Online Marketing Solutions

If you’re a business owner, and you haven’t spent some time exploring Pinterest’s boards (and benefits), you should -- it just might help to boost your bottom line! Below are some Pinterest best practices we suggest you peruse before you dive in.

Boasting an average of 1,090 visitors per minute and a database increase of over 145% in just one year, Pinterest is more than just a new kid on the block (shop.org). Generating over four times as much revenue-per-click as Twitter, and 27% more revenue-per-click than Facebook, Pinterest has attracted a valuable (and oft-difficult to snag) business and retail audience (venturebeat.com). For a relatively new network on the social media scene, these numbers are both staggering and convincing.
 
As with all social networks, the age-old strategy of “build it and they will come” is extinct. Marketing through social media requires engagement, integration and consistency, and Pinterest is no exception.  To build and execute a successful presence on this network requires five key practices that should be included on every social media manager’s sticky notes.
 
Plan. Create a content strategy that is customized toward the lifestyle of your target audience. “Pin” products and information that engage with your demographic and always think of your consumers first.

Engage. A natural social community, Pinterest requires engagement. Repin, Like or Comment on both your own pins/boards and the boards of others. Be sure to participate.

Integrate. Do not silo your social media efforts. Promote your boards on your pre-existing accounts (Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, for example). Incorporate the “Pin It” button onto your social sharing lineup.

Evaluate. Be sure to measure your social media marketing success. What boards are seeing the most “likes”? What pins are seeing the most “repins”? Is Pinterest driving traffic to your website? As you’re following your plan and engaging with your audience, keep track of your KPIs (key performance indicators) and continue to evaluate and re-evaluate.

Enjoy. Have fun with this network! As a visual medium, encourage others to enjoy your content and engage with your copy. Have fun. 

In a recent study led by ComScore, it was revealed that 21% of people with Pinterest accounts have purchased an item after seeing it on the social network (comscore.com). For small, independent businesses, this statistic should leave you salivating. Requiring a minimal budget, Pinterest enables small businesses to display their product lines in a unique and visually compelling fashion – something that a business of gifts, home décor, housewares and jewelry will excel within. Likewise, travel and tourism industry marketers would do well to get online, post pictures of their destinations and encourage visitors and guests to do the same!
 
Registering on Pinterest is easy. Visiting www.pinterest.com will take you through a “Login” or “Join” process right on the homepage. Simply click “Join” and register with your Facebook, Twitter or email address. Upload a photo, supply Pinterest with brief details and your  business is set.
 
What are you waiting for? If you need advice, or want to pursue Pinterest as part of a larger social media marketing campaign, Stir can help. Give us a call today!

In Part I of this post (Does Social Media Marketing really help to boost a business's bottom line? Yes!), we talked about the importance of a social media campaign to your company's success. In this post, we'll look at some of the great social media campaigns of late. Our hope is that in them you'll find inspiration, motivation, and proof that a social media campaign done well can mean real wins!

Case Studies

Stir is always watching for social media success stories like the ones below. It’s a great way to learn what works. You could (and should!) do the same. Combining the inspiration they offer with the tips above will enable you to create a social media marketing campaign that will build your brand, boost buzz online, and improve your company’s bottom line.

BC Guest Ranchers Association -- from www.stirsolutions.com

“The BC Guest Ranchers’ Association (BCGRA) wanted to run a social media (Facebook) contest to promote its member ranches across North America, and needed an agency to help imagine, plan, create, and carry out all aspects of the campaign. So Stir combined strategic planning, graphic design, content creation, email marketing, and Twitter engagement with a world-class Facebook contest to great effect. By the close of the campaign, Facebook "likes" had grown by over 1200%. And eight custom contest update newsletters were sent to thousands of targeted and qualified recipients, resulting in a contact list the BCGRA could continue to use for future marketing.”

Huggies -- from www.dmnews.com

Kimberly-Clark recently released results on a Huggies promotion it ran in spring that made novel use of social media. The brand promoted offers via email and on its Facebook page and website for $1.50 off any package of diapers.  Interested parties could print out the coupon and go, or they could click a button, share the offer with three friends and instead receive a $3 coupon for their trouble. More than 600,000 people took Huggies up on the offer, and two thirds of all visitors to the offer page printed a coupon. According to Kimberly-Clark, the open rate and the click-through rate on email referrals was 56%, and the company estimated that it reached 3.5 million new consumers through the campaign.

More interesting to direct marketers, perhaps, is the fact that Kimberly-Clark  was able to track all the offer-takers. “As soon as the consumer presses the ‘share' button and gets to the landing page, they're given several ways to share it. They can post it, tweet it, email it--all with a branded message,” says Vijay Sundaram, head of marketing and sales for Social Twist, the company that deployed the promotion for Huggies.  “No matter what route they use to get to the microsite, we know who they are, who referred them, and whom they referred, so we can identify the biggest influencers. We can apply conventional marketing metrics to this.”

“The Huggies promotion had some consumers who had five generations of referrals.  That's high, so the brand can say, ‘These people got 15 other people to engage in the brand and these people got six' and they can segment them into groups of influence,” Sundaram says. “Social media gives brands a way to reach out to and hear from consumers, but brands don't own the channel, so they don't know who the consumers are. This is a way to find out who your most influential consumers are.”

Dunkin’ Donuts: Keep It Coolatta -- from www.acquisitionengine.com

“Dunkin’ Donuts came up with an awesome campaign to promote the launch of their Coolatta beverages – a sweepstakes where Dunkin’ Donuts Facebook fans could upload a photo of themselves with a Coolatta beverage to Facebook and automatically be entered into a daily giveaway. The relatively low cost campaign built up their social network following, increased brand & product recognition with the mass of Coolatta-related images flying around the web, and obviously encouraged people to buy their iced-coffee drink too.”

