strategy
3 Ways to Increase Your Reach on Facebook
Facebook is a powerful and expansive channel for connecting with your target audience. However, as the number of posts and interactions increase, the likelihood of a specific user seeing your wall post decreases.
Here are 3 ways to change that.
1. Pin or Highlight Wall Posts
Pinning a wall post attaches it as the first post to appear on your Facebook Page’s timeline even when more recent posts are published. Pinned posts will automatically unpin after 7 days if it is not manually unpinned.
Highlighting a wall post enlarges the post to stretch across both columns of the timeline. Compared to pinned posts, highlighted posts still shift lower as new posts are published.
Both options increase the prominence of a post on the Page’s timeline.
2. Encourage Users to Comment or Interact
Newly published wall posts are typically seen by only a fraction of people who Like your Page. If a users comments, likes or shares your post, your post has the chance of appearing in the users’ friends’ news feeds. As a result, your post will be exposed to a secondary audience.
Users who regularly interact on your Facebook Page are more likely than others to see your wall posts on their news feeds.
3. Promoted Posts
Promoted Posts is a Facebook advertising option that lets Page Administrators pay to have specific posts displayed to users or friends of users who like the page. Facebook charges a flat fee based on the number of people the advertisers want to reach. Promoted posts are displayed within the news feeds of users.
Promoted posts may be a suitable option if you have an important event or conversion goal you want to promote.
Victor Chan
Digital Strategist
Tags: advertising, facebook, pin, promoted posts, Social Media, strategy
What a Kickstarter Strategy Looks Like
Crowdfunding is moving at warp speed. In 2012, there were 1 million campaigns that raised $2.7 billion dollars (an 81% increase over 2011). 2013 is on course to nearly double those numbers with funds expected to hit $5.1 billion. (source) 
Kickstarter alone has generated $579 million in pledges since its launch in 2009.
In that time, 3.9 million people have pledged to fund nearly 40,000 projects.
So how do you launch a successful campaign on Kickstarter especially knowing the majority of projects don’t ever get funded?
There are many success stories (and candid tales of failure) that we can learn from.
Here are the highlights.
Looking at Kickstarter specifically, in order for a project to receive funding, a fundraising goal must be set and achieved. Approximately 44% of all Kickstarter projects achieve their goals. Funds raised may exceed the initial goal, but the goal is the baseline that must be accomplished. Therefore, it may be strategic to lower the goal amount (but not too low!). For example, if your project requires 150k and you set the funding goal accordingly, but only 120k is raised, you will receive nothing. Indiegogo, on the other hand, offers users the ability to accept funding even when their goals are not met. This comes at a higher percentage (9% underfunded versus 4% for fully-funded projects).
A few important notes:
- Kickstarter takes 5% of all successfully funded projects.
- All projects are required to have US bank accounts and a US mailing address (Kickstarter is working to remove these restrictions to enable Canadians to use the platform more easily).
- There is a limited window in which to raise your funds (approx. 5 weeks). Choose your timing carefully.
- Your project is never removed from the Kickstarter site. It cannot be deleted.
Differences between IndieGoGo and Kickstarter
After funding goals and the reward structure have been determined, and slick multi-media assets have been produced (to post on the Kickstarter project page), it’s time to get down to strategy.
- Create a compelling and engaging story about your project – connect and establish an emotional connection with Backers.
- Raise awareness – identify Key Influencers and establish multiple channels to drive traffic to the Kickstarter project page.
- Pay attention to metrics and adjust accordingly.
- Pay for a PR blitz.
- Empower your fans - consider incorporating fan feedback into the development of your project.
- Consider offering Stretch Goals - it helps keep excitement levels high even after the original funding goal is reached.
- Attract a celebrity popular with the target audience - the celebrity’s endorsement and network goes a long way.
- Be prepared to live & breathe the campaign.
Do you have tips or lessons learned that you can share? Leave a comment.
