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Are you curious what other companies are doing to achieve success with Facebook marketing? You’ve come to the right place.

This article highlights nine companies (big and small) that have transformed their Facebook presence by implementing innovative Facebook marketing practices.

You’re guaranteed to find inspiration for your Facebook marketing efforts here.

These tactics will work for just about any business—large or small, B2B or B2C. So let’s dig in!

#1: Cheese & Burger Society

The Cheese & Burger Society is sponsored by the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board. This page is an innovative way to promote Wisconsin cheese by talking about something many people love—burgers and grilling.

One savvy practice introduced here is fan gating. Fan gating, also known as “like gating,” is where you require visitors to become a fan of your page to gain access to special content, discounts or contests.

If you use a contest for fan gating, make sure you abide by Facebook’s terms of service. These articles can help: Mari Smith (compliance) and Sara Hawkins (legal promotions).

This contest brought 1000s of new fans for The Cheese & Burger Society

To increase engagement, Cheese & Burger Society created a Send to a Friendapp, allowing fans to send a cheeseburger to their friends. This is fun, easy and promotes viral visibility.

The Send to a Friend app makes it easy to connect with a friend in a fun way.

The Cheese & Burger Society also encourages fans to post pictures. Photos and videos get a better EdgeRank (Facebook’s algorithm for determining what shows up on your fans’ news feeds) and people love to share photos.

In fact, approximately 6 billion photos are shared on Facebook each month according to Pixable. For some tips on how to take full advantage of photos on your page, see this article by Debbie Hemley.

Fans love posting pictures of themselves

Key Takeaways:

1. Elevate the conversation to topics larger than your specific brand or niche.
2. Find creative ways to engage your audience with photos and contests.
3. If appropriate, develop an app to encourage fans to share your content (e.g., Send to a Friend).

#2: IdeaPaint

IdeaPaint is a B2B company that sells a specialty paint that converts walls and other spaces into a dry-erase writing surface, eliminating the need for hanging white boards and opening up creative space.

In keeping with their creative purpose and mission, IdeaPaint makes innovative use of their welcome tab by creating hot spots with links to their social sites. This promotes interactivity. The exploratory user will also find a link for a coupon.

Idea Paint’s welcome page is loaded with discreet hotspots.

Find the “Download” button and find this clever coupon.

A key to building long-term customer loyalty is to give your customers a good first experience with your product or service. IdeaPaint does this by providing detailed videos on their Facebook page on how to install and use their product.

Idea Paint provides a variety of instructional and inspirational videos.

IdeaPaint integrates several social components in their Facebook videos. In addition to the Like button, they use the Send button, which enables you to directly send the link to your friends. The Facebook comment section allows people to make comments that will show up on their wall.

Look at the smart social integration on this video.

Another smart tactic employed by IdeaPaint is their use of NetworkedBlogs to automatically pull their blog posts to a dedicated tab. Additionally, they manually add their posts to their wall. As explained by Mari Smith, this will enhance your news feed. (Get a free class here from Mari on Facebook News Feed Optimization. See the yellow box.)

Key Takeaways:

1. Use hot spots on your welcome page to integrate your other online sites.
2. Use videos to instruct and inspire, taking advantage of comments.
3. Integrate your blog manually and automatically with your Facebook page.

#3: American Express Open Forum

American Express has created a forum just for small business owners and leaders. Through a strategic partnership with Facebook, they created a massive contest for small businesses that generated lots of interest and increased their fan base. Note the importance of having a valuable prize ($20,000).

This contest brought lots of new small business fans to Amex.
A key to creating ongoing engagement on your wall is to use variety in your posts. Notice how Amex uses questions, quotes and articles to engage their fans. It’s also important to use shorter posts. Buddy Media found that posts with 80 characters or fewer get 27% greater engagement than longer posts.

Notice the variety in these 3 posts.

American Express also cleverly integrated their rewards program so people can redeem points for Facebook ads. Maybe you can’t leverage a deal with Facebook, but perhaps this kind of rewards incentive might get you thinking about partnership opportunities you’ve been overlooking.

This partnership with Facebook helps small business owners.

Amex features their authors and articles through some savvy Facebook integration. This requires special programming, but gives contributors the notoriety they deserve.

Amex features their experts and ads variety with polls and video clips.

Key takeaways:

1. Integrate your blog with your Facebook page.
2. Create variety in your posts.
3. Form strategic partnerships that benefit your fans.

#4: Banez Insurance Agency

Banez Insurance Agency is a local Farmers Insurance agency in Stockton, California. This small business is doing a number of things smart marketers should study.

Ron Banez is the owner of this insurance agency. He makes an immediate impression on his welcome page by doing two things: 1) Making a charitable donation for every Like and 2) using a video.

Notice Ron’s disclaimer.

A few things to notice on his wall: First, observe how Ron has taken advantage of the photo strip by creating 5 interchangeable photos that reinforce his core messaging. Here’s a helpful article on optimizing your photo strip.

Banez insurance makes good use of their photo strip.

Next, observe how Ron incorporated his photo in his profile image, enabling him to use his headshot as his avatar when interacting on his Facebook wall. In a relationship-based business like insurance, it’s important for people to see you’re a person.

Additionally, see how the profile image points you toward the links below it. This subtle guidance will keep visitors on your page longer, increasing the likelihood they will engage with you as a fan.

Finally, this page makes a great use of the tabs. Through the tabs you can get a quote, learn about insurance products and enter a contest.

Key Takeaways:

1. Take advantage of the photo strip for messaging.
2. Draw attention to your tabs.

Continued…

Source: Social Media Examiner

Do you need a plan to add customer service to your social strategies?