Dove: Dove Evolution -- from www.acquisitionengine.com

“Dove’s viral video ‘Dove Evolution’ was part of its ‘Campaign For Real Beauty’ launched in 2006, and was the first purpose-built viral video to make a real impact on a marketing campaign for the company. The video features model Stephanie Betts being given a makeover then later being photoshopped, and is supposed to highlight how our perception of beauty is distorted. The video managed to acquire over 11,400,000 views on YouTube, and it has been estimated that it brought in a massive $150,000,000 worth of exposure for the company. Not bad.”

Obama: Election Campaign -- from www.acquisitionengine.com

“It’s been well documented that Social Media was a huge part of Obama’s election campaign, and that can be backed up by some fascinating statistics regarding what the campaign achieved: 5 million ‘friends’ on more than 15 social networking sites; 13 million email subscribers; 8.5 million monthly visitors to MyBarackObama.com (at its peak), [and] 3 million online donors.”

Nike at the Olympics -- from econsultancy.com

Nike is known for using guerrilla marketing tactics to try and steal the limelight from its competitors, and during the London Olympics it managed to outshine official sponsor Adidas with a massive billboard and social campaign around the capital. Nike eschewed the usual celebrity endorsements in a campaign that celebrated everyday athletes. It bought up hundreds of billboards around the city featuring the hashtag ‘#findgreatness’. Adidas, which spent tens of millions of pounds to be an official sponsor, ran a campaign featuring Team GB athletes and the hashtag ‘#takethestage’.

Heinz -- from econsultancy.com

Heinz is another FMCG brand that frequently uses social to build excitement around its product launches. As part of the marketing activities around a new Five Beanz variety, Heinz created a Facebook quiz app that told people what kind of bean they had grown up to become in response to a series of questions about their personality traits. To encourage people to take part and share the app, five winners were picked every hour and sent a personalised bean and every user that invited 10 people to take the quiz was given a goodie bag. Heinz also offered Facebook fans a coupon so they could try the product. The campaign ran for two weeks and achieved impressive results: 22,143 took the quiz to apply for a personalised bean; More than 10,000 users shared the app; The campaign reached 10.8m people on Facebook; It reached 3m people reached outside of Facebook through Twitter, blogs and news sites, [and] The Heinz Facebook community grew by 30,000 extra fans

FanFeedr -- from socialfresh.com

“For some background, FanFeedr is a sports news aggregation site that collects and classifies over 10,000 quality sports related sources, photos, scores, and tweets into team specific pages. Content is published on team specific Facebook and Twitter accounts, in addition to the FanFeedr website. We have engaged in trials using Facebook ads for several of our pages with the goal in mind is to increase the following: Awareness of FanFeedr and its many team pages; Our overall Facebook presence growth, [and] Referral traffic back to our site, FanFeedr.com.” 

Fanfeedr employed “precise interest targeting” and achieved some pretty “surprising CTR results”! “For each page, we ran multiple ads and A/B tested everything from advertising copy, the photo in the ad, location, precise interest targeting, and demographics such as age, and gender. The factor that consistently saw the largest increases in CTR (click through rate) and largest decreases in CPC (cost per click) was precise interest targeting.  At times, we included over 60 precise interests and this resulted in significantly better results than targeting a larger and more broad audience.

“In fact, our Yankees page, which was one of our best performing pages, saw a peak CTR of 0.45%, which is 997% higher than the reported average...We think the reason for our success is simple: people would rather see an advertisement for a page or product they’re interested in (in our case, their favorite team), as opposed to something that may be completely irrelevant to them and that they most likely will never click on.”

Next Steps

Still not sure where to begin? Call Stir today. We’ll be happy to do an analysis of your online presence and the efficacy of your social media marketing efforts so far, and then make recommendations about where you might spend some of your marketing resources for the best result. We look forward to working with you!

Social Media Marketing

A Social Media Marketing effort can be as simple as having a blog attached to your website or asking your customers/clients to “like” or to “follow” you on Facebook and Twitter. Or it can be as comprehensive as a full Social Media Marketing campaign that incorporates a variety of applications, sites, and buzz building components like social contests, e-Newsletters, polls, videos, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), paid search, and media buys.

Some of Stir’s clients, for example, manage their social media campaigns in-house and call on our experts for targeted strategic planning and analysis to complement what they're already doing. Other clients have us manage all aspects of their social media marketing. 

However you choose to approach social media marketing for your business, one thing is certain: You’ve got to do it in order to compete! 

North American companies spend billions of dollars trying to capture consumer attention online -- and it works: The Hubspot.com blog reports that “the number of businesses that say Facebook is critical or important to their business has increased by 75% from 2009”.

Why all the effort by businesses to make names for themselves on social networks? Check out these stats from Simplyzesty.com: 

Note: It’s not what you spend, it’s what you have to say and how you choose to say it, so don’t fret if your business is new and your online marketing budget is small. In fact, the arena of social media represents a bit of a coup for small businesses. In the old days, only the big companies with the big budgets could carry out the big promotional campaigns -- “budgets dictated success”. Today, thanks to social media, everyone can play (and win!).

This great infographic from Mashable.com provides an interesting overview of business owner attitudes and marketers’ measures of success. This eMarketer article is another great resource. We recommend reading it as you’re planning your 2013 campaign. 

In the meantime, here are some steps you can take to get started:

First, make sure your website (your central online hub and the place to where your social media marketing efforts will be driving traffic) is in tip-top shape. Then, do a thorough analysis of your target market. Who’s your target client/customer and where are they congregating online? That’s where you’ll want to start. A review of what your competitors are doing well (and doing poorly) can help to highlight areas where you can win. 

Then review your budget, create a plan, stay true to your company’s mission/vision), and decide how you’ll support your social efforts (a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaign? a Pay-Per-Click campaign? a media buy?) Then get started! 

