As marketers, we obviously love working with exciting products but we particularly enjoy being given the opportunity (and creative freedom) to transform a traditionally unremarkable product into a remarkable one.

This week, Reload Media are excited to launch National Storage’s “Nate Story” social media campaign – an adventure into the world of product differentiation through social media.

How did we pull it off? Read on…

The Brief

National Storage is more than just a bunch of storage sheds.

Firstly, they offer:

• Climate-controlled storage (for important things like wine and art);
• Moving supplies and support;
• Storage insurance and security;
• Packaging supplies;
• Records management and much more.

However, awareness of these augmented product offerings was not high amongst National Storage’s target markets.

Secondly, storage is not a frequently purchased product (you only move house as often as you can bear). Therefore, developing top of mind brand awareness was a critical factor towards increasing the lifetime value of each National Storage customer.

Finally, National Storage possesses industry-leading customer service; a competency that the company was keen to transition into the social sphere.

The Campaign and Execution

Led by Reload’s Head of ROI, Paul Goldston and chief Creative Consultant Jonathan Peck, the Reload team set about creating a campaign that engaged with National Storage’s target audience and communicated the company’s key messages in a fun and entertaining way.

This resulted in the creation of Nate Story, National Storage’s new Social Media Community Manager. Nate works day to day inside his very own office/storage unit, responding to customer queries, joining relevant social media conversations and uploading engaging, relevant content to National Storage’s social media channels.

A key factor in this campaign was the production of a number of “webisodes” featuring Nate that set out to educate the audience about National Storage’s product offerings in an interactive and engaging way (you can see  ’Webisode 1′ and ‘Behind the Scenes’ of this video series below).

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Furthermore, the Facebook page was re-designed (twice… thanks Timeline!) to showcase the brand’s services and to create a platform for fan engagement through ongoing conversation and interactive promotions… including the popular ‘Store a Memory’ promotion.

The “webisodes” were firstly scripted and storyboarded, with Nate himself then recruited. Filming took place over two days before the episodes were edited and completed.

The social media assets of Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and YouTube were meticulously scoped and wire-framed, with a clear plan for each channel, before being designed and built.

Ongoing Engagement

The success of any social media campaign is all about the long-term. The key is, as Facebook continually spruik, ‘lightweight interactions over a long period of time’. That’s why National Storage now have Nate responding as quickly as possible to all tweets, Facebook messages and comments that occur across National Storage’s social media channels.

Further to this, Nate will be responding according to the jovial character and tone developed for him within the social media strategy (which was also reinforced throughout webisode series).

This was a critical factor in transferring the company’s commitment to customer service into the social media sphere.

Finally, a comprehensive Social Media content strategy and schedule was produced, meaning ongoing tweets, posts and videos could be structured to ensure the social campaign remains engaging over an extended period of time.

This campaign is just in its infancy, with plenty more cool elements still to come…

You can check out what Nate is up to over on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and YouTube.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

If you checked your Google account this morning I’m sure you were greeted with a nice little surprise. That’s right, Google have redesigned their social networking platform Google+, allowing users to create a more customised, user-friendly experience on the network.

From the ability to tailor apps and the navigation bar to more flexibility with profile pages and pictures, this update comes as a very welcome injection of sleek design and superb usability – A winning combination in my books.

They say a picture tells a thousand words, so in this vein of thought, I’m going to leave you with this introduction video backed with a very sweet, very Google-ish song.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

p.s. If you’d like to chat with me about how Google+ (or any other social media network) can help your business, please add me into your circles today using this link http://bit.ly/HysbPJ 

With people liking more pages, connecting with more friends and with an ever-growing Open Graph network, Facebook’s News Feed has become a rather crowded place. In fact, many users have great difficulty navigating through their News Feed and are made to trawl through an irrelevant sea of irrelevancy to get to the information they want.

With the launch of ‘Interest Lists’, however, Facebook is hoping to reduce News Feed clutter by presenting users with the information they are most interested in.

Users on Facebook will have the opportunity to subscribe to broader interest feeds such as ‘cooking’, or more specific lists, such as ‘vegetarian recipes’ . Users can also create lists comprised of celebrities, public figures and brand pages and more – the list is endless

As soon as a list is created, an ‘Interests’ tab will appear in the left hand column of the user’s Facebook landing page. The idea in all of this is that by displaying top stories from each Interest group in that users’ News Feed, the whole site will feel customised and, more importantly, much less cluttered.

If by now you’re thinking this all sounds a little similar to how Google+ and Twitter are running their show, you’re not alone. According to TechCrunch, ”The release continues Facebook’s battle to usurp Twitter’s control of the interest graph. The feature combined with Subscribe could be good enough to jeopardize Twitter’s long term growth.”

As for my thoughts, I’m not too sure. But I can say with some confidence that I don’t think we’ll be seeing the demise of the little blue bird any time soon. Well, not while Justin Bieber is still tweeting his little teenage heart (throb) out. To be honest, I’d say the player to watch for the real social media uprising is Google+. But that’s for another blog post.

