a standard Facebook landing page (typically the Wall).  We would be foolish not to mention it. See facebook.com/backatyou as an example of how it works.  The goal is to create an incentive for people to Like your Facebook Page. Click here to get going.

After you finish creating your marketing promotion, go to the Promote step and install the promotion as a Facebook application on your Page. Once this is complete, you need to make sure the app you just created and installed is set to be your landing page for those users that have not Liked your Page. To do this, go to your Facebook Page and click Edit Page on the top right.  Then go to Manage Permissions and select the Promotions app to be the default landing page.  This is a must to be effective.  (Contact us if you have any questions or need help.)

3.  Stay on your Facebook Page and now invite your friends.  You can invite a couple ways.  The first way is to manually invite all your friends on your personal Facebook page. This is very effective, but time consuming. Another way to invite friends is through your email contacts (gmail, Yahoo mail, AOL, Hot Mail, etc.).  To do this, on your Page, click Edit Page, got to Resources and then select Tell your Fans.  Here you can enter in your email and Facebook will grab all your contacts and then will preview the list and let you write a message to your friends before sending.  The more people you invite the more people will Like your Page and enter your promotion.  For every 1 person that Enters your promotion, about 200 people will potentially see your brand and promotion through Wall posts.  This number can get huge!

4.  Now that your Page is up, promotion running and friends invited, next is to do a Wall post on your personal Facebook Page. I would recommend a Wall post telling your friends that you created a new Fan Page and that their support would be greatly appreciated.  Ask them to Like your new Page.  I would post this once a day for 2-3 days and then again in another week.  Don’t overdue it as you might upset your friends for being solicitous.  Another way to post a Wall message to your personal page, which is likely more effective, is to go back to your Page you created and on the bottom left side on your Page you will see a link that says Share.  Click this and share your new Page through a Wall post on your personal Facebook page.  The advantage to this method is that the shared message uses your Page’s image and description.  Click thru rates tend to be much higher this way.

5.  Now that you have an audience, don’t stop, continue to market your Page and use the promotion you created to bring in a bigger audience. Take the promotion link on Facebook and market it around the Internet.  Be proactive to grow your audience.  At this time, you need to start engaging your new Fans.  There are a few things you need to do.  First, when you get a new Like, take the time and send that potential customer a personal message.  That goes a long way to gain loyalty.  Next, start posting content on your Page through Wall posts.  Post meaningful and or fun content relevant to your business.  Maybe 1 out of 5 posts can be solicitous about your product or service.  Ideas for posts include providing tips, news, asking questions, posting pictures or videos or whatever is of interest. Images tend to get the highest engagement factor so use them whenever possible. Some posts can be serious and some can be fun, remember you are building loyalty, and that takes time. Be consistent and over time you will build a loyal and large base of customers to marketing to!

Now that you are armed with steps to succeed in social marketing, let’s get started.  Your customers want to help you, let them!  You just need the tools and know-how to get them going.  Good luck and if you have questions, feel free to hit me up.

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Nine out of 10 businesses with a Facebook Page do not know how to use social media effectively.  Typically a business sets up a Facebook Page because they see their friends and competitors have one.  Frankly, they are afraid of being left behind so setting up a Page on Facebook is the first thing they do. It’s a good start, but it’s not good enough.

Fact is, most business owners do not have the know-how, time or resources to manage their social media profiles.  In fairness to them, of course they don’t, they are running a business. I am here to help and provide a quick tip on social media marketing 101.

If you have a Facebook Page, at a bare minimum, you need to have a Like Promotion page. What is this you ask?  It’s simple, many very large brands on Facebook have a Like Page as the landing page for those users that are not yet fans of the Page (examples include Oreo and Skittles).  The Like Page asks a new user to Like or become a fan/friend of the brand. To make this even more effective, you should add a  promotion to the Like page to provide more of an incentive for a new user to Like it.  For example:

- Like Us and be entered to win (your product/service); or

- Like Us and get 15% off your next purchase.

Let’s face it, a business’ Facebook Page does not get a lot of traffic, so my belief is that every new user that gets to your Page must convert!  The Like Promotion page is your best chance to convert that new user.

Now once you get them as a fan of yours, then you need to continue to engage them through relevant Wall Posts. Check out my previous blog 10 must do’s for better Facebook engagement for some suggestions on continuing to engage users to create a loyal customer.

Good luck and remember, if you have any desire to use social media, at a bare minimum, get a Facebook Like Promotion started.  Whether it’s backatyou.com providing this service or you do it yourself, you will be well served with this simple, yet very effective social media marketing strategy.

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I find it slightly strange that so many brands have taken the time and effort to build an online presence but are not taking advantage of the fruits of their labor. It is relatively simple to get people to Like you on Facebook as it just takes a click of a button.  But now companies are caught like a deer in headlights with tons of followers and not knowing what to do with them.

The largest brands on Facebook like Starbucks, Oreo, Skittles, Redbull and others have teams dedicated to growing and engaging their online profiles. Here is a good article and list of top Facebook brands . These brands also provide examples and ideas of what the other 99% of companies that don’t have dedicated teams could do.

