Blog

5 ways to build a sticky Facebook fan page

April 22, 2011

… The McLellan Marketing Group’s page

With well over 600 million people on Facebook, it’s no wonder that businesses are flocking there to create a fan page for their organization. But what should that page contain?  How should you use it to connect with your customers?

Here are 5 tips for creating a Facebook page that people won’t ignore.

Connected: Be sure you use your Facebook page as a launching point for learning more about your product or service.  Link it to your website, a testimonials page or a third-party site that sells your product.

Good example: Ace Hardware offers us special FB discounts, links to their retail locations and you can even view your own local ad flier.

Be the resource: Know your audience well enough to anticipate what else they might want to know.  If you sell business training, link to other HR and employee related sites or tools.  Think beyond what you specifically sell and build a more well rounded resource center.

Good example: Arbor Springs shares their expertise in dementia by offering a free ebook and other links to resources valuable to families facing this disease. (disclosure — they’re a client and we built the page)

Let them talk: Don’t make the mistake of treating your Facebook page like a one way broadcast tool.  One of the best elements of Facebook is that you can actually talk to your customers and prospects.  Don’t turn off their ability to comment on your page.

Good example: Check out the questions we get asked on our FB fan page.  We might start the question/discussion but sometimes people pop on and ask us something out of the blue.  We love that.  (disclosure…duh, it’s us)

Let the games begin: No matter how old we are chronologically, we like to play games.  One great way to get Facebook page fans or to get them to keep coming back is to create contests and games that hook your audience and keep them coming back for more.  Or, have a regular contest –like a weekly trivia game.

Good example: Northwest Savings Bank offers contests and giveaways to their customers.

Serve with a smile: Use your Facebook page as your customer service portal.  Let customers ask questions, post problems or give you feedback about your product or service.

Good example: Check out how Scrapbooking for Less customers ask questions about products and classes.

Facebook is a very powerful tool.  But just jumping on board and slapping up a page without a strategy will leave you and your page getting chilled from a lack of attention.

Who do you think is doing it better than most?  Post the URL so we can check it out.

Need some one-on-one direction?

April 19, 2011

Note: In almost five years of blogging, I’ve never done anything like this before.  And I probably won’t do it again for quite awhile after today.  But I keep getting requests and thought this was the best way to serve the need.

……. Is this your opportunity?

Every single week I get dozens of emails from people asking questions about marketing, building their brand and motivating their employees.

I would love to answer them all.  But, that’s all I’d do every day.

So in broad terms, I try to answer some of them on the blog – thinking others may be wondering the same thing.  No, I can’t get specific about someone’s business or precise problem, but it feels like I am helping a little.

As you know, I have a day job – running my agency, traveling to speaking gigs and spending time with my daughter before she heads off to college in August.

Those priorities don’t leave much time to answer all the questions I get via email.  Which is frustrating because I don’t want to say no when someone asks for help. And I love watching that light bulb go on in someone’s eyes.  It’s awesome to be a small part of helping grow someone’s business.

So I’ve got an experiment I’m calling Direction… from Drew.

I want to spend eight weeks intensely mentoring, coaching and consulting with three people who need direction and advice in their business.

These three people will get complete access to me and I’ll support you in every way possible.  We’ll spend time setting goals for your business and working backwards to create a plan that guarantees you’ll reach them.

Every other week for eight weeks we will spend an hour together on Skype discussing the unique aspects of your business and reviewing the work we’ve been doing/discussing via e-mail in between calls. At the end, you will have an action plan customized specifically for you to market your business, build your brand and motivate your employees.

You won’t even have to think.  All you have to do is take action on the ideas we discuss together.  And because we’re doing this over the next 8 weeks – we’ll have time to try some things and test some waters, to see what’s going to get you the biggest bang for your buck.

I’m looking for three people who are committed and willing to invest in themselves to make massive amounts of change in their businesses quickly.

I’ll be there watching over your shoulder and guiding you as long as you’re willing to take action.

Interested? Click on this link and I’ll tell you how to apply.

Build your digital footprint in a hub and spoke model

April 18, 2011

The hub/spoke model. Click on it to enlarge.