Tags: crowdfunding, indiegogo, kickstarter, strategy
Magnification Potential
Online marketing promotes or builds awareness for a product. Often, the decision as to which tactics are used depends on available resources – time and money.
There’s also an important factor to consider, which I like to call the “magnification potential”. By magnification potential, I mean the expected multiplication factor of a dollar spent.
Faced with limited resources, you’ll need to determine which marketing tactics will help you achieve your objectives within the given time. If your objective is to gain as much exposure as you can for your product in the next 2 months, tactics with a high magnification potential will be more beneficial. However, if your objective is to make as many sales as possible, a tactic with a lower magnification potential, but a stronger, more targeted message may be more beneficial.
So what determines a tactic’s magnification potential? It’s quite simple. The likelihood that the target audience will share your message with a secondary audience.
For example a pay-per-click campaign on Google Adwords has a lower magnification potential. A fixed dollar amount spent on Adwords will attract 1 visitor via 1 ad click. It is highly unlikely that this visitor will “share” or discuss the ad with someone else.
An email campaign has a moderate magnification potential. There is a low chance an email will be shared, unless it is requested. The number of people reached in the secondary audience will also be limited because the original email recipient will need to manually add each person to the forwarded email.
A contest that requires public voting has a higher magnification potential because contestants are encouraged to ask their friends to vote for them, hence increasing the motivation to share the message.
A Facebook wall post, depending on the content, has an even higher magnification potential because users are able to Like, comment or share the specific post. Any one of these actions will potentially expose the post to the users’ friends. A popular post may reach a secondary or even a tertiary audience. This is the key benefit of social networks.
When creating your next digital strategy, consider your objectives and the magnification potential of each tactic to ensure your campaign will reach the desired number of people.
Victor Chan
Digital Strategist
Photo Credit: StockMonkeys.com
Tags: magnification, marketing, sharing, strategy, virality, word of mouth
Why Monitoring Matters
A key feature of ALERT & ALERT-TV+ is a way to set up monitoring for your social media channels and general online presence. This is an essential part of any social media strategy. Monitoring not just your own social media channels but also your competitor’s social media channels can pay dividends.
Let’s take a look at two recent case studies to illustrate the point.
Case #1: Samsung – Monitoring and Responding to Its Facebook Fans
In August, electronics giant Samsung showed how monitoring and responding to its social media followers can result in great publicity.
It all began in May 2012 when Facebook user, Shane Barrett posted a picture to the official Samsung Facebook Page. The picture of a crudely drawn dragon was accompanied by a message asking Samsung for a new Galaxy S III smartphone to replace his older model. In return for the phone Shane said that Samsung could keep the picture he had drawn.
Samsung responded, thanking Shane for his picture and query but declining his request for a new phone. Instead, Samsung’s online community manager drew a Kangaroo on a unicycle and sent it back to Shane in response! Shane posted the conversation on the popular social news website Reddit. The post of the conversation quickly became one of the most popular on Reddit and the story went viral.
At this point, Samsung could have sat back and enjoyed the free publicity it had earned. Samsung did not, instead choosing to send Shane a brand new Galaxy S III smartphone with a custom case featuring the dragon he had drawn on his original Facebook post (see below). After receiving the phone, Shane posted a picture of it on Reddit and once again the story and picture went viral earning even more publicity for Samsung.
This token of Samsung’s appreciation for a customer resulted in lots of positive online sentiment for the brand and millions of views of the Reddit posts. By monitoring and responding to its Facebook fans, Samsung gained loads of publicity for the low cost of a new phone.
Case #2: Low Cost Holidays Moves in on Another Travel Firm’s Turf
In November 2011, UK based travel agency Thomas Cook received an interesting request posted to its Facebook Page. The request came from a man who shared the company’s name, Thomas Cook. In his request Thomas asked for a free holiday, posting “Seeing as I share the exact same name as your huge company, and because of this I have been ridiculed for as long as I can remember. I think it’s only fair that you help compensate for this by giving me one of your lovely holidays.” Thomas Cook politely declined and instead directed Mr. Cook to its website where he could book his own holiday.
