In steps 1-3 of this series I discussed Creating a Plan, Content and Execution, and Analysis. Now, let’s focus on optimization. By definition, optimization is the process of making a design or system perfect. What is perfect? Well, perfection in terms of digital strategy is maximum effectiveness based on your key performance indicators, or KPIs. I suppose “maximum” and “perfection” are hard to quantify and may never be truly reachable, but the point is that you are continually striving to improve ROI. To throw out the jargon: you want to create better ads and content to achieve the most conversions for the smallest budget.

It’s important to remember that optimization is not a one time event. This process is ongoing and evolves with the successes and direction of your company. Successful optimization requires patience, constant attention and experimentation. It’s also necessary to stay in touch with trends and changes in your industry.

In a recent Legolas Media blog, they state that, “click performance isn’t always the best way to measure digital campaign success.” It’s easy to look at a growing number of clicks or impressions and feel victorious, but these may not only be the wrong metric, they could be hurting your brand. Remember, you are optimizing your campaigns to achieve your digital goals by tracking KPIs. If you feel like you’ve lost sight of them, maybe you should take a step back.

Optimizing Your Campaigns

Although I could break down each type of content, or different ad network, I will try to speak in a broader sense. Here are some questions to ask yourself when optimizing your campaigns and content:

Are your ads organized properly?

Most online ad platforms allow you to separate your ads into different ad groups based on topic, product, or service offering. If multiple topics, whether keywords or ads, are combined within a single ad group, your performance can suffer. Separate your ad groups by purpose or topic, and make sure to remove keywords or ads that are not performing well, which can hurt the overall ad group performance. You want to rank higher for a lower bid, so break experimental ads or new ideas out into new ad groups. It’s great to experiment, but don’t damage an ad group that has been performing well.

Are you engineering your content for better performance?

There are two parts to developing engaging content. The content must be informative, helpful and/or entertaining to your customers. You also need to make sure your content is engineered to reach the right audience. This begins with analyzing your title and keyword use and making sure it matches popular, low competition search queries. Tweaking a word or phrase can make a big difference when search optimizing your blog or video content.

Are you learning from past successes?

Once you find that a bit of content or an ad is successful, figure out why and use it as a template approach for the future. It’s simple, I know, but make sure you do it. Match high performing text/taglines with the strongest images and keywords. Eliminate tactics that don’t bring success in terms of your KPIs.

Are you looking at analytics and defining conversions?

To decide what campaigns and ads are performing the best, its not as simple as comparing dollars out to dollars in. There are many steps in between for a prospect before they are ready to buy. Knowing this, you’ll need to define conversions. Conversions are metrics you use to measure the value of a visitor and are often organized into a series of actions, or a conversion funnel. The difference between a visitor that looks at three pages and one that looks at four (and fulfills a conversion) could be the indicator that they are seriously interested and aren’t just browsing. If you work backwards from your conversions to the source, you’ll be able to see what ads and keywords are generating leads and which ones are attracting window shoppers that never become customers.

Are your landing pages working for you?

Improve messaging and targeting of your ads, and when visitors arrive on your landing pages, make sure the content and personality fits your ad. If your landing page doesn’t provide the correct information, or leaves customers with questions, your bounce rate is most likely high as well. Make sure your ad keywords match your landing page keywords, and keep the pages as streamlined as possible. Clutter loses conversions. Here is a helpful list of reasons why customers don’t convert on your website.

Are you improving PPC ad ROI?

We’re striving to get the most out of the smallest budget, no matter our specific goals. Maximizing investment is a universal goal for any business. To pay less for your PPC and display ads, you need to:

1) improve your relevance by making your ad and landing page more cohesive

2) remove keywords or ads with poor performance

3) keep up with trends and be willing to make changes often

Are you still focusing on KPIs?

Make sure you are still moving towards your original digital goals and basing your decisions on your KPIs. If you start tweaking and experimenting without a method to your madness, or without a control in your experiments, you probably need to get re-acquainted with your digital plan.

So now you are ready- courageous, confident and excited to launch your own digital strategy. Just remember to stay focused on your digital goals. Good luck!

TopTen is the ten most engaging posts last week from the largest 100 consumer brand pages on Facebook.
All data is gathered with social media content strategy tool Zuum.

#1 Chick-fil-A - photo2013-03-14 19:01

Happy 92nd birthday to Chick-fil-A Founder, Truett Cathy! Click "Like" to share your birthday wishes.

4.09% enagement rate 257,119 likes 8,582 comments 6,684 shares 2% shares

#2 BMW - photo2013-03-14 18:01

BMW Instagram

Thank you all for liking, sharing and commenting on the photos we post here on Facebook. If you want to see more of them, follow @BMW on Instagram: http://instagram.com/bmw

3.136% enagement rate 345,230 likes 5,258 comments 54,857 shares 14% shares

#3 CHANEL - video2013-03-13 17:10

The fashion essential that never goes out of style… a new film revealing the story behind the iconic CHANEL jacket. http://inside-chanel.com

The jacket - Inside CHANEL

www.youtube.com

3.027% enagement rate 248,268 likes 3,603 comments 12,628 shares 5% shares

#4 Macy's - photo2013-03-14 21:03

What’s topping VIP shopping lists everywhere? Designer shoes in every heel, size & color! http://bit.ly/WaVUFu

1.178% enagement rate 119,894 likes 1,529 comments 4,940 shares 4% shares

#5 Nokia - photo2013-03-11 17:10

Want Instagram for Nokia Lumia? Join the movement: http://nokia.ly/Zw5Tmv #2InstaWithLove

1.072% enagement rate 99,321 likes 3,302 comments 3,501 shares 3% shares

#6 Mercedes-Benz - photo2013-03-17 12:55

We present our latest selection of the most beloved pictures on our Instagram channel. Don't forget to follow us onhttp://instagram.com/mercedesbenz

The roar of the engine - Best of Instagram

We present our latest selection of the most beloved pictures on our Instagram channel. Don't forget to follow us onhttp://instagram.com/mercedesbenz

0.843% enagement rate 73,486 likes 774 comments 8,399 shares 10% shares

#7 Hello Kitty - photo2013-03-14 19:40

Tea time is so much fun with Hello Kitty! Find sweet porcelain mugs and plates now at Sanrio.com: http://ar.gy/3j_0

New Photos

0.613% enagement rate 67,385 likes 965 comments 8,978 shares 12% shares

#8 Amazon.com - status2013-03-11 02:00

Who would like that hour back?