Remember that while your social efforts will help your search engine optimization efforts, and that - in many ways (ie: including keywords and keyphrases in your social posts) - you are trying to attract the attention of search engine robots, content is king:

Write for a human audience. Always provide your fans and followers with content that is interesting, relevant, and timely. Use perfect grammar -- while social media is a more casual platform by nature than, say, your website or brochure, it’s still your company’s calling card and should reflect the highest level of professionalism. And then, when that’s second nature, have a bit of fun!

Note: There can be a risk to assuming the free tools available on most social networking sites are enough -- they’re not. In fact, platforms like Facebook are making it harder to make and track connections (“Reach”) without a paid campaign. So learn all you can about the benefits of paid social advertising and, if possible, budget for a media buy.

Note: All the marketing in the world is a waste if you’re not also monitoring. 

Social Media Monitoring

Through Social Media Monitoring you can a) hear what your customers (and your potential customers, as well as competitors and industry insiders) are saying about your brand, b) analyze trends in online feedback, and then c) respond to it in a way that will drive sales and grow your business -- perhaps by re-branding, changing service/product offerings, or refocusing targeted marketing campaigns. 

Today there are a multitude of social media monitoring tools (of varying levels of quality) that will monitor the internet (social media sites), gather information, and produce reports for your analysis. (Most businesses will require the help of an online marketing agency to help analyze that data and recommend campaign changes to respond to any issues.

And while social marketing (SMM) return-on-investment (ROI) isn’t an exact science -- yet -- you can start by looking at the kind of ROI you’ve been getting for your SMM efforts so far:

Look at (and chart) the following...

Do you see growth? Can you attribute growth at certain times to specific social activities? Is the growth meaningful? That is, are new fans and followers members of your target market, potential partners, and industry insiders? If yes, you’re doing something right.

Make use of easy-to-navigate reporting tools like Google Analytics or Raven Tools and measure the data they provide against annual sales volumes and new lead counts to show both campaign success and results. 

Great Campaigns

Our friends at Hubspot interviewed several small business marketers and found 10 common traits among those enjoying success in social media. They...

1. Commit weekly resources to creating content and engaging in social media
2. Have some methods of understanding how social media activity [impacts] business results
3. Regularly generate content using blogs, Twitter, Facebook or other social platforms
4. Don’t use every platform...[focus]...resources on the...channels that drive the best results 
5. Use social media to drive participation in offline events
6. Set clear expectations for customers regarding frequency and types of social media interactions 
7. Leverage social media to position their company as a thought leader within their industry
8. Provide clear calls-to-action and opportunities to generate leads using social media
9. Use information and data from social media to drive business strategy
10. Balance paid and organic search engine traffic.

Read Part II of this blog post here for some examples (case studies) of winning social media campaigns. And - if you're ready to get started - call the Stir Team today. A customized strategic analysis will allow you to reflect on what what worked for your business in 2012, and where you might focus your social media resources in the new year to build brand recognition (buzz!) online. 

This year Facebook added a new stat to Business Page Insights data calculations: Reach. You’ve probably noticed it -- that “x number of people saw this post” hypertext in your Page Admin Insights panel -- but were distracted by all the Facebook Timeline changes taking place around the same time. 

So what is reach? In simplest terms, reach (measured in part by Edgerank, “the algorithm developed by Facebook to govern what is displayed—and how high—on the News Feed”) is “the number of people who have seen your post...on both desktop and mobile. Your post counts as having reached someone when it is loaded and shown in news feed” (facebook.com).

There are three types of reach: Organic (“the number of unique people, fans or non-fans, who saw this post in their news feed, ticker or on your Page”), Paid (“the number of unique people who saw this post from a sponsored product, such as ads for Page posts or sponsored stories”), and Viral (“the number of unique people who saw this post from a story published by a friend. These stories can include liking, commenting or sharing your post, answering a question or responding to an event)" (facebook.com).

As above, you probably didn’t pay much attention to “reach” -- until, that is, last month when your reach numbers declined -- drastically and - it seemed - overnight!

Here’s why: 

On September 30th of this year, "Ogilvy reported that Facebook announced a drastic change to the EdgeRank algorithm" (edgerankchecker.com) that seems to have resulted in a decrease of reach of Facebook Business Page content.

This isn't totally new: "Over time we’ve seen reach slowly decrease as more Pages, and more users, create content. The more content that is posted to the news feed, the less likely your Page’s content will reach your fans. Facebook has also been rumored to provide 80% organic content, and “20% paid content in the form of sponsored stories” for Pages. So, tweaks in EdgeRank can cause fluctuations in metrics for brands on Facebook" (edgerankchecker.com).

EdgeRank Checker discovered that after September 20th, there was a 7% decrease in organic reach. Further, "other Page Admins suggested that they have received detrimental losses to their Viral Reach. When examining Viral Reach Per Post Per Fan, we found that before the 20th Pages were experiencing 0.69%. After the 20th, Pages suffered a drop to 0.38%. This resulted in a nearly -45% change for Pages’ Viral Reach. Over the long term, this could have serious negative impact on Pages’ ability to enter Fan’s Friends’ news feeds" (edgerankchecker.com).

So what does this mean for your business’ Facebook Page and what can you do about it? 

"Overall we found that Organic Reach (-25% change), Viral Reach (-45%), and Engagement/Fan decreased (-17%), while Virality marginally increased (+7%). With both Organic and Viral Reach dropping fairly drastically, it seems to indicate that visibility was possibly reduced within the news feed. This decrease in Reach may have also caused the decrease in Engagement/Fan averages. Virality was relatively maintained, which seems to suggest the quality of the content was roughly the same (or was able to engage people who saw it)" (edgerankchecker.com).

