JitterJam® Social CRM

Many people have already acknowledged that the 2012 elections will be the first time social media plays a large role in presidential campaigns. While Barack Obama was able to harness its power in the 2008 election, use and adoption of social media was not what it is today. Since 2008 the number of tweets sent per day has increased from 300 thousand to 200 million, and the number of Facebook users has jumped from 100 million to 750 million.

This growth has led to a similar rise in social media’s public influence, and has made a social presence necessary for political campaign success. This marriage has proved particularly effective because social users are more inclined to share and engage when they are passionate about something. Politics are an area where strong beliefs and opinions create passion, which sparks social activity. Facebook and Twitter profiles are used to capture this activity, but social media is now also being used in more innovative ways in politics. Here are two recent examples:

Politicians on Plus – As of now, Newt Gingrich is one of only two presidential candidates to have a profile on Google+ (the other being Gary Johnson). While both politicians generally post the same content to their Facebook pages and Google+ profiles, Gingrich is also taking advantage of the hangout feature. He has hosted two hangouts so far, and even posted the video to the first here. These group video chats could help candidates create more personal connections with supporters, and should increase candidate transparency as well. More candidates will probably try this approach in the future, and Johnson has already indicated that he will host a Google+ hangout soon.

First Presidential Debate on Twitter – Following the massive participation in Barack Obama’s town hall, conservatives hosted a presidential debate for Republican candidates with the Twitter handle @140townhall. The debate followed a traditional format with opening statements and time limits for questions dictated by moderators. Twitter has proved to be a great platform to host town hall style events because of the digestibility of 140 character messages, and its ability to reach and participate with an audience. Like Google+ hangouts, we will likely see more of these Twitter events in the future.

What do you think of the way social media has influenced the 2012 elections so far? Have you seen other innovative uses of social media in politics? Comment here and let us know, we’d love to hear about them!

Photo Credit: Twitter

The popularity of summer has never dwindled, and I’ve always believed that it’s well deserved. Summertime means rising temperatures, more hours of daylight, and the probable release of numerous blockbuster movie titles. However, many often forget one of the most enjoyable mediums of summertime entertainment . . . books!

Reading lists, like all to-do lists, grow far too quickly and shrink too slowly. Unlike most to-do lists though, these lists are actually fun to work through. With a little effort, summer can be the perfect time to start making progress on your list. All you have to do is set aside a few hours each week, and you will be finishing books in no time. If you have trouble finding the motivation, choose a day when the weather is nice and head outside. Reading outside is usually more relaxing and the pages are likely to pass more quickly.

Another reason to start working through your reading list in the summer is all of the new books on social business that have just been released, or will be shortly. Here are a few that I have on my list:

Enchantment – Guy Kawasaki reveals what it takes for a brand to enchant its customers; sharing his insights on customer experience, influence, and brand loyalty. As the previous chief evangelist of Apple, Kawasaki’s insights on building brand experience are second to none.

Smart Business, Social Business – Michael Brito shares his knowledge and understanding of the social customer for businesses to learn from. In addition to getting a great book, purchases also support the Not For Sale Campaign, an organization fighting human trafficking around the globe.

Launch – Michael Stelzner educates readers on the art of sustaining a successful business through valuable content and relationships. For those of you that want a quick preview, the first chapter of this book is available for free here.

What are you waiting for? Grab a comfortable lawn chair, your favorite beverage, the first book on your reading list (or your eReader), and head outside! What books have you already read this summer, and would you recommend them? If not, what other books are you looking forward to reading this summer?

Photo Credit: Svilen Milev

Within the social media industry, the best way to measure the value of influence is a hot topic of discussion. Last July, Empire Avenue, an interesting new service that lets you “play” with social presence (and influence), was launched. It’s a social hub that is designed to evaluate and raise your social media presence while creating a fun way to drive social activity and connections. Lately, the popularity of this service has substantially increased.

Empire Avenue measures social presence in an imaginary currency (eaves), and allows you to increase your value through a stock market-like interface where you buy and sell Empire Avenue profiles, or stocks. You can link Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube, Flickr, and Facebook Fan Pages to your Empire Avenue account; this in turn drives your personal social “valuation.”

