From Facebook to Email and Back Again

You have your email list, you have your Facebook fans, so how do they work together? Believe it or not, there are benefits to having someone as a fan and as an email database member, you just have to get them to sign up.

One benefit of having a fan on Facebook is you can talk more often than you can email. Send me an email message every day and I'll probably unsubscribe, post a daily message on Facebook and I'll remain a fan, as long as the content is engaging.

One benefit of having an email address is you can use it to go from one social network to the next. If the popularity of Facebook wanes, you can use the email address to extend an invitation to the next social platform.

Sounds great, right? So, how do you get them to sign up?

Building your database - from Facebook to email. Want to capture the emails of Facebook fans? The easiest way is to host a giveaway on Facebook and drive fans to a website registration page where you capture their email addresses. If you are hosting an event you can also promote on Facebook and require email during the event registration process - again driving them from Facebook to a website registration page.

Building your database - from email to Facebook. Simply invite your fans to like you on Facebook via an email. Offer up a clear reason to join - perhaps you will post a fan only coupon to your page soon, or you'll be hosting a Facebook contest. Give them a sense of urgency that they need to join now in order to be a part of the action. Keep the email copy single-focused - don't bury the ask in a newsletter format.

Something else to consider is Custom Audiences, Facebook's ad product which allows you to upload a list of emails from your database and advertise directly to them on Facebook. If they like you enough to receive your emails chances are they would be open to becoming your fan.

Simple ways to drive people from Facebook to email and the other way around. What methods have you seen work?

Good Customer Service on Social Media

In a world of text, tweets, chats and non-physical face-to-face conversations it is much easier to let someone down. Want to cancel dinner? Just text you have a headache. Didn't really quite enjoy that first date? He can be dumped in less than 140 characters. Recently, I watched in wonder as people took to a Facebook event wall to cancel just hours before a party started. You have to ask yourself if they would have sucked it up and come had they been forced to call and speak to someone. So admittedly, technology in all its wonders does have some draw backs, it makes it much easier to "hide" or to be in a way unreliable.For brands and companies though, the opposite seems to hold true. When a dissatisfied customer takes to technology, it is less about hiding or running and more about helping as quickly as possible. No one can be sure how fast the message will spread or how many others will see it and jump on the conversation. Some companies have a policy of answering within 24 hours, others within the hour and some get to it when they can, probably not the best approach. When thinking about your response strategy think about the following:

- What is my capacity? If you don't have someone dedicated to monitoring and responding, then make sure you try to set some standards for fans. Being up front and honest is half the battle. "We'll respond to requests within seven days. If you want a more immediate response call this number."

- Where can people go for customer service? If social isn't where you are putting your focus for customer service be very clear how people can reach you otherwise - phone, email, website. Despite having this people may still want you to respond on social. Very often people want to be responded to via the same medium they reached out on.

- What is your response? If you have a list of common questions or complaints, you can always format a library of responses, allowing even a a third party to be able to respond on your behalf. It saves you time and it satisfies the fan.

Technology may allow people to hide  but it also allows people to have their voice amplified. Make sure your company is prepared.

Know How Technology Works

When driving North on I-65 I came across two billboards each a mile apart. The first was for a local mom and pop diner. On it was a picture of food and a call to action - the restaurant's phone number. From what I could tell it wasn't the type of joint you would need to call ahead for a reservation, so why was the phone number featured so prominently?The second billboard was for Burger King. It also had an image of food but in big bold letters it read: Turn right at the next exit. Followed by an arrow. Burger King nailed it. Granted they probably had a support of a large agency,  but they clearly understood how the medium (a billboard in this case) worked.

Whether it's a poorly placed QR code or a text heavy Facebook post, people often fail to think about how the medium is being used by their customer. Here are two key questions to ask yourself when developing a campaign:

1. What is the information your customer needs to know?

2. What is the best way to deliver that information on the particular medium you are using?

If you are using mobile use wide ranging methods to reach your customer -  less QR codes and Apps and more use of mobile web and SMS. Mobile search is often searching "in the moment" or "on the go." What types of information would your customers need to know as they are heading out to shop, eat, etc?

If you are using social be conscious of which platform you are using. Twitter behaves differently than Facebook which behaves differently than Pinterest. Make sure you are in the right space to reach your customers. On social media, what social currency can you give your followers so they'll help spread the word? Maybe it's a coupon, maybe a recipe or perhaps a bit of trivia. Think about information that is interesting and useful for your fan base while still helping you achieve your business goals.

