DigitalNina.com » How To

Facebook Ads: What Works, What Doesn’t

Nina — Mon, 14 May 2012 15:37:36 +0000

Brands may be plowing more and more money into Facebook ads, but the creative results are decidedly mixed, with all-too-common flubs such as blurred product shots and incomprehensible pitches.

To help agencies and brands make better ads, Facebook’s measurement team is making public its research on what does and doesn’t work.

http://adage.com/article/digital/facebook-ads-works/234731/

HOW TO: Create a Facebook Campaign that does More than Get LIKES

Nina — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:41:01 +0000

We put so much emphasis on getting more LIKES, but not enough emphasis about what to do with those new users once you’ve got them. I thought this was a great case study on how one brand built a campaign designed to capture and engage their customers.

Read Full Article: http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2011/6926/follow-amexs-example-of-a-successful-facebook-campaign?adref=nlt012512&utm_source=mpt&utm_medium=howto&utm_campaign=basic&utm_term=socmedia&utm_content=article

How to determine the real value of a Facebook fan

Nina — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 12:45:04 +0000

Good tips on how to measure your efforts on social platforms.

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/30100.asp

Use National Holidays to Increase Your Fan Base

Nina — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 22:59:25 +0000

If there’s one thing that our most successful clients (i.e. those who have the greatest number of engaged fans and followers) have in common it’s this: they consistently provide their audience with great reasons to engage. We’ve previously written about the power of running weekly or monthly promotions (e.g. weekly coupons or monthly giveaways), but another powerful way to consistently engage your audience is to center promotions around holidays (e.g. Valentines, Halloween, Easter, Christmas, Hanukkah etc).

IDEA #1: Encourage word of mouth spread by offering The Ultimate Holiday Party

Run a sweepstakes to give away the ‘ultimate National Holiday party’ – food, drinks, and bbq included. But to make it more ’social’ and to encourage word-of-mouth spread, use our ‘group prize’ functionality and ask entrants to name the ‘5 people’ they’d invite to the party if they were to win.

IDEA #2: Drive daily engagement with a ‘count down’ sweepstakes

Encourage regular engagement leading up to the holiday by running a ‘count down’ sweepstakes (e.g. ‘Count down to 4th July’ or ‘30 days ’til Bastille Day’). For each day of the ‘count down’ award a daily prize like a gift card and then award one grand prize at the end of the promotion.

IDEA #3: Combine Holiday-Themed Virtual Gifts with Charitable Giving

Create a virtual gift campaign to enable friends to send each other free Holiday-themed virtual gifts (e.g. American flags, fireworks & party hats to celebrate 4th July). Combine this with an opportunity to ‘give back’ by offering to donate $1 to a charity of your choice for every gift sent.

IDEA #4: Encourage sharing by running a Holiday-themed Contest

Create a Holiday-themed contest where users submit their best fireworks photos, favorite 4th July recipes or pledges for what they plan to do to make their country better. Contests can be highly viral because each entrant will reach out to their friends and family to vote for their entry.

IDEA #5: Celebrate the Holiday by giving away ‘Mystery’ coupons

Many stores will offer coupons and deals to celebrate the 4th July or other National Holidays so why not use Wildfire Campaign Builder to provide a coupon on your fan page or website. To add more fun to your promotion, use our unique code upload functionality to offer a ‘mystery’ coupon, like the game retailer Hautelook created with Wildfire.

Source: Wildfire Interactive

6 Clever Tricks to Double the Effectiveness of Your Fan Page Status Updates!

Nina — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 22:55:33 +0000

Many businesses are rushing to build up their Facebook ‘fan’ base, but what’s the value of a fan if you don’t know how to effectively message them and get their attention? Below are a series of very simple tips for how to get your Fan page status updates noticed.

Special thanks are owed to the other panelists joining Wildfire CEO Victoria Ransom at the Web 2.0 expo session, “From Faceless to Fantastic,”where some of these tips were discussed (@ekaterinawalter, @ttaxchels, @smcilnay and @angelathp) and in particular to Jeff Widman at Brand Glue.

But first, you might be wondering why such tips are even necessary. Aren’t all status updates seen by fans? The short answer is, no. Facebook uses an algorithm to determine which updates and stories will appear in a given person’s newsfeed. While no one knows exactly what this algorythm is (besides Mark Zuckerberg!), it largely depends on how much engagement a particular story receives. So, if you send an update out to your fans and it receives a lot of ‘Likes’ or ‘Comments’, it will be exposed to a much higher % of your fans in their Top News stream and there will therefore be a much higher likelihood that your fans will actually see your post than an update that gets few ‘Likes’ or ‘Comments’. So sending out posts that are highly engaging is extremely important to the success of your Facebook marketing strategy.

TRICK #1: Ask fans to ‘Like’ your update!

This may sound trivial, but it is hugely powerful – when you post an update out to your fans ask them to show their support by clicking on the ‘Like’ button of your post. For example, if you send an update about a new product feature instead of simply saying: “We’re excited to announce the release of our brand new navigation, ” say something like: “We’re excited to announce the release of our brand new navigation. Click the ‘Like’ button if you like this change”. We have tried this over and over again and on average we see 200-300% more ‘Likes’ when we make direct requests like this.

