Helping Fans Engage on Facebook (and other Social Media)

by Morgan Mann

I've been getting a number of questions about Facebook pages and how to engage and grow your fan base. And there are a number of great articles that saying that average number of fans who will engage in your page's posts (like or comment) is only 3 - 7.5%. ¹ However, I've seen that number higher and can share some of my secrets.

I help manage the Door County facebook page and can tell you that they have a whopping 65% engagement! How do we do that? We talk to our fans like they're friends.


Ask Your Fans to Join In
It sounds simple, but it's important to make the types of posts that bring up the level of engagement and in the process fans. Act like they are your friends. Ask for them to join in! How was their day? Share a photo, story, or tip. Then repackage and repost.

For example, this past week on the Door County page we didn't just post that the colors are changing and a link to the Color Report. We started a "Fall in Door County" photo album with a couple of photos and invited fans to add pictures — giving them a piece of Door County while they're away.

We did a similar post in August with Sunrise and Sunsets and had a 2.43% level of feedback with 582 likes across the pictures (at the end of August) and over 60 fans submitted photos — and of course, the numbers are still growing.


Answer Your Fans Questions
It seems like a no-brainer, but you need to check your page and respond to those who have engaged with you.

Are they asking questions?
Answer to the best of your ability or put them in touch with someone or place that might know. This not only helps one particular fan, but also the others reading the post who might have the same question. And also leads people to know you as a resource and knowledge base.

Are they posting pictures or links?
Tell them what you think about their post. Was it and informative article? Say what thoughts resonated with you. Or was it a beautiful photo? Give them an inside secret to another location nearby that is similarly spectacular.

Share Insights & Ask Your Fans to Share
Have you reached a milestone? Whether it's your millionth customer or 1,000 fans. Post a "Thank You" and ask for others to share the great experiences your giving you them. Give your fans a reason to boast about them knowing about you first!

Make a Game Plan
You know that you're not supposed to be too sale oriented online and just blather on about your next latest deal. But what do you post then? It's time to make a game plan.

1. Write a list of topics that you like to hit on. It might be the weather, scenic photos of your area, packing & travel tips, etc. If you can't come up with ideas, start looking around your industry or other successful companies and see what others are doing, and then keep a inspiration list. Be sure put your own spin on things though. Remember to put your business cap on and be what YOUR brand is instead of your competition.
   
2. Then pick 2-3 days where you're going to make your posts. You can look at your insights to see what days people really interact with you, or find potential days you'd like to ramp up more. You can choose time specific types of posts with certain days like a (Tuesday Tip) for example, or you can just make it random. The key is to make the commitment to post and stick to it.
   
3. To make things easier and use your time effectively, set up a program like HootSuite (which is free) and spend time once a week programming in your posts. They'll go out when you tell them to, and you won't have to think about it every day. It's a great way to keep your commitment without having to keep it at the forefront of your mind.
4. Don't be the only admin. Just like in your regular job, you can't run your business by yourself. Bring in your trusted associates or employees to help, or hire a company to help. Just remember that you all have to speak from the voice of your brand and business which is why a game plan is so important.
   
5. Don't forget to check back in once a day on your actual Facebook Page so you can respond to questions or comments. It doesn't have to be lengthy, but try to plan for at least 15 minutes a few hours after your post goes out or at the end of the day.

Time Your Posts
Sometimes it's all about timing. Think about your product or service and when people use you. If you're a restaurant, post a great picture of your feature at 4pm when everyone's thinking "what's for dinner tonight?" If you are a plumber, it's the midnight call that you get most often, so time your posts after dinner. You're company's name might be the last one they've seen that night and come first to their mind when they're in need.

Everything has a schedule, and if you study your customers enough, you can figure out when they're wanting your service.

Give-Aways & Gimmicks
I'm sure I'll have a few detractors, but I'm not a fan of give-aways — unless you normally do that as part of your marketing strategy.

You have to be true to your brand and the strategy you have in place for marketing your business. If you are constantly giving away your product, why would anyone want to buy it? They'll just wait for the next deal to come around. Or worse, they'll think that your product or service isn't worth your regular price since you have to give it away.

Another reason gimmicks don't work is because they don't always bring in your true target market. People might join your page solely for the give-away and never engage again. This brings your engagement levels down and doesn't get you quality leads for your business.

The only person you're making truly happy is the customer who wins your contest. Everyone else could potentially feel like it was a waste of their time to comment or post and that will make them less likely to engage again. Plus, that bad taste in the mouth might be the last feeling you've left your "friend" with about your brand when they might be needing your services. Be a good friend and try leave a positive message that's fun and easy to share.

Wrap Up
I hope this post gave you a few ideas to try or made you think of even more. Let me know what's worked for you and share your knowledge. I look forward to hearing from you!


Morgan Mann is owner of 1 Design Source, a marketing and advertising firm located in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin (in the popular tourist destination of Door County). She has worked with large and small companies helping them reach their customers and increase their effectiveness. Join her facebook page to get more helpful insights and tips at Facebook.com/1DesignSource.

