Here’s the latest doc from Facebook with updated best practices on how to effectively use News Feed to meet your objectives. DOWNLOAD YOUR COPY HERE.

Chart showing time and budget allocation for social media strategy.

For the past couple of years, we’ve touted two primary tools for building audience on Facebook: promotions and ads. We’ve even gone so far as to recommend a budget and time allocation to these efforts. As the pie chart at left shows, we have recommended that Promotions should comprise around 25% of your social media budget (time and dollars), while Facebook Ad Buys should hover around 20%.

Since Facebook has gone public, however, and the world knows all of the ins and outs about how they make (or don’t make) their money, the company has worked diligently to improve their ad platform. Some of the enhancements over the past year include better targeting by interest and keyword, improvements to the more powerful sponsored story and sponsored post ad types, and improved insights. These enhancements may lead us to flip-flop the emphasis on ads with promotions.

Let’s be clear: ads and promotions are two distinct and separate audience-building tools that cannot be interchanged. You need them both. The question here is not which one to eliminate or choose over the other. It’s how to balance the two within your overall effort.

A sweepstakes promotion for The Natchez Trace.

The purpose of Promotions such as sweepstakes, coupons, contest, auctions, etc., is two-fold. First, promotions engage your audience in conversation. On Facebook, conversation can be a post, a photo, a like, a comment, a share, an entry, or any other type of action that posts to your timeline. Promotions are great at this because they allow you to entice your audience into actions that aren’t directly sales-oriented. In other words, you are using prizes and incentives to bargain for conversation amongst your fans. Why is this important? Because since 2007, the #1 reason that fans “like” a brand on Facebook is discounts, freebies, and incentives. Give them that, and their friends will hear about it. Plain and simple. But promotions are about more than engaging. The second purpose of promotions is to grow your audience. Because users have to be “fans” in order to participate in a promotion, there is tremendous growth potential. We’ve seen single promotions add thousands of fans in a matter of days and weeks. It happens because whenever someone joins, likes, comments, or shares, their friends see it, AND they see the incentive. ie- Jack joined entered to win $500. So, Jack’s friends want to win $500, too, so they also enter, thereby increasing the audience for the page. Promotions are not 100% successful, but they work consistently over time.

Whereas promotions have a two-fold purpose, the purpose of Facebook ads is to increase audience. That’s it. That’s why they are used. Studies show that fans acquired through Facebook ads are more engaged and have a higher level of affinity for the brand than fans acquired through other means, including promotions. Fans acquired through ads saw the ad, clicked the ad, and liked the page without any reward potential. This typically means that really, sincerely like you.

Excerpt from Facebook ad insights over a 28-day time period.

Business owners often balk at the idea of Facebook ads because they are already paying money for promotions or management or the overall effort. They view ads as another expense. The fact is, however, that 30 days of good Facebook ads can replace the time, effort, and expense of a year’s worth of work to grow your audience through promotions only.

In the past month or so, we’ve seen the following results from Facebook ads:

• Miskelly Furniture  of Pearl, MS added 2,500 fans in 2 weeks.
• Relish Home Accents of Gluckstadt, MS added 2,000 fans in 2 weeks.
• Transformation Contest of Denver, CO added 2,800 fans in 3 weeks.
• LL Cool Bead of Madison, MS is adding fans at a rate of roughly 100 per day.
• Sport Center of Vicksburg, MS is adding fans at a rate of roughly 120 per day.

We’ve been telling clients for years that, when you launch a Facebook campaign with less than 500 fans and you do NOT employ Facebook ads, it will take you ON AVERAGE 9-12 months to acquire 1,000 new fans. This is assuming you do about half the work right, and half the work wrong.

Seen in this light, spending $1,000 – $1,500 on 30 days of Facebook ads to acquire 1,500 – 3,000 new fans is a tremendous value. The alternative is spending upwards of $500 per month for a year to reach the same mark.

Simply put, it’s worth the money.