0.529% enagement rate 87,486 likes 3,028 comments 573 shares 1% shares

#9 Gucci - photo2013-03-13 16:10

Black? Green? Yellow? Discover which Gucci 1953 Horsebit Loafer suits your style best. http://bddy.me/12H9T8H

0.41% enagement rate 37,586 likes 1,447 comments 3,409 shares 8% shares

#10 Ferrari - photo2013-03-11 16:59

You've seen it in Rosso Corsa and Nero liveries. Now the new special limited series car can be admired in Giallo Modena. To discover the avilable configurations pease click here: http://www.laferrari.com/en/design/

0.381% enagement rate 35,680 likes 527 comments 5,375 shares 13% shares

Facebook Pros and Cons

The social media giant clearly leads the field in terms of B2C marketing. But how about that professional audience you’re trying to reach?

• Pro: Facebook’s huge user base means that more professionals are on Facebook than on LinkedIn in terms of total numbers. Those professionals don’t turn off their business acumen when they’re on Facebook, so you can still market effectively through the broader platform.
• Pro: Facebook allows direct marketing through Facebook ads, meaning you’re no longer dependent on buyer engagement in order to reach potential customers.
• Con: Facebook posts may or may not appear on your fans’ walls, depending on their level of engagement with your brand.
• Con: Marketing efforts must compete with non-professional posts. Music videos, cute puppies, and pithy quotes are all clamoring for the attention of your potential buyers. Your posts have to be good enough to earn a viewing amongst all the ruckus.

LinkedIn Pros and Cons

Most professionals rely heavily on LinkedIn for job seeking, hiring, and networking. But is it an effective way to market to business professionals?

• Pro: Professionals tend to gather at LinkedIn. Nearly 60% of B2B marketers are on LinkedIn, meaning you’ll reach more professionals there at any given time than you will on any other social network. You can also count on your target audience checking in pretty regularly, with most users active between noon and 3 p.m.
• Pro: It’s easy to network with serious professionals, view their profiles, and connect with the movers and shakers in any industry. Profiles contain lots of rich data that proves invaluable in your marketing and networking efforts.
• Con: Total number of users, number of minutes spent on the site and number of high-level professionals fall far below the same stats on Facebook.
• Con: Most people don’t think of LinkedIn as a marketing platform. Instead, they typically use it for job seeking and networking with others in the industry. That doesn’t make it a deal-breaker, but it is something to consider.

LinkedIn has established itself as a valuable tool for business professionals, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily the best tool for every job. It’s important to consider which social media platforms offer the best opportunities for marketing to your business clients and then choose the one that makes the most sense for your business.

The parent you on Facebook shared the most darling thing your daughter said this morning. The Facebook parent you never yells about putting shoes on to go to school or loses it in a homework battle with your 12 year old.

The Facebook you is the best you possible.

The friend that remembers every birthday. The buddy who always knows what to say to a friend in need. The life of the party, a great entertainer, providing an endless stream of amusing images, videos and random thoughts. The supportive spouse “in a relationship” with the most fantastic person in the world.

You are not alone. This is the life we all lead…on Facebook.

There are more than a billion Facebook Yous roaming around Earth right now and all of us “yous” have a lot in common. We try not to share content that is mundane or even worse, a downer. “On Facebook” is the new “in public” so we all mind our language, and post the best moments of our lives as though we live in some sort of never-ending Christmas card.

We all realize on some level that Facebook isn’t real life. But, none of us really want to share all the day-to-day difficulties of life when we can use Facebook and the rest of social media as our happy place, especially when everyone is a little paranoid about employers/bosses/recruiters and worst of all their moms reading their posts.

So what does this mean for the Social Media Marketer You?

You are not writing social media content for people, you are writing content for the people your consumers want to be.

Posts that celebrate the best in people will be liked. Images that depict the positive connections we have with others and our environments will be shared. Videos that were created to entertain friends of friends will be shared, embedded, commented on.

Facebook Yous will never share your ad copy, except for the rare cases when it truly entertains, connects or celebrates. When you are creating your next content calendar for a client, ask yourself if you would share it on your own wall. If the Facebook You is happy with it, the rest of us will be too.

Building engagement is a process, not a once and done function, and there are multiple keys to the process including:

• Interesting Content
• Publishing at key times for the audience
• Inviting comments, questions, and shares
• Offering promotions.  Contests, deals, and offers can help

If you offer a contest, deal, or promotions to assist in pulling fans and a larger community to your Page, a key is posting that promotion correctly to maximize it's visibility in the News Feed and to best prompt viewer actions.

Too many businesses are failing to get the word out effectively in the News Feed and then wondering why the engagement is lower than expected.

Getting the attention of and making it easy for all fans (desktop and mobile) to access the promotion can totally make or break your promotion getting traction!  It can mean the difference between 5 entries and 500 entries; between 5 Likes and Shares and 5000 Likes and Shares!

So how do you best get the word out on Facebook?

The Answer:

Post a photo or video to your News Feed with a call to action and a Smart URL in the description field.

Why a photo or video?

Facebook, in its own research, found that the most successful posts for capturing the attention of users and inspiring action are visual. Photo albums generated 180 percent more engagement than other types of posts, and individual photos 120 percent more. Since 40 percent of a Facebook user’s time is spent in the News feed, capturing attention to inspire a “Like,” comment or share by using images is critical.

Quick Guide for posting your contest or promotion to Facebook.

1. This works for posting to your Facebook Page or a Facebook personal profile.

2. Next Select “Attach Photo / Video”

3. Choose the photo

Choose the image you want to post, add a text description to inform viewers of the promotion (this is the call-to-action that fans will see in their News Feed when the image catches their eye!), and include a smart URL to the tab in the description so that desktop and mobile viewers can access the tab.

4. Schedule the Facebook Post

You can simply publish the post, but best practice would be to  schedule it to go out at a optimum time.

On each fan page Facebook offers ability to schedule a time when a post will go live.  This is a valuable tool because you can plan ahead and ensure posts go live at times when your audience (fans) are most likely to be on Facebook.

You can prepare a post and schedule it to appear later by adding a date and time in the future before you post it. You can schedule a post up to 6 months in advance in 10-minute intervals.

From your Page’s sharing tool:

1. Choose the type of post you want to add to your Page
2. Click the time  icon in the lower-left of the sharing tool
3. Choose the future year, month, day, hour and minute when you’d like your post to appear
4. Click Schedule

If you choose a date in the past, the post will appear immediately at the appropriate place on your Page’s timeline. All times correspond to the current time zone you’re in.

Following this procedure gives you the best means of sharing information about your promotion and drawing in fans to participate.  As the Facebook study showed, photos and videos get the most engagement.  They capture the attention of viewers.  Since most Facebook users spend the most time on Facebook in their news feed, this offers a way to capture their attention and pull them in to the promotion.  With photos and videos continually performing better in engagement (Likes, Shares, and Comments) this method is the best current practice for sharing your promotion on Facebook.

Some interesting observations for this industry:

• While Facebook communities far outsize Twitter, Twitter community growth outpaces Facebook.
• Moderate posting volume: 70% of brands posted within a 22-28 post per month window.
• Content dominated by visuals: 96% of all posts are photos or videos.
• Brands approach Facebook as a destination: Links off to websites treated secondarily.