The true fun of this service lies in the ability to buy and sell stocks of your favorite companies and social media thought leaders. If the value of your portfolio increases, your net wealth in eaves will rise. The value of your stock increases when other users buy shares of your stock, and accordingly decreases if too many users sell your stock. However, there are plenty of other ways to earn more eaves to invest with. These include watching video advertisements, trying free or paid offers, buying magazine subscriptions, and even purchasing eaves with real US dollars (for the serious enthusiasts!).

What’s the point of having all these eaves?

Eaves allow you to add luxury items to your profile, such as mansions, yachts, or airplanes. For newer users with less net wealth, “luxury” items such as bicycles and canoes are also available at much cheaper prices. Eaves are also used to upgrade your profile capabilities, allowing you to buy and sell larger quantities of stock. Essentially, the more eaves you have, the more fun Empire Avenue will be! Apart from fun, eaves also increase the valuation of your social media profile on Empire Avenue.

Ultimately, this service is another way for social web users to connect and interact across multiple online networks in one place. However, the stock market interface, and the amount of control you have over the wealth created by your social activities, makes this a fun and rewarding activity.

Check it out for yourself! How many eaves is your social presence worth? As of now, I’m worth 10.22e per share!

Part I of II: Direct Engagement With a Twitter Contact

This is a “sister” blog post to Idea Spark: Social Marketing Use Case #4-Direct Customer Engagement & Feedback which answers the question, “Okay, so how do I actually do that in JitterJam?” Our Idea Spark blog posts are purposefully tool-neutral; they present best practices, engagement strategies and all types of, well, ideas! JitterJam Tips blog posts, on the other hand, are designed to help our clients transform concepts into practice and to show our prospects what is possible within the JitterJam platform.

Putting Engagement into Practice

Whether you are using or intend to use social media for building brand awareness, lead generation, customer service, sales promotions, or product engagement and feedback, the tactical steps are pretty much the same! Your numerous and effective JitterJam Social Searches should have plenty of relevant conversations streaming into the Listen•Engage area of JitterJam. It’s fantastic to see what people are saying about your brand, your company, your product(s) and your industry! There are tremendous benefits to having your corporate ear tuned to listen. But this post is about something deeper! To build relationships with the authors of these valuable nuggets, you’ll need to move into the engagement phase.

It’s at this point that you’ll have some decisions to make regarding the approach to use for an initial dialogue and subsequent engagement with these chatty consumers. Your approach will depend on your industry, your current use case for social media and the current perception and awareness of your brand among the community with which you hope to engage. We have a bunch of past blog posts (consolidated in the following list) that will help you settle on the approach that is best for you. Review these and then we’ll dive into the “How-to-do-it-in-JitterJam” stuff.

• Idea Spark: Starting a Dialogue With a Customer
• Idea Spark: Social Etiquette
• Idea Spark: Voice of the Brand Pt. 1—Who Is Talking?
• Idea Spark: Voice of the Brand Pt. 2: What is Your Brand’s Voice?
• Idea Spark: Social Communities

Your engagement tactics will depend on the channel on which a contact was discovered (Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, You Tube or a blog) and how much public social profile information JitterJam found for the contact you hope to engage with. The rest of this blog post is focused on engaging with contacts discovered on Twitter; Part II will cover the other channels.

How To Engage With a New Twitter Contact

A look at a few engagement scenarios …

1. Person-A tweeted that they tried your product and were happy with the results.
2. Person-B just checked in via Foursquare to one of your locations (and used Foursquare to tweet about it).
3. Person-C tweeted that he was looking for advice on selecting a product in the space where you compete!

Your response to each of these discovered Twitter “conversations” should probably be different. Let’s look at the response scenarios.

Responding to Person-A: Brand Mention
You know that Person-A tried your product and took the time to tweet about the positive experience. Because you know this, it is perfectly acceptable to follow Person-A on Twitter.

Using JitterJam:Click on the grey “birdie-bottom” icon near the profile information to start following someone new; the icon will turn blue to show that you’re now following them.

This is your first step of engagement. Following someone on Twitter will add that person into JitterJam’s intelligent contact database. Additionally, you’ll impress your brand presence onto this person when he/she is notified of their new follower (typically by email, depending on the individual’s Twitter settings). Depending on the social media approach you have settled upon, you might say nothing to the contact and let the Twitter ‘follow’ speak on its own or you might respond with a “Thanks” or another equally light-touch response… “Glad you enjoyed it!”, “Nice to hear, thanks for sharing”, etc. Your response over Twitter can also be a re-tweet of the conversation the contact authored about your brand, an @ mention or @ reply, or a Direct Message (DM) IF that person is already following you.