Facebook responded to the widespread confusion and complaints with this: "We’re continually optimizing newsfeed to ensure the most relevant experience for our users. One of the key factors in our optimization is engagement: the amount of clicks, likes, comments, shares etc. generated by a piece of content While overall engagement should remain relatively consistent as a result of our most recent optimization, your organic reach may be impacted...The more engaging your content, the lower the impact this optimization should have on your reach going forward...Feed is optimized to show users the posts they are most likely to engage with, where engagement is defined as clicking, liking, commenting, or sharing the post – or in the case of offers, claiming the offer. Posts that are more likely to be engaging tend to appear higher in feed" (facebook.com).

Our friends at Hubspot explain further:

“Until now, Facebook's reach was calculated based only on desktop views, although I think it's safe to say many of us just assumed mobile was included, since its exclusion wasn't explicitly stated otherwise. So before this update, anyone that viewed your stories on mobile devices were not counted in your Reach score. Yikes. Well, at least they fixed it -- story over, right? Not quite. There's one more little tweak to Facebook's Reach calculation whose meaning hasn't been made totally clear. If you read the post about this update on Inside Facebook, you'll notice it states, "the desktop News Feed will no longer count Reach until a user scrolls and loads the page's story." What exactly constitutes a load is a little bit unclear, but Facebook is now loading fewer stories at a time in the News Feed. That's actually good for the accuracy of your Reach metric, because it reflects impressions from users that are more likely to have actually read your post, instead of just scrolling past it quickly in a cluttered News Feed” (blog.hubspot.com).

“So, what does this change in the way Facebook calculates reach mean for you? It could mean your Reach numbers look a little worse ... or a little better. If you have a big mobile audience, their inclusion in the new Reach numbers should help your score. That being said, the fact that your Reach score only improves when a user actually loads a page's story could also mean that you're not getting points you did previously for those quick-fire impressions. Then again, those impressions aren't actually that useful, because the user didn't really consume your content. So at the very least, your Reach number is a better reflection of your true Facebook reach with these new changes” (blog.hubspot.com). 

Some social media marketing experts are suspicious of the whole thing, both the idea of a reach calculation in the first place, and - now - this new development.  

Social Media Coach Janet Fouts says this: "The problem is, the “reach” graph in your Facebook Insights combines all three, Paid, Viral and Organic reach. So let’s say you run some “story” ads. The reach from those ads is included in your overall reach. When your ads reach your set funds limit or you quit running ads, your reach may drop significantly. Another consideration is how the metrics of each individual fan affects the reach too For example, if you have 10 fans who each have 100 friends then their reach is considerably lower than another page with 3 fans who each have 1,000 fans. So basically if you want to inflate your “reach” you just have to attract fans with big friends lists. Even if they don’t engage, your reach goes up. How bogus is that? Basically reach doesn’t have a whole lot to do with how effective you are at engaging your fans” (janetfouts.com). 

Janet’s concern is this: “Isn’t it interesting that so many people are complaining about their reach dropping and Facebook comes out with the “Reach Generator”? This little tool is available only to “qualified accounts” who are then guaranteed that their content will be seen by 75% of their fan base. Not the paltry 16% that most pages get on a good day, but 75%!!" She says: "Bottom line? Quit worrying about reach and worry instead about engagement."

Simply Zesty agrees with Janet: “We’ve always been told that one of the best things about building a large Facebook fan base is that you can build a community around your brand and share content with them rather than constantly having to pay for media. Brands have spent a fortune building up huge amounts of followers on their pages, but...[these changes]...are making a mockery of the whole notion of actually having people like your page. The bottom line is that Facebook is cutting back on the amount of updates people see from brands and it is probably to do with increasing its own revenues...What is happening now – with the introduction of promoted posts – is that Facebook is trying to get brands to pay to be seen by all the people who already like their page.  They are saying “only 5% of people who like your page are going to see your updates so if you want to get the other 95%, you will have to pay again” (simplyzesty.com) 

Note: The team at SocialFresh think these changes are a good thing: “At first it seems that this an attempt by Facebook to turn the screws a bit on brands. I don’t personally feel that this is the case. I believe Facebook is attempting to keep the news feed filled with truly incredible content. The consequence is that the brands that aren’t producing this content, will lose out on their organic reach. The brands that understand this and excel at it, will dominate organic reach” (socialfresh.com).

So, while it’s still not clear whether or not businesses should worry too much about reach, or how accurate the data is, or what it really means to the efficacy of Facebook Business Pages as “valuable marketing tools”, business owners should hedge their bets and do everything they can to improve their “reach” in the meantime. Luckily, it’s quick and easy.

Further, after all the debate, the rules aren’t new rules. In fact, as you’ll see below, the tips and tricks for improving your business’ Facebook Page reach are the same tips and tricks for all social media marketing and engagement: post relevant, timely, and engaging content; provide a clear call-to-action, provide readers (fans/followers) with content of value -- make it worth their time to follow, read, and share; invite dialogue and interaction. Do those things and you should see an improvement in your Page’s reach. And if not? Perhaps the above cynics are right and the new EdgeRank reach calculations are a bunch of hooey -- a new money-making scheme for the bosses at Facebook.

Read Part II of this post for information on how to improve your company’s Facebook reach. In the meantime, call the Stir Team to learn about our consultation and strategic planning services to ensure you’re getting the most out of your social media marketing efforts.

Improving the reach of your company’s Facebook page 

Note: You can check your Page’s current reach versus your reach before this change last month: “Head over to “facebook.com/YOUR_PAGE/page_insights_reach” and export your “Post Level Data” for 9/13 until 9/27 into Excel” (socialfresh.com).

1. Use Facebook’s Sharing Tools

"As a Page admin, you can update the people who like your Page and their friends by using the sharing tool located on at the top of your Page's timeline. You can update your status, ask a question, post photos, share a link and record or upload a video. These posts appear on your Page's timeline as well as in the news feeds of people who've already liked your Page and their friends" (facebook.com).