Facebook promotions run by brand pages are seeing quality returns on investment.  With research data by Vocus noting that 79% of Facebook fans are more likely to purchase from a brand they have liked, pursuing fans and deeper engagement with their fan community is a huge priority.

Valentines Day and other holidays give brands, particularly B2C and retailers, opportunities to reach out to fans.  Utilizing seasonal holiday trends for marketing can increase the bottom line.  On Facebook, in particular, promotions around holidays can result in:

• Increased Likes
• More brand awareness
• Greater customer loyalty
• Increased e-mail list opt-ins and subscribers
• And more sales

Launch a Valentine's Day promotion on Facebook!

It's that month, the month where Valentines Day promotions take center stage as businesses seek to offer consumers products, services, and ideas for purchase in anticipation of the February 14 day of romance. There's still time to showcase your products and services, tying it to Valentines Day and flowing with the season holiday. Season holidays provide extra opportunities to offer promotions that can increase visibility, strengthen brand awareness, and drive sales.

How Can Your Business Quickly Roll Out a Valentines Deal on Facebook?

Need something quick and easy for your Facebook Page?  Consider a Facebook approved Deal App within the company Facebook Page.

Apps for Facebook Pages enable you to easily create and launch a discount code for online use, or a coupon or a discount on specific products that fans can bring in to your store to make their Valentine purchase.

Steps to a Facebook Valentine Deal Promotion include:

1. Sign-up for a Facebook Approved Promotion App

2. Create your Deal / Offer Images and add to your Deal App Tab.

3. Publish the Tab to the company Facebook Page.

4. Post the Smart URL to Facebook, Twitter, e-mail lists, and more to alert fans and followers to your offer.  Repeat every 1-2 days leading up to Valentines Day.

Here's four different Facebook Promotion ideas  that can be implemented quickly to help your business increase sales via a Valentines Promotion on Facebook.

SHARE DEAL APP  

Click here to view the embedded video.

The premise is simple: In order to "unlock" the Page deal, the fan must share the deal on their own Facebook wall!

The "Share Deal" Facebook App is a great tool for offering a printable special discount, a savings code to use online, or other promo that spreads because fans need to share the deal on their Facebook profile news feed in order to get access themselves. This App includes the Promotional Tool feature enabling you to build a call-out to add to your website/blog to drive traffic to the tab!   Click here to view details.

FRIEND SHARE DEAL REVEAL

This app allows Facebook Pages to offer a deal that can only be accessed after the fan has shared the deal with a friend. Empower fans to spread the word with friends via the Friend Share Deal Reveal. Different from "Share Deal" above, this app allows a fan to share the deal direct to the news feed of a specific friend of theirs. A trusted recommendation from a friend gives credibility to your offer and increases the return.

See full details

PIN DEAL  

Click here to view the embedded video.

Integrate Pinterest sharing in your Facebook Deal offer to increase the visibility of your offer online on both Facebook and Pinterest.  In order to "unlock" and get access to your Facebook Page tab deal, the fan must Pin the deal on Pinterest!

The "Pin Deal" App is a powerful tool for offering a special discount, incentive, or offer promo that spreads because fans need to "Pin" the deal on Pinterest in order to get access themselves to it on your Facebook tab. This App is available at the Platinum Plan level and includes ability to offer a download or an image offer revealed after the Pin.

As with all Engagement Apps, this app includes the Promotional Tool feature enabling you to build a call-out to add to your website/blog to drive traffic to the tab!    Pin Deal Details >

Add to your Fan Page

COUPON APP

Drive Valentine deal buyers to your Facebook fan page by offering a discount coupon or code! Simple to setup, customize by loading a branded image with coupon information that fans can use on your website or print and bring to your location.

This app for Facebook Pages  includes social sharing tools and optional Like Gate. Additional features included are the option to add a "Sign-up for future Coupons" form for entering e-mail address and name, and an export option as well!  Setup Details >

Add to your Fan Page

INCREASE TRAFFIC, ENGAGEMENT, AND SALES WITH A VALENTINES DAY FACEBOOK DEAL

Help shoppers plan ahead and get that special someone something wonderful by offering a Valentines Day Deal on Facebook.  Setup now and post about it on your social sites, on your website, and via e-mail to drive consumers on mobile and web to your special Valentines Facebook Page Deal.  Offering a Facebook promotion can increase visibility, strengthen brand awareness, and drive sales.  Are you using the seasonal holidays to your brand advantage?

Photographer Grows Facebook Page Fan Base by 46 Percent Using Contest App

One of the questions that businesses have asked repeatedly over the past few years is whether there can be a return on marketing investment in social media.  Basically, can it really amount to business (meaning sales) or is it simply a fun time pit?

Here's one  case study example of a small business that ran a photo voting contest on their Facebook Page and the results that they achieved.

Facebook Photo Contest

Stephanie DeBolt is a local photographer, an entrepreneur who is also her only employee. She photographs weddings, engagement shoots, high school senior portraits and family portraits. She has a limited marketing budget, and she can devote limited time to marketing. In those ways, she’s a common small business owner.

Using her Facebook page as a social marketing tool, she wanted to grow her business and decided on a Facebook photo contest.  Her goals were straightforward, and similar to those of a lot of small business owners:

1. Earn new “Likes,” to increase her potential audience.

2. Boost engagement on her page, to increase her reach to friends of fans.

3. To ultimately see her talents gain more exposure, in order to book new clients.

DeBolt spends her days either in photo shoots or processing photos for clients.  As such, she needed a simple Facebook App that  allowed her to quickly and easily create and execute a Facebook-approved photo contest.  She selected TabSite.

Her vision was to use her own wedding photo-shoot images, tie into the enthusiasm of the couples she had captured on their big day, and showcase her talents via a photo contest as a way to increase awareness of her business and services.

The Facebook Photo Contest Results:

By contest’s end, DeBolt saw a 46% increase in the number of new fans on her Facebook page, going from 803 fans to well over 1100. Amid the 15-day period of the contest, she more than met her goal for traffic — in fact, she saw 9 days when her page’s traffic topped 9,000 (new and returning visitors), more than 60% higher than her average before the contest.

"I'm ecstatic with the Page growth in Likes and the reach that the contest helped me achieve,” DeBolt said. “I received a lot of new inquiries from friends of those entered

and I'm now booked out four months in advance on photo shoots!”

THE CONTEST DETAILS:

DeBolt created a two-stage photo contest based around photographs she had taken for her clients. First, she loaded a photo collage featuring shots from all 21 weddings she had photographed since the start of 2012. She alerted each couple to the fact that a photo of them was in the contest, and she encouraged each to share the photo and the contest with their social networks. She also pinned a large view of each of the 21 photos to her Pinterest page, and she shared an image on her Facebook Timeline with a description and a smart URL link to the tab where people could vote. The first  stage of the contest lasted seven days.  Voters were allowed and reminded to vote 1x per day.