Whether you’re a Fortune 500 company, a small retail shop or an individual consultant trying to be found — everyone is concerned with being findable on the web today.

And with good reason.  It’s the 21st century — so when we want to find anything or anyone, we Google it.  Being findable in relevant search queries matters to businesses (and people) big and small.  And to achieve that — you need a strategy.

We recommend to MMG clients that we build their web of content creation in a hub/spoke model.  You need to have a core or hub for all of your social media activity.  One place that is the repository for your core content.   In my case — it’s  this blog.  It’s home base — containing the bulk of the content I have created.  It’s where I link out from and it’s where I want people to ultimately land if they’re searching for marketers, marketing agencies in the midwest, Iowa advertising agencies etc.

You can have lots of spokes…but they all build off the same hub.  If you look at the diagram I’ve created for my own model (clearly not an art director!) you’ll see that both online and offline activities all point back to the blog.

The logic behind this is pretty straightforward:

• You want to point all your links and backlinks to the same place — the spot you want Google to drive people to.
• You don’t want to spread out the Google juice — you want it concentrated on your hub location. The more links and juice pointed at the same place, the higher your ranking.
• You want people to find your best thinking, depth of knowledge and most authoritative voice — typically a blog or website.
• You want the search engines to drive people to where they can actually connect with you — human to human.

I’m not suggesting for a minute that everyone should have a blog.  You know I don’t believe that to be true.  So for some businesses, it might be your corporate website.  It might be your Facebook fan page.  It might be a Squidoo lens page.

You need to look at how/where you’re going to be spending your time online and then carefully build your strategy around choosing a home base and building off of it.

Don’t dilute your online efforts by not having a smart strategy about how and where you want to be found.

A week of many perspectives

April 16, 2011

The many sides…

As you may know, I am a regular guest blogger on a couple sites beyond this one.

And I occasionally will share my thoughts on some none marketing/branding related sites as well.

It just so happened that several of these guest appearances coincided with each other, so I thought I’d share them with you here. I invite you to check them out and join in on the conversations…

Taglines and Brand Equity: In this post over at Marketing Prof’s Daily Fix, about taglines and brand equity, we’re discussing the National Pork Board’s decision to completely discontinue use of The Other White Meat and change taglines again. (click here to view post)

Leadership versus Managing: The best leaders understand that they need to build their team’s leadership abilities as well.  In my post at IowaBiz.com, there’s an incredible video of Seth Godin talking about managing versus leading.  You’ll want to check it out. (click here to view post)

Civility: I serve on the board of the Josephson Institute of Ethics and just wrote a guest post on the importance (and apparently loss) of civility, especially online for their Business Ethics and Leadership blog.  (click here to view post)

The Power of MultiMedia:  We all know how potent video can be but don’t forget to include Facebook in your distribution of that video.  My post on the MENG Blend blog explores some stats on where videos are actually viewed. (click here to view post)

So….those are the many sides of where my brain was headed last week.  Hope one or more of them gives you a spark of insight or a new idea!

Social media cheat sheet 2011

April 13, 2011

Social Media Cheat Sheet 2011

As I continue to travel the country, teaching people how to integrate social media into their marketing efforts — the most common question asked is:  Which social media tool/site is the best?

And of course, my answer is an unequivocal — it depends.  The crowds sure love that!

Like any marketing tactic — the effectiveness of it is based on what you’re trying to accomplish.  Social media is no different.  Which is why, about a year ago, I was so happy  to share with you a cheat sheet that ranked different social media tools as good, okay, or bad…based on the goals you had.  (Created by CMO.com).

The goals were/remain:

• Customer communication
• Brand Exposure
• Traffic to your site
• SEO

The social media cheat sheet has been updated.  I think you’ll find it very valuable as you access where you should spend your social media resources (time, money, attention) in the coming year.

You can download a full sized PDF by clicking here.

Someone has to hate your brand

April 10, 2011

A brand…if it is going to be effective, has to be bold.  It has to stand for something.  It has to plant a flag into the ground and stake out its territory.  A brand cannot be neutral.

Your brand loyalists will love you. But, there’s no ying without the yang. In other words, if some love you, others will hate you.  You can’t be everything to everyone and be a strong brand.