Using JitterJam: The image shows which icon to click depending on your desired action. The response actions available to you in JitterJam depend upon your relationship with the contact. If a response action is not available (e.g. you can’t DM a contact because they aren’t following you), the icon will not be visible.

The most common actions in this scenario are re-tweeting or sending an @ mention (or @ reply) message, both of which are public and therefore visible to some or all Twitter users. The contact made a public statement about your brand/company, and a public, light-touch response is a fine choice. However, if you surmise from reading this contact’s Twitter stream that he/she might be tentative about public engagement on social networks, a Twitter DM might be the better option. You can send a Twitter DM only if the contact is following you and the message is just between you and the contact; it is not visible to any other Twitter user. For more on the various Twitter messaging options, read our past post, Twitter: Mentions, DMs and Retweets (and When To Use Each).

Responding to Person-B: Foursquare Check In and Tweet
Person-B checked in (via Foursquare) at one of your locations and tweeted about it. It might be a bit presumptive to jump right into a dialog with this person and it might or might not be too bold to follow them on a first check-in. Again, this depends on a number of parameters and practices within your industry and the awareness/perception of your brand. However, if you add the contact to the JitterJam database without following them (by clicking on the Add to Database icon in the “Actions” column of Listen•Engage with two people as shown on the previous graphic), JitterJam will track all of their conversations that are picked up by your social searches and conversation topics; you’ll be able to see how often they check in, mention your product/brand/company, etc. Maybe you’ll decide to follow or initiate a dialogue with someone who has tweeted a check-in more than three (3) times. Your social practices are your decision; JitterJam makes it easy to apply them.

JitterJam Tip for Using Foursquare
Set up a social search to pull in all tweeted Foursquare check-ins for your business and assign these social search results to their own JitterJam Topic (e.g. “4Sq Checkins”). This way, by creating a new Contact Search (in Develop or Promote) you’ll be able to isolate all of your contacts who have checked in more than three times, more than five times, never … what ever threshold is right for you. With these contacts isolated you can follow them, apply a tag to them, or even reach out to kick off a dialog!

Responding to Person-C: Asking for Product Advice
It is pretty exciting to see the conversation from Person-C asking for advice on the best widget when you, in fact, sell the very best-darn widget around! However, make a good effort to temper your response so you don’t sound like a snake-oil salesman. Try something like, “I understand you are looking for widgets, ours might fit the bill – care for a demo?” Or, include the url to a review of your widget as you suggest that, “You might check this out: http://…“ Person-C was looking for some guidance; if your tweet provides that without a strong-arm approach it is likely to be well received.

What happens if a person is less than pleased with your company/brand?
This is certainly a possibility and something you should be prepared for. We have covered this topic in our Monitoring and Responding to High-Risk Conversations post. Most importantly, keep a level head and look upon about the situation with a 360-degree perspective.

What’s Next?
Since this post was quite Twitter-centric, I think it is important to point out other Twitter-specific posts we have for you to use as a resource. Here are five great ones … a post on each of The 5 C’s of Following People on Twitter: Customer, Credibility, Content, Community, Competition.

Part II of this topic will cover Direct Customer Engagement & Feedback over other social channels.

Ready to engage? Remember to step lightly and always be respectful.

This Idea Spark blog post is the result of the discussion during our Friday morning Creativity Coffee. If you’d like to join us (in person or via web/phone conference), please sign up here. There’s no charge or obligation. We just love ideas and open discussion!

The last Creativity Coffee discussion centered around Social Communities. We discussed the types of social communities and how brands can take advantage of the existing communities that have organically formed. This week’s discussion continued that conversation by focusing on the role of the community manager for a brand or a business. What does that community manager do?

An online community manager, in essence, plays a role as a public voice of the company (tone, content, conversation) on social networks. So what are the community manager’s responsibilities? Look at the recent job description for an Online Community Manager for a media company in NYC:

Your role will be to act as the eyes and ears across social networks and new media platforms. You’ll monitor for discussions and sentiments amongst existing and new fans, and personally engage with those communities. You’ll also act as the fan advocate for the marketing team, providing feedback and regular reports for internal dissemination.