Because once you acquire those fans and hit that initial 3,500 or 5,000 fan milestone, THEN you can begin to employ promotions to engage that audience and create even more growth in a shorter period of time. Promotions with 5,000 fans are infinitely more effective than promotions with 500. The exponential curve speeds up pretty quickly.

So, for 2013, it would be highly advisable to plan to funnel some money at a Facebook ad buy and get the dirty of hitting that early milestone out of the way. Plan to spend around $50 a day on your first campaign. This is the minimum budget that Facebook considers when offering full-time support for your campaign.

Mojoloco works with clients around the country on managed Facebook ad campaigns. Contact Ellison Belt at 601-624-5205 or ellison@mojolocollc.com for a consultation.

Basic stuff, but pretty helpful.

Facebook’s_Steps_to_Business Success

http://www.facebook.com/page_guidelines.php

There are two notable additions to this document:

• Very specific prohibitions on what can be done with the cover photo space:

B.    Cover

Let’s talk about ROI, the sales funnel, and expectations for social media. Whenever I hear someone talk about ROI in social media, it almost always follows that they had ample opportunity and were simply unable to capitalize on it. It’s a classic case of blaming the tool for operator failure.

Every sales-oriented organization has its own version of the sales funnel. Regardless of the version, social media is an exceedingly good medium for filling the top of that sales funnel. In fact, it is a 100% certainty that social media will meet this particular expectation. From there, it’s all about how adept your organization is at engaging and converting opportunities within your particular sales funnel.

In the social media world, 1 fan equals 1 opportunity. If you are able to capitalize on that opportunity, then that fan becomes a customer/advocate. And here’s where it gets interesting: not all customers are created equal, even at the same price points. A customer with 10,000 Twitter followers is more valuable and holds far more opportunity than a customer with 100 Twitter followers. The value of a customer/advocate increases with their social influence. And that’s the paydirt social media can provide. In that light, it doesn’t take too many customers/advocates to produce thousands of new opportunities….so long as you know how to identify them and convert them into customer/advocates.

Early in your social media marketing efforts, you are buying opportunity, not customers. During this time, when hardly anyone is a social media pro, ROI should be viewed in terms of cost per opportunity. If your organization is skilled at initial communications, fact finding, developing and proposing solutions, negotiating, and closing the deal, then social media will be a relatively easy win for you. You’ll be able to convert opportunities to customers/advocates fairly quickly. If not, or if your organization is geared to a lower stage of the sales funnel, then it’s going to take some effort and some adaptation on your part.

Fans and followers are not cold leads. Neither are they warm leads. They have taken an action…vis a vis liking you or following you…but you don’t know what the particular motivation for that action was. Fans and followers fall somewhere between warm and cold leads…I call them passive warm leads. In the head-hunting world, they call them “passive candidates”, or professionals who aren’t looking for a job but might entertain an offer if the right one comes along.  Treating a passive warm lead in the same manner that you would treat a cold lead or a warm lead will not produce success. You must develop a unique approach to these passive warm leads in order to capitalize on your social media opportunities.

If a member of the opposite sex smiles at you across a crowded room (that’s the safest equivalent assumption of a consumer liking a brand on Facebook), that doesn’t equate to a marriage proposal or even an invitation to dinner. It simply means that maybe they will talk to you if you make the right effort and don’t screw it up.

In a similar manner, you can’t assume that fans or followers of your business of your business are ready to purchase, but you also know they aren’t totally apathetic. They’re somewhere in between. Passive warm leads. The point is that the translation from your traditional sales process to a social media sales process is not always natural or smooth. Sometimes it takes work.

If your organization is particularly gifted in making initial contact with warm and cold leads, then social media will be a natural extension of your existing sales process, requiring only slight adjustments to your approach. If, however, your organization is accustomed to receiving warm leads without initiating that first contact, then you will have to adjust a good bit in order to be effective and generate a significant ROI in the social realm.