No matter what the medium, it's important to understand how people are using it and to identify the critical information they need so you can make a sale. Sometimes it's as simple as a big yellow arrow pointing toward your next Whopper.

Social Media Fueled Revolution

Thanks to one of my clients – The World Affairs Council of Kentucky and S. Indiana – I had a front row seat with members of the Tunisian revolution. (This does circle back to social media so stick with me). I admit, prior to the event, I knew little about Tunisia and I certainly couldn’t pick it out on a map.  I did know that the Tunisians kicked off the Arab Spring. They were the first country in the region to overthrow theirdictator and you could say gave inspiration to nearby countries.

What struck me during the cultural conversation was one comment, spoken by one of the older Tunisians – “The youth had rocks and tires which they would set on fire, but the greatest weapon of the revolution was the mobile phone.”

After hearing their story, I have to admit it was true. The mobile phone allowed the people to continue to tell their story long after the traditional media had been shut down and the journalists jailed. The youth took photos and videos sharing them on Facebook and Twitter which were then used by media around the world.

I couldn’t help thinking of Mark Zuckerberg. When he created Facebook did he have any thought that one day this platform would give people the courage to overthrow a dictator? And it didn’t stop in Tunisia. The Tunisian youths taught the Egyptian youth how to best leverage social media along with other tips on surviving and winning a revolution. It was a sharing of best practices you could say.

The Tunisians are now in the rebuilding process and will start elections in October. Oh and by the way, this country went from one dictator to 107political parties. Can you even imagine? I suppose they wanted choice.

Next time you take out your phone and fire off a tweet, give a second to think about the Tunisians and the power of social media. That phone of yours may one day be your most powerful weapon. You never know.

Community Management for Small Businesses

Many stats show that small businesses are embracing social media and plan to devote even more focus in 2011, but what these studies don't dive into is how businesses are going to staff these efforts. Right now I've seen two basic methods - do it yourself in-house, or use agency support.Here are four things to think about as you contemplate expanding your presence.

1. Do you have the skills to manage a community on your staff? The technical stuff can be learned, but the communication and creative stuff will most likely need to come naturally. Some folks are good at math, others are good at talking. At the end of the day social media is about interacting with people online. If writing, responding and listening aren't your strong points you may want to think about outside help.

2. Do you have the time? When you print an ad you can walk away and be done with it, same with direct mail. Social media is different, it requires you to respond, to monitor and to listen. Sure it is more work, but when you are building loyalty and working with your customers to make your business the best it can be, the payoff can be pretty sweet.

3. Do you have the desire? Social media is not for everyone. If you are one of those people who have said, "Why would I ever join Twitter? I don't care what someone ate for breakfast." You may want to hand social over to someone else. It's one thing to not "get it," it's another thing to "not want to get it." Somewhat similar to how I feel about football or baseball...er and hockey.

4. Do you have the funds? Sure setting a page up is free, but then what? To make social work hard for you, you need to keep the content fresh and the conversation engaging (that means spending time listening as well as talking). If you don't have the time, skills or desire to handle in-house, then ask yourself if you have the funds to use an agency. Also think about supporting social with ad buys on Facebook or special promotions.

If you believe social media is a powerful marketing tool and want to increase your presence, go for it. Just make sure you have the right resources in place before you take the plunge, and don't kid yourself that it won't take time and energy. As any business owner knows, anything worth doing  takes a little effort.

$50 Facebook Ad Experiment - Small Businesses

I've worked with global brands who have spent six figures on Facebook advertising and seen great results, but what about a small budget for a small business? Here's what happened when I invested $50 on a Facebook ad for my company Go Social, a Louisville, Ky based communications agency.The Set Up: Creating the Ad

Some will disagree but I find the Facebook Ad system fairly easy and intuitive to use. There are multiple ways to get to the ad system - I went to my company page and clicked the Create an Ad link on the right hand side.

When you get to the Ad page the first step is to create the actual ad. Facebook will ask you to choose the page or insert a url that you want the ad to drive to  (this is super important to get right because that's where people who click on your ad end up).

Choose Sponsored Story or Facebook Ad. Sponsored Stories pulls in fan activity from the newsfeeds and serves it up in an ad. If you have a small fan base and your goal is to get new fans or awareness I would keep it simple and go Facebook Ad, which are the standard ads you see on the sides of your page.

In terms of where you should send the people, I would choose Wall or Default (which is most likely your Wall). Really not sure why you would spend money on an ad to drive people to your photos tab or discussions page. I would guess most advertisers want more fans, in which case the Wall is probably your best bet.