Responsibilities:

• Creatively and proactively interact with online communities across all platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, selected blogs and message board systems.
• Work directly with creative team and client to help develop an ongoing communication strategy and publishing calendar based on marketing objectives and community feedback.
• Maintain a master list of fan-generated social profiles, sites and user-generated content.
• Answer questions and engage in conversations where necessary as directed by the team.
• Work with our conversation monitoring tools to track online conversations and sentiment.
• Compile weekly reports on all interactions, with recommendations for possible course correction.
• Help identify & engage advocates.
• Proactively communicate issues, opportunities and insights to the team.
• Host and/or participate in live chat events.

Essentially, the community manager is the social liason for the company or brand. They speak for the company publicly, they engage current and potential customers, they alert the company when there’s an issue or opportunity, and they essentially can become the voice of the customer internally. This is an essential role that needs to be filled carefully and deliberately. The business or brand needs to evaluate what their objectives are for the role and then find the right person to fill the role.

1. What are the business objectives of having a community manager?
• Awareness. Conversations are happening regardless of whether businesses and brands are listening. Having awareness of what people are saying has value. Some companies want to take the first step of listening before developing their content and conversational goals and approach. The community manager can take the first step to measure buzz, sentiment, identifying influencers and reporting on the strength and value of each social community and more.
• Engagement. The community manager’s primary role is to join and engage the communities of individuals talking about or around the business’ brands and markets. The business objective of that engagement, however, varies from company to company, brand to brand and department to department.
• Adding value. Whatever the brand or business wants to accomplish, a key objective of the community manager should be to add value. Brands live in multiple communities, and they should get to know the community to best determine how the can add value. Is it information? Deals? Humor and entertainment? Providing unique content? Answering questions? When joining existing communities, the rules of engagement are driven by the members. By studying and identifying the best ways to engage without being seen as a “spammy company just out to sell,” a business has a better chance of gaining the trust and acceptance of the entire group.
• Developing advocacy. In brand-sponsored communities, it’s often a primary goal to identify key contributors and develop them into advocates that help drive content within the community, manage the various user-driven forums, and engage other users to join and contribute. In organically-formed communities, advocacy is driven by cultivating trusted relationships within the community and building relationships from initial light touch (exposing people to the brand’s participation in the communities) to public enthusiastic support and engagement of others.
2. Aside from core communications and social media skills, what skills does the community manager need to have?
• Balance. The community manager needs to marry the goals/rules of the community with the needs of the company. Balancing these needs takes planning and a genuine interest in adding value, sharing great content and information, and having the skills and maturity to understand how to engage and respond to individuals with differing agendas and sensitivities.
• Communications and teamwork skills. While the responsibility of being the “voice” of a business can be tricky, ensuring that the “voice” of the customer gets back to and integrated into various organizations within the company.
• Drive and initiative. The community manager gets to see how people are interacting with the brand on a daily basis. This interaction is the perfect environment to grow new ideas for the brand to investigate with the hopes of engaging their customers even further. However, it’s up to the community manager to both identify and convey these potential new avenues of success.
• Genuine interest and enthusiasm for the brand. If the brand’s community manager doesn’t have genuine interest in the company’s products or market, that lack of interest will be (or become) obvious to the members of the community. The voice of the brand is the voice of the community manager; his or her interests and personality will come through in their communications. Brands need to make sure they hire for those interests as well as the core skills (communications, social media experience, currency on technology, creativity, etc.).

What criteria do you use to hire and develop your community manager? What skills have you found to be the most important?

We’ll be chatting more about social communities, including who the voice of the brand should be in a business and where social marketing lives in a company. Please join us for Creativity Coffee and voice your ideas and opinions!

Image Credit: svilen001

In social media, personal connections inspire trust whether in an individual or in a brand. Connecting personally helps brands to develop relationships with consumers and promote advocacy. The challenge is identifying potential advocates. One effective solution is utilizing user-generated content, which allows willing advocates to step forward and help promote your brand. This can be much cheaper for your business, and it will be fun for your customers.

The most common method for gathering user-generated content is asking users to share brand testimonials or a specific brand experience through a video. Consumers are inclined to trust the opinion of customers more than the voice of the company, because consumers are unpaid and don’t have their own agenda. A consumer taking time out of their day to share their positive experience with others is an endorsement of the brand in itself.

A recent video campaign using this strategy was the Ten Second Challenge from Aflac, which asked fans to explain what the company does in only ten seconds through a creative video. While these videos are funny, they also communicate the brand’s message through the credible voice of a consumer. This is a main strength of brand advocacy, and user-generated content accomplishes this and more.