Knowing and understanding where your strengths lie within the sales funnel is key to making social media selling work for you. Being able to adapt your approach to passive warm leads is critical.

Mojoloco’s job is to deliver opportunities and to assist in initial communication, fact-finding, and developing solutions. We can and will do our job well. As your organization adapts to the social media funnel and gains skill at converting opportunities to customers/advocates, then you can begin to view your ROI in terms of cost per customer.

If this scenario describes you, let’s talk…and when we meet, let’s speak clearly about goals, objectives, expectations, and what a positive ROI looks like for your organization.

]]> http://www.mojolocollc.com/blog/trendspotting/social-media-roi-in-perspective/feed/ 0 http://www.mojolocollc.com/blog/latest/miskelly-furniture-launches-new-year-new-home/ http://www.mojolocollc.com/blog/latest/miskelly-furniture-launches-new-year-new-home/#comments Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:08:50 +0000 julieanne http://www.mojolocollc.com/?p=1160 Continue reading →]]> It’s a new year, and Miskelly Furniture wants to give one of their Facebook fans a “new home.” Miskelly’s recently launched a Facebook promotion contest, New Year, New Home! The promotion calls for users to submit a video showing a room in their home they want to “makeover.” The video with the most votes wins a $2,000 gift certificate to Miskelly Furniture.

Miskelly’s started off with a mere 350 fans in August 2011. This is our third promotion we’ve held for Miskelly’s, and their fan base has already increased to 1, 950. Miskelly’s fan following is expected to increase substantially as video entrants are encouraged to ask their friends to vote for their submission. Head to facebook.com/miskellyfurniture to check it out.

The following 10 trends have been observed on the front lines of social media work here in Mississippi. Please review this document as it may indicate a coming shift in your social media strategy.At a glance:

1. Buy Facebook Ads.
2. Focus on Social Reach.
3. Utilize Facebook’s Open Graph.
4. Maintain a Softer Emphasis on Promotions.
5. Sharpen Your SEO Pencil.
6. Ask Your Fans to Vote.
7. Provide a Call to Action.
8. Cross-Promote.
9. Incentivize Check-Ins.
10. Increase access to your social presence.

1. Buy Facebook Ads.

This will be the single largest shift in our general social media approach for 2012. In years past, Facebook ads have been expensive and equally ineffective. Beginning in mid-2011, we have observed a dramatic uptick in the results from Facebook ad buys. Some of this is due to the shear volume of people that Facebook reaches here in Mississippi. Mostly, however, it is due to the radical updates and improvements to the Facebook ad platform.

Facebook now offers several ad platforms (ads, ads for pages, sponsored stories, post stories, app stories, etc.). “Ads for Pages” and “Sponsored Stories” are, in our experience, the most effective by far. And the good news? Facebook ads remain relatively inexpensive. For example, a $300/month budget in the state of Mississippi can reach millions of users within a 90-day time-frame, all of which will see your message next to names of their friends who “like” it (this is what Facebook calls a “story”). Facebook ads are fast becoming the fastest, most predictable way to build a Facebook audience. In coming weeks, we will likely present recommendations to all of our clients for increased budgeting for Facebook ads.

2. Focus on Social Reach.

If you have 1,500 fans here in the state of Mississippi, you likely have a social reach of well over a million users. “Social reach’ is Facebook’s way of saying “friends of fans.” This is a number that Facebook has recently begun tracking front-and-center for fan pages…and it’s nothing to sneeze at.

Inspire 100 fans to like, share, post, or otherwise engage, and hundreds of thousands of their friends and connections will know it. This is the game of creating conversation and buzz. Your social reach is a crucial number, arguably more important than your fan count (the higher the ratio of fans:reach, the more quality of the fans). Expect to hear much more from us in 2012 about your social reach and how to tap into its incredible influence.