Which is of course, why we have so many “mushy middle” brands — companies who are afraid to take a stand, so they try to be everything to everyone.  Or they try to be a liger brand…a little bit of everything all mashed together.  At McLellan Marketing — we tell clients, be bold or go home!

No graphic states this more eloquently than Kathy Sierra’s visual below.

Love, love this explanation of why your brand can’t live in what we call the mushy middle!

Which is why I *love* the new Miracle Whip campaign.  They’re basically calling us out — and saying, you either love it or hate it.  Declare which side you’re on.  They totally get that some people absolutely hate their product.  And they’re fanning those flames.  Why?  To get the people who love their product to take a stand.

Check out their current TV spot and enjoy smart branding.  But then come back… because of course, we need to talk about your brand.

Okay — time to look at your own brand.  Can you define who hates you or at least who should?  And don’t get all “people who don’t want quality” should hate us.  Lame.

Seriously — it’s time you step out of the mushy middle and be brave enough to take a stand.

By the way — check out all of these stories, stats and results from Kraft’s gamble on the Miracle Whip brand.  Do you think they would have generated this kind of buzz if they did a mushy middle “everyone loves us” campaign?

Related articles

• What Camp Are You In? The Mayo Camp Or Miracle Whip Camp? (adpulp.com)
• Miracle Whip on YouTube: Haters Gonna Hate (clickz.com)
• Kraft’s ‘love-it-or-hate-it’ campaign whips up buzz about Miracle Whip (canada.com)
• Jersey Shore’s Pauly D Disses Miracle Whip in Ad [VIDEO] (mashable.com)
• Miracle Whip ads: Love them or hate them? (adweek.blogs.com)
• Harvard Business: Miracle Whip, Marmite, and the Love-It-or-Hate-It Brand (blogs.hbr.org)
• Playing The Spread (forbes.com)

Weekend reading – two great social media ebooks

April 9, 2011

Grab a free ebook and get a little smarter!

It’s about 70 degrees here in Iowa today, the birds are chirping and everyone is working hard to come up with an excuse to be outside.  Don’t worry — I’ve got you covered!

Check out these absolutely free resources — some excellent weekend reading.  Get smarter while you soak up the spring weather.

HubSpot has a new e-book on mobile marketing case studies. Click here to download.

Questions about Facebook marketing?  Grab this 26 page ebook by clicking here.

And….keep an eye out.  I’ve written a new ebook on creating your social media strategy that we’re going to be releasing here very soon!

Advice for finding that first marketing job

April 6, 2011

How to find that first job

It’s spring time, which means the robins, tree buds and soon to be college graduates are all popping up everywhere.

I remember how tough it was to find that first job.  Everyone wanted you to have experience but no one wanted to give you that first job…so you’d get some experience!

I am often asked by college students how they can compete in a sea of “I did an internship, I got good grades, my parents are pressuring me to find a job” applicants out there.

So…for all you soon to be and recent grads — here’s my counsel (from the MMG website).

If I were you and I wanted to snare a job at MMG, here are some of the things I would and wouldn’t do. (and naturally, this applies for any job, just substitute the company specifics.  And, I’d replicate this for the 3-5 places you really, really want to work.)

I would:

• Read the MMG website carefully, to get a sense of culture and tone.  Be sure this sounds like a good fit for you.  I know you need a job — but your first job is so important.  You’ll meet your first mentor there.  Or not.
• Sign up to receive MMG’s weekly e-newsletter, the Marketing Minute.
• Stay smart — keep reading advertising, marketing and social media blogs, magazines etc.  You’re going to do this for your entire life — so you’d better get in the habit now.
• Follow MMG on their Facebook page and Twitter.
• Read Drew’s blog and if I really want to stand out from the pack, I would subscribe (via e-mail or RSS reader) and within a week, make an insightful, articulate comment on a post.
• Ask my friends, contacts etc. if anyone knows anyone at MMG who could make an introduction.
• Be very mindful that my cover letter/resume are the biggest demonstration of whether or not I get marketing.  I would ask myself…if I were a product and MMG was the target audience…how would I sell me?  How would I make myself different from all the other applicants?
• Download and read “Giving College Grads a Fighting Chance.”
• If I have a blog, I’d link to Drew’s because I know he’ll check to see who I am.
• Know that they’re going to check my Twitter, MySpace, Facebook etc. pages.  So if they need cleaning up, I’d clean them up.
• If I had no relevant job experience, I would look at the job experience I did have and figure out what elements of marketing were present there.
• Join the local social media club, ad club, marketing club.  Whichever is more relevant to what you love to do and your market.  But start getting connected, if you haven’t already.
• If I didn’t get the job or they didn’t have any openings at the moment, but still think this is the place for me…I would stay engaged.  I would keep reading/commenting on the blog.  I’d drop them a note every month or so.  I would become someone they notice/know.