As Jeremiah Owyang states, “as internal and external demands mount, companies become mostly reactive, relegating themselves to a ‘Social Media Help Desk’.”

With strategy, planning and communication you can ensure that your company won’t be caught off guard. If the day hasn’t come yet when your social media team is thrust into fielding customer-service problems, it’s fair to say that it’s just a matter of time before they will be.

In this post, the seventh installment in the A-Z guides published here on Social Media Examiner, I’ll discuss the importance of developing an integrated social media and customer relationship management program for your company.

A to Z Guide for Integrating Customer Service Into Your Social Media Strategy

#1: Allocate your resources

Assign a number of team members the responsibility of managing social networking profiles to ensure they’re all covered throughout the workday.

Provide coverage when staff isn’t around to monitor social networking profiles.

#2: Bridge the gap

Bridge the gaps in customer-service coverage during staff breaks and vacation times. Don’t risk missing important messages.

#3: Create a center of excellence

Jeremiah Owyang advocates for creating social media centers of excellence described as “a centralized program that provides resources, training and strategy to a variety of business units that are deploying social media in order to reduce costs, increase efficiency, and provide standardization. This team is often run by the corporate social strategist, who’s the business stakeholder and program champion.”

The social media center of excellence has four major duties: planning, resources, processes and vendor selection and management. Image source: Altimeter Group

#4: Deliver

Deliver on your customer communication as promised. Whole Foods, for example, lets users know what time and days they can expect to hear back.

Whole Foods lets users know the hours they monitor their Twitter page.

#5: Evaluate

On a regular basis, stop and take a look to see how your social media pages are doing. Monitor reports and keywords and determine how much of your time is spent fielding customer issues.

#6: Food for thought

A couple of good mathematical equations to remember are contained in this food for thought offered by Seth Godin: “My rule of thumb is this: every person you turn away because your product or service isn’t right for them turns into three great customers down the road. Every bad sale costs you five.”

#7: Guerilla marketing techniques

Ann Evanston offers five guerilla marketing techniques to improve customer experiences in the social sphere:

Set up search phrases for issues that your target market faces, like “slow Internet” or “Internet connection.”

Also set up search phrases for your business name. Searches are easy to set up in Twitter, MarketMeSuite, HootSuite, Social Mention and will search blog posts as well.

Watch those mentions and respond to them! Offer empathy, help and make a suggestion. Show them you heard.

When people use your business name positively, saying “thank you” creates a way to keep in touch as they’re becoming fans and referral sources (or potential customers, if they’re not already).

If something negative happens, deal with integrity and good communication. Don’t delete it; that’s like putting your head in the sand. You can show others how gracious you really are.

#8: Hub and spoke

Jeremiah Owyang suggests that the hub-and-spoke model provides centralized resources to business units. And Drew McLellan recommends that clients build the web of content creation in a hub-and-spoke model. “You need to have a core—or hub—for all of your social media activity. One place that’s the repository for your core content.”

Create a hub-and-spoke model for social business. Image source: Altimeter Group

#9: Interface across functions

The Community Roundtable suggests in their report, the 2010 State of Community Management, that community management is “increasingly a distinct and separate role that’s explicitly responsible for interfacing across many functions to ensure continuity of care for community members.”

#10: Justification

Heed the advice of the Community Roundtable : “Measurement is NOT about justification. It’s about understanding the data so that you can do a better job.”

#11: Key stakeholders

Remember, key stakeholders will care about different aspects of your social media and will need access to different types of social media metrics. In Forrester’s white paper, “Social Media Marketing Metrics That Matter: Communicating the Right Data to Internal Stakeholders,” Nate Elliott points out the focus of the company’s various internal stakeholders will differ. “Create frequent reporting of digital metrics to community managers and social media strategists, per-campaign or annual reporting of branding and trial metrics to other marketing team members, and quarterly or annual reporting of financial metrics to executives.”

#12: Listen

Set up a good listening strategy and be sure to not only listen for customers’ compliments, but also keep your ears tuned to hear their complaints. Heidi Cohen says, “With the help of social media monitoring tools, customer service can hear what consumers are asking, provide timely responses, and determine early warning signs of PR and other issues.”

#13: Mitigate problems

It’s one thing to listen to what customers are saying. In addition, we must also take precautionary steps and actions. As Heidi Cohen says, “In the current social media ecosystem, it’s critical to have a crisis management plan in place to mitigate potential problems.”

#14: Number of interactions and issues

Some businesses are heavily focused on the number of fans and followers they’re acquiring through social media. And while that’s all fine and good, we must remember to track the interactions staff are having and be able to report back the issues identified and how many were successfully resolved.

#15: Opportunities

Customer-service issues and complaints need not be seen as all negative. With the right mindset, we can view them as opportunities to learn more about what people want and expect from us. Use feedback as opportunities for improvement.

#16: Processes and policies

Customer service and social media needs must be addressed by more than the marketing department. Companies are encouraged to develop thorough processes and policies. Drew Kraus writes in the Gartner paper Emerging Technology Analysis: Social CRM for Customer Service that “one of the inhibitors for the adoption of social CRM customer service technologies is the lack of defined processes and policies… Many fitting the mainstream and late-adopter profile will look to hold off on bringing the new technology into their contact centers until optimized processes and policies have been vetted by early adopters. Instead, they will opt to allow their marketing departments—which have access to near-term budget for such investments—to take the lead in handling all social CRM interactions in the interim.”