2. Post Engaging Content

“Feed is optimized to show users the posts they are most likely to engage with, where engagement is defined as clicking, liking, commenting, or sharing the post – or in the case of offers, claiming the offer. Posts that are more likely to be engaging tend to appear higher in feed” (facebook.com).

Alternately, “avoid posting content that will receive negative feedback (when a user hides your post, hides your page, reports spam, or unlikes your page)” (socialfresh.com).

3. Consider Using Facebook’s Paid Media

"If a page has a piece of content that it feels will be very engaging e.g. A good offer, a great photo, an announcement, etc. then using paid media to “boost” that post to fans in newsfeed can be an effective tool to increase engagement with fans” (facebook.com).

4. Target Your Fans’ Friends

“Brands can significantly increase their reach on Facebook by effectively targeting the friends of their fans, according to a European study from Comscore...Friends of Fans often have slightly different demographic profiles to the core Fan base of a brand. Understanding where the differences lie provides brands the ammunition to strategically target these demographics and drive them into physical or online stores. To harness the full extent of Facebook’s brand building potential, marketers have to invest time and energy in the dialogue with their fanbase, continuously posting relevant content. 

"The money shot kicks in where fans ‘like’ posts, sharing the information within their network on their newsfeed. If this information strikes a chord with this extended network, who in turn ‘like’ the post, you can see a chain reaction, cascading ‘likes’ across Facebook, extending the reach of the initial communication exponential.” 

Caution: “However, there are a number of difficulties to achieving such an explosion of ‘likes’, mainly time and frequency of content sharing. The tightrope dance between frequency that inspires engagement, and incessant posting that leads to overexposure, is one that must be performed with care” (marketingtechnews.net). 
 
5. Understand EdgeRank

“EdgeRank is the algorithm used by Facebook to determine the most screen-worthy content. Three factors, multiplied together, determine your content’s value: affinity, weight and time. The affinity score is based on how often a fan has engaged with your brand content in the past, including page visits. Weight, or popularity, is determined by the type and quantity of engagement your post receives (e.g. Likes, comments). Lastly, time and the decay of your post matters; as your content ages and engagement wanes, it becomes less relevant and therefore less likely to appear in a user’s News Feed. Understanding the EdgeRank algorithm is the first step for brands to improve their content strategy” (mashable.com).

“If you're noticing a drop in traffic to and from your Facebook fan page you're not alone. Facebook's EdgeRank algorithm limits what your fans see in their news streams based on their level of engagement with your content. If you want more people to see your updates you can pay Facebook's promotional fee, but a better solution would be to learn how to work with EdgeRank” (examiner.com).

6. Increase Interaction

“Here’s the deal: The best way to increase your page’s visibility is to increase fan interaction. The more fans comment on, share and like your posts, the more affinity they will have with your page, and the more they’ll see your posts. Kind of a catch-22, isn’t it? To get more visibility, you have to be more visible” (novelpublicity.com). So consider posting a question, or provide a clear call-to-action (ie: “Share with your friends to...”). “Like to enter” (ie: fan-gated) contests work great too!

7. Use images

“Facebook users typically respond much better when an eye-catching graphic accompanies a post (think about it—what do you notice first: a pretty picture or a funny comment? The picture is much more visually attractive” (novelpublicity.com).

8. Be an Upstanding Citizen

“Befriending community organizations, media, and non-competing local businesses is one of the smartest moves you can make as a local business on Facebook...A few times a week, preferably each day, spend 5 minutes signed in as the Page scanning the newsfeed, Liking and Sharing (where appropriate) community events and non-advertising posts from other pages”. 

Note: Do this cautiously. Don’t inundate your fans/followers with random shares. If you do it well, here are some of the benefits: “Others are more likely to Share your content; You become more than a marketing vessel, but a source of local information; The fans of the Page you interacted with see your name, know you’re there, and might just Like you, too” (searchenginewatch.com) and you’ll be providing a mix of original content (which is important) and shared content (which is faster, easier, and less expensive than creating original content every time). 

9. Check Your Watch

“Know when your fans are online, post during these times so that your Post’s Lifetime overlaps the time they’re online” (socialfresh.com).

Bonus:

Help your Facebook Fans ensure they’re seeing your stories in their Newsfeeds -- send them this! “To make sure you're seeing all the fun stuff we share on Facebook, check your settings: Go to the our Facebook Page, hover your mouse over the “Liked” box (see below) and ensure that “Show in News Feed” is checked in the dropdown menu that appears.” 

Interest Lists

Some experts are also exploring the effects of Interest Lists on Edgerank (ie: improving a brand’s Facebook reach). 

“Interest lists are an optional way to organize the content you're interested in on Facebook...[and can include subscriptions, likes, and friends]...You can create your own interest lists based on the things you care about, or subscribe to other people's lists.” 

As per Social Fresh: “Brands have an exciting new opportunity to increase the exposure of their content. Brands that are added to to multiple Interests Lists now have the potential ability to extend their Reach well past their Fan base. Brands that are generating the most engaging content (and therefore the highest EdgeRank objects) can now be rewarded with many more additional people Reached” (socialfresh.com).

Whether or not actively pursuing Interest Lists as a way to improve your Facebook Reach (and, in turn, your social media marketing efforts as a whole) will be effective remains to be seen. The people at Hubspot think it’ll be worth the effort: 

“'Interest Lists' are a feature that allows users to organize updates into separate topics from a collection of fan pages and/or public figures who have the subscribe button enabled on their profile. For example, a user could create a "Recipes" Interest List, adding to it fan pages like Betty Crocker and the Food Network, as well as the profiles of their favorite food bloggers to which they subscribe. Users can also subscribe to Interest Lists created by other people, as Facebook suggests popular lists and make it easy for users to discover lists created by their friends. Consider experimenting with Interest Lists by creating awesome lists in your industry; promoting the 'Add to Interest Lists' button on your Facebook page; creating content about industry news so your updates are the first to show up in any lists your business is apart of; and creating a must-subscribe, content-rich Facebook presence” (hubspot.com).

