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Posts Tagged ‘Fan Page’

Marketers both love and hate sweepstakes and contests. While effective tools to build brand awareness and generate prospect lists, they tedious, time consuming, and challenging to administer. So when Daniel Herndon of Red Wall Live came up with a terrific idea for a back to school promotion for our client Dr. Jeremy Ciano of RevolutionEyes I was excited about the idea, but concerned about the execution.

The contest is simple:

1. Parents submit photos of their kids wearing glasses and sunglasses
2. Then they get their friends and family to vote.
3. The child with the most votes wins a helicopter ride, tickets to an Ice game and a ride in a zamboni machine, and a behind the scenes tour of the zoo.

The objectives behind the contest, not so simple:

1. Collect images we can use to build awareness of the pediatric practice
2. Build fans for facebook page
3. Collect email addresses

The administration was intimidating. But this is the age of the internet and the iPhone, and there is always an “App” for that. In this case the application is Wildfire. What I like About using Wildfire:

• It was relatively easy to build the campaign. (Depending on how much time you want to spend on the graphics you can be up in less than an hour)
• We had options: Sweepstakes, coupons, photos and essay contests
• Inserts easily into fan page.
• Facebook is not required -Wildfire also offers simply widget for website and a microsite you can direct contestants to as well.
• The simple user interface makes it easy for people to invite their friends and expand the contest virally.
• The price is reasonable. Depending on the length of the campaign, and the amount of customization you require, your administration budget will be a fraction of what it used to cost to run a program like this. ( Dr. Ciano’s budget spent around $200 for this six week program)

What I don’t like about Wildfire: ( Lets face it, nothing is perfect)

• Only one submission per computer – I understand the reason, but this prevents us from signing people up as they come to Dr. Ciano’s office. While we can hand out reminders, not everyone will go home and do it. (after I wrote this post, we found a way to increase the number of submissions, so one less thing to dislike)
• We can capture emails of everyone who submits, but not everyone who votes. The real benefit of this campaign is expanding the mailing list. So we want o parents AND all of their friends and family members. To accomplish this, we will switch to Formstack for the voting

Bottom line… I am excited about Wildfire, and will be testing a number of the variations for clients in the coming months. Including our own : Biz Card Makeover Have you used Wildfire? What experiences have you had with the product?

Don’t forget to – enter your child or grandchild to win a ride on a helicopter, zamboni machine and more!

This post was written by Lorraine Ball

Lorraine Ball twenty years in corporate America, before she came to her senses. Today, you can find her at Roundpeg, a small marketing firm, based in Carmel, Indiana. Along with an extraordinarily talented team (which includes Bonnie the dog and Clyde the cat) she shares what she knows about marketing, networking, pr, social media and business planning. Committed to contributing to a vibrant entrepreneurial economy in Central Indiana, Lorraine is focused on helping small businesses, become big businesses.

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A few weeks ago, Facebook unveiled the ability to tag, or electronically connect, friends and other Facebook users in your status updates, notes and such using the “@” sign before their name. As you start typing the name, the list of friends comes up, just like they would if you were addressing an email to them, and their name then magically becomes hyperlinked to their profile page. The same works for group or pages you’re a member or fan of.

While some where all a Twitter about the move because the “@” function is a straight rip-off of similar functionality on Twitter, that fact is of minimal importance. No one owns the “@” sign. What’s important is that Facebook has expanded the ability for you to connect with your friends, fans or followers more frequently.

For a business, this can allow you to stay more top of mind with your friends or fans. When you tag someone, they receive a notification you’ve done so and, thus, come see what you tagged them in. This is potentially very powerful for businesses. As the administrator of a fan page, when you tag someone in a wall post or note, it appears to them as if the business or organization tagged them, not the individual logged in to administer the account.

(NOTE: The catch is that you can only tag those who are your Facebook friends as well. If someone is a fan of your business, but not a friend of yours on the network, you won’t be able to tag them. As a result, you’ll have to think through having a professional account for yourself that you use to friend people who are fans of your brand. Some may not feel comfortable friending someone from the brand as well, but some probably will.)

However, there are some best practices to consider when tagging others on Facebook so that you, or your business or organization, doesn’t abuse the ability and upset your fans. Here is my list of five best practices for tagging in Facebook.

Five Rules For Facebook Tagging For Business

1. Only tag people who will find the information you’re posting relevant. Throwing up a coupon and tagging all your friends is spammy. Use your update or email marketing features for that. Use tagging when you mention one of your Facebook friends showed up at your event and you were glad they came. It sends a personal “thank you” in a public way and allows them to see that you appreciate them.
2. Don’t tag the same people all the time. Just like blasting messages via email, when you get into copy and paste procedures, you become spam-like and annoying. Make sure you follow rule number one, but mix it up and tag different people in different messages, pictures or notes.
3. Set your notifications appropriately. The first thing most people noticed when the tagging feature was added is they started getting notifications of not just being tagged, but when anyone else responded to the item you were tagged in. Change those email notifications to get the exact information you want from Facebook and one that you don’t want or don’t need.
4. Be sensitive to your customer’s wishes. I would only recommend tagging people you have a great relationship with an know won’t mind you connecting them with your brand publicly. Your best friends … fans … advocates. Tagging a new person who has joined your Fan Page in a note or status update can seem a bit creepy if they haven’t had a chance to get to know you yet.
5. Encourage your employees, friends, followers and fans to tag your fan page when mentioning you on Facebook. It’s a simple act (just hit @ followed by your brand name or page name, then select) that places a link to your page or group in their updates. I would recommend, however, you ask in a way that is subtle and implies that you’d appreciate the gesture but it certainly isn’t required. Don’t worry. They’ll share the love if they really love you.

I’d love to hear more about how you’re tagging folks and if you even like the new abilities. My friend Paul Marobella pointed out there’s no tagging functionality yet on the Facebook iPhone app. I’m sure that will come in an update soon, though. Jump in the comments and let me know what you think. Or, practice and tag me with a note on Facebook.

IMAGE: Photo by Lasse Kristensen on Shutterstock.com.

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Earlier this week, I posted a tweet promoting a product that was pretty cool. The application was graphically beatiful and incredibly useful… but I couldn’t actually figure out what it did or how to use it without a lot of work.

The company immediately tweeted back that the interface was “simple”. I replied, “thanks!”. I wasn’t going to argue with their logic. They were obviously a lot smarter than their user… a seasoned techy and geek.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.

Of course, the interface was simple to them. They built it! The application in question has actually been on the market, unchanged, for quite a while with very slow adoption. Hmmm… so we’ve not had rapid adoption and we’ve gotten feedback that our interface was clunky. Perhaps the two are connected?

It’s not really fair to insult a user by thinking they’re dumb. Relatively speaking, you should always assume they are dumb! I’m not saying all users are dumb… just setting a ‘frame of mind’ when thinking about your customer experience.

In my conversation with Clint Page, he touted social media as an incredible resource of customer information – saving the company money and time on surveys, focus groups, and strategies. His customers like the product, and they know what they need to make their lives easier… as well as Dotster more successful. Dotster just had to lay the groundwork to begin listening to them!

If you’re a technology company, the conversation is already happening about your product! You can search Twitter, try out a Fan Page on Facebook, use Google Alerts or simply post a blog post and solicit feedback. If your users know you are listening, they’ll provide you with the answers you need. You just have to be smart enough to find the answers.