I would put your logo or an image of your product as the picture. Remember the space is small so the more simple the picture the better. I went with my logo because it is bright and colorful, and I was hoping it would attract attention.

Facebook will put your page name as the Title. In a larger ad buy you can alter this and get more creative with the Title, guess that's one of the perks. For the body text you need to keep it simple as you only have 135 characters.

Tip: Tell people what's in it for them. My end goal was to get people to like the page so I could continue the conversation with 2 - 3 posts showing up in their newsfeeds a week. I could have said, hey hire me as your social media agency, but that's a bit obnoxious and unless someone was specifically in that moment looking for an agency, they probably wouldn't like the ad.  Instead I said let me help you keep up to date with social media trends.

The next step is Targeting. I narrowed my audience finally settling on the following: live within 50 miles of Louisville, Ky., 30 years or older, college graduate, English-speaking and not already a fan of Go Social on Facebook. Again, if your goal is getting new fans, make sure you aren't serving up ads to people who are already fans as it's a waste of money.

I played around with other attributes targeting people's interests - like social media and small business owner - but it narrowed the field too much.  I've worked on other ad buys which were too targeted and Facebook was unable to deliver enough impressions for the budget.

Lesson: Be smart about your targeting, pick the things that really matter. In my case, I wanted to make sure that I was reaching people in Louisville that were in a position where they may influence marketing departments or own a small business themselves. I wasn't interested in reaching people right out of college.

Budget/Distribution

Having worked on previous campaigns I've found you get more bang for your buck if you run your ad over a short time period. The idea is to take advantage of the social newsfeed aspect - more people seeing "so and so" liked Go Social in their newsfeed, the more likely they are to recall it and possibly like the page themselves. I ran my ad from 7 am on Thursday to 7 am on Saturday. Facebook will spread the money out over that period based on a bidding system. Every time someone clicks on your ad, you get charged. Remember though, you set the ultimate limit in terms of total money spent, so no big surprise bill at the end.

The Results

Long story short I received 164K impressions from my ad. Sounds impressive but I was less excited about impressions and more interested in the actual likes. If your goal is awareness then 164K impressions for $50 is pretty good. My goal was to get more likes so I could continue the conversation on a regular basis and stay top of mind over a longer period of time.

I had 45 people click my ad and out of that number 15 people actually liked my page. As a result of those 15 people liking my page I got an additional 3 people who liked the page because they saw it in their friends' newsfeeds. So 18 fans for $50 which means I paid about $2.77 for each new fan.  Not bad. Prior to the ad buy I was averaging 8 new fans a month, so you could say $50 bought me two months worth of fans.

I researched advertising in a local paper and rates for a fairly small ad that would run in the back of the paper, surrounded by other ads, ran around $150.  While that price did buy me a month's worth of exposure, I still find great value in getting into someone's newsfeed, especially knowing the average Facebook user has 130 friends.

Was it worth it? We'll see if any new business results, but for $50 I felt I got a good deal of exposure and 18 people who (fingers crossed) will help me spread the word to their friends.

Social is built for movements

When the American Red Cross was able to raise $200K+ via Facebook Causes in a matter of days for Japan, I was impressed but honestly not totally surprised. When the pool of people you are talking to is that big and the platform you are talking on is innately social, your ability to get a group of people to take an action is fairly likely. (Not to mention Japan relief efforts being a very worthy cause).Much in the same way that we take cell phones for granted and even the mobile web, I think the ability to connect millions of people in an instant has become the norm. I also think that's a good thing. From political uprisings to connecting people in natural disasters social has become a tool we can't live without.

And the power of this connection is built for making movements - whether that be a movement to provide disaster relief or something much lighter like getting Oreo into the Guinness Book of World Records for the most likes on a FB post.

The key to starting  a movement on social is to ask people to take small, easy actions, because on social even a baby step can lead to fairly big pay-offs. Obama asked his followers to donate $25 and raised millions. The Red Cross took the same approach with Japan. They were also smart enough to realize the value of world of mouth - if you didn't want to donate you could still participate by acting as a "promoter" and getting the word out by donating your status update.

Brand movements should also ask little from their participants, knowing they'll reap much more in return. A single like of a post can result in someone's 200 plus friends seeing your brand.

Some may complain that social has infringed on privacy or caused us to rely on "fake" online connections versus making real friends, but I think social is uniting us in a way that is extremely powerful.  I'm excited to sit back and watch what other good deeds we accomplish as one big social community.

