JitterJam® Social CRM

The Idea Spark discussion about Facebook Marketing was very lively last Friday during our Creativity Coffee Tweetup in celebration of the 5-year anniversary of @TechCrunch. The discussion surrounded how consumer-facing brands and businesses can gain more than just “fans” or “likes” from their presence on Facebook. Here are some ideas to spark your marketing creativity.

1. Facebook is a “game changer” that is appealing to a broad demographic of users that is mapping to the general population’s demographic make-up.
• Embrace Facebook for more than the youth market. In fact, the fastest growing segment of Facebook users is women 55+.
• Facebook is a great way to reach your target customers and draw them into deeper engagement with your brand. Try using Facebook Ads to begin finding new fans for specific target markets.
2. Post sharable content.
• Post videos, photos, links and other content that your fans will want to share with others—content that's interesting, entertaining or fun.
• Sharable content enables your brand to grow beyond your fan base and to be redistributed throughout (and beyond) Facebook.
3. Let your "fan" or "like" count be a goal—but not your only goal.
• DO drive people from your other marketing efforts (print, TV, direct mail, online ads, website, SEM, events, etc.) to engage on Facebook and through other social channels
• Getting people to "like" your brand is not that difficult. Getting people engaged with your brand and getting them to recommend and purchase—that is your ultimate goal. Use content, open conversation and conversion tools like promotions to engage them further.
4. Reward your fans for engaging with you.
• While fun content will keep your Facebook fans entertained and engaged, providing unique offers will drive measurable return of your social marketing efforts.
• Unique offers reward your Facebook fans for their loyalty and participation. Make sure that your offers are also sharable so your fans can invite others to participate as well.
• If your business has different locations, enable offers to drive revenue and participation at specific locations.
5. Let your fans be your guide.
• Even though your Facebook fans are engaged with you on one channel, make sure that you enable each individual to drive the channels, the frequency of communication and the content they'd like to receive from you. JitterJam's Make Me Happy™ permission marketing system does just that.

Would you like to join in our live discussions? We hold a Creativity Coffee hour every Friday morning at JitterJam's Bedford, NH office. Come by and join us! There's no charge, and no "sales" going on!

Are you stuck on a problem and can’t think of a creative idea to solve it? Need some help to make your ideas gel into a plan? Call a few friends (or strangers), sit with them and just talk. And let the ideas fly.

I have always found that my best ideas are a result of conversations I have with others. It’s not that I’m taking someone else’s ideas and running with them; I have found that the very process of expressing my point of view gets my creative juices running. Ideas pop in my head and out of my mouth, and suddenly, I have a breakthrough idea. While sitting and thinking about something gives me time to organize ideas and take action, but I crave interaction with others to spur my creative ideas.

When Ric Pratte, our CEO, suggested that we start a Creativity Coffee hour on Fridays here at JitterJam, I was all for it. I knew that we’d have different people in the room each week and would have an opportunity to have lively and diverse conversations about social marketing on a weekly basis. It would help us generate ideas for our customers, our community and our company. It would introduce us to new points of view and experiences that would help pave the way for new breakthroughs in thinking.

This morning, we celebrated TechCrunch’s 5-year anniversary with a Meetup and Creativity Coffee hour. We had some new faces in the room, some great conversation and some ideas about how Facebook could and should be used by businesses to engage their customers. We’ll be posting those ideas on the blog next week in the Idea Spark series. You can see our first installment of that series here.

So, Fun Stuff Friday now has two really fun hallmarks—coffee and creativity in the morning, and beer and bonding in the afternoon.

Boy, do I love start-ups.

Want to join us for a Creativity Coffee hour? Sign up here! There’s no cost. We just want to know who is coming and how much coffee to stock.