Rev Your Marketing Engine.
Monday Fill-up
Monday Fill-up 4/5 – South Dakota and Facebook | Simple Business Models | Content Marketing Mistakes
Apr 5th
Simple is better - This article crossed my desk today and thought it was a great read. The thrust of it is that just as complex societies collapse under their own bureaucracy, so will media companies, especially those dealing with video. Newspapers flop on the floor of the boat waiting to die because the model changed. You either lead, follow, or get out of the way – or collapse.
Five mistakes you made with your content marketing - One of the things we focus on here at VSixteen is developing content and content packages that attract customers and search engines to client sites. To do it you need the bravery of an artist, the discipline of a scientist, and the teflon of Ron. This post from Target Marketing Mag outlines some of the mistakes you can make with your content marketing. It’s easy to think that if you stuff a page full of keywords that it will perform, but that’s not the case. Write for people, not computers.
South Dakota = Facebook Capitol of the US (not including DC) – What do the 116 million US users of Facebook look like compared to the demographics of the general population. The nugget I liked best about this demographic breakdown was that South Dakota is the state that has the greatest number of Facebook users per capita (31%), if you don’t count Washington, DC, which has 125%.
Monday Fill-up 3/29 | Facebook engagement | Better Fan Page | Friend Fiascos | Contests | Ads
Mar 29th
In this week’s fill-up we took a closer look at how to increase engagement with Facebook fan pages (for ourselves and for a client). We started with the foundation and then found some very relevant and recent articles on building fans and thought we’d share what we’ve found so far:
Foundation
Better Facebook Fan Pages – Give your Facebook fan page a personality that is geared toward your brand then actively promote it and you will be rewarded with active and loyal fans. Ten steps to create a Facebook fan page for your brand. You also should consider installing some apps to the page, so here’s Mashable’s list of 5 essential apps for your Facebook fan page. And don’t forget that once you have 25 fans you can grab a vanity URL from Facebook.
The Rules
Facebook Promotion Guidelines - These guidelines cover both sweepstakes and contents and were established in November of last year and widely reported. The bottom line is Facebook allows basically only one type of promotion. You may ask people to become “fans” of a fan page, then give them access to a section on the fan page to enter the contest/sweepstakes. Notice that this is NOT: “Become a fan and be entered in a contest.” Rather, it’s “Become a fan, then go to a tab on the fan page to enter the contest via a third-party Facebook application.” No wall posts, photo uploads or anything of that nature is allowed. For all other promotions, Facebook requires prior written approval for promotions administered on their system and want you to work with their account rep.
Promotion
Friends: You always need to add friends, especially from your various contact databases, whether they be in Outlook or one of the free email sites. We wrote about how to export Outlook contacts to Facebook just recently. Beware, however! I recently went through the automated process to add friends from my Gmail account to Facebook and after carefully selecting the friends I wanted to invite, the next screen Facebook presented me with was an ALREADY CLICKED list of contacts whose emails were not in Facebook. I was just interrupted by my 6-year-old when this screen popped up and hit continue without even thinking about it – until I saw the confirmation screen. Ooops. I just invited a lot of random email addresses (and some legitimate folks) to be my friend. Good or bad? We’ll find out…
Contests: I like this post about creating and promoting a Facebook page because it timelines a simple contest. When I used to work in the music biz we always talked about audience and motivation. You need the right motivation targeted to the right audience to get people to become fans. It’s easy if you’re selling niche products and services. A freebie gets people interested. BUT, what if you are selling to an audience that is not as cost influenced. Then I would look to an experiential prize. Free vacations to nearby resorts can be great lures for higher-end demographics and allow you to reach out to tangent businesses.
Facebook Ads: When I attended SearchFest Portland 2010 one of the things most panelists, especially in the pay-per-click space were hot on were Facebook ads. With Less cost and less competition than Google ads, these small boxes can be fine tuned in many different ways and targeted to very specific demographics in all manner of ways. You get a 25 Character tile, 110×80 pixel image, and 135 characters to make your message count. And you can budget just $2 per day if you want.
Monday Fill-up 3/22 | Marketing Truths | Two Hours to Work | Charging for Content?
Mar 22nd
Five Things Every Marketer Knows – John Jantz, the founder of Duct Tape Marketing shares some off-the-hip current marketing truths. I agree with number one, since the most important part of marketing is doing it. Making a plan is one thing, but working on that plan and improving it over time and not being afraid to be wrong can make you look like a marketing genius.
What would you do if you only had two hours to work - A great story about focus popped up on Men With Pens last week. I really like this because I often get up at 6-6:30 for the sole purpose of having two uninterrupted hours to work on something that could really make a difference in my business and in my life. For me, two hours means focusing on momentum and on results. It’s a lot like Timothy Ferriss book, The 4-Hour Work Week, except I’m still on the work-all-day chapter.
If you charge for content you can make money – A non-buzzy concept this is, considering the Internet climate of the past 20 years. Yet some companies are making money charging for content. Dan Rayburn argues that if bandwidth and distribution are not free why do people always insist content be free. Not all do, of course, and some businesses who charge for their content actually DO make money. He’s talking about video, but this could apply to almost any content online these days.