Resources
¹ A Study of Fan Engagement on Facebook Pages: http://visibli.com/reports/fbstudy

Cottage Website Redesign

Introducing the new Door County Cottages website created by 1 Design Source which includes 360 tours! Centrally located on the peninsula, each cottage was hand-built and have been newly renovated this year. For a truly relaxing vacation, this is the place to stay!

Website: http://www.doorcountycottages.com/

B&B Website Portal Redesign

Introducing the new contemporary website for Classic Inns & Resorts of Door County, Wisconsin! Created by 1 Design Source in a custom (non-wordpress) CMS system, the lodging owners are able to login individually and update their personal information while a Super Admin manages the rest of the site — an affordable, easy solution!

Website: http://www.classicinnsandresorts.com/

Egg Harbor Visitor's Brochure

Tourism Brochure
Client: Egg Harbor Business Association, Egg Harbor, Door County, WI

http://www.eggharbordoorcounty.org/

Egg Harbor is located along the western coastline of Door County along the bay of Green Bay. It has picturesque views, exciting local events, and a wonderful community of shops, restaurants, lodgings and activities. It has even been recognized as one of the Coolest Small Towns in America (Budget Travel, 2010) and the Best Small Town in Wisconsin (Wisconsin Trails magazine, 2011) among a smattering of other awards.

Their brochure had been redesigned the year before, but they wanted to change some things in it and make it more of their own. Working with the EHBA team, we sourced, added and made photos larger. We included more events, reworked the map so that it was more user-friendly, and even found room to add in the additional members that joined without adding pages and increasing the cost of printing.

In addition, we added Wi-Fi and Pet Friendly icons to listings and inserted QR codes in a few places to help engage the brochure reader. We brainstormed reasons why you should visit Egg Harbor, and we included the history of the naming of Egg Harbor.

It was a very lively project, with lots of activity and excitement. This 28-page brochure is sure to have an impact on those who pick it up and can be requested on their website.

Design: 1 Design Source, Sturgeon Bay

Social Media Presentation

I was able to be one of the presenters along with Dina Boettcher of Boettcher Communications for the Door County Women in Business, Let's Get Social meeting held at the Newport Resort in Egg Harbor yesterday morning where over 30 Door County business owners came to learn – what a great group of influential women.

Here is a recap of what I said and a link to the PowerPoint presentation I showed. I welcome your comments and thoughts and hope you can utilize some of the information provided.

Slideshow:

See the presentation larger.

History Lesson
Social Media has been around since the beginning of time. It's how we learned about new things, it just didn't involve computers. Today's "Social Media Era" started in the late 1990s with websites like MySpace and Friendster and with the emergence and acceptance of Facebook in 2006, the global community that is available to "like" your business has grown and is listening.

Below is a graph of the History of Social Media which you can see larger by clicking on it.

Source: http://blog.skloog.com/

The social landscape changes constantly. Recent developments in social media include:

• Google Realtime Search Quietly Adds Quora, Gowalla, Others (April 25)
• Google's coupon service Offers is now live in select cities (NYC, San Fran, Portland). (April 21)
• Yahoo Sells Delicious To YouTube Founders (April 27).
• Social Network Pioneer Friendster To Erase All User Photos, Blogs And More On May 31.
• Facebook launches Deals. (April 26)
• Still in the testing phase :: Facebook has made several new self-serve ad targeting options available to a test group of users, including family status such as “Parents”, “Engaged (< 6 months)”, or “Newlywed (< 1 year)”, as well as “Has birthday in < 1 week”. Those in the test group have the option to target ads to broad categories of interests, such as musical genres, types of sports, activities such as photography, and professional categories such as real estate, in addition to traditional precise interest targeting.

The best place to watch what's coming and going is connecting to the main companies themselves or watching Facebook pages like Mashable, TechCrunch, or of course our FB page, 1 Design Source.


New Marketing Trifecta
Including your other traditional avenues of marketing, a new marketing "trifecta" is now a consideration you should pay attention to when planning your marketing strategy for your business.

Source: 65 Terrific Social Media Infographics

Global Trends
Some of the trends that we're seeing in Door County include the Geosocial, Group Buying, and QR Codes. Facebook Commerce will start to take a front seat as well, and there is always Social Search.

Source: TIG Global, interactive marketing company for hospitality and travel.

I'll talk a little bit about each one and why they're important:

Geosocial sites including Foursquare and now Gowalla (since Google just bought them) are important ways that tourists with smartphones are finding what's going on in the area, where to eat, and where to stay. Your business is likely already there because you aren't required to put it on sites like Foursquare, so it's best to be watching the conversation and engaging the group using it.

Group Buying includes sites like Groupon, and now Facebook's Deals and Google's Offers. A few places in Door County have already done a Groupon deal. The things to consider about making an offer is if you would give the offer normally and confirm expiration dates and limitations.