DeBolt posted a link to the contest on her blog, but only three visitors came to the contest through her blog. Facebook was responsible for bringing almost all voters to the contest. As well,  Debolt used no paid advertising whatsoever to promote the contest.

DeBolt estimated it took her about 30 minutes to set up the Facebook contest in TabSite and load the corresponding images. Nearly every day, she took five minutes to post an update and a reminder to vote on her page News Feed.

Considering her goals for the contest promotion, Debolt implemented these settings:

• A two-stage contest, with ability to vote once per day. Her goal was to gain new fans and entice those to return to her page, voting as often as once per day and otherwise commenting and interacting as often as they chose, which would increase their affinity with her page, which would in turn make her posts from her page appear in their News Feed in the future.  Voting through the tab and otherwise interacting meant  more traffic and more opportunity for voters and commenters to use the tab’s social sharing tools (Like, Share, Tweet, Google+ and Pin It buttons) to further share the contest.

• Like Gate on the Facebook Contest Tab. There was a Like Gate image on the tab — in order to vote, new visitors needed to Like the Page first. That’s a basic tool that helped DeBolt boost the “Likes” count on her page and allow her page posts to be seen by all of those people who now “Liked” her page.

• A finalist round. The finalist round lasted from a Saturday until midnight on the following Friday. The three highest-voted couples from the first round escalated to the finals, and TabSite’s tab calculated the results and bumped up the finalists automatically. DeBolt didn’t need to do anything to start the final round as TabSite automatically advanced the top 3 on the date she had set.  This reset the voting so that the finalists all started out equal again. All she had to do was post updates to Timeline at her convenience to get the word out.

After a neck-and-neck race between the two highest-voted couples during the last few days of the final round, voting closed at the predetermined time and the couple with the most votes went live as the winner on the tab. The winning couple netted 143 votes, to the second-place team’s dramatically close 132 votes.

Statistics for the Entire 15-Day Facebook Photo Contest:

DeBolt’s Page Fans Before Contest:  803
DeBolt’s Page Fans at End of Contest: 1173

“People Talking About This” Metric at Start Date: 617
“People Talking About This” Metric at End: 829
“People Talking About This” Peak during Contest: 912

Social Media Marketing Conclusions:

The Stephanie DeBolt Photography Facebook Page saw a significant increase in Likes and visits during the Facebook Photo contest.  In addition, there was a tremendous increase in overall reach while the contest was live.  The "vote once per day" strategy  worked well in generating  return traffic to the Facebook page, during which time the visitors were able to see other recent image posts of her work while building Edgerank affinity for those users to her Page.

The 46% growth in Likes helped DeBolt expand her audience, so she can reach to more potential clients going forward, and she met her goal of boosting engagement to extend viral reach, with nine days netting a reach greater of more than 9,000 users (over 60% higher reach than she’d hoped for each of those days).

"I plan to run more contests,” DeBolt said. “ I think one thing I will change is to run the contest in a shorter time period overall , like seven days total, as the Facebook attention span is short.

"I'm not a computer geek,” DeBolt said, “so having something that was simple to set up and that did the work for me of determining finalists and a winner was great! I recommend a Facebook Contest as a great tool to help build your community and bring in more business."

When a well-implemented plan is set in place, a social media promotion can have a real impact on business objectives.  The key is to clearly define the goals of the promotion ahead of time, and then implement a promotion tailored to achieving those ends. 

______________________________________

Mike Gingerich is a co-founder of TabSite.com, a leader in Facebook fan page tools for businesses. TabSite offers brands the power to boost Facebook marketing with contests and promotions.  For more information on TabSite, please visit www.tabsite.com.

Companies that achieve engagement have pages with an active, positive, and involved community.  This type of social community responds to Facebook posts, is committed to the brand, and helps to further extend the reach of the Page through their sharing and comments.  When broken down into tangible factors, increased engagement can bring about positive returns in a number of areas for marketers including:

• Increased Likes
• More brand awareness
• Greater customer loyalty
• Increased e-mail list opt-ins and subscribers
• And more actions taken on ordering products and services

With recent research data by Vocus noting that 79% of Facebook fans are more likely to purchase from a brand they have liked, pursuing more fans and deeper engagement with existing fans is a huge priority!

The million dollar question, though, remains, "how can a company boost engagement for their Facebook Page?"  While there are a number of core methods for increasing engagement such as creating highly shareable content, posting images and videos, and posting succinctly at key times, another powerful method is to run promotions.

Promotions have the ability to draw visitors to a Facebook page and when used correctly, can be a very valuable tool to accomplish engagement objectives.

Here's a FACEBOOK PROMOTIONS INFOGRAPHIC with key insights on types of Facebook contest promotions options, keys for which type of promotion can work best for your goals and best practice tips.

Facebook Contest and Promotions Types INFOGRAPHIC by TabSite.com

Free: The Z-100 Report.

Trends, Strategies and Tactics for 100
of the top business pages on Facebook.

View or Download Report >>

Facebook's Facebook Post on Facebook Trends

Subscribe Free

If you're not already subscribed, why not get this FREE weekly email of the most impacting posts on Facebook?
Free Sign Up

About Zuum

Zuum is a tool that helps brands increase their engagement level with their Facebook fans by knowing what works on Facebook. For their brand and their competitors.
www.ZuumSocial.com

Since the launch of Timeline by Facebook in March, the key to Facebook success is getting fans to engage with your company Facebook Page.  As fans engage, it  helps to ensure they have a greater chance of seeing your posts in their News Feed. Contests and promotions on Facebook offer a valuable resource to boost Facebook Page engagement with fans.

Why run a contest or promotion on your Facebook Page?

• Promotions draw traffic  to your Facebook Page
• Contests, can draw entrants and those entrants then share with Facebook friends to invite friend votes, thereby drawing even more visitors to your Page
• Any Facebook  "Like", Comment, or Share of a entry boosts the visitor connection to your Facebook Page, increasing the likelihood of them seeing your future posts in their News Feed.
• People love deals and deals can be a means to new business and repeat business!
• A promotion or contest run on Facebook can boost product and brand recognition

From Photo Entry Contests to Group Deals and Sweepstakes, there are multiple types of easy-to-build promotion apps enabling companies to run a promotion on Facebook.  Beyond the setup of the app on your Facebook Page, however, there are critical elements that go into the planning, marketing, and implementation that are critical to the success of the promotion.

How to Launch a Successful Promotion on Facebook:

Step #1: Follow the rules and the law!

There are rules and laws regarding contests and sweepstakes, which vary by social platform, and by state and  country. For example, you often must have official rules that outline how you will pick a winner.