Lindsey Harper Mac, on www.jeffbullas.com, shares the same insights, namely highlighting the importance for business owners of not trusting (blindly) the value of social media marketing, but rather knowing exactly what they’re getting for their efforts: 

“People have been looking for the next big thing for decades, and many believe they’ve finally found it! “Social Media”... many of us mistake traffic on our blogs and Twitter streams for actual popularity and social interaction. And companies and businesses have discovered that social media networks can offer them an almost endless market for advertising. But the visit count on your blog, the number of Twitter followers or your Facebook fan “likes” doesn’t necessarily mean you have a captive and active audience. Various factors—most of them completely out of your control—can affect who sees your content, whether they follow you or not” (jeffbullas.com). 

More: “While Facebook’s “Pages” allows individuals and businesses to amass a fan base, that doesn’t mean that people see it. A recent article on All Facebook explains how fan pages’ performances are exponentially less effective than their owners believe they are...What that means for small businesses and companies is that a platform they might use for the majority of their advertising is woefully underperforming” (jeffbullas.com). 

So what can you do? 

Harper Mac says: understand Edgerank and post engaging content (ie: ask questions and try polls), and includes Twitter in the discussion, which is interesting:

While Twitter doesn’t at present offer a reach calculator like Facebook does, make sure that if you’re tweeting on behalf of a business, your tweets are “RT worthy” -- encouraging the same engagement on Twitter that you do on Facebook to get the most bang for your buck.

Previous to now, brands with a single Facebook page could geotarget updates (posts) by languages and country, but they were limited to a single look and feel to the page. Features (cover photo, timeline, apps) stayed the same across all targets, no matter who was viewing the page (and from what country).

“Last week Facebook unveiled plans for new Global Pages that will allow brands to show localised content to different markets from a single centralised account” (econsultancy.com). Social media managers can associate existing local pages with a central global page and Facebook will then show the local version when appropriate, or default to the global page.

“Today we're excited to announce Global Pages, a new structure that provides the best, localized experiences for a brand’s customers, available to all brands working with Facebook...With this new structure, Facebook users will be directed to the best version of a Page based on the country those users are in, enabling them to see localized cover photos, profile photos, Page apps, milestones, "about" information, and news feed stories from Pages—all while remaining part of the global brand community...Each brand's Global Pages structure will include local Pages for specific markets (single- or multi-country regions) and a default Page for all other markets" (facebook.com).

Global Pages will: 

• automatically translate content into the visitor's local language 
• allow brands to setup localised versions of everything: cover/profile pics, apps, & stories

Sounds great! But how do you know if this new feature is right for your business? Some critics argue that this feature (rolled out hot on the heels of Facebook’s changes to how “reach” is measured and how to improve it is just another way to upsell advertisers. However, if your business has clients, customers, fans, and followers in different countries (where different languages are spoken and different business-related announcements (sales, specials, events, etc) might apply, certainly you can imagine it would be easier to manage a single Facebook “hub” instead of several local pages.

The best suggestion is to give it a try. Meanwhile, here’s some inarguably good news: You’ll need a Facebook Account Representative to set-up and manage your Global Pages Account. In the past, only businesses that spent a certain (and significant) amount on Facebook advertising were eligible for a Rep (or “a managed account”). However, recently, they’ve lowered the threshold and now many more businesses qualify. In fact, if you’re just starting out (haven’t spent more than $500.00 on Facebook ads in the past 30 days) and plan to spend at least $1500 in the first month, changes are good that you’ll meet the requirements for your own Rep. 

Call Facebook directly to learn more, or email Stir today. We can help you research and write a detailed Online Marketing Strategic Plan to determine which of Facebook’s features will best serve your social media marketing campaign.

Social Media Monitoring

A Social Media Marketing effort can be as simple as having a blog attached to your website or a corporate Twitter account, and asking your customers/clients to “like” or to “follow” you. Or it can be as comprehensive as a full Social Media Marketing campaign that incorporates a variety of applications/sites and activities.

Some of Stir’s clients manage their social media campaigns in-house and call on our experts for targeted strategic planning and analysis to complement what they're already doing. Other clients have us manage all aspects of their social media marketing. 

But whatever your social media marketing efforts entail, the monitoring is as important as the marketing.

Through Social Media Monitoring you can a) hear what your customers (and your potential customers, as well as competitors and industry insiders) are saying about your brand, b) analyze trends in online feedback, and then c) respond to it in a way that will drive sales and grow your business -- perhaps by re-branding, changing service/product offerings, or refocusing targeted marketing campaigns.

Today there are a multitude of social media monitoring tools (of varying levels of quality) that will monitor the internet (social media sites), gather information, and produce reports for your analysis. But how do you choose the best tool? How do you interpret all the data that it provides? How do you know the best response? And, even if you could figure it all out, do you have the time and the capabilities in-house?

Depending on the results of your monitoring efforts, you may choose to hire an internet marketing agency (like Stir) to help. In fact, if what you find (in terms of online sentiment about your business or your brand) is particularly negative, you may need to consider Online Reputation Management services.

Handling Online Reviews

Thanks to the plethora of interactive business pages and accounts on social media and user-driven review sites (like Yelp, TripAdvisor, Google Places, Angie’s List, Yahoo Local, Citysearch, and the Better Business Bureau (BBB) for example), most businesses can do some level of social media monitoring and online reputation management themselves.