#17: Questions

Answering consumers’ questions often ends up taking a back seat to responding to customer complaints. However, the timely response to a question will make customers feel heard and potentially can alleviate dissatisfaction.

Apologize for missed communication.

#18: Resolve problems

Try to resolve problems immediately. Stacey Acevero says, “Sometimes the largest protesters can become advocates with a little bit of love and attention. If you don’t provide some source of customer service or redirect online to someone who can help, you’re risking your reputation.”

#19: Structural hole

A structural hole can be seen as the person between two groups who has been taken away, thereby creating a disconnect between the two groups. Community Roundtable suggests that the “recognition may cause companies to rethink the outsourcing of their Twitter accounts to their PR companies.”

#20: Template for Social CRM

Gartner’s Drew Kraus offers actions for technology and service providers which includes developing a “template” social CRM for the customer-service delivery process for your customers. You may think of this as the standards by which you base all of your customer service, whereby all of your business reps deliver the same quality of care and the same services and messages.

#21: Unhappy customers

When we think about social media and customer service, there may be times when we find ourselves on the other side of the spectrum as the unhappy customer. Erik Deckers writes, “If you’re unhappy with a company, by all means, complain. It’s your right as a customer. But if you do it the right way, you’re more likely to get what you want than if you whine and gripe about their incompetence and failures.”

#22: Variety of functions

Heidi Cohen states that social media has changed how consumers and companies view customer service. Customer service fulfills a variety of different functions including enhancing your marketing. Heidi lists 12 ways social media enhances customer service:

-          Gives business a human face

-          Listens to what customers are saying

-          Proactively engages with prospects and customers

-          Provides additional product-related content

-          Answers product-related questions

-          Supplies alternative contact channel

-          Gives customers a channel to talk to each other

-          Shares customer feedback

-          Celebrates your customers

-          Shows customers behind the scenes

-          Makes special offers

-          Creates new purchase options

#23: Wisdom

There’s a lot of wisdom in this statement by Jacob Morgan from his post,

What is Social CRM? “Social CRM is about moving from fans and followers to customers and advocates.”

#24: (E)xposure

The MarketingProfs post Brands Undervalue Social Media for Customer Service points out that “when social CRM is done well, it provides the added benefits of increased exposure for your brand by helping to retain existing customers, acquiring new customers and driving brand awareness.”

#25: Why measure

For community management to be successful, we need to regularly measure our efforts. Dion Hinchcliffe writes, “If you aren’t looking at overall levels of participation, growth rate of new members, making lists of the recently disengaged and following up on them, etc., then you aren’t managing your social environment. Understanding the overall health and momentum in your community, directly responding to it, and doing it every day will be vital for the long-term success of your effort.”

#26: Zealous

Social CRM requires dedication and devotion. Be zealous about maintaining good customer relationships.

Source: Social Media Examiner

Are you using photos to enhance your Facebook page? If not, you may be missing a key opportunity.

Cameras are everywhere these days. This access to photography, coupled with the rise of social media, means that not only can everyone shoot photos, but they can also share them with a lot of people.

Utilizing photography in social media offers organizations an incredible opportunity to connect with others and showcase their brand in unique and interesting ways.

For the purposes of this article, I’m going to focus on using photos on a Facebook page.

Here are six tips to keep in mind as you incorporate photography into your Facebook page.

#1: It’s Not Personal, It’s Business

This common adage is not only often used to justify moral transgression but also provides a lot of insight when it comes to using photos to represent your brand on social media. Remember, these are not your personal photos. These photos will likely look different than the photos you upload to your personal Facebook profile.

And rightfully so. These photos are an extension of your brand. They instantly say a great deal about your organization to the casual observer. They certainly don’t need to be formal (in fact, usually they shouldn’t be) but they should always be professional. If there is anything you wouldn’t show to a client in person, it shouldn’t be online. If you have to even question whether a photo is appropriate enough to be used, it isn’t.

Zappos balances professionalism and fun when showcasing their brand on their Facebook page.

#2: Make Sure Your Photos Represent Your Brand Well

The photos you use will represent your brand and your organization to the casual observer. As such, it’s important that they show that you took some time and put in a bit of thought. Don’t upload too many photos of the same subject. Pick the best and only show those.

In addition, some basic photo editing can go a long way. Start with cropping your photos to highlight the subject you are showcasing. Throw out any photos that are blurry. Consider experimenting with some black and white photos to stand out and give a different look.

Get creative and have fun, but remember the goal is to showcase your organization. For instance, crop photos to showcase staff members and leave nothing extraneous to distract from the main subject of the photo.

#3: Post Shareable Photos

One of the best ways to broaden your reach online is to create content that other people will want to share. Photos are a great opportunity for you to connect with others and produce content they will want to share with their connections.

Try to think of content that is likely to be interesting and worthwhile in some way. Chances are no-one cares what your desk looks like unless it’s really cool for some reason, or you are really cool for some reason. Think of subjects that others will want to see.

In the photo below, St. Louis ArtWorks uses their Facebook photos to share art projects that their teen artists have produced.

Here ArtWorks shows off the artwork of teen artists at a Holiday Open House and Sale.

It could also be beneficial to post photos of events that involve other organizations. If the photos are decent, these organizations will likely share your photos (and thus your organization and brand) with their followers. In addition to posting the photos to your Facebook page, make sure that you tell these organizations about the photos.

For instance, maybe you sponsored a fundraising event in partnership with a few other organizations. You could put up photos showcasing the event and let these other organizations know about the photos. Not only are you sharing the positive contribution you’ve made, but you are also providing content that your partnering organizations will likely want to share with their followers, all the while driving more traffic to your Facebook page.