3. Utilize Facebook’s Open Graph.

Earlier this year, Facebook rolled out the latest generation of the Open Graph API. This API includes some major platform upgrades, such as the Timeline (Google it).  As Facebook begins to fully implement the Open Graph, you will receive recommendations from us on how to maximize it. These recommendations may include registering custom actions that can replace the “like”function for your fans (ie- “Ellison drives Patty Peck Honda” instead of “Ellison likes Patty Peck Honda.”). The Open Graph also enhances the so-called timeline of interaction with your brand. Users will be able to view all interactions in chronological order, instead of the current Wall, which is bland by comparison. Finally, Open Graph includes a myriad of ways that your Facebook presence can be tied together with your web site and other web tools….the web is becoming a much smaller place, oddly enough- and all roads lead to Facebook!

The Open Graph bundles a ton of new features that spice up the way in which fans can engage in your brand. Expect some recommendations before the end of 2011 on how you can begin tapping into the Open Graph. We also have some products in the works that we will introduce to you in Q1 2012 that will be incorporated into your approach at no additional cost.

4. Maintain a Softer Emphasis on Promotions.

As early as 2005, we were running social media promotions, mostly on MySpace (ha!) To date, promotions have been the most effective tool in audience-building, particularly on Facebook. As 2012 draws near, I’m seeing a shift in this trend. As Facebook ads become more useful and productive, as the Open Graph creates organic micro-promotions at every interaction, and as users gain more social media savvy, promotions are no longer the sledgehammer they used to be.

Promotions remain at the forefront, but now they have company. You don’t want to inundate your customers with promotions, but there is a very fine line- a balance to strike. We will have some guideance for you on the recommended formula of promotions, ads, and Open Graph elements for your brand. Either way, expect a softer approach to promotions in 2012.

5. Sharpen Your SEO Pencil.

The lines between social media and SEO continue to blur. As Google and Facebook jockey for market share, the cannon that is being wielded most effectively by Google is search content. As Google begins to index conversations on Facebook and Google+ into the permanent search record, it will become increasingly important to monitor conversations far and near.

The good news is that we already monitor conversations for you by using several industry-standard monitoring systems. If something is said, we likely will know it. The bad news is that you will need to draft a policy for addressing inaccurate and defamatory comments as well as protected information. What if a customer starts a conversation about you on Facebook that isn’t true and it harms your business every time someone Googles your name? What if a disgruntled employee posts a trade secret on Google+ that becomes a permanent part of the public search record about your brand? These are difficult issues, but ones that demand attention in advance. The point is, you want to keep your public search record as squeaky clean and true as possible.

Where appropriate, we will be recommending a Social Media Disaster Plan in the first half of 2012 to help you address these issues.

6. Ask Your Fans to Vote.

Fan voting has long been a staple success story in social media here in Mississippi. This trend is only increasing. In 2011, we ran various social promotions that asked fans to participate by voting, and the results were impressive. Asking your fans to vote for something works, quite simply…and it works even when the voting subject matter is totally unrelated to your brand. People sometimes forget that every appearance or interaction in the social timeline is “branding”. So, the interaction itself has some leeway on the particulars. In other words, it doesn’t matter if “Ellison likes Courthouse Racquet Club” or if “Ellison voted for the Tennessee Titans in the Courthouse Racquet Club Superbowl Contest” (as if)……in either, Courthouse Racquet Club receives a touch and a link and is granted access to the “Social Reach” (see above).

As long as fans appreciate and respond to voting contests, expect additional recommendations from us that involve engaging them in this manner. 2012 is shaping up to continue this trend forward.

7. Provide a Call to Action.

To date, everyone has rightly been very hesitant to sound overly sales-oriented in your social footprint. And you’ll always receive a “right-on” from me on that…..remember, brands are always and forever the intruders in the social conversation!

However, we have begun to notice a new willingness on the part of consumers to respond to more direct calls to action. This makes sense in context….if you’re selling something, people know it and at some point just get tired of pretending otherwise. So, when that wall comes down, you can relax a little and begin to reach out.