I have put together a quick list of what every large and small brand should do to better engage their existing followers. The list is based on the premise that content is king!  Everything you post on Facebook has a “hidden” quality score that users determine on their own.  Though you can’t please everyone, keep high standards to produce quality content.  So based on this, here are Must-Do’s to engage your fans:

1.  Create an emotional bond. When posting content try to illicit a positive response. Reactions such as “I have to have it!” or “What a great offer!” or “That was a great story!’  When posting content, be creative and to the point. Bounce ideas off your friends and colleagues to get the response you want.  The little extra time it takes to create the right message can make the difference between a viral or a dead campaign.

2.  Use pictures and videos. We all know that including an image improves the click rate.  So find cool pictures and videos and use them.  If you have an archive of old media, find alternative fun media to post and write a catchy phrase as a headline. With that said, keep the media relevant to your brand.  Don’t post stuff that will confuse a fan. According to Facebook, posting an image along with your content significantly improves the click rate.

3.  Make sure you have a good, catchy headline and a thumbnail for all Wall Posts. Wall Posts on average have a click thru rate of 6.5%, which is exceptional when compared to a Facebook ad that gets approximately 0.05%. Again, a good headline and thumbnail make all the difference whether someone clicks! Don’t underestimate this.

4. Offer an incentive to Like your Page. Encourage people to Like your page and offer them an incentive for doing so. People need to be nudged to take an action and nothing works better than offering a coupon, exclusive content, sweepstakes or a giveaway. Here is a shameless plug for Back At You, but it works.  By far this is one of the best ways to increase your Likes. This is also a good way to reward your existing Fans!

5. Provide weekly or monthly contest or rewards. Mix it up and don’t be predictable.  Even create a 1 day, impromptu promotion. Give away tickets, food, sneak-peaks, fun swag or whatever it is.  The best giveaway is fun and cost you little to nothing. The point here is not to plug Back At You, but promotions work really well. Another great thing about a promotion is that it provides a great way to thank a fan in front of your audience. There is nothing more cool than to have a brand post on their wall a message like “Congrats to David Smith!  David just won 2 tickets to this weekend’s concert. You and all our Fans are the best!  Thanks to everyone who participated!  We have a lot more to giveaway to say thanks, stay tuned!”

6.  Ask a question to your fans. I have a lot of experience in Q&A having co-founded one of the bigger Q&A sites.  Asking a question in a poll format or a headline almost always improves the response rate. Also include a link in your post so fans can answer the question on the desired page. I have tested this a lot and a question format in the header/title almost always yielded better engagement than a non-question.  Also, having a number in the title works well too (ergo this blog post!). Getting your fans engaged by asking a question is a great way to get engagement.

7. Provide local content.  This is more relevant to those businesses that operate on a local level, however bigger brands can earn a lot of “kudos” for promoting local activities and events without any of their own sales pitch. You can provide content about local events or activities occurring in your area.  Show your fans that you are involved and care about the local community. Even better is if you relate the local activity to your services without, however, looking like a used car salesman.  Maybe you can provide some interesting or expert editorial connecting your business to the event.  I know I always appreciate a business promoting other businesses or local activities without a sales pitch to buy something. It feels more genuine, thus gaining more respect and loyalty.

8. Provide a daily or weekly themed post. Pick a theme and do a 1-2 liner wall post about this theme or even a picture of the day (relevant to your brand).  Think of the “word of the day,” “quote of the day” or “daily horoscope” themes and how something so simple is so successful.  Depending on your business, ideas include “Today’s shoe tips,” “drink of the day,” “site of the day,” “Ways to dip an Oreo cookie (if you are the brand Oreo),” “Random places Starbucks coffee cups are found (if you are the brand Starbucks)” and other creative daily posts that will amuse or provide a tip to your fans!  Have fun and go nuts. Plus, when you post these daily treats they show up on your fans New Feed. They read it, Like it, and guess what….the Like now shows up in their Friends feed!  I love this idea!

9. Listen to your fans. You can’t expect your fans to always listen if you don’t listen to them.  Respond to their post and answer their questions and any feedback they have.  Your response shows you care and take an interest in their opinions. Plus it allows you to have a one-on-one conversation with a fan, which is invaluable to gain loyalty.

10. Send out a Thank You message. Thank them for being a fan of yours.  This is very under-appreciated by brands but has a big impact on the person fanning you. I know when I get a thank you message I am usually pleasantly surprised.  With that said, I can’t stand canned, auto-responses!  So there is a delicate balance of making sure the note is personal and not spammy. Also, don’t send it out immediately, ideally wait 4-10 hours before sending the thank you, otherwise it seems auto-generated and maybe desperate.

So there you have it!  Easy right?  Well, yes and no.  The reality is that none of these steps are difficult, in fact they are all pretty easy.  If you don’t have much experience, don’t worry, keep doing these suggestions and after a quick week or two of posting everyday, you will quickly get the hang of it.  One final note, doing all 10 steps might take more time than you have, no problem, pick at least 2-3 that you feel the most comfortable and then stay consistent!  Stay diligent and follow each guideline and, in doing so, I can almost guarantee you will be successful in engaging and growing your Facebook Page!

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