Check out the great engagement with this post– 29 people indicated they “Like” it, which was likely aided by the direct prompt to do so right in the message!

TRICK #2: Encourage comments by asking yes/no questions

A powerful way to encourage comments is to ask your fans questions when you post an update. But you’ll get a much higher response rate if you ask questions that require very little effort to answer, like yes/no questions. For example, you’ll get far fewer comments if you ask “Tell us what you think of our new homepage design” than if you ask “Do you like our new homepage design – yes or no?”. Of course, if you’re looking for concrete feedback from your fans you may prefer the first approach, but if you are wanting maximum exposure for your post the latter approach will yield a significantly higher number of comments.

TRICK #3: Don’t use the Facebook links box!

You may have noticed that Facebook provides an option to attach a link to your fan page status updates. What you may not know is that you’ll generally get fewer clicks on your link if you use this feature rather than simply including a link in the body of your update.

Don’t do this…

: The link button outlined above will attach a link to your post, but its best to avoid using this tool, and just paste the link right into your text.

Try this instead…

: Pasting a link you wish to share with your users directly into your message has proven, with testing, to have a significantly higher user click rate!

TRICK #4: If you post your own videos, do use the Facebook video upload

Just as Facebook provides functionality to attach a link to your update, so too does it allow to you attach a video to your post. While we recommend against using this functionality when posting a link, we do recommend that you use the ‘attach‘ functionality to add your own videos to your updates. Why? If you upload your video via the Facebook ‘attach’ functionality it will automatically embed a ‘Like’ button into your video, thus giving you the opportunity to build your fans when people share your video. If you simply link to a video on YouTube or elsewhere there will be no ‘Like’ button automatically embedded in your video.

Try this out…

: Upload videos which you have on your computer using this uploader tool– it automatically inserts a “Like” button right into your video!

You get a cool feature with it!

: By uploading this video directly into the video uploader tool pictured above, users can now click directly on “Like” within the video as they watch.

TRICK #5: Target your messages to different segments of your audience.

Did you know that you can push out status updates that only specific segments of your fan base will see? For example, if you have a global business and you have an offer that is only relevant to your Canadian customers, you could push out a story that only your Canadian fans will see. Likewise, if you have Spanish speaking fans you could target them exclusively with an update written in Spanish. Right next to the “Share” button in the messaging box is a targeting tool– while the default targeting is “Everyone,” you can limit the outreach by location, all the way down to city/state and by language.

: If you have a message that you don’t need or want all of your users to see, you can customize who the message will be revealed to, by using the functionality built right in to the message box!

Target your message right down to the city!

You can target you messages by location of your users, as deep as their city, and even the language they speak!

TRICK #6: Make it worth your fan’s while to look out for your updates!

Razorfish published a study awhile ago that asked consumers why they fan and follow brands. The greatest percentage of people, by far, responded ‘for the exclusive deals & offers’. So if you want your fans to watch out for and look forward to receiving your updates, you should reward them from time to time with special offers like coupons, giveaways, contests and more. We’ve seen companies that offer regular deals (e.g. Friday specials or Tuesday giveaways) build highly engaged fan bases.

So why not get started and create a promotion today?

How To: Use Facebook for Business Part 2

Nina — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 15:32:18 +0000

In Part 2 of my “Using Facebook for Business Series” I will provide ideas and resources for implementing your business’ content strategy.

How will you attract new fans and engage existing fans?

1. Promoting Your Page

The tricky thing about Facebook Pages is that you can’t friend someone the way you can from your profile. People can elect to become fans of your Page, but only if they know about it. So you’ve got to spread the word organically (and keep doing it) to introduce people to your Page and to your company.

First identify contacts from your personal profile that are either business connections, people working in a field related to your business, or who would otherwise benefit from the information your company provides, and invite them to become a fan of the Page. Send a short note explaining what you want to offer from the Page (remember, people are thinking “what’s in it for me?”) and include a link to the Page.

Next, promote your Page elsewhere online by putting a Facebook Page button on your website to help others find it, spreading the word on Twitter if you’re there, sending out an email notification, or putting a link on your business cards. Do whatever it takes to help people know that you’re on Facebook and you want them to become a part of your community. Don’t forget to tell them WHY to come…but that will come later in this article.

2. Defining a Content Plan

What will you post? How often? This is so important to do up front, becuase as I’ve mentioned in Part 1 of this series, THE PRIMARY WAY YOUR FANS WILL ENGAGE WITH YOU IS VIA NEWS FEED. If you are serious about this effort then take the time to set a plan. This will change and evolve as you monitor your response, interactions and (hopefully) new business leads.

What Kind of Content? This is dependent on your business. If you are an affinity brand like a radio station, then it’s easy to post content about your events, your content, your staff because people want to hear all about you … they feel like part of your community. Pest Control, Accounting, Real Estate…well, it might take a little more work to come up with an effective plan for content management.