I would not:

• Send a cover letter or resume that even slightly reads like everyone else’s.
• Rely on any cover letter/resume book. I would throw those away and refer back to my marketing text books.
• Under any circumstances tout my ability to work with people (or that I like them) as a strength or skill.
• Send anything that a pair (or two) of fresh eyes didn’t proof.  A typo will get me tossed right into the “no way” pile.
• Hit send or lick the envelope until I checked and double checked the spelling of the agency, the agency owner’s name and anything else (like their clients) that I might reference.  (see bullet point above)
• Try to BS my way in.  Because I should expect that MMG will smell that a mile away and ask about it until I admit that I sent the same “I believe your agency is perfect for me” cover letter to 12 agencies.
• Humiliate myself. I would double check that I put the right cover letter/resume in the right envelope.  (I’d hate to be the one who makes that mistake, but it has happened.)
• If I really wanted to work there, I wouldn’t give up.  I wouldn’t be a stalker, but I would keep at it.  I would look for ways to help them, even before I got a job there.  Because I would believe that I am going to work there eventually and begin behaving like I already do.

You don’t have to do any of this.  It’s your job hunt, after all.

But remember, at MMG (and most smart businesses) we hire as much for “culture fit” as we do for competency.  We can teach you marketing.  But we can’t teach you to be a team player.  Or curious.  Or passionate about our work & our clients.   We’re not going to force you to be someone who believes in giving  back to the community.

So along with your work and academic achievements, show us that stuff.  And show us that you get why that matters.   Then, we have something to talk about.

Your job is pretty straight-forward.  If you’re smart and creative enough to sell us you, we know you can help our clients.

Good luck!

3 blogging tools worth exploring

April 5, 2011

BackTweets.com

This handy tool (www.backtweets.com) tracks any and all tweets that drive back to your blog, whether they mention you, your blog’s name or even your URL.  That’s right — if they use a shortened URL, you’ll still get the info.

I’ve subscribed by e-mail (it was free) so that every day, I get a simple report that shows all the tweets that drove people to my blog.  I get a better sense of what topics draw more attention and sharing.

Your blog to Kindle

This is a simple and free way to publish your blog so people can subscribe via their Kindle. Just go to Kindle Publishing and set up an account.

From there, you just add some basic blog information (RSS feed, title, description etc.) and your bank information (so they can pay you when someone subscribes) and within 48 hours, you’re available 24/7 on the e-reading giant.

Zemanta

Zemanta is a free plugin for your browser that looks over your shoulder and as you’re typing, it’s suggesting relevant links and photos that would enhance your blog posts.   You can embed links, add a short list of related posts at the bottom of your own post and place their photos where you’d like them to appear.

Even more interesting — when you use Zemanta, it automatically puts your post into their related articles database…and offers your content to other bloggers to link to.  So it goes full circle.

These are three of my favorite tools.  What tools can you share with me and my readers that are among your favorites?

Going old school – Yahoo Groups

April 2, 2011

I know that Facebook‘s groups are the rage and I think it’s a dandy tool.  But what if you have a group of people that aren’t heavy Facebook users?

For many years, I’ve used Yahoo Groups whenever I was part of a small group that needed to stay in touch, share files/photos, and by using the designated e-mail address, could talk to everyone at the same time.

I was recently asked how to set up a Yahoo Group and created this step by step PPT presentation.  So I thought I’d share it with you too, in case you want to go old school with me!