Facebook outlines a promotion policy that defines what a promotion must do to comply with Facebook Terms of Service (TOS), and that if a user does not comply, they risk having their Page shut down.  Key elements of the Facebook TOS include:

• Promotions on Facebook must be administered within Apps on Facebook.com, either on a Canvas Page or a Page App. (TabSite is a Facebook App)
• Promotions on Facebook must include the following:

a.    A complete release of Facebook by each entrant or participant.

b.    Acknowledgment that the promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook.

c.    Disclosure that the participant is providing information to [disclose recipient(s) of information] and not to Facebook.

• You must not use Facebook features or functionality as a promotion's registration or entry mechanism.

So, using a approved Facebook Page App is important in order to comply with Facebook rules.  Page Admins should not try to run a contest in the Page Timeline for example.  If you see a Page saying "Comment here on this post to be entered", that is not in compliance with Facebook promotion guidelines.

Every region, and every industry, has different restrictions on promotions. Be sure to research this for your location and industry, and ask your legal counsel if you have any remaining questions.

Step #2: Determine the Facebook Contest / Promotion Type

There are different types of promotions and different ways to have winners selected.

A Sweepstakes allows visitors to enter and then Page Admins conduct a random drawing to select a winner from those entered.  For contests, there are more ways to choose a winner. Facebook Page Admins will have to decide how they will choose a winner  in order to write the official rules mentioned in Step #1.  Page Admins might want to have the most votes win and announce a certain end date.  Or a company might want to run a 2 Stage contests with voting on phase 1 and the top 3, 5, or 10 vote getters from this initial round move on to a final round of new voting.  A third option would be to outline that a Panel of Judges will select the winner on a certain date from all entries received.

Recommendation: Our team recommends strongly that a Facebook Page contest allow fan voting, or if you decide a Sweepstakes is the preferred tool, allow the user to enter more than once.  This increases fan traffic to your Page and allows you more times to potentially interact with them.  For a contest, it allows a broader spectrum of fans,  entrants and voters, and encourages entrants to reach out to their networks, inviting their networks to come and vote for their entry which ultimately results in more exposure.

As well, it would be our recommendation that voting be set to one vote per day on the Facebook promotion, and not simply one vote per contest.  This gets voters to come back and interact with your page again and again which helps increase your exposure and their connection to your Page, as well as increases the chances of them Liking, Sharing, and Commenting on your contest entries.

The more interaction a Facebook Page can offer to those entering and voting, the better; as this expands the reach of the contest virally across Facebook and the web.

Step #3: Choose the Promotion Technology

Here are some considerations in contest / promotion technology for Facebook Page Admins:

A company could build the promotion platform from scratch themselves, or hire a web firm or agency to build it.  Building a promotion tool from scratch will give a Page the most flexibility and customized features and functions, but it can also be very pricey and will take a significant amount of development time.

An alternative is to leverage a third-party contest platform that is built to work on Facebook.  This may offer less total customization but offers quite affordable turnkey solutions that take minimal setup time and no coding knowledge.  There are multiple third-party Facebook contest providers, each with many different tools and options available. Key tools to consider when reviewing third-party providers are: what type of control of the voting options are offered (single entry, daily voting, 2 Stage voting, etc), what flexibility in design and layout is offered, does it offer a mobile friendly Facebook Page Tab solution, and whether the entrant and voting data is captured and exportable.

Step #4: Pick a prize

A single prize can do or offer prizes for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. This is where the incentive comes in that drives your audience to enter and seek votes.

One major consideration to take into account in relation to what prize is offered is who your ideal target audience is.

If the goal is to generate leads for a female audience related to clothing and jewelry, then offering a Gift Card to the local Big Box Store may not do the trick.  Make the prize relevant to the target you want to enter.

Another consideration is matching the prize to the effort required to enter, which is especially important for contests.

If a user just needs to provide a email address to enter to win a free hot dog, that might be enough of an incentive.  However, if I need to create a video for a hot dog brand, including write a script, editing the video and need actors, the prize had better reflect the time investment that will be necessary!

Another consideration is that if your organization is awarding a larger grand prize for greater incentive, such as a free iPad, you'll  want to make the your cost investment as worthwhile as possible. A longer duration contest allows for broader reach and more social word-of-mouth. It also gives people more time to enter, allowing for a more detailed contest with a greater number of potential brand benefits.

Step #5: Get the word out!

You must get the word out!  If running a Facebook contest, consider Facebook Page Timeline posts with a link directly to the contest.  Since not all fans see your post, Facebook Pages may want to consider using Facebook's Promoted Posts tool to boost the reach of the post.  As well cross-promoting should be done on services your fans use such as Twitter, G+, LinkedIn, and of course the old faithful e-mail blast.

A company should also consider a blog post or press release on their website and other web resources.  The post should contain the vital information, clear imagery, and a easily found call-out link to the contest on Facebook.

There are really three phases to getting the word out: The initial launch, the ongoing updates (reminders, status of who is leading, etc, which needs to be done at least a few times per week if not something every day,) and the post contest announcement of winners and information to frame and capture the final buzz around the promotion.  Use Facebook, e-mail, and other means to share.

This part is critical to the success of the campaign.  They will not enter if they do not know about your promotion.  They will not vote multiple times if they are not reminded they can vote more than once, and they will not come back to see who won if not alerted to end of the contest.  Social communication, using images, and timely posts at opportune times for best visibility all help to ensure your campaign takes off and momentum is sustained.

Step #6: Publicize the Winner

Promoting the contest after it ends is very important! In Step #1, you should have already outlined how a winner will be chosen. Now it's time to pick and publicize. Some third party platforms, like TabSite, will determine the winner for you based on criteria you setup (such as most votes in a contest, or picking a random winner from Sweepstake entries).

Depending on how big the prize is, you may be able to garner significant extra attention by promoting the winner, publishing a picture of the prize, or even later publishing a picture of the winner with the prize! Again, using your social network avenues including Facebook Page Timeline posts, a message on G+, Tweets, and a e-mail blast are ways to alert your community that a winner has been determined.  Do not simply tell them all the information, but announce and link back to the Facebook Page tab again for the unveiling.  This is your final push to bring them back to your Page to engage, congratulate, and get further connected to your Page.

Final Reminder:

A Facebook promotion can be a major community builder and exposure mechanism to reach your target audience and to expand that audience.  Facebook is the most popular and most-used social network so it makes sense to look to Facebook as a key social network for your promotion.  The key to success is choosing a promotion type that will connect with your audience, and then getting the communication out well so that the promotion can gain traction and exposure.  The multiple connection and communication points to promote ahead, during, and after a promotion offer key opportunities for a brand to boost engagement on their Facebook page.