That is, business owners can see what their clients, customers, guests, supporters, opponents, competitors, and industry insiders are saying about their industry, business, and brand and then - if they’re proactive - make changes. Those changes can include, among other things: rebranding, restructuring, repricing, or retargeting. 

Recently, Stir has helped clients with some of the following in response to no or poor online sentiment about their brand:

• website and microsite creation or redesign
• social media account creation, design, fan/following building, and posting to increase engagement
• social media (Facebook) contest of Facebook “Offers” to build buzz and boost positive online sentiment
• product/service promotion through press releases, blog posts, whitepapers and articles
• search engine optimization to highlight positive online sentiment and specific keywords/keyphrases

Warning: This whole idea of business owners monitoring and responding to reviews online is a slippery slope. However, because it’s been well-established by online marketing and monitoring experts that businesses must be present and active on online review sites in order to compete today, it’s a very necessary part of growing a brand.

In “the olden days”, an unhappy customer could only spread bad sentiment about a business as fast as they could speak in-person to their social network. Today, with social media, news and views can spread like wildfire (for better or for, in this case, worse). As such, a bad online review (even if it’s no big deal in the grand scheme of things) can set a business owner to panicking. That’s understandable:

A business owner is by default passionate about their business. But that passion means he/she doesn’t have the distance from the situation to respond to a review pragmatically (without getting all fired-up). And in responding to negative reviews, business owners can and often do create more trouble for themselves.

A reply to a bad review that is angry, emotional, defensive, argumentative, petty, blames the customer, or makes excuses is a million times more damaging to a business or brand’s online reputation than the bad review itself.

It’s a bit of a “catch-22”: You must respond to negative reviews urgently (and it’s a good idea to respond publicly -- after all, because the bad review is public, you had better take the opportunity to show potential and future customers that you’re proactive), but you mustn’t respond to bad reviews in a panic. 

Here’s how to proceed cautiously and constructively:

• Take a breath. It’s good to be passionate about your business and it’s okay to be disheartened by bad reviews, but try not to take them personally.
• Consider all feedback valuable and be prepared to learn from each response, both positive and negative. Create a clear response strategy that lays out how your business will handle both positive and negative reviews.
• Keep in mind that when you’re posting your reply online you’re not just speaking to the angry customer, you’re also speaking to all potential future customers who are learning about your business online.
• Make sure that every response you post leads with gratitude (“Thank you for your feedback...”) and an apology (“We’re sorry that...”)
• Keep in mind that on most user-review sites, you cannot remove bad reviews and you cannot remove your replies to bad reviews. Make sure to carefully review what you’re posting.

Keep your replies calm, clear, short and succinct. Make it clear that you’re being proactive (“we’re looking into this right now”), but invite the bad reviewer to contact you directly (privately) to discuss further. (That demonstrates to the online public that you’re taking action, but keeps the (sometimes) petty (“nitty gritty”) details of the complaint out of the public eye. 

Be prepared to offer compensation (a refund, a free pass, or a discount on future services).This can be hard for a business owner if they don’t believe the bad review is the result of anything they did wrong, but, again, remember: The customer is always right and - in participating in this activity (responding to online reviews) - you’re really trying to demonstrate to all those potential and future customers that your business is proactive -- that you invite feedback, that you really listen, and that your customers are valuable.

Remember: It’s just as important to engage good reviewers as it is to pacify the bad ones. And while it’s not okay to pay customers to post reviews, it is totally okay to invite them to share their good experiences online. When they do, take the time to reply (publicly) with your thanks for their feedback and your excitement that they had such a good experience (with your product or service).

Want to learn more? Contact the Stir Team today and ask about our sample strategic internet marketing plan that includes insights into social media monitoring and online reputation management. 

Or, more urgently, are you a business owner who’s discovered bad reviews online? We can help. Before you respond to them publicly or - worse - delete them completely, call Stir and we’ll work with your team collect data, analyze the results, develop a response strategy, and handle the negative reviews in a professional and proactive way while promoting positive news about your brand online.

Blogging is an important component of every company’s Internet (Social Media) Marketing or Search Engine Optimization campaign. It’s one of the best ways to engage with an audience (your potential clients, guests, and partners). 

Why? It allows you to control the content (and tone) completely, but because it’s casual and current (blogging is meant to happen often, and content should be timely), your audience feels included (which makes them happy). And a happy social network is one that will provide your business with valuable (and free!) word-of-mouth advertising. 

Tips & Tricks 

• Remember that website and blog visitors are impatient (skimmers & scanners) 
• Make your posts easy to read by using bold titles and subtitles and bulleted lists 
• Carefully set your post’s metadata and include your keywords in the post’s title 
• Include an optimized link to a related piece of content on your website, and vice versa!  
• Try to link to your new post from other posts/areas on your website 
• Aim to craft some of your posts around your top keywords/keyphrases 
• Include those keywords as links in your post and don’t forget to tag it! 
• Provide high-quality content that readers will find value in...

When it comes to search engines, content is king. They value good quality content over “keyword stuffed” content, and give it much greater consideration in the rankings. But don’t forget about your human readers: Make posts relevant, timely, and actionable. Remember the general rules for “writing for the web”: 

• Start with a solid outline & have a well-defined message/purpose 
• Know your audience and always speak to your least informed reader 
• Write tight; no unnecessary words 
• Use active voice instead of passive voice 
• Ensure that text is clear, concise, and correct 
• Consider using a corporate style guide 

Be Engaging. If you write engaging content your readers will want to keep coming back. Further, they’ll be more willing to share what you write with their friends. 

• Ask questions. 
• Solicit a response. 
• Provide a clear call-to-action. 

Length of Posts. Aim for posts that contain between 250 - 600 words. Search engines don’t particularly “care” about how many words a blog post has. Rather, they are looking for content with substance, keywords, and links. 