So what does this mean for your page?

Below we’ve outlined a few of the more major updates and changes along with some of our recommendations to help you address each of these before Facebook hit the big green ‘on’ switch at the end of the month.

Note: If you are an admin of your page, you can preview your page changes up until March 30th and, if your happy with your updates, you can publish them prior to the rollover date.

Cover Images and Profile Pictures

As has been the case with personal profile pages, brands can now also join in on all of the cover image fun!

If you haven’t seen a Facebook cover image before, here is a cracker that will surely get your creative juices flowing:

Our Hints and Recommendations

• First of all, for your cover image use the native dimensions of 851px by 315px for best results.
• For your profile picture, use the dimensions 180px by 180px and ensure this will still look good as a thumbnail for your posts.
• Get creative with your image and profile picture and think outside the canvas
• Ensure your cover image and profile picture work cohesively together.
• Remember to follow Facebook’s (strict) cover image guidelines! You may not include:

1. Price or purchase information, such as “40% off” or “Download it at our website”
2. Contact information, such as web address, email, mailing address or other information intended for your Page’s ‘About’ section.
3. References to user interface elements, such as Like or Share, or any other Facebook site features.
4. Calls to action, such as “Get it now” or “Tell your friends”

Application Icon Changes and Application Position Changes

One of the first questions that will be popping into many marketers and business owner’s minds will be “…but what’s going to happen to my apps?”

First things first, let’s start with your app positions and icons and then we’ll move onto the apps themselves.

If you scroll back up to the Livestrong example, you’ll see that under the cover image there are four extra images visible. These are your apps.

There are two things you need to know about this app repositioning:

1. As the ‘photos’ app is immovable, you really only have space for three featured apps on your page. The rest of your apps can be accessed via a drop down function to the right of the last featured app.
2. The apps utilise larger icon images with the dimensions of 111px by 74px.

Our Hints and Recommendations

• Make sure that you devise a creative strategy to integrate your app icons with the look and feel of your cover image and profile picture. If this is too much of a brain fry, at least upload some attractive images to represent your apps and to keep your business timeline page looking clean and tidy.
• Although Facebook says you cannot include a call to action on your cover image, they have not yet ruled out the option to include a call to action on your app icon images.
• Choose your three featured apps wisely as it is likely that these will gain the most organic click through traffic. Ensure you have analytics installed on your apps to determine which is currently engaging your users the most.

 -Intermission-

Now, if you’ve at least completed the tasks above you can safely get to March 30^th knowing that that at least your timeline page will be up to date, looking nice and spiffy. Phew!

However, if you’d really like to hit your customers between the eyes with a fully fledged timeline integration and app optimised business page, read on!

Timeline and Milestones

Again, just like with your personal timeline, brands can now upload all of the historical content relating to their brand. Coke have (as they always do with new marketing platforms) executed this extremely well.

The giant cola company has invested some real thought into their timeline and have combined imagery from their bountiful archives with an integrated design theme in order to create a truly engaging historical account of their brand:

Our Hints and Recommendations

• Go through the history of your brand and add as much of it as you can to your timeline in order to create a more engaging user experience for your audience
• Try to have an integrated design theme for all of your timeline content and make each piece of history interesting for your users.
• For best results, design your milestone images to 843px by 403px.

Application Width Changes

I mentioned earlier how applications would be affected by timelines didn’t I? Well hold on to your seat. This is going to be one of the biggest changes to your business page.

Previously, Facebook in-page iframes (applications) were limited to 520px in width. This was the maximum app space businesses had to play with and generally resulted in long, narrow facebook apps. Now however, with the rollout of timelines, the new width for applications is 810px wide!

What does this mean?

1. Unfortunately, your old apps will be centered smack in the middle of the new app canvas with a bunch of white space on either side.
2. On the bright side however, you have much more space to work with when developing new apps for your page. You no longer have to squeeze everything into that darn 520px!

Our Hints and Recommendations

• With this huge increase in canvas space, we’re licking our lips at the new creative opportunities this expansion will enable for our clients and you should be too. We are all starting fresh here so it could even be YOU who creates the next big Facebook app that everybody is talking about!
• If you have already invested a bunch of money into your current app suite, don’t fret, there are plenty of ways to integrate your old app functionality into a new design. Just ask your design team or agency to get creative and come up with a workable solution.
• If you are keen to start fresh, start thinking of featured app ideas that will really intrigue and attract your audience. Then, go ahead and develop them while utilising the 810px of space in the most creative and engaging way.
• There appears to be a compulsory white border around the edges of the new app canvas so just note that your design will not be able to go to the edge of the app.
• With the compulsory borders, it appears that, the actual space you have to work is actually 779px.
• Users can add their favourite apps to their own timelines now so try to make sure your app is ‘sticky’ enough to be used on more than one occasion. We envisage that page apps will begin to function more like reusable smart phone apps. The price however will be a ‘like’ as opposed to 99 cents!