______________________________________

Mike Gingerich is a co-founder of TabSite.com, the industry leader in Facebook fan page management. TabSite offers brands the power to boost Facebook engagement while leveraging the ability to simultaneously extend reach on Platforms such as Pinterest.  Their innovative Pin Deal application for Facebook Pages that integrates a Facebook promotion with Pinterest sharing is one example of this social synergy. For more information on Tabsite, please visit www.tabsite.com.

Brogan is co-author of New York Times bestsellers The Impact Equation and Trust Agents, (both cowritten with Julien Smith) and author of Social Media 101 and Google Plus for Business. Both in his roles as CEO & President of Human Business Works, co-founder of the PodCamp new media conference series and as a blogger himself, Brogan has a long history of shaping the way that companies approach the social web. Flightpath took the opportunity to speak with Brogan about his take on how companies could better utilize social media, measure ROI and just do social better.

Flightpath: One of your gifts, and probably a huge reason why you have become such a force in social media is your outgoing personality and ability to make everyone you talk to feel important. You are also very successful transcribing this emotional connection across social media platforms. So, how do you advise companies to connect emotionally with consumers?

Brogan: The answer to that is a little challenging because when I go in there and tell companies you really have to really connect with emotion, their eyes go up into the top of their heads. They say ‘Oh I thought there was some kind of software we could buy and a switch we could toggle and then we could go back to thinking about our golf game later.’ It’s really difficult because every time I’m telling people that this is a great way to get more value, what I am also saying is that this takes more work.

I had a conversation with a woman who she runs the Microsoft New England Research and Development Center here in New Boston and we were talking about those experiences you have when you write a company complaint, challenge or question and you get a very personal response back.

In her case, a specific kind of ice cream that was supposed to be showing up at Whole Foods that she loved from the West coast and it just wasn’t in the store. So, she wrote the ice cream company and got a letter back from the CMO (this is email not even the social web) but she could tell it wasn’t a form letter- it was a very personal letter right to her. It wasn’t like she wrote it as a woman who runs Microsoft, she wrote is as a woman who likes ice cream. The CMO responded very personally and said ‘Well, it’s a brand new deal and distribution might be a little slow. I’m really sorry but you might want to look for these 4 flavors.’

What came back from this, of course, is that she tells everyone this story. She told me this story. To me this is the hardest and most difficult challenge, because I have to explain to a business that should you treat customers like real live humans. That you should give them incredible, concierge class service and that should you do this it is going to change so much more than you can measure in a spreadsheet.

Flightpath: There is so much process that agencies go through to come up with those canned responses and they all seem to begin with ‘We appreciate your concern, thanks for your input’. So should agencies working on behalf of clients dealing with a disgruntled customer situation use canned responses or are you saying that all social customer service responses be custom?

Brogan: I think that it is so easy to do a hybrid of that. It is so easy to do. You can do 2 or 3 paragraphs of the absolutely canned stuff, and if you add one sentence at the beginning and one at the end it feels very custom. That is what I advise. Now believe me, there is times when there is a canned response required. Say Kindle Whispernet goes down and every Kindle owner cant get get a book or something like that. That is a great time for a canned response.

And that’s fine, but I don’t even believe that volume is an excuse. I think that if it is a huge outage kind of a thing, than that is an announcement not a correspondence. I think that the opportunity for custom is when anything comes outside of the typical workflow. If someone is really mad because they missed their plane that is a perfect time for a personal message. If this person spent the time to complain than they are worth the time to reply to, because what you do next decides where they spend their next dollars.

Flightpath: Marketers of course want to impact purchasing decisions and often the question they come to agencies with is which platform they need to maximize impact. How do you move the conversation away from tools and back to the importance of building human connections?

Brogan: It’s so funny because in working with a lot of people in this space, I always get tool questions. I will be in a roomful of people and I will be saying, “How did your grandparents sell? How did they buy 50 years ago?” and they will be like “What does this have to do with Pinterest?” and I will be like nothing. This has zero to do with Pinterest.

This is not the future, we do not have jet packs. We are not wearing foily costumes. What I need to tell agencies, marketers and business professionals of all kinds is that the tools are always in service of the work and the work is a lot simpler than the fear that goes into the tools.

The reason we ask so many tool questions is we are so afraid of using them wrong. We are afraid of this Brave New World feeling of being on a social platform. But, the more you use the tools to convey real legitimate human experience and the less you use the tools to emulate methodologies that agencies worked on from past experience, the better the opportunity.

The other thing I tell agencies all that time is that your job is no longer to be the voice of the company. Your job is to be the ears of the company and to help the company be their own voice.It is time for companies to reclaim their own voice. So, agencies have this opportunity to be listeners/teachers. Professional listening is a huge opportunity. That is a vast shift from the way that things are going.

Originally posted on our Flightpath blog here.

Remember Facebook’s Virtual Gifts of yore? When you could send your Facebook friends a “beer”, “rose” or “birthday cake?” Facebook closed its virtual gift shop in August 2011, and has replaced it with the ability to send Facebook friends real beer, roses and birthday cakes (or at least cupcakes). All from the status box on their friend’s timeline.

So what is the benefit of this for brands? Your brand’s products can be offered via Facebook Gifts, which offers a seamless e-commerce experience and new platform for driving sales. Now, when a user sees a friend announce they are expecting a baby that user can quickly send an appropriate gift without having to leave the confines of Facebook for, say Amazon and perhaps get distracted along the way to purchasing your brand’s product.

Facebook has also done a great job of removing the shipping address barrier of sending gifts to people you are friends with on Facebook, but are not close friends with in real life. The sender doesn’t have to enter any shipping information. The gift recipient is notified via Facebook private message that they have a gift waiting and they are prompted to accept the gift, at which point they enter in their own shipping information. This lowers the barrier to purchase for the gift giver and also encourages surprise, and impulse gifting (it’s a little hard to surprise someone with a gift when you have to text them and request their shipping address).

The social media/word of mouth marketing aspect of Facebook Gifts is also alluring to brands. Every time a user sends a gift, a tantalizingly wrapped gift image appears on the recipient’s timeline by default, encouraging them to unwrap it and reveal what is inside. Senders can opt out of the share. Below is an example of the image a recipient sees on their timeline:

At this time, the gift selection is somewhat limited. Potential senders first land in the “Recommended Gifts” section, which is mostly gifts of food, but also include Starbucks and iTunes virtual gift cards. The user then has the option to navigate into the following gift categories:

• Food & Drink
• Wine
• Fun
• Home & Kitchen
• Fashion & Body
• Flowers
• Baby & Kids
• Gifts that Give Back
• Pets

According to Facebook, there are multiple safeguards in place to ensure that alcoholic beverages are not purchased by or sent to underage users, including carding recipients at their physical door during delivery and barring users with a stated age below 21 from even seeing alcoholic beverages as Facebook Gift options. This could be a great sales platform for those brands in the wine and spirits category.