Tagging. After you have written your blog post, title, description, and keywords, you also (generally) have the option of adding “tags”. These can be used for categorization by the search engines, but probably don’t hold much weight. That said, include them. Never use more than 10 tags; aim for 4 or fewer. Keywords/phrases make great tags. 

Want to blog but not sure where to begin? Contact a reputable internet marketing agency likeStir today. We can help you build a great blog, integrate your new blog with your website, develop a blogging strategy for ensured success, and build buzz about your new blog online. 

Stir offers full-service Twitter marketing and advertising solutions. Below are the Twitter apps we use to develop Twitter marketing and advertising campaigns. Note: We can easily integrate Facebook marketing campaigns with Twitter campaigns.

Twitter Offers

This app enables world-class Twitter Contests, sweepstakes and giveaways allow users to add new followers and spread the word.

•     Custom landing page builder that uses your Twitter account image
•     Fan gating checkbox (participants must follow your account in order to join)
•     Auto-fill tweets for your new followers to send out
•     Auto-fill direct message for you to send to new followers (ie: links, thanks, promos)
•     Contest and campaign tweets and retweets tracking
•     Campaign countdown clock
•     Analytics and reporting

Twitter Viral App

This app provides a simple way to generate strong word-of-mouth advertising on Twitter about your campaign. Gain new followers and customers in the process.

•     Similar to Groupon – set the number of retweets needed to activate an offer
•     Supports online and in-store redemption – promos, links, coupons
•     Custom landing page builder that uses your Twitter account image
•     Contest and campaign tweets and retweets tracking
•     Campaign countdown clock
•     Analytics and reporting

Twitter Exclusive Offers

This app provides a simple way to reward Twitter followers by giving them access to exclusive offers, deals or content. Gain new followers and new customers.

•     Custom landing page builder that uses your Twitter account image
•     Supports online and in-store redemption – promos, links, coupons
•     Fan gating checkbox (participants must follow your account in order to join)
•     Contest and campaign tweets and retweets tracking
•     Campaign countdown clock
•     Real-time reporting

Twitter New Follower Incentives

This app allows you to “incentivize” new followers by giving them access to special offers and content. Send them automatic direct messages (thanks!) when they follow you.

•     Landing page to house the campaign  (optional)
•     Online redemption – upload unique promo codes for automatic distribution
•     Real-time analytics and reporting

Twitter Photo Contests (Facebook enabled)

Build buzz and engage fans by using this app that allows people to vote on other fans’ uploaded photos and content. Use natural Facebook behavior to drive awareness and viral participation.

•     Promote a photo contest in Twitter
•     Fan gating checkbox (participants must follow your account in order to join)
•     Set the number of times a fan can vote; allow voting for multiple entries
•     Organize entries and submissions into categories
•     Schedule submissions and voting windows
•     Real-time analytics and reporting

Twitter Video Contests (Facebook enabled)

Make friends and earn fans/followers by using this app that allows you to run fun contests that encourage Twitter/Facebook followers to share and vote on user-generated videos.

•     Promote a video contest on Twitter
•     App offers full video moderation and optional pre-screening capabilities
•     Fan gating checkbox (participants must like your page)
•     Schedule submissions and voting windows
•     Opt to accept photo entries in addition to video
•     Set the number of categories, and of times a fan can vote; allow voting for multiple entries
•     Real-time analytics and reporting

Does your business have a Facebook Page? If so, you need to read this article and take action right away (by March 30, 2012 at the very latest) to avoid disruptions to your current social media marketing efforts caused by Facebook’s site-wide switch to the new Timeline design. 

Note: Don’t panic! Stir is here to help. We can update your current custom page to Timeline and provide social media marketing services and consulting to help your team navigate the transition.

What is Timeline? 

"Your timeline is your collection of the photos, stories, and experiences that tell your story." In laymen’s terms, Timeline is the name for the new layout and design Facebook is making mandatory for all Facebook Page owners as of March 30, 2012.

Since its launch in 2011, Facebook’s "Timeline" was an optional feature for users -- a fancy alternative to a regular Facebook Profile. However, this month Timeline will become mandatory -- that is, all users' profile pages and business pages will be switched over and “old” profiles will become obsolete. 

As per Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg: “Millions of people [800 million, in fact!] curate stories of their lives on Facebook every day and have no way to share them once they fall off your profile page...[Timeline is a] completely new way to express yourself... [It] has three pieces: all your stories, your apps and a new way to express who you are.”

You can learn more about Facebook’s Timeline features by taking a quick video tour at facebook.com/about/timeline 

• Add a cover
• Edit your basic info
• Jump to the past
• View your activity log
• See highlights from each month
• Star stories you want to highlight
• Add life events
• Update your status
• View and add photos
• Share your app activity

So, while there has been some controversy over the fact that the switch to timeline is mandatory, and some worry over privacy issues caused by the switch, at the end of the day, Facebook has become a crucial part of any forward-thinking company’s online marketing efforts, and in terms of features and layout, Facebook is The Boss. We recommend getting prepared, being proactive, and making the most of the features on offer.

Why do you need to change your business’ Facebook Page?

Here’s the problem: If you simply wait until Facebook switches your business page to the new Timeline on the 30th, you may lose a lot of the work you’ve done up until now, including disruption to or corruption of your custom pages, custom apps, custom tabs, and graphics, etc. 

Stir highly recommends exploring Timeline now and preparing for the switch. It would be such a shame to lose the hard work you’ve put into your Facebook identity, and to have your clients and customers visit (or stumble upon) a broken page.

Next steps...

1) Watch the video here: facebook.com/about/timeline  
2) Consider how you’ll incorporate your current Facebook Page components into your new Timeline 
3) Ensure those details/components are in-line with your business’ corporate image etc. 
5) Contact Stir now to get help migrating your Facebook Page to the new Timeline design