Bottling Laughter - Coke

It's easy to get caught up in the latest and greatest apps and games and it is also easy to work in silos within your marketing team. What's hard to do is to define what your brand stands for and then keep true to that message through the line - print, digital, pr, etc.Coke is one of those brands that just gets it. The brand is all about making people happy, spreading joy and smiles. Their tagline - Open Happiness - conveys that as does one of their latest digital plays the Smileizer. Consumers can log on to the Smileizer site and record their laughter. Coke will donate money to a charity for every laugh recorded, which is a nice touch, but what's even better than hearing your own laughter encased in a bubble is hearing everyone else's laughter recorded. It doesn't matter if you know the person or not, it is just the sound of ridiculous laughter that starts off "forced" and then erupts into something real. Before you know it, you're laughing too.

You can share your recorded laughs or others' laughs via Twitter and Facebook, and before you know it, you are spreading happiness. The whole program  works because it puts a smile on your face and it makes you feel all happy and warm inside about Coke. It also aligns perfectly with their other marketing messages.

If Coke is all about happiness, what's your brand about?

High Tech Holidays: Goodbye Cards

My mother told me I would not be getting a Christmas card in the mail this year.  Despite the fact that they are financially sound she said they were cutting back because of the economy. As if to justify her position, she assured me that many people were cutting back on holiday cards. Which got me thinking, is it the economy or is it the fact that people are becoming so used to sending quick messages to a wide audience via social and mobile, that the thought of hand addressing a card becomes much too tedious?

My husband, for example, wanted to send an evite out for our wedding invitation. I squashed the idea despite the fact it was very tempting. As much as I love the holidays I also semi-dread handwriting the cards.  My penmanship isn't the greatest and I'm constantly searching  for stamps and people's postal addresses.

Traditional companies like Hallmark, which have recognized online competition for years now, are forced to reinvent themselves. I just saw a commercial where Hallmark has incorporated augmented reality into their cards so you can actually play scenes from the Charlie Brown Christmas Movie by holding the card up to your web cam. Smart, but doesn't solve the problem of making a trip to the mailbox or getting a hand cramp from writing. And of course, paper card companies also have e-cards, which are old hat now. There's something acceptable about sending an e-card for a birthday but not as acceptable for the Holidays or for a thank you note. That is a completely imaginary rule I made up, but one which I have lived by in the past nonetheless.

I have no doubt that in time, sending "real" holiday cards will be replaced completely by virtual cards. Yes, it will be slightly sad, but in the end it will allow us more time to shop, bake and spend face-to-face time with our loved ones. So to my Family and Friends, I'll be updating my Facebook status with a big old Merry Christmas on Dec. 25 and if you're ready to make that leap,  I invite you to join.

Facebook Messaging - Faster, Faster

Is it weird to think that email may be out of date? Typewriters sure, fountain pens you betcha, but email is e-tastic. The truth is I've found myself emailing with colleagues wishing they would head over to the Chat/IM function. Look if we are making lunch plans, I don't need to wait for you to craft an email and think of a clever subject line. An IM will do just fine. So it's not totally surprising that Facebook heard other people saying email is too slow and jumped on it by rolling out Facebook Messaging - a new form of communication that is more integrated with IM, text and social.Most are saying Facebook Messages is not an email killer, and that may be , but one day something is bound to replace email. And when it does something newer, faster, more efficient will come to life no doubt. Happens all the time with everything. So perhaps Facebook messaging is not cutting us off from email but rather easing us into this idea of change.

It’s Not About Location, It’s About Deals

The Pew Research Center came out with a study saying only 4% of people are using location based services. Mashable points out a few flaws in the study - one being they interviewed people via the phone, potentially landline phone. I'm kind of shocked they even found 4% of people this way.The truth is location is growing and with Facebook Places just announcing Facebook Deals, location is sure to grow even more. For some checking in will always be about the "look at me" factor. I'm somewhere cool and I want you to know. But for most I predict checking in will be about what's in it for me, and nothing peaks people's interests more than free stuff or deals. For example, The Gap is making a splash today by giving away 10,000 pairs of jeans. At a retail value of $60, that's worth checking in and actually driving me back to the Gap, a store that's long fallen off my radar screen.

At the end of the day location is simply a more efficient way of clipping coupons and providing value at the point of purchase. There will always be people who feel it is too big brother, but for the majority, I believe the benefits/deals will wash out any fear of being followed.

If Facebook Deals does explode in a way that Groupon and other online coupon offerings have, I hope that one day we can stop printing up all those circulars I throw away every week. In the future just sending out coupons on a hope and a whim to everyone will seem slightly ridiculous, when we can simply check-in to what we really want.