One of Thomas Cook’s (the travel agency) competitors, Low Cost Holidays was monitoring this conversation. After reading of Mr. Cook’s plight and of Thomas Cook’s reluctance to offer him a free holiday, Low Cost Holidays intervened and offered him one instead saying, “Here at lowcostholidays.com we completely sympathize with your suffering and if your name was “lowcostholidays.com” we would certainly have accepted your request to be sent away on a weekend in Paris. … So how about we send you on that weekend in Paris? In fact why not make it a week for you and a friend?”
After his free holiday Mr. Cook posted a picture of himself in front of the Eiffel tower along with screenshots of the Facebook exchanges he had between Thomas Cook and Low Cost Holidays to Reddit. The posting quickly shot to the number 1 most read slot on Reddit and has garnered thousands of views and comments since. By monitoring its competitors social media channels and reacting in a humorous way, Low Cost Holidays has received lots of positive online sentiment and has been featured across news websites such as Fox News and The Daily Mail.
Despite posting a message to Facebook stating how happy the company was for Mr. Cook and his free holiday, Thomas Cook (the travel agency) received criticism online for its lack of sense of humor when Mr.Cook initially approached for the holiday. Mr. Cooks Reddit post has received over 2,000 comments and has been viewed in excess of 50,000 times, add this to the publication of the story in major news outlets you’ll see that Low Cost Holidays has gained lots of publicity for the relatively low cost of a holiday for two to Paris.
What other great examples have you seen of companies monitoring and responding to their online followers?
Aidan
Tags: digital strategy, engagement, facebook, internet marketing, monitoring social media, Social Media, strategy
Why Your Business Needs ALERT®
Magnify Digital was created in 2007 as a digital strategy agency. The team here soon realized that they were creating much more than just an agency. They pioneered a process for aggregating, simplifying and leveraging the non-stop avalanche of digital platforms, tools, and tactics. That’s when ALERT® was born.
ALERT® is an automated web based system that enables marketers and small businesses to take control of their digital presence and devise effective strategies that actually work for them and their clients. ALERT® stands for ASSESS, LOCATE, ENGAGE, RESPOND & TRACK – the five key steps to the system and we’d argue, the five essential components of every successful digital strategy.
Assess & Locate make up the first stage – a rigorous Assessment of a company’s digital presence, and that of its competitors. A scan of the industry reveals what your target audience is saying and where they are hanging out. The second stage is Engage, which consists of devising and implementing a manageable and measurable Strategy. Once the strategy is in place, it’s time to Respond & Track, which essentially is monitoring your online presence.
The benefits of using ALERT® are endless! Marketers often complain they don’t have enough time to keep up with the seemingly endless changes in social media features, emerging tools, guidelines, policies, and thought leaders. ALERT® does the heavy lifting for you. Think of it as a digital whisperer! ALERT® makes licensees look like digital strategy rock stars without the expense and hassle.
Here are some key features. The ALERT® system is:
- Updated daily. The tools are updated whenever a new feature, viable platform, or tactic comes to market.
- Resourceful. Includes a resource area full of aggregated information, such as social media statistics, news updates, and case studies.
- Easy to use. You don’t have to be a digital expert, the system takes you through a step-by-step approach on how to use each tool and feature.
- Time saving. We’ve already done the work for you. You don’t need to keep on top of trends and new tools. ALERT® aggregates this information into one place and best of all makes the digital jargon make sense.
- Web based. You can use it anywhere.
- Professional in design. The system is designed to make you and your company look great. It automatically creates polished documents based on the data you input.
ALERT® is the perfect system to help get you and your business get on its way with an effective digital strategy!
Please contact us if you have any questions regarding this system.
Maryam
@socialmaryam
Tags: digital, small business, Social Media, strategy