Another campaign leveraging user-generated videos is Tillamook Cheese, who gathered similar videos and used them as the basis of a TV advertising campaign. Since the video campaign, they have expanded their efforts and are now asking their fans for notes that  “Share the Loaf.” This new campaign builds upon existing relationships and fosters new connections through engagement.

User-generated content is beneficial to businesses because the value it adds to a company far exceeds its cost. This campaign strategy can be implemented on social networks like Facebook for almost no cost, while simultaneously identifying the best potential brand advocates. The connections formed with these users give your brand the opportunity to build loyal customer relationships through engagement, which is the first step towards developing brand advocacy.

If you have time, spend a few minutes of your Friday watching these videos or checking out Toyota’s campaign, and see how user-generated content campaigns can be successful and fun at the same time! If your company has used this strategy before what were the results, what worked and what didn’t? And how would you recommend other companies implement their own campaigns?

In the era of social business on the web, reputations are determined by how companies act in the public eye. Whether positive or negative, sentiment can spread very quickly across social networks with the potential to become viral. To take advantage of this, marketers have begun to publicize their socially responsible activities through cause marketing campaigns. Cause marketing has helped companies build brand loyalty, increase engagement with consumers, improve brand reputation, and—most importantly—do good for the community.

The Pepsi Refresh Project is one of the largest and most popular cause marketing campaigns, and recently committed $1.3 million to the gulf coast alone! The campaign is structured so that users vote on grant ideas submitted either by other users or by well-known celebrity figures, allowing everyone to feel like they are doing a bit of good along the way. This creates huge engagement opportunities on Facebook and Twitter and motivates people to share the initiative with others as well.

Dawn Dish Soap has also turned heads with their Everyday Wildlife Champion initiative, which promises to donate a dollar to rescuing wildlife for every bottle of Dawn product purchased. To activate this donation you have to go to their website, where you will see plenty of cute animal pictures, and then enter the activation code from the bottle.  By enabling consumers to complete the donation, Dawn makes them the ones responsible for doing good.

The common denominator in both of these campaigns is finding important charitable causes that consumers feel passionate about and that genuinely reflect the company’s values. Both campaigns move the responsibility of involvement to consumers, empowering them to contribute, and making them feel good about their actions. Additionally, cause marketing motivates consumers to share with the brand and with other consumers creating an opportunity to develop engagement into long-term customer loyalty.

There are plenty of great opportunities to get involved with cause marketing right now, whether you are donating a dollar through Dawn or beginning your own cause marketing campaign. Just remember, with a little creativity you can do an awful lot of good! What other cause marketing initiatives have you seen and participated in? What about the campaigns made you want to participate?

Photo Credit: LittleMan

This Idea Spark blog post is the result of the discussion during our Friday morning Creativity Coffee. If you’d like to join us (in person or via web/phone conference), please sign up here. There’s no charge or obligation. We just love ideas and open discussion!

The last two Creativity Coffee discussions centered around Social Etiquette and Facebook Etiquette—the rules of engagement. If you are aware of the rules of engagement, what are some acceptable and effective practices for outreach to engage a new consumer with the hopes of starting a dialogue? Here are the ideas sparked during our last Creativity Coffee.

