Tag Archives: Facebook

DIG: This Podcast: Wildfire Marketing and Interactive Promotions

24th February 2011

Running a promotion within social can get complicated fast. From guidelines between networks to development and budget, the requirements alone can be daunting.

Last week, Stacy Cohen and I were give the opportunity to chat on the DIG: This Podcast with Wildfire’s Senior Vice President Derek Draper and Southeastern Senior Account Executive Christien Louviere.

Wildfire is a marketing and interactive promotion platform which allows brands to quickly  build & launch social media marketing campaigns within minutes. Campaign formats include quizzes, contests, coupons, virtual gifts and more.

As one of the first preferred developers of Facebook, Wildfire’s unique relationships with social media platforms allow for deep integration and successful campaigns from the moment they launch.

Listen in over on the DIG: This Podcast page as we learn more about the platform, its capabilities and where the team is heading in the future.

5 Unique Features of the New Facebook Pages

14th February 2011

Late last week, Facebook unveiled changes to Pages that made a big splash in how businesses can now communicate with their fans.

Facebook outlined many of the core changes to pages to page administrators, referencing features such as better communication, more opportunities for expression and improved relevancy. Moving beyond the visual tour offered to page administrators, let’s take a look at some of the smaller, and very powerful, details of new Facebook pages.

1. Moderation: This feature automatically mark posts or comments containing words an administrator outlines as spam. Find it here: Edit Page –> Manage Permissions –> Moderation Blocklist

2. Email notifications: Forget to check your page multiple times a day for new fan content? You can now select to receive an email each time a fan posts or comments on your page. Activate this feature here: Edit Page –> Notification Settings –> Email Settings

3. Post as a page: As outlined in the Pages tour, admins can now login to Facebook as a page rather than a person. Not only does this allow an admin to comment as a page, you can now directly post to the wall of another Facebook Page, just as a fan would. This feature will allow Pages to easily cross promote, but watch out, we could see an increase in spam with this as well.

4.  Questions: The Facebook Questions application is now available to all pages. To add it as a tab to your page and allow fans to ask you questions directly in a dedicated format, visit: Edit Page –> Manage Applications –> Questions –> Add Tab

5. Featured admins: Pages now have the availability to feature admins to the public fan base, allowing fans to place a face with a page. However, use this feature carefully, as fans will be able to click to see any public information of an admin’s personal Facebook page. Activate this feature here: Edit Page –> Featured –> Add Featured Page Owners

What new features of Facebook Pages have you stumbled upon? Do you love or hate the new format? Share your thoughts in the comments.

How To: Build a Content Strategy

28th January 2011

As a community manager at Engauge, I spend much of my time building strategy, writing and best of all learning for my clients. As we enter into a new year, it seems this is the best time to take a look back and revisit how we present information to our fans.

As quoted in the 2011 Engauge Digital Outlook, “Brands aren’t celebrities, they’re not people and they’re not peers, but they can be very useful friends – driving the use of social.”

Taking this to the core of some of my responsibilities as a community manager, here are some of my favorite tips to keep in mind when managing a brand’s social presence:

1. Build a calendar: Each month, I plot out our posts within a calendar using either Keynote or PowerPoint. However, if you are looking to share a calendar among several team members, Google Calendars make an easy way to see at a glance what should be posted each day and quickly rearrange when necessary.

2. Add variety: One of the largest mistakes brands make in social is to focus strictly on the bottom line. While product is still important, be sure to clearly define “buckets” for types of content. For instance, if your brand frequently holds events or has a strong philanthropy arm, set content aside for those areas and define an amount of posts per week to be devoted.

Likes and comments and re-tweets = stream impressions = new fans and followers.

3. Create engagement: Going along with #2, try asking your fans questions or to share a recent experience. You will be surprised how eager they are to speak with you. However, do keep in mind, that you cannot offer fans anything in return in the form of a prize, as this is illegal within the wall on Facebook.

4. Test and learn: Experiment with posting at different times of the day, different days of the week and posts of varying length. Not every brand audience will respond the same way, so this is key to learning more about your fans, not Facebook users in general.

5. Create a voice and tone: Defining a voice and tone for how a brand will speak, act and engage with fans will help fans to more easily identify with who you are and what you will say. For instance, what works for an energy drink may not be as well received by fans of a non-profit.

6. Take advantage of analytics tools: Track everything. Time of day, length of post, number of comments, fan growth week-to-week, impressions per post. The information is there and if used correctly, will be the key to proving not only do your fans love you, but here’s why and here’s how.

What would you add to this list? Do you have a go-to form of communication strategy when it comes to your pages?