BUT…be careful, and treat that openness with great respect. We will be having conversations with you in coming months about specific calls to action and revenue/conversion goals you would like to set for your social presence.

8. Cross-Promote.

2011 was the year of the cross-promotion at Mojoloco. We ran quite a few cross-promotions with great success. Courthouse/Miskelly, Retriever/Mistletoe, Cornerstone/Cowboy Maloney, Patty Peck Honda/Sweet Potato Queens, and so on. We always look for ways to expand your audience and introduce your fans to other consumers. After all, that’s what social cross-promoting is all about: introducing a happy customer to someone that’s never darkened your doors.

I see no reason at all to back off of the practice of cross-promoting for 2012. In fact, we will likely step up those efforts. Remember, cross-promotion isn’t about being brand-relevant, it’s about making an introduction to a new prospect. Brand-relevance can come later. You don’t lead off a new acquaintance with your elevator speech…you lead off with a hand-shake and a smile, setting up the elevator speech for later. That’s what cross-promotion is in the social space.

9. Incentivize Check-Ins.

Very recent trends suggest that check-ins, whether on Facebook or Foursquare or some other check-in specific platform, are on the way out. This is a new development that we are monitoring. However, the same trends also suggest that incentivizing a check-in can produce very positive results. Studies show that about 4% of users on Facebook actively, regularly check-in using Facebook Places. In Mississippi, this equals approximately 135,000 people, most of those in the Jackson Metro area. 40% of these users use a mobile device to check-in. So, even with trends moving downward, as some sources suggest, the numbers still hold potential, particularly as 135,000 people can produce a social reach well above 5,000,000.

So, if you have 2,000 fans and an average 80 fans (4%) check-in routinely, then you are potentially reaching several hundred thousand people per month with a personal recommendation. I’ve no doubt that personal recommendations from 80 people each month would be enough to raise an eyebrow.

We have a couple of different products in the works that combine check-in technology with some of the newer Open Graph features from Facebook. Expect a recommendation on incorporating these tools early in 2012.

10. Increase Access to Your Social Presence.

This trend has been a mainstay since 2003. Every year, it seems that web sites are doing more to increase access and tear down the walls between the traditional web front and the social media presence. In my view, you don’t really have a “web site” anymore…you have a “web presence” that is the sum of your site, social profiles, search results, and online profit centers. 2012 will be no different in terms of increasing access to all of these things.

There are numerous tools available to accomplish this and numerous ways to syndicate your content across multiple fronts. We will approach each of you as we find opportunities to increase access to the brand.

However, late last week word began to trickle down that Google will begin including Google+ posts in Google search results. The full article from the San Francisco Chronicle can be read here. This article explains that:

If someone in one of your circles shares a link on the social network, you’ll see it whenever you’re searching for something relevant on Google.

A follow-up piece from the Huffington Post offers a more in-depth explanation:

This feature is activated only when you’re signed in to your Google Account, according Product Manager Sagar Kamdar, who posted the announcement on the Google Search Blog.

When you’re searching Google for, say, a restaurant, you might see that some results include content shared publicly by members of your Google+ Circles.

With Google+ set to roll out their business platform this fall, the above news offers a glimpse of a potential game-changer. To date, I’ve been looking for some reason- some “wow factor”- that would indicate some intrinsic value that Google+ might provide that Facebook currently doesn’t. Folks, this might be it….maybe…possibly…depending on how Google handles it.

Taking the above articles and other rumors about the new feature at face value, this move will drastically impact the way you approach your social following.

For instance, right now, if someone makes a positive or derogatory comment on Facebook, it’s more or less limited to the silo of Facebook. In the case of a derogatory comment, it’s easy enough to flood your page with other content and push the comment down. But what if the comment was indexed by Google, forever archived as a credible search result about your business?