1. How do you open the dialogue?
• Thanks. Has a consumer made a positive comment about your brand? Thank them. Be genuine.
• Question. Has a consumer made a comment about looking for a product in your market? Have they stated a preference? Ask them a question to see if they will engage with you. Make sure it’s not a direct sales pitch like, “Have you tried our product?” or you could immediately alienate the consumer. However, if someone states that they are looking for a specific type of product that fits your product line, ask a question about what they need. Be on the lookout for a response—and your opening for creating a dialogue!
• Comment. Did someone post a comment, a link, a tidbit that fits your product or market? Comment back to the consumer with a compliment, a suggestion or a helpful piece of information. For instance, if someone posted a picture of their cute dog and you’re a dog food company, comment back with an opening like, “Love that picture of spot. You should enter it into our Dog of the Month contest—Spot is so cute! Here’s the link…” Or if someone is concerned about what they’re feeding their dog, you should comment about what proper nutritional elements are in a good dog food and what could be causing problems. Be helpful and provide value. Don’t try to sell. Remember, you’re trying to be social!
2. Make it personal.
• No robots. Social consumers are savvy. If they see a comment from you that’s repeated over and over (think “scripted”), they will quickly be able to see your lack of personality and shy away from engaging. Who wants to talk to a robot?
• Be specific. Use the contact’s name. Address specifics about their comment, question, posting, etc.
• Be genuine. You’re speaking for your company, but your personality shines through in your dialogue. Make sure that your comments pertain to your real interest in the consumer…not fake enthusiasm. If it’s fake, someone will notice. If your brand is a known public brand, they might even call you on it.
3. Use a contest to draw people in.
• Use some sort of contest to get people to engage with you.
• The pet pictures example mentioned above doesn’t have to be for a pet brand. Recently, a community bank used a community pet photo contest to engage more deeply with the local community. Better yet, this kind of contest is viral—people will share their entry with family and friends in order to get votes! Be careful—make sure you do not misuse registration information. Registering for a contest should not automatically cause an opt-in for marketing communications. Use the opportunity to ASK for an opt-in, but don’t make it the default. If you do, you’ll alienate potential customers and tarnish your brand.
• You can use both digital and traditional media to promote your contest.
4. Use content that truly engages people and reflects your company’s values.
• Community causes. Whether your “community” is local, national or international, you can connect with consumers who share your values. Many companies are supporting causes that reflect their core values, and these causes can be a vital way to connect with the community.
• Use social media to publicize. Reflect the messages used to create awareness in other media on social media as well. Use social media to report on progress, share stories and to get people engaged.
• Example: Dawn Saves Wildlife. A dollar from every purchase (when a code is entered onto their website) is donated by Dawn to saving wildlife. This spurs purchases and engagement and resonates with people who care about ecology and animal welfare.
• Example: Supporting local charities. A community bank donates money to a local non-profit and posts the pictures of the donation ceremony on Facebook. Tons of people “like” and “share” the story and picture with others. A press release may have been picked up by a local paper and, for most part, ignored. But this kind of community work is a great positive social PR story.
5. Take your time, try different mixes and be patient.
• Some markets are harder than others. For instance, how does a CPA engage with potential customers?
• Use the Five C’s of Following People.
• Try different mixes and types of content, from informational, educational, fun and conversational. Make sure that you interject some product information as well, but not too much (less than half of your content should be product-based).
• Blog. It’s one of the key ways to continue to add content to your website to increase search engine rankings and to be found organically.
• Stick with it. All this takes time and resources. Make sure you stick with it, or your brand will be seen as anti-social, dis-engaged, a dead stick.

What is working for you? What kinds of conversations have you started lately? Have they resulted in new customers? Join the conversation!

This Idea Spark blog post is the result of the discussion during our Friday morning Creativity Coffee. If you’d like to join us (in person or via web/phone conference), please sign up here. There’s no charge or obligation. We just love ideas and open discussion!

The last Creativity Coffee discussion centered around Social Etiquette. What rules do businesses and brands need to follow to ensure that they are not creating social SPAM? We had far too little time to fully cover the topic, so we continued the conversation by focusing on social etiquette for a single social channel—Facebook. Here are the highlights of the discussion.