Encourage discussion among fans by asking questions like: “what’s your favorite product?” or “what could we do to improve our product?” Post updates weekly, if not daily and point your fans to any off-site promotions, such as giveaways hosted on different web sites.

And keep it fun! Nobody likes straight up business all the time! Zappos, for example, has crazy videos and posts that aren’t related to shoes, which is why their fan base is well over 21,000.

It will take time to build your fan base, so remember to keep sending out invites to new contacts asking if they want to become a fan of your business Page. Constantly promote the Page in any way possible, and keep your content fresh — give people a reason to check in on your page regularly.

Check your analytics: before long you should see a large portion of your website’s referrals coming from Facebook!

How Often Should I Post? This is also not cut and dried. If you are posting entertainment stories you are posting once a day if not more. If you are posting tax tips, then you want to keep frequency low. Start at once a week and monitor response. I’m not saying you can only post once a week, I’m saying keep your tax tips or car sale information to a minimum. Post relevant news stories, fun tips, or anything related to your business category that is more light hearted.

Defining a publishing schedule for your content
This isn’t really a tip, but more of a best practice. By creating a calendar to guide your updates, you will achieve the following benefits:

1. You can spread updates out so that you carry on a persistent but unobtrusive dialog with your Fans. Post too often and your page updates will start being hidden, or you’ll lose fans. Too seldom and you’ll be forgotten. Try to mix up different update types – a status update, a Link, a Note, a Photo or video update.

2. By creating a calendar, you can also schedule moderation periods for comments if you feel this is necessary for your brand. Most Interaction activity (including comments) will occur within 24 hours of an update before it drops out of Fans’ news feeds.

3. By recording all activity on a schedule, it’s easier to map it against exported stats data from your page’s Insights. This can show you Total Interactions around different content types to gauge which gets the most traction/conversation, and track Removed Fans against certain update types.

Overall, just get started by doing something … even if it’s only once a week. You’ll be a social media whiz before you know it.

I recommend the following website for more learning, http://www.mashable.com.

How To: Use Facebook for Business Part 1

Nina — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 14:57:35 +0000

“How Do I Start a Facebook Fan Page?”

I get asked this question constantly from friends, associates, clients and co-workers so I thought it would be a good post for this blog. It will also prove to very handy the next time I get this question!

If you are thinking about setting up a Facebook Fan Page for your business, congratulations, you have just joined over 80% of business owners in your intent.

Facebook is the world’s leading social network, with over 450 million users and counting. No one else comes close.

Beyond personal networking, Facebook can be a powerful tool for brands, businesses and charities. Let these resources help you get the word out and engage your fans. This is just a “getting set up” blog. As with anything, you evolve as you grow. I would highly recommend integrating your social marketing efforts with your other marketing efforts. Cox Media Group does a great job with this and my team can help you take your efforts to the next level – just give us a call!

Facebook Pages 101

Page v/s Profile: I’m going to start basic for all the newbies..so first things first…are you even on Facebook? If not you have to first set up a personal profile. Facebook Pages are different than Facebook profiles. A profile is for you, Jane Doe, but your business can’t have a profile — it can have a page. This is important. If you don’t do it right, Facebook will find you and shut you down.

1. Go to www.facebook.com and set up a personal profile. If you are not the owner for the business fan page you are creating then have the owner set up an account or simply create a personal account for this purpose. If your administrative assistant sets your business fan page up under her personal account, guess what happens when she leaves?

2. Now, set up your page. Once you’ve set up your personal profile. Click or search for Ads or Pages. Set up your business account following the wizard. Facebook has a great help section if you get stuck. You can populate your page with info that relates to your business in one place with a built-in potential audience:

- Overview of company
- Website and contact info
- Press releases
- Videos
- Blog RSS
- Twitter updates
- Company news and status
- Customer interaction

3. Facebook Domain

Vanity domains are really helpful in directing people to your new FB fan page – ex: http://www.facebook.com/yourbusiness. Learn more about it here – http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=896

4. Creating the Perfect Profile Picture

Facebook specs recommend that profile pictures should be 200px wide, while height can vary as needed. What is less documented is how the thumbnail that Facebook uses across the system is generated from this picture.

You’ll find the system crops images when generating a thumbnail, losing information around the edge. After some initial testing, we’ve determined that there’s a “title safe” area within all images. So when you create your profile image that’s 200px wide, allow a 12 pixel border around crucial information (such as typography or a logo) to allow for automatic cropping. Also bear in mind that regardless of the shape of your profile image, Facebook thumbnails are square (with rounded corners), and sized based on the length of the shortest side of your image. So when designing rectangular profile pictures, make sure to keep your desired thumbnail imagery within a square boundary.

That’s it! You’re done creating your Facebook Fan Page for your Business. You will continue to tweak and add content as you get more comfortable, but don’t go crazy with design. One of the most important things to understand is the overwhelming majority (over 95%) of your fans (once you get them) will not go to your facebook fan page. They will interact with your via their news feed. SO, it’s important to start thinking about the kind of content you will post or fan acquisition and engagement.

Stay tuned for Part 2!