Or, on the flip-side, how many of you have had great and positive comments posted on Facebook, only to have those posts pushed down by newer content? Wouldn’t it be great to have them indexed as part of the permanent public information record about your brand?

This move by Google stands to seriously up the ante on your social focus. For those that don’t pay attention, the consequences will be profound. Imagine all of the comments that are so easily dismissed or overlooked on Facebook suddenly and permanently appearing in Google search results!

If this plays out anywhere remotely close to the present rumors and incarnation, I foresee three game-changing results:

1. Shift in overall social strategy- So many brands presently have a “broadcasting” approach to social media, thanks largely to Twitter and Facebook. Since Facebook doesn’t allow search engine access to posts and post comments, it’s relatively easy to get away with this strategy. Some businesses broadcast because they do not understand the nature of social media or because they lack the tools or creativity or time to do anything more. Further, many brand managers who are afraid of interaction and engagement via social media, but are nonetheless under pressure to “do something”, intentionally adopt a broadcasting strategy. In doing so, they can show activity and feel as though they’ve accomplished something, even though no real engagement or interaction has occurred. If posts and post comments are suddenly made part of the public search record, then the broadcasting strategy will be stood on its head. Businesses and brand managers will be forced to engage and create positive conversation. If they do not, they will be 100% at the mercy of consumers who have no real connection with them or affinity for the brand. Either way, those that presently broadcast will suddenly be playing from behind the 8-ball, forced to learn how to engage and interact in order to catch up.

2. Shift in SEO strategy- If search results begin to include organic comments and posts from consumers, then SEO efforts must, by necessity, take into account how to engage these consumers and harness the power of their experience. SEO then becomes much more intimately intertwined with customer experience and quality control than ever before. SEO strategists must become customer advocates if they are to be successful. This would greatly contrast with the current culture of SEO, which tends to be somewhat removed from the customer experience, operating in a vacuum of factory-made content written solely for search engine eyes. The human element, vastly unpredictable, will absolutely change this. In the long run, this is a positive thing, as it leads to more authentic search results about a brand. In the short term, I predict that it will become more cost-effective and productive to hire and reward brand advocates from among your social following than to spend large sums on pay-per-click ads or prolonged SEO efforts. In the long run, it’s simply another piece of the puzzle, and a way for consumers to hold brands accountable.

3. Legal Considerations- Imagine a newspaper that publishes off-hand comments without any follow-up research or vetting. Positive commetns that get published, of course, are always welcome. But what about negative comments? If you run a promotion, and a sore loser decides to post wildly emotional or inaccurate or accusatory comments about your business, how upset would you be if Google published that comment thread and gave it instant credibility? Or worse, what if a competitor was able to flood the web with negative comments about your brand, all disguised as legitimate customer complaints? That possibility certainly lends a new level of silliness to political campaigns. Google’s handling of posts and post replies in search results could create a massive wave of litigation and threats of litigation against individuals, companies, and even Google itself. From a reputation-management standpoint, I’m hoping that Google can determine the credibility of a post and list it accordingly. In other words, I think that a post- positive or negative- with multiple replies that express agreement with the original text should rank higher than an isolated post with no interaction. This will help mitigate any attempts at spam as well as dampen the effects of knee-jerk reactions by emotional consumers who may post without a full understanding of the facts.

Again, this is speculation at this point- I’ve no doubt that Google will evolve this feature over time. At the very least, however, this Google+ rumor just might be the “wow factor” we’ve all been waiting for from a potential Facebook challenger. I just hope that Google handles it appropriately.

We’ll keep you posted, as always…

During the live period, there were 1,362 new likes (up 1,818%), 81,183 post views (up 49%), and 554 items of post feedback (up 66%).

The total fan base for this page effectively doubled during the live period as a direct result of this promotion.

This video contest produced almost identical Insights as the Southern Beverage Port paradise contest. Buzz Promos work, folks! A small army of advocates can create huge dividends in positive word of mouth for your brand!

The complete PDF review of this promotion can be downloaded here.