To help spread the word on Facebook, you should tag the other organizations in your post announcing your new photos. Once you’ve uploaded the photos to an album and published them, follow these steps to tag other organizations:

Like the other organizations by going to their Facebook pages and clicking the “Like” button.

Return to your organization’s Facebook page and click the “wall” link on the left sidebar.

Beside “Share:” make sure that “Status” is selected.

In your status announcing your new photos, include a tag to the other organization by typing @ and then the organization’s name.

Select the other organization from the popup menu.

Click the blue “Share” button.

Here we’re tagging the Saint Louis Zoo in some photos we took at an event recently.

Now your status will show up on the wall of the organization that you tagged in your message. This is a great opportunity for followers of that organization to find out about you and your brand while also providing the other organization with some valuable photos to share with their followers.

#4: If You’re Local, Show It Off

If you’re an organization that could benefit from local appeal, play up your localness in your photos. Many organizations pride themselves on their location and the communities that they serve. But don’t confuse showing off your local appeal with just taking photos of local landmarks. Chances are your photos will not be any better than other photos of landmarks already out there.

Instead, show members of your organization interacting with your city in some meaningful way. For example, let’s say you are a local restaurant. Why not take photos of your chef shopping for produce at the local farmer’s market? Such photos not only showcase your brand, they can also make you more appealing to the clients that you serve.

In this example, Children’s Miracle Network of Greater St. Louis displays their localness by showing some of their Miracle Ambassadors with Fredbird, the mascot for the St. Louis Cardinals.

Photos can be a great way to connect with the community.

#5: Show Off a More Personal Side of Your Organization

The photos that you post on social media networks are a great chance for your organization to show off a side that your clients may not often get to see. You shouldn’t just put up the same photos you have on your website or in your advertising. Show something a little less formal to humanize your organization and show the personalities of the people who work there.

Here we see Arts as Healing using their Facebook photos to show their staff at a local Cancer Wellness Fair.

This is a great way to make your company seem more personable and endearing to your potential clients and other organizations that you work with.

#6: Add New Photos Often

Unless your photos are really beautiful, there’s likely not much of a reason for people to come back to see them time after time. Putting up new photos consistently can help to entice people back to your organization and keep you at the top of people’s minds. It’s also a good way to appear current and active on social media networks. The more consistent you are in uploading new photos, the greater the chance that your supporters will share your content. Additionally, by including a wide variety of photos, there is a greater chance that visitors to your page will find something interesting.

Photos are a great way for you to engage your followers and show off your brand. If you take a little time and put in a bit of thought, your photos can help you stand out among the mass of photography on the Internet today.

Source: Social Media Examiner

Does your business rely on local customers? Are you looking for ways to make your business more visible in your neighborhood?

You know that the Internet puts your business within a few keystrokes of people anywhere around the world. But did you know that social media tools, especially Twitter, help you pinpoint people who live and work in your neighborhood?

Twitter allows you to locate people who live or tweet in your city or neighborhood, people you know, as well as people you don’t yet know. This makes Twitter the ideal tool for infiltrating your neighborhood.

How to Search for Local People

Most Twitter users occasionally tweet about the things around them. This means that you can find local people by searching tweets for things in or near your business location.

For example, you can search for:

City name
Neighborhood or community name
Local landmarks
Local businesses
Event venues, museums and public locations
Local fairs, parades and community events
Hashtag identifiers for a local community or event

When you search for your city name on Twitter, you have to look for all of the possible ways people may type it. Experiment with the options to figure out which ones give you the best search results. You can also use Twitter’s search operators to string together multiple options in one search or exclude items from your results.

From this list you can fine-tune your search query.

#1: Find Local People Using Tweets Near You

Twitter lets you search through current tweets to find the name of your city, a neighborhood name, a local landmark or a business. You can narrow the results to only the tweets posted near your location.

Search Twitter for your city name.

Use the Twitter search box to find tweets about your location. Twitter shows the most recent tweets that match your search on the Tweets tab.

The Tweets tab shows current tweets that contain the city name “Tempe, AZ.”

View the tweets posted near you.

Click the Tweets Near You tab. Twitter shows a list of the most recent tweets that match your search posted by people near your current location.

Click the Tweets Near You tab to find tweets in your results posted by people near your location.

Review the list of tweets and follow local people.

Read the tweets in your search results. When you find a tweet from someone who might be in your target location, click the account name. Twitter shows you a brief account profile in the flyout in the right pane. In the flyout, click Follow to add this person to your Twitter community.

The flyout shows a brief Twitter profile with the Follow button.

#2: Find Local People With Your City Name in Their Profile

Twitter allows you to search through profiles to find people who list your city name. Unfortunately, Twitter only shows a few people, not everyone who lists your city in their profile.

Search Twitter for your city name.

Search for your city name (and its variations) in the Twitter search box. Twitter shows the most recent tweets that match your search on the Tweets tab.

Search for your city name in profiles.

Click the People tab. Twitter shows a list of people whose profile location contains your city name.

Click the People tab to find people who list your city name in their profile.
Review the list and add local people.
Review the people in your search results. Click the account name to display a brief Twitter profile in the flyout. Click Follow to add a person to your Twitter community.

#3: Find Local People With Twitter Advanced Search

Twitter’s advanced search page allows you to add geography to your search. For example, you can search through the most recent tweets posted within 1 or 5 miles of a city by name or zip code. The search results are current tweets, so every time you do this search, you get different results.
Display the Twitter advanced search page.

Set your geography range.

In the Places box, identify your city by name or zip code, and select your range using the drop-down options.