QR Codes are the squares that are popping up in print marketing and other unique places throughout the advertising world, and in Door County you'll notice quite a few of them in the Visitor's Guides, local advertising and elsewhere.

The things to consider with QR codes is providing a unique experience for the person who will be snapping a photo of the QR code. Take them to more information about the product or service, have it dial your number, don't just make it a link to your homepage which is likely right next to the QR code within your advertising anyway (unless you have a very long URL).

Facebook Ecommerce is something that is relatively new and hasn't had a huge presence in Door County's social media savvy businesses yet. But it will be. You will be able to link your hotel's booking engine within Facebook and sell products.


Average Time Online for Americans
Nine hours! That includes a Google survey that claims 39% of smartphone owners use their devices in the bathroom. (Hmmm, toilet paper ads anyone?)

Source: WIRED Magazine

B2C Trust
This infographic defines the new trust model that we find today thanks to social media. Consider talking your fans like your best friend or how you would if they came into your store. Remember, your fans liked your business. If your talking about the local area or an upcoming area event, be sure to tie it to your business.

Source: Hotel Marketing Strategies

Social Media Team
With all the time people are on social media, it feels like you should be on that much too. But the reality is that you have a business to run. How can you get it all done? Enlist a social media team of experts. This is a nice simple example of whom you could enlist to build your team.

Source: Hotel Marketing Strategies

Social Media Policy
With your team in place, you should have a Social Media Policy. How do you handle working with good and bad comments? What can your ambassadors give away? How often should you be posting and what should you be saying? These are just a few things that you need to spell out for your team.

Below is a graphic that is an example of a Community Management Scenario Map which might help you start the conversation within your company.

Source: David Armano

Where You Should Be
The top four places a Door County business should be is Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. Facebook is the largest social media network at this time and more likely than not, your demographic is there. Twitter is another popular tool that is heavily utilized in the tourist industry. YouTube is the second most searched engine behind Google. Put some clips of your business or you/your team at work and link back to your other marketing efforts. And LinkedIn is where you can connect with other business owners to ask questions and find your next great employee.

Being in Door County, you should also look into your presence on Foursquare, Gowalla, and TripAdvisor, if you haven't already.

All of these sites are free at this time. They offer different marketing opportunities and reach different demographics. Try to change your messaging between the mediums even if it's the same topic to keep your messaging fresh.


Contact Me
You can find me and my advertising/design business on:

Facebook.com/1designsource
Twitter.com/morgan270
LinkedIn.com/in/morganmann

_______________________________________

Morgan Mann is Creative Director and Owner of 1 Design Source which is located in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. If you have questions about your social media strategy, get in touch with the links above or call 920-743-5754.

Facebook Questions, Things To Consider

Facebook released a new feature on March 24 where you can ask questions both through your business pages, and for your personal profile.

In testing out the new feature, I've found a few things to consider when using it:

Standing Out from the Crowd
Your question may not stand out much in the newsfeed when other posts have photos and video links included. It could differentiate the question post because of that. But as most of us know, photos and links equals engagement and neither of those are options within the Question feature (yet).

Keep It Short & Sweet
In writing answers, you must keep in mind the amount of space an answer will be given. It appears that 40 characters is the magic number, and then it gets cut off. You can rollover the answer area and have an ALT tag (caption) show the whole answer, but you will have to consider the initial portion of your response more closely so that it will engage someone to initiate the rollover.

This could be a major hindrance to gain indepth answers, but works great for yes-no-or-maybe questions.


Sharing with Friends
If you've found a question that you want to know the answer to or are trying to make the question go viral, you may click the "Ask Friends" button on a question. This pops up a box containing all of your friends whom you can check off.

The major draw back at this stage of the game, is that you cannot use the segments you've created for your friends. Instead you must either start typing the name or scroll through an alphabetic list.


Remember You're on Facebook
If you answer or post a question, everyone can see it whether they're your friend or not — including businesses, clients, your Mom, and others. This is a gold mine for marketers and hiring agents, but also takes privacy away.

These are just a few of the things I've found that deserve some thought. Feel free to share what you've found when using this new feature.

Door County Peninsula Vision Care Brochure Design

Optometrist / Eye Care Brochure
Client: Peninsula Vision Care, Sturgeon Bay, Door County, WI

http://www.peninsulavisioncare.com/

Peninsula Vision Care was looking to update their brochure to match the look of their newsletter (right) and breath new life into it. They needed a new layout, photography, and some massaging of the message inside.

Incorporating similar elements and colors helped bring the branding across their collateral materials giving them a more cohesive marketing presence. We reviewed the text used within their website and other marketing materials to help select and massage the message, and we also worked with Jason Mann Photography to include some photos of the new office space and the team, making the piece both reflective and informative.

In completing our full service care, we sourced printing from both internet companies and locally. Wanting to stick with local vendors and because of previous experience with them, Peninsula Vision Care selected On Time Printing in Sister Bay.

Design: 1 Design Source, Sturgeon Bay
Photography: Jason Mann Photography, Sturgeon Bay
Printing: On Time Printing, Sister Bay