At this time, the gift selection is somewhat limited. For instance there are only 10 gifts available in the pets category. So, Facebook is going to have to expand their selection to appeal to more buyers. Which is great news for brands who are interested in coming aboard.

So, what brands are taking part in the initial roll out of Facebook Gifts?

• Apple
• Baby Gap
• Harry & David
• Fab
• Brookstone
• Gund
• Sesame Street
• Warby Parker
• And more...

Want to get your brand’s products on board with Facebook Gifts? Just fill out this form to submit your products for consideration.

Originally posted on our Flightpath blog here.

As we look toward 2013, a number of themes jump out as key trends: social media, mobile technology, location-based marketing, and gamification. Here’s a roundup on what we think will happen in these areas and their impact on the digital space.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing gained an exceptional amount of steam in 2012, as parties ranging in size from international brands to local businesses jockeyed to start (or grow) their efforts and presence here.  As 2013 looms, social media marketing is set to become a top priority marketing tactic. No longer a nominal experiment, businesses recognize that social networks are where their targeted customers are spending huge amounts of time.  With this knowledge, prepare to see marketers shift their dollars to the social arena. A key point for businesses will be to rise above the clutter, and savvy marketers will use a mix of content, engagement, and promotions to grab the attention of consumers and extend the reach of their communities.

Marketing Shift to Consumers

With rise of social media and the changes in search engine ranking algorithms, the shift from link building to content marketing will grow. Digital marketers have said that "content is king" for what seems like ages, but a new trend is emerging where both king and queen tango — and the queen is consumer engagement multiplication.  Great content is always necessary, but the need and potential of engaging consumer messengers moves to the forefront in the year ahead. Consumer messengers are influencers who have the ability through their social sharing to take content messages to their own networks and to the masses, greatly extending and multiplying the reach of brand marketing efforts. Consumers who share great content will be a defining marketing conduit in 2013.

Gamification

The rise of gamification will expand as consumers respond to promotions that reward them for participation and sharing. Gaming isn’t new, of course, and it’s been an end in itself where in-game purchases are made of marketed products.  In 2013, though, game strategies will extend further into the mainstream marketing sector as a significant strategy within social marketing, not just within the game industry. Tools for social networks that have a game component - and that incentivize social sharing as part of the promotions - have proven successful, and we’ll see more growth in that field.  Related as it is to the shift toward content marketing through consumers, gamification is another valuable way to kick-start the sharing process and extends to find new customers.

Cross-Social Network Promotions

Social marketing promotions will reach across platforms, bringing two or more social networks into play during a promotion. Instead of relying just on Facebook, promotions will grow by incorporating additional social networks intertwined in a promotion.  We’re already seeing promotions that are based on a Facebook page, but require a Pinterest, Twitter, or Instagram-integrated component as part of the entry and participation process.  Businesses will continue to leverage their strength on one social platform to extend their reach on others.

Rise of SoLoMo

SoLoMo, the intersection of social, local, and mobile marketing efforts, will hit the mainstream.  Marketers recognize the time spent on social networks, and they’ll reach out through these platforms to mobile users to engage them with location-based specials.  Additionally, local stores will offer incentives to nearby mobile users to draw them into the store.  While in-store, businesses can utilize QR codes and signage to drive users to their social sites for further connection. SoLoMo will capitalize on the rise of smartphone use to pull together social and local initiatives, offering a more personalized and localized experience that can build greater customer loyalty.

The evolution of digital marketing is a clearly defined path, and the savviest marketers have already benefited from recognizing consumers’ eagerness to share content on social media; interact with their preferred brands; and receive rewards for sharing marketing messages. The trends we’ve outlined here are no longer experimental — they have proven and positive results when implemented well. Marketers should embrace these growing trends… in 2012 they were suggestions, but in 2013, they’ll be requirements for the savvy digital marketer.

_____________________________________________

Mike Gingerich is a co-founder of TabSite.com, the industry leader in Facebook fan page management. TabSite offers brands the power to boost Facebook engagement while leveraging the ability to simultaneously extend reach on Platforms such as Pinterest.  Their innovative Pin Deal application for Facebook Pages that integrates a Facebook promotion with Pinterest sharing is one example of this social synergy. For more information on Tabsite, please visit www.tabsite.com.

Special Free Facebook Report.

Page Data Averages for 9 Industries.

View or Download Report >>

Facebook takes the voting process and makes it social content

Subscribe Free

If you're not already subscribed, why not get this FREE weekly email of the most impacting posts on Facebook?
Free Sign Up

About Zuum

Zuum is a tool that helps brands increase their engagement level with their Facebook fans by knowing what works on Facebook. For their brand and their competitors.
www.ZuumSocial.com

Special Free Facebook Report.

Page Data Averages for 9 Industries.

View or Download Report >>

“X are like Facebook” campaign as a Facebook post

Subscribe Free

If you're not already subscribed, why not get this FREE weekly email of the most impacting posts on Facebook?
Free Sign Up

About Zuum

Zuum is a tool that helps brands increase their engagement level with their Facebook fans by knowing what works on Facebook. For their brand and their competitors.
www.ZuumSocial.com

When it comes to marketing budgets, big isn’t always better in social media.  In fact, smaller budgets sometimes net the best results.

In our industry, most automotive marketing budgets are sizeable.  But like other businesses, share of budget dedicated to social media varies by automotive brand.

The fact is social media levels the playing field between the haves and the have-nots.  With a little bit of ingenuity and knowledge, and by following these three simple steps, it’s possible for small budgets to compete head-to-head with deep pockets to achieve maximum success.

Step #1:   Develop ideas with viral potential.

Marketers who view social media as efficient channels through which they steadily self-promote, where they do more talking than listening, or where they attempt to impose brand messaging and force brand loyalty instead of encouraging it are looking at it all wrong.

Social media is efficient because it’s viral. It isn’t designed for bragging about how great your business is.  It’s about enticing people to brag about your business for you. Essentially, social media offers smart marketers the opportunity to turn a handful of people into an enormous labyrinth of loyal brand ambassadors.

In order to do this, marketers should focus on ideas that have 'cosmopolitan distribution' potential, or the best chance of engaging people to converse, comment, share, like or follow on a mass scale by entertaining them, enlightening them, or by making their lives easier in some way, and by giving them a public forum to voice their opinions.

Probably my favorite example is Ford’s Fiesta Movement.

The concept is simple enough. Give 100 consumers deemed “agents” a Ford Fiesta for six months, ask them to complete a series of missions and document their experiences -- through their own eyes and ears and in their own words – on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube.

The results at the end of the first chapter in 2009 were extraordinary.  The campaign garnered 6.5 million YouTube views, 50,000 requests for information about the Fiesta (the majority from new customers) and sales of 10,000 units in the first week of the campaign. The best part?  Ford’s initial Fiesta Movement was reported to have cost a tiny fraction of the expense of a typical national television campaign.