Twitter lets you search for all tweets near your city by name or zip code.
Review the list of tweets and follow local people.
Read the tweets in your search results. When you find a tweet from someone you want to follow, hover your mouse over the account name. Twitter shows a brief account profile in a hovercard.

You can follow a Twitter user from the hovercard or expand it to see more profile information.
Click More to see the expanded hovercard with more profile details. Click Follow to add this person to your Twitter community.

You can follow a local Twitter user from the hovercard.

#4: Find Local People Using Twitter Grader

There are many Twitter search tools developed by other companies that help you search through the tweet stream and Twitter profiles to find people in your locale. Twitter Grader evaluates the effectiveness of Twitter users by calculating a grade from 1 to 100. They list the top 50 people in each city as the Twitter Elite.

Display the Twitter Grader Top Users by Location page.

Search for people in your city.

Twitter Grader is a free tool that allows you to check the power of your Twitter profile compared to millions of other users who have been graded.
Review the list of people.

Twitter Grader shows the Twitter Elite list for your city. When you find a person you want to follow, click the Twitter account name.

Locate a person you want to follow and click on the Twitter account name.
Click on the full name.

Twitter Grader shows an account summary. Click on the full name. Twitter Grader pulls up the Twitter profile for the user.

Click on the Full Name to display the Twitter profile for this user.
Follow the user.

In the Twitter profile, click Follow to add this person to your Twitter community.

#5: Find Local People Using Twellowhood.

Twellow is a public Twitter directory. The Twellowhood feature allows you to find people by location.

Display the Twellowhood map page.

On the Twellowhood map, click your continent, then country, then state or province.

Twellow lets you drill down to a city from a world map.

Select your city.

Twellowhood displays a list of cities with Twitter users for your state or province. Click on your city name in the list.

Twellow displays a list of cities with the number of Twitter users in each city.

Review the list of Twitter users and choose people to follow.

Twellow displays a list of Twitter users in your city. Review the people in your search results. When you find someone you want to follow, click the account name.

Click on the Twitter name to display the Twitter profile for this user.
Follow the user.

Twellow pulls up the Twitter profile for the user. In the Twitter profile, click Follow to add this person to your Twitter community.

Source: Social Media Examiner

Approach 1: Facebook as an exclusive source

Hotel Seven in Paris uses Facebook as the exclusive source of both hotel news and the lowest available room rate. By focusing attention here, they have attracted an audience of over 12,000 fans: significant for a single property of their size. This is undoubtedly an extreme approach, but the results are hard to argue with. If you want to make building your follower numbers on Facebook a priority, think about what exclusive content you can deliver through this site.

Approach 2: Facebook as a local community hub

Poet’s Cove Resort & Spa uses Facebook not only to connect with guests, but also to engage with the local residents of Pender Island, British Columbia. While local residents may not be interested in staying at your hotel, they could be a valuable source of revenue for your restaurant or spa. Positioning your property as a local hotspot can be an effective strategy for your Facebook page.

Approach 3: Facebook as a local guide

Distrikt Hotel in New York City uses Facebook to update their community on what is happening in the city. This is helpful because by becoming a resource for visitors to the city, Distrikt Hotel increases the likelihood of people passing the page along to others.

Approach 4:  Facebook as a sales tool

The Beacon in South Beach focuses on making sales by creating and promoting a special offer on their welcome tab: 2 free mojitos and a 15% off discount. As you saw from Hotel Seven, delivering an exclusive offer is a powerful way to focus attention. This does not have to be just discounts or coupons. Put together a value-added Facebook package that is compelling and only available through Facebook. Not only does this draw traffic to the page, but it gives you another way to measure results.
Ecommerce is likely to become an increasingly important part of Facebook activity, with powerful integrated booking engines now available. We will look at this topic in more detail later in the guide.

Approach 5: Facebook as a website

One & Only Palmilla uses advanced design to create an experience like browsing their website. (This will become easier in the future because of some new changes to the page structure, which we will discuss later.) Experiment with some of the new Facebook functionality to show beautiful photography and video to your visitors that attracts them emotionally.

Source: Marketing strategies

Is your business experiencing the social media success you had hoped for? Are you curious what successful companies are actually doing to gain social media success?

You’ve come to the right place. This article highlights nine companies (big and small) that have transformed their online presence by implementing innovative social media marketing.

You’re sure to find inspiration for your social media efforts here.

Look at the tactics these companies employ and don’t concentrate too much on the target audience. It doesn’t matter whom you’re targeting—these tactics will work for just about any business… so let’s dive in!

#1: Martell Home Builders

Martell Home Builders is an Atlantic Canadian custom homebuilder. In the past, Martell relied heavily on realtors to keep their business moving forward. However, once they embraced social media, they were able to create a direct-to-consumer model where they were no longer reliant on a middleman to bring them business.

Martell started a content creation and blogging strategy to focus on their homebuyers’ needs. With topics such as “14 Must-Have Tools for New Homeowners” and “Home Staging Tips & Techniques,” Martell was able to grab the attention of homebuyers. Today, about 86% of all their leads come directly from consumers.

Notice in the image below the placement of their email capture box as well as their social media channel buttons. Prime placement of both components (above the fold and in the right sidebar) is the key to grabbing attention and encouraging interaction.

Note: Studies show that more people subscribe to blogs by email than RSS feed readers. Martell’s call to action—”Get the blog sent to your inbox. Enter your email”—is a smart move to capture leads while promising value in the form of new blog updates.

