Friday 19 October 2012

4 WAYS TO INCORPORATE HALLOWEEN INTO YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING STRATEGY


Who doesn’t just love Halloween – horror movies, scary décor, trick or treating (and all that free candy…)!  I know some people (yes, adults) who go more nuts at Halloween than they do at Christmas.  According to Statistics Canada, we spent 331 million dollars on Halloween candy in 2009!  And, according to Value Village’s 2011 annual Halloween shopping survey, the average Canadian planned to spend $300.00 on this very special occasion last year!   

 
Think it might be time for you to scare up some social media marketing tactics to take advantage of this ‘spooktacular’ (sorry, I couldn’t resist) time of year??  Here are a few tricks and treats you might want to try:

1.  Post some Halloween related photos to get yourself and your fans into the spirit.  You can change your profile photos out for something Halloweenie, too, but try to still relate the photos  as much as possible to your business to keep up your branding efforts.  Change out your Facebook business page’s Timeline cover photo for maximum effect. 


2.  Hold a fun Halloween contest for all of your fans, employees and clients to enjoy.  You could have a “Best Costume” or “Wildest Jack-O-Lantern” contest, whereby you could have fans post photos of their costumes or jack-o-lanterns to your page and whoever has the best, wins a prize.  The prize could be anything from a big bag of treats to tickets to a horror movie.  This is a great way to engage with your network.


3.  Post a whole Halloween-related campaign.  A great example of this:   Mike’s Hard Lemonade’s  “Zombie of the Day” campaign.  They used a Facebook application called the “Zombifier”, with which users could upload photos of themselves, and transform themselves into zombies by choosing from a series of horrifying eyes, noses, mouths, wounds, scars and splatter, and clicking & dragging these features over their photos until the desired horrifying effect was achieved.  Every new zombie was featured in a photo gallery and the company posted a new and different “Zombie of the Day” each day. Very cool and so much fun.  And, very smart:  you had to “Like” their page in order to participate!!  


4.  Host a social, Halloween-themed event to network and generate buzz.  It could be a costume party or haunted-house tour.  Promote your event on Facebook and LinkedIn – it’s so easy to do.  Get a bunch of people in your network together and enjoy.   Another great way to engage, engage, engage!!

Friday 5 October 2012

7 IMPORTANT THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW BEFORE YOU POST ON FACEBOOK


Facebook is the medium of choice for many businesses when it comes to a social media marketing strategy.  Why?  Because Facebook has almost a billion users; it has become the social medium on which to connect and because, with its gazillion user-friendly features and apps, it’s just so damn cool!

Here are a few statistics and things (courtesy of consultant, Jeff Bullas, one of my favorite go-to guys for all things social media) you should know before using Facebook as a part of your business’ social media marketing campaign.

1. What Days of the Week are Best for Posting?  Although there’s nothing wrong with posting on Facebook any given day of the week, statistics show that the best days to post are Wednesdays and Sundays.                   

2. What Times of the Day are Best for Posting?  The best time to post on Facebook is between the hours of 8:00 PM and 7:00 AM.  Apparently posting between these hours garner 20% more user engagement.  So, if you want to increase traffic, “likes” and comments, analysis shows that it’s actually best to post during non-business hours, when users are not at work. 

3. How Many Posts a Day Should you Create?  Research dictates that it’s quality, not quantity, that matters most.  Accordingly, posting one or two times per day generates 40% more user engagement.

4. How Many Times a Week Should you Post?  By the same token, according to Bullas, you can, “Achieve maximum user engagement by not overcrowding users’ newsfeeds with too many Posts during the week.  Posting one to four times produces 71% higher user engagement than five or more Posts in a given week for retail brands.”
No one wants to have their News Feeds inundated with an over abundance of posts – especially not if they’re all from the same person or company.

5. What is the Optimal Length for a Post?  With respect to the length of posts, it would appear that more concise posts (posts between one and 40 characters in length) produce higher engagement than do longer posts.  The statistic is, “Posts with 80 characters or less receive 66% higher engagement.”

6. What Kind of Content Sparks Dialogue?  To get the dialogue ball rolling, ask questions of your fans.  If you really want to generate lots of comments, there’s no better way to do it.  If your objective is to really get fans talking, remember that, “question posts generate comment rates double that of “non-question” posts.”

7. What Keywords are Most Effective in Facebook Offer Posts?  People respond best to uncomplicated and undemanding offers.  Tell your fans what they’re getting in straightforward language.  Bullas claims that keywords like “$ Off” and “Coupons” generate the highest fan engagement.  On the flipside, keywords such as “Sale” and “% Off” receive the least fan engagement.

So, now that you’re armed with some of the best advice for posting on Facebook for business – get out there and get posting!!  For more information and to best optimize your social media endeavors, why not join one of our Social Networking for Business seminar/workshops and we’ll equip you with everything you need to know!  Just click on the link for a schedule of workshops in your area.