1. A Facebook “fan” is like an annuity—a gift that keeps on giving.
• A Facebook fan provides an ongoing value stream.
• Your wall posts/updates are seen by all your fans, but also potentially by all your fans’ friends. One fan can fuel hundreds of brand impressions.
• The real “value” of a Facebook fan is an unknown. That is, until you begin to drive engagement with your fans.
2. Facebook outreach to non-fans is tricky. When is it okay? How do you do it without “freaking out” the consumer?
• As we discussed in our last session, Facebook’s closed networks and less-than-public personal updates make it a difficult platform to use for “discovery” of new brand fans. Search results are limited to those who choose to make all their status updates open to everyone.
• When you do come across a public (everyone) status update that is associated with your brand/market/product, what do you do?
• Use the context of the person’s update (and prior updates). Be respectful. If it’s a negative comment or a complaint, identify yourself and ask if you can be of assistance in resolving the situation. Remember that your posts/comments to a person’s wall is from YOU, the page admin, not BrandX, so identifying yourself is important.
• Offer value. If the status update is a positive comment, identify yourself (Facebook manager for BrandX), thank them enthusiastically for the comment, and invite them to “like” your page and opt-in for future offers. If the person tends to like offers (you can tell via their news stream), you might take the risk to provide a coupon or offer as well. This is really discretionary and should be used only when clearly appropriate.
3. There are coupon fans and non-fans. And they’re both on Facebook.
• Sometimes, it seems to be black or white, love or hate for “offers”. Listen before you engage. View the status updates from a person to see if they are amenable to receiving an offer before sending one to them. Make sure you have a plan, and a respectful one at that, for what triggers your brand to engage with a consumer on Facebook, BASED ON something they said from status update.
• Context is king. At times, people post on Facebook to be social and aren’t interested in potential “offers.” Other times, they are shopping, researching, chatting about brands and products, and it IS appropriate to engage them in your brand even further and even incent them to try your product. Use the info you know about a user, and offer them something targeted that will be meaningful to them. Send the appropriate message.
• While it’s fine to post incentive offers like coupon links, promotion codes and special “Facebook-only” deals on your fan page, make sure that these are NOT the only pieces of content you share on your Fan page. You want to draw people to engage, communicate and deepen the love of your brand. Don’t forget to be social, have discussions with fans, ask them questions, make them smile, provide them with a fun and lively place they want to visit often.
4. Let them opt-in.
• Facebook is a social network. While your fan page is a primary channel for your brand’s consumer engagement, it’s always good give your fans other ways to connect with you.
• Give your fans a way to opt-in to other communication channels (email, Twitter, mobile) and to other communication types (newsletter, coupons, events, etc.) JitterJam’s Make Me Happy™ permission marketing Facebook app works well here!
5. You don’t know what a fan is worth until you know.
• A fan or like you make today may not produce for months….stay the course, be patient, give to get.
• Example: Gary Vaynerchuk – the gift economy. If you don’t know someone, how to you get in their good graces..bring a gift. The same holds true for digital/Facebook etiquette. Come with a gift.
6. Make sure you’re ready for negative comments.
• Whether it’s about your product or about how you’re marketing via Facebook, make sure you’re ready to publicly handle negative comments in a positive way.
• Making decisions on what to say and how to handle potentially sensitive and explosive issues (e.g. the Capri Sun moldy drink debacle) shouldn’t be in the hands of an intern. Make sure you have a fast and effective process for escalation and resolution.
• Not everyone is going to love being contacted by your brand. Be respectful and always make sure you follow any requests to disengage swiftly. Don’t make a lost connection a bad connection.

How are you handling Facebook outreach and engagement? What have resulted in higher engagement by your fans? Please let us know!

Consumers love freebies and companies love new leads and contact growth. To satisfy both parties, companies can use contests to reward consumers for participation and simultaneously build their own community. Here are three steps to help you create your own successful contest:

1.  Conceptualize

• Before you begin planning your contest, identify specific goals for the campaign. These could be simply gaining more fans and followers to build your contact database, or building customer loyalty, brand advocacy, and community engagement. Be sure that the value you will gain from the contest matches the value of the prize to the consumer
• The success of a contest hinges on targeting the correct consumers, which will let you gain long-term customer value from participants. Identify an idea or concept that will appeal to your target market, and not just the largest number of people.
• Lastly, decide which format is the best for your contest. The format and rules should be based off of your concept and your goals for the campaign, and will affect how and when you choose the contest winner.

2.  Promote and Run

• Because contests have a set time line for entering and for announcing winners, they will dictate the timetable for your marketing activities. You should promote your contest a few weeks prior to the campaign launch and during the campaign at key time junctures (being sure NOT to spam).
• Your target market should determine the best promotion channels for your campaign. Social broadcasts on Facebook and Twitter will increase your reach, but if your audience receives company updates through newsletters or press releases these channels will be more effective.
• A key part of your strategy is the campaign’s call to action. How will you attract your target market and how will they enter? It is most important that the action of entering the contest benefits your company.

3.  Measure

• Measuring short-term success is as simple as recording brand mentions, conversation volume, contact growth, or sales figures depending on your campaign goals.
• Long-term success will be dependent on these numbers remaining elevated, and developing new contacts into customers. To gain more value from new contacts you can implement a customer loyalty program that rewards continued support and engagement, and would allow you to track which future sales resulted from the contest.

Ultimately you are the person that knows your target market best, and this should determine how you plan your campaign. If you follow these steps and appeal to your desired audience, your contest is sure to be fun and successful for everybody!

Have you used a contest or a sweepstakes as a marketing tool before? Tell us about it! What strategies did you choose to use and what successes were you able to achieve?