Martell also takes advantage of geolocation technology by mounting GPS tracking devices on their contractors’ vehicles, making it easy for their customers to always know where their contractor is when on the job. This eases the customer’s mind and allows Martell to extend even greater customer service.

In the image above, Martell’s customers can track their contractor’s location when they’re on the job.

With innovative strategies, Martell has made the homebuilding experience social. One great strategy is their use of photo galleries of the clients’ homes being built. Not only can the homebuyer watch the progress in pictures, but also they can share their excitement with their family and friends on social networks. This is not only a great experience for their clients, but Martell is able to gain excellent social proof and even more visibility online via these photos as seen below.

Martell also uses the Facebook Like box, as seen below. This widget is dynamically updated; pulling content right from their Facebook page each time someone visits their site. The Like box is great social proof. It shows how many people have Liked your page and also shows faces of your Facebook fans.

The benefit of having this widget is that people can become your fan without leaving your company website. This encourages viewers to stay on your site longer and allows you to increase your fan base from your own website.

Tip: Think outside the box, like Martell did by allowing their clients to see where their contractors were at all times while on the job and by giving access to photos of their homes being built. By providing real-time, socially connected customer service, you’re able to create even more trust with your clients.

#2: Zappos

Zappos is an online retailer that sells shoes, clothing and accessories. They’re known for the enormous emphasis they put on creating real relationships with their fans and customers.

Notice their Facebook custom welcome tab below. Their catchy saying, “Let’s be in a Like-Like relationship,” shows they treat their potential fans as equals, solidifying their relationships even more.

One great strategy they’ve employed is to first ask for the Like and then ask their new fans to join their email list. Once you click their Like button, the custom tab changes and you then see the opportunity to sign up for their email list and interact with their products, as seen in the image below. By waiting until after the fan clicks the Like button, Zappos is proving they care about building relationships with their fans first.

In addition, Zappos uses a strategy often called “fans-only content” where they reveal content only after someone has become a fan, such as the fashion images in the illustration above. Once you click the Like button, you get instant access to exclusive content, videos and special promotions.

They’ve also included comment widgets, as seen below, on their custom welcome tab where you can post about their products and your comments will post to your profile or page, telling all your friends or fans what you like most about Zappos. Great social proof!

One of the best engagement strategies I’ve seen on Facebook is Zappos’ “Fan of the Week” contest. They encourage fans to send in their photos with the Zappos box and other fans get to vote on the best photo of the week. What’s great is that Zappos highlights the fan of the week by putting him or her in their wall image photo for all to see. As seen below, this is definitely about putting your customers first!

Tip: Brainstorm ways you can use social media to make your fans the stars. The more you spotlight your fans and followers on your social media channels, the more often they’ll engage with you and come back for more. Remember, you don’t have to be a billion-dollar company to model what Zappos is doing on their Facebook page. You can take their best strategies, tweak them to fit your unique needs and make them work for your business.

#3: Giantnerd

Giantnerd is a company that sells outdoor equipment for outdoor activities like hiking, biking and snowboarding. This company represents one of the best examples of social media integration seen online today. Their emphasis is on giving their customers the most value possible while becoming friends with them in the process.

As seen in the images below, Giantnerd has integrated social media into almost every aspect of their website. They’ve created a social network on their site that’s completely different from other social networks like Facebook or Twitter. Their one-click process to join their network makes it easy and fast to join the group and they incentivize new membership by offering a discount to all new members with their “Nerds save 5%” promotion.

Also, Giantnerd has incorporated the Like button on their site and they promise their fans exclusive deals and promotions when they click Like and join their Facebook community. Since adding the Like button, their average order has increased by 50%! That’s a pretty impressive social media ROI, to say the least!

Also, when potential customers are researching products on the site, Giantnerd provides multiple social methods to get feedback from other social buyers. One example is their WikiNerdia, as seen below. Similar to Wikipedia, viewers can check out all of the different products, including descriptions and photos, and their customers can edit the information as well, making the experience interactive.

With WikiNerdia, potential customers can also ask product questions and the nerd community comes on board to answer the questions. What’s genius about this is that they let their customers sell for them by giving them the tools to answer questions that potential customers post on the site. People tend to trust their friends and other consumers more than they trust the brand. Giantnerd benefits from their fan engagement by allowing customers to answer product questions for them, thus increasing brand trust for potential customers. Brilliant!

Tip: Let your customers be your salesforce. Think of multiple opportunities for your customers to tell others about you. Social sharing buttons, exclusive social communities and real-time engagement opportunities are all great ways to turn your existing customers into word-of-mouth advocates.

#4: Ford Motor Company

Ford has brought the social experience to the forefront of their marketing efforts.

Each time they add a new blog post, they pull in the image, headline of the post and the comments from readers onto the front page of their website. Those new to the site or those browsing for a new car get to experience the company and its culture from a social viewpoint right from the start.

Their blog, The Ford Story, is also unique. In the image below you can see their innovative layout where viewers can start reading the comments before they read the article, putting their fans’ and followers’ viewpoints first. Introducing your blog and your readers’ comments to new viewers sets a welcoming and friendly first impression for any company.

Notice the placement of the Stories button in the image below. Ford takes the social sharing component to the next level by not only asking their customers for their Ford stories, but also asking their community to share ideas that are in popular categories like Safety or Personalization.

Ford uses this as a way to get new ideas for their next generation of cars. These ideas are not taken lightly; Ford has used many of these innovations to advance the technology of their cars. They do a great job of involving their fans and customers into their company growth.