The launch of BMW’s ActiveE electric car is another great example of social media success on a small budget.

In 2010, the automaker created a mini four-film documentary series featuring thought leaders such as Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin and Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson to discuss their views about mobility and the future of cities.  BMW showcased the video series “Wherever You Want to Go” online, opting out of traditional TV advertising common for a new model launch, instead soliciting engagement exclusively from social media users.

Then, BMW created an app designed to simulate and track users’ daily driving experiences and their impact on emissions, to determine if an electric car was right for them.

Virtually zero media dollars were spent, yet the campaign netted a staggering 450 million media impressions. Beyond the marketing impact, the automaker says the wealth of data gleaned from the campaign will be used in the design and engineering of future BMW vehicles.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What the Ford and BMW campaigns demonstrate is how an idea with viral potential is worth its weight in gold – in this case, how a great idea proved more effective than the budget (or lack thereof) behind it.

Step #2):  Be ‘resource wise.’

Probably one of the biggest myths about marketing on the social web is that it’s free.  It isn’t and it never was.

Marketers familiar with social media understand it takes a great deal of resources to be successful, including time spent strategizing, developing and implementing campaigns, and consistent man hours dedicated to routinely engaging with audiences. Costs for design and production, analytics, content creation and research can all put a significant dent in budgets too.

Following are a few suggestions to help marketers cut costs and improve ROI.

• Focus on identifying trends surrounding posts and tweets that net the biggest reactions and interactions. Replicate those strategies.
• Like the Ford Fiesta campaign, leverage User Generated Content (UGC) to reduce development and production expenses whenever possible.
• Rely on turnkey social media management apps to automate posts and updates, gather data or monitor conversations to alleviate the burden of time consuming tasks.
• Take a page out of Marketing 101 by integrating your efforts.  Messaging of traditional campaigns should align with social media messaging.  Post broadcast ads to your company’s branded social sites.
• Enable your social media audience to share special offers or discounts with their friends.
• Make your customers the star of your social media campaign.  Post photos of contest winners or reward your most influential followers with exclusive sneak peeks or special discounts.  Fan inclusion is a simple and cost-effective way to build brand awareness.

Step #3): Simplify the sales path.

In Michael Stelzner’s 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, it revealed that by spending as little as six hours per week in social media marketing, 61 percent of marketers surveyed saw lead generation benefits.

Social media isn’t all fun and games.  As marketers, our bottom line goal is to positively impact the bottom line of our business.  What this means is that any social media marketing campaign – any good marketing campaign for that matter – should include 1) clearly defined goals 2) performance analytics and 3) calls-to-action.

Unlike traditional media where making an immediate purchase after seeing a magazine or billboard ad requires more effort than most new media consumers are willing to expend, social media audiences should never be more than one click away from a call-to-action to learn more about a product or service, or from submitting a request to purchase that product or service.

Bear in mind I’m not suggesting in-your-face, hardcore sales tactics – I’m talking about the ability for users, in one easy step, to request product information or ‘buy now’ if they want.

If you need more inspiration about successful social media campaigns on shoestring budgets, check out highlights from one of my favorite non-automotive campaigns – Tourism Queensland’s groundbreaking “The Best Job in the World.”

Nick Matarazzo is CEO of Jumpstart Automotive Group.

Whatever the case, it could be the indication of power moving to the fans. Of course, it's likely this wouldn't work week in and week out. It's also important to note that despite very high "Like" rates on these posts, there was zero sharing.

Special Free Facebook Report.

Page Data Averages for 9 Industries.

View or Download Report >>

One of three posts from fans gaining most engaging status last week

Subscribe Free

If you're not already subscribed, why not get this FREE weekly email of the most impacting posts on Facebook?
Free Sign Up

About Zuum

Zuum is a tool that helps brands increase their engagement level with their Facebook fans by knowing what works on Facebook. For their brand and their competitors.
www.ZuumSocial.com

So what is a brand to do?

Facebook app development remains an integral part of a brand's presence on Facebook. The brand immersive experiences, like sweepstakes and other fun apps are designed to engage and inspire users to share and they do. But, as brands watch more and more of their traffic come from mobile devices it may be a good time to evaluate what your brand is doing on the one part of your Facebook presence that mobile users can see: Timeline.

The best Facebook brand posts have must-see, must-share content. So how do you take your branded posts from meh to marvelous?

1. Use user generated images in your posts

I know that everyone social media expert on the planet will tell you that social media posts with an image get more attention than those that don't. But, this advice is a bit different.

Ask your community to share pictures, not highly posed shots of them holding your product at salesmanish angles, but real photos of the sort they probably already have. Pictures of their home, kids, pets and the like- whatever category is relevant to your brand. Use them in all of your posts and you will see interaction skyrocket.

People like to see themselves represented and I for one could go the rest of my life without seeing another stock photo used in a Facebook brand post. We implemented this with a client at the beginning of the year and have seen monthly unique interactions grow from a respectable 6% to a totally awesome 40%.

2. Make your posts relatable

How many times have we seen a post with copy like this: "It's back to school time! Like this post if your kids are ready for school." Ugh, snore. Sounds like the opening line of a very boring PTA meeting.

Take that basic idea and add copy with an accompanying image that the mom you are speaking to can relate to: "Here is Barbara from Poughkeepsie enjoying her coffee in peace this morning. Like this if you are enjoying the silence of back to school time!" It's better, more from a mom point of view and the consumer you are trying to engage will have a higher likelihood of interacting with the post.

3. Create inspirational branded images

A lesson we can all learn from the popularity of Pinterest is that inspirational images get shared. That lesson applies to Facebook as well.

Take an inspirational quote about life, home, self-care whatever makes sense for your brand and put it meme style on an image (even better an image shared by a user). Ask your community to share and boom, your branding is out there being shared with a larger audience and is connected with a powerful, inspiring message which is all good. We have been using this tactic for a few months and have had some images shared 20,000+ times.

Creating better Facebook posts means higher engagement from all users, especially those viewing your brand page on a smartphone. Creating killer Facebook apps is still important, but until Facebook allows tab content to be viewed via mobile spending time creating content designed for interaction and sharing is a win.

Leave a comment if you have tips for making the most out of Facebook posts for the brands you represent.

Fan posts, on average, generate about a tenth of the engagement that brand posts do. But this post shows you how simple emotional trigers can escalate, and once the ball starts rolling, it doesn't matter who or where the post came from.

Special Free Facebook Report.

Page Data Averages for 9 Industries.

View or Download Report >>

A YouTube Fan’s Post that Started a lot of Conversation

Subscribe Free

If you're not already subscribed, why not get this FREE weekly email of the most impacting posts on Facebook?
Free Sign Up

About Zuum

Zuum is a tool that helps brands increase their engagement level with their Facebook fans by knowing what works on Facebook. For their brand and their competitors.
www.ZuumSocial.com