Facebook

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.

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!

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!

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!

Fascinating Facebook infographic

March 9, 2011

I think there are few on this planet who don’t recognize that the Facebook phenomenon is staggering in its reach and sheer volume of people.  (One guy just named his baby Facebook!) But it’s hard to not gape at some of these numbers (from SocialHype and OnlineSchools.org) These user statistics are more social proof that this beast is not a fad.

Hard to imagine that there’s not a smart way for every single business to use this tool.  Are you using it?

Via: Online Schools

Add sounds and links to your images

March 8, 2011

Singing pictures?

Picture these scenarios:

In your online store — you want to show a photo of a family room, filled with your products.  You want people to be able to click on each of the items (maybe a lamp or blu-ray player) to purchase them or read reviews.  With ThingLink, you can.

On your static website, you want to include some customer testimonials.  So you post their photos…but you want people to be able to click on them to hear exactly what they have to say.  With ThingLink, you can.

You’re a musician and you want to create a website where beautiful imagery is connected to specific songs or you want to create an online flyer for a concert, offering song samples that people can post on their Facebook page.  With ThingLink, you can.

What’s Thinglink?  It’s brand new technology launched today by ThingLink and SoundCloud. For the first time, it is possible to link a SoundCloud waveform player to any photo or picture, thereby connecting the subject to sounds, music and effects, voice annotations and narrations.

Users can also include links to social networks, blogs, news and commerce web sites, as well as email.  You can also add up to 250 characters to a hover over so you can describe elements of a photo or a product.

This is brand new stuff so there aren’t a lot of examples yet.  But check out these photos from the Stockholm Furniture Fair (click here) or musician Shambhu’s site. (click here)

What’s even cooler is that the links/sounds travel with the images, as they’re passed along.  So imagine the reach that testimonial or band’s flyer can have on Facebook or Twitter!

As is the way of this era, you can grab a free account at www.ThingLink.com.

I’m curious — how can you see marketing folks using this technology?