Also, photos are always a great way to attract new viewers and draw in existing audiences. In the image below Ford has added a Flickr widget to show off some of their latest photos, making their site more interactive and fun. (One little-known fact is that Flickr is a fantastic tool for search engine optimization. When you load your photos onto Flickr, you can tag them and optimize the descriptions.)

Tip: Encourage your customers to share their stories and ideas and make it easy to do so on your site. Also, make it easy for readers to interact with and share your content by adding more opportunities to comment on your blog and sharing buttons to encourage social sharing.

#5: Convince & Convert

Convince & Convert is a social media strategy firm with clients across North America. Its founder, Jay Baer, is a social media expert and co-author of the new book titledThe Now Revolution.

To say the least, Jay knows a thing or two about making a website social. One smart strategy he uses is placing a link to all of his comments at the top of each blog post. This tactic is a smart social proof mechanism.

Most people only show their comments when you’re on the abstract of the blog post. However, when you showcase your comment numbers near the top of all posts, others can see how many readers before them have interacted with your post, making it more appealing to them and more likely they too will follow suit and read the post.

Jay also includes social share buttons in strategic locations on his site. He includes them at the top of each post (as seen in the image above) and he includes them at the end of each post as seen below. To get more people to share your content, provide more opportunities via social share buttons in numerous places throughout your site.

Since Jay is targeting businesses, he knows his audience is likely connecting differently than the masses when it comes to networking. He found that by adding the LinkedIn Share button to his site, he was able to dramatically increase the amount of traffic to his site from LinkedIn. In the image above you can see that for Jay, this button outperforms the Facebook Share button because his community is actively engaged on LinkedIn. It’s important to understand where your audience is spending time.

Tip: Give your readers every opportunity to share your content with their networks. Expert marketer Brian Solis calls this “an audience with an audience of audiences.” If you want to expand your message, make it as simple as possible for your readers to share with their audiences.

#6: Cree

Cree is a business-to-business company that sells energy-efficient, environmentally friendly, industrial LED lighting. When you think of social media marketing, you wouldn’t think that an industrial lighting company that sells LEDs to grocery stores would be shining; however, Cree is extremely social-savvy.

As you can see in the image below, Cree knows how to make their customers’ experiences fun, social and interactive. In their “Cries for Help” section, theyencourage companies to showcase their terrible lighting on their site. It’s a fun way to make light (no pun intended!) of their bad lighting situations in their offices.

In addition, Cree provides valuable content to pique their audience’s attention. With articles such as “What happens if a baby holds a Cree light bulb?”, they’re able to speak to their audience in a way that grabs their attention and gets them involved.Great content is the key to a happy audience.

Also, Cree knows the value of social proof. When you become part of their environmental movement, you get to display a badge on your site that says, “Take the pledge. I joined the LED lighting revolution.” This is a great way to build community with your audience and get great viral exposure for your company.

In this image you can see they also do a great job of including their social media channel buttons on their site. When you see the Facebook Like box and their Twitter and YouTube buttons, it’s easy to see that Cree is truly changing the way B2B does business today.

Tip: Remember that you’re not selling to other businesses or to “consumers,” but instead you’re always selling to real people whose buying decisions are driven by emotion. Speak to that emotional side, as Cree has done by infusing the hot buttons of bad lighting in the workplace and people’s passion for environmentally friendly products. Find your cause and use it in your messages and share it on your channels.

#7: Emmy’s Closet

Emmy’s Closet is an online store that sells accessories for children. They’re a great example of infusing social media with ecommerce.

Emmy’s Closet is an extension of the popular arts and crafts ecommerce site,Etsy.com. On the site they use an application created by Etsy that allows you to browse and purchase directly through Facebook (see the image below).

They’ve also included social share buttons so fans can share their favorite items on their Facebook profile with their friends and their friends can then click through and buy products via Etsy as well. The share buttons create a viral buying experience. In the image below, you can see how easy it is to share favorite items with your Facebook audience.

Emmy’s Closet knows that Facebook commerce is on the rise. With over 500 million people on Facebook, it makes sense that many of them like to conduct their entire shopping experience on Facebook, including the actual purchase.

Emmy’s Closet also does a great job of branding their company to their social experience. Notice in the images below, they’ve created social buttons to reflect their brand, thus personalizing the social experience.

Tip: Experiment with ecommerce and product sharing apps on Facebook. For a great article on Facebook apps, check out the Top 75 Apps for Enhancing Your Facebook Page.

#8: San Chez Bistro

San Chez Bistro is a tapas bistro and restaurant in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Just like Martell Home Builders, they’ve taken social media and infused it with the needs and preferences of their local audience. San Chez encourages their patrons to use Twitter to reserve a seat at their restaurant. They call it “Tweet-Ahead Seating” and it’s a great use of social media local marketing. Once you tweet your interest in a reservation, the online hostess tweets you back with a message similar to this: “Great, you’re on the list. See you in a little while.”

With the number of smartphones on the rise, San Chez knows they can reach even more potential customers if they make access to their restaurant easy and quick. By combining smartphone capabilities, social media and local marketing, they were able to create an extremely successful marketing campaign online.

In addition, San Chez Bistro utilizes Foursquare to gain even greater viral visibility. Foursquare, one of the top location-based services out there today, allows people to check in with their mobile devices and let all their friends know where they’re currently spending time. It’s fun for the fan and powerful exposure for the physical business.

Notice below how San Chez Bistro has customized their Foursquare page, making it easy for patrons to see the incentive for checking in.

Tip: If you’re a local business, consider customizing your Foursquare page and adding an incentive for social media check-ins. It’s great exposure for you and makes your patrons’ experience in your establishment more fun and interactive.

#9: Cranium

Cranium, a game by Hasbro, takes board games to the next level by including fun activities like drawing, singing, acting and trivia questions.

To make their experience more social, Cranium does a great job of using content from the game to engage with their fans. They often post factoids that can be found in their game, such as the one about Einstein’s theory below. They know their audience well and therefore know that these fun factoids will attract them.

Also, Cranium has brought the experience of playing their game to their social networks. They’ve developed an app that encourages fun via fan engagement. For example, as seen in the image below, the app asks fans “Which one of these characters are you? Take our little quiz” and fans interact with the app and then are told which character best fits their personality.

Cranium is also clever with their use of video. Again, in the spirit of bringing the experience of playing their game to their social channels, they use video to get their fans to play along. For example, in the video they have someone humming a song, and you have to guess what song she’s humming. It’s put together in a way to make the experience interactive and fun.

In the image above you can see that the use of video on your Facebook page is smart because when you upload your video, you get an embed code. You can take that embed code and place the video on your website, your blog or anywhere outside of Facebook. When you do this, the Facebook video automatically brings the Like button with it. Therefore, if somebody’s surfing the web, they find your video and they’re not yet a fan, they can become a fan of your Facebook page right from the video just by clicking that Like button.

Also, if somebody shares your video on their Facebook page and a bunch of their friends see it, they too can become a fan of your page while they’re watching the video, without actually leaving the video. This is a great way to virally grow your Facebook fan base.

Tip: Create experiences on your social channels. How can you tailor your programs or product experiences to get your fans engaged and interested? Think of ways to spread your message by getting people to interact with you in fun and interesting ways via great content, apps, videos and quizzes.

Source: Social Media Examiner

Dan Sherman of Ski.com attributes a$70,000 sale to Facebook – but it was not from a special offer. It was simply a photoof a beautiful fresh snowfall.

“In my opinion, Facebook is all aboutengagement – allowing you have more ofa dialog with more people in one place. If I post a sales message, I don’t get a lot of action. But if it’s just relevant information for our business, like a photo of a fresh snowfall, people like to engage with that.”

“The great thing is that when people comment on anything on Facebook, all their friends see it. Because of this, we received a $70,000 booking from someone who had never heard of us before.”

A number of studies have been done to quantify the value of Facebook activity. Recently, ChompOn tried to determine the value of a tweet compared to a piece of content shared on Facebook. According to them, a tweet was worth $5 in sales, while Facebook shared content was worth $14. Clearly, the value of a referral will depend on what you are selling, but research like this suggests Facebook drives more transactions.

The caveat? Selling directly to your Facebook fans rarely works. Facebook is all about reaching people through people. Reaching your fans’ friends. This concept is called “Transitive Trust.” Your job is to create material fans will pass along, introducing that brand to their network.

Source: Marketing Strategies Blog

Facebook has exploded in popularity past 600

million active users, and shows no signs of slowing down.

Every 20 minutes:

• More than 1 million links are shared

• More than 1.8 million status updates are made

• More than 2.7 million photos are uploaded

• More than 10 million comments are posted

The Facebook press page shares more statistics as of March 2011:

• 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day

• The Average user has 130 friends

• Average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events

• Average user creates 90 pieces of content each month

• More than 30 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts,

notes, photo albums, etc.) are shared each month

• More than 70 translations are available on the site

• About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States

• There are more than 200 million active users currently accessing Facebook

through their mobile devices

• People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice as active on

Facebook than non-mobile users

But perhaps more important than these impressive numbers is the fact that

Facebook is becoming more than just a social network: it is becoming a platform

for social communication (something we will discuss in more detail later).

From a marketing standpoint, the fact that people share more personal details about

their identity on Facebook than anywhere else offers unique advantages. As brands,

we have access to a depth of demographic information, providing

opportunities such as ad campaigns targeted to employees at selected

companies, or specific university graduating classes.

When it comes to return on investment, we have evidence – both anecdotally and

through research – that Facebook can be more powerful than Twitter and other

social networks for generating sales.

To be continued…

Source: Hotel Marketing Strategies

LinkedIn hits 100 million user: There are one million new members each week on this social business platform. To celebrate this major milestone LinkedIn published the infographic below.


Source: Social Media Examiner

Responsibilities – the key responsibilities for Social Media Ambassador include:

•Create a comprehensive social media strategy to define programs that use social media marketing techniques to increase visibility, membership and traffic across all XYZ brands and Implement and manage social media programs
•Experiment with new and alternative ways to leverage social media activities (“marketing R&D”)
•Monitor trends in social media tools, trends and applications and appropriately apply that knowledge to increasing the use of social media at XYZ
•Strategize with and educate the management team and others across the company on incorporating relevant social media techniques into the corporate culture and into all of the company’s products and services
•Measure the impact of social media on the overall marketing efforts

Experience – the ideal Social Media Ambassador will have experience in the following areas:

•Social media tools and techniques
•Marketing (traditional, new media, guerilla and ‘word of mouth’)
•Strategy
•Product marketing
•Press and analyst relations
•Business development
•Technology
•Operations
•Sales
•Financial and quantitative analysis
•Project management
Attributes – the key attributes for this position include:

•Creativity
•Willingness to experiment
•Ability to deal with uncertainty
•Ability to contribute individually, and lead, manage or participate in cross-functional teams
•Doggedness and determination
•Ability to synthesize large amounts of data into actionable information
•Excellent writing skills and a willingness to use them
•Excellent verbal communication skills
•Persuasiveness
•Ability to create great working relationships with all levels within the company and across multiple disciplines
•Sense of humor