Default Welcome Pages Changes

Previously, best practise for a Facebook business page was to ensure you were welcoming your fans via a default landing page tab. As the new Facebook changes don’t allow for a default landing page tab, your ‘welcome’ page may become somewhat obsolete. This reinforces our position that app strategy will become more focused on creating unique, content moments between you and your Facebook community.

Our Hints and Recommendations

• Don’t worry if you still have a ‘welcome’ page, you can still direct advertising traffic to your apps!
• Consider developing featured apps with a more unique and focussed purpose.

Pinning

Facebook have also rolled out a new ‘pinning’ feature to be available for updates made by your brand. What is pinning you ask? Pinning is a tool that allows you to ‘pin’ status updates to the top of your page for up to seven days so that it is the first piece of page engagement that a visitor sees. We also assume it will therefore become your default sponsored story ad copy. Very cool.

Our Hints and Recommendations

• Use pinning to push traffic to your promotions or apps for seven days after launch.
• Be sure to include pinable content into your social media content schedule.

Fan Gating and Advertising Changes

As mentioned above, I assure you, advertisers are still able to direct Facebook advertising to their specific page apps. Further to this, fan-gating is still allowed. Therefore, some tried and tested community building strategies will still be applicable. However, there will also be some very exciting advertising changes coming your way.

Facebook are looking to add advertising to sit within user’s desktop and mobile Facebook news feeds, allowing your brand’s content to be ‘sandwiched’ between their friends status updates and activity. With over 350 million people using Facebook on their mobile, this initiative will increase your potential audience significantly.

On top of this, the new ‘reach generator’ advertising solution appears to allow advertisers to dodge any EdgeRank issues and reach up to 75% of their audience through paid status updates. As most pages are currently only reaching approximately 16% of their user base, this is definitely a tool that will be making most marketer’s eyebrows rise a few inches!

There are a slew of other exciting advertising improvements and additions but that’s for another blog post….

Our Hints and Recommendations

• Keep using fan gates, just be sure to utilise the new app width you have to work with
• Keep sending ads to your apps.
• Look into some of the new advertising options for yourself. You will be impressed I guarantee it!

Send Your Audience Messages

Finally! Brands can now send direct messages to fans. This will help with your social media response strategy as brands can now respond to disgruntled users or private matters through a personal message. This will help to move any conflict out of the public eye or discuss sensitive matters without having to move to phone or email communication.

Furthermore, for businesses that have ever had to remove a post due to page guideline breaches, this feature will allow admins to proactively inform the offending user.

Final thoughts

There’s definitely a lot to take in here and it can all seem a bit overwhelming. Our advice is to just start making the relevant aesthetic changes in small chunks in the lead up to March 30^th in order to ensure your page looks visually pleasing when the rollover occurs. However, if you need some assistance or would like to implement a full transition strategy, contact Reload Media about one of our Facebook Timeline rollover packages today.

So what is it?

Hubspot describes Pinterest as a social network that allows users to visually share, curate and discover new interests by posting images or videos to their own or others’ pinboards (i.e. a collection of ‘pins’ with a common theme). Pinterest visually emphasises each user’s lifestyle, allowing you to share your tastes and interests with others. The social network’s goal is to “connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting”. Users can either upload images from their computer or pin things they find when browsing online via the Pinterest bookmarklet.

Before you dive in…

Before you even begin contemplating using Pinterest as a business, you need to consider Pinterest etiquette. The site heavily discourages self promotion so as a company you shouldn’t upload images of your products or services, instead try uploading images that display the lifestyle that your products or services create.

One company leading the charge with Pinterest is Etsy – the online shopping website with 51,000+ followers.

The thing I love about Etsy’s Pinterest account is how they take their interesting and heartwarming products and show you how they can be used in everyday life. This appeals to the large female user base on Pinterest (approximately 70% of users are female) and encapsulates everything Etsy stands for through imagery. This gives Etsy’s customers new ideas for how to use their products and more incentive to buy.

Mashable is another brand that is killing it on Pinterest. Mashable is the largest independent news source for digital culture, social media and technology, so it is no surprise that they are seriously pinning.

Mashable is preparing to be ahead of the curve for when the male population finally gets on board with Pinterest. As a tech-head myself, I love the way that Mashable is delivering data through imagery around boards dedicated to web humour, infographics, social media and even super bowl ads. Mashable truly shows that even as a data driven company, there are still ways that you can visually appeal to your market and create interest.

As you can tell from the above examples, the trick to Pinterest isn’t about showing off your products or services directly. It’s about appealing to your target market’s lifestyle through showing the lifestyle benefits of your products or services via creative imagery.

How do I get started?

To get your business up and ‘pinning’, here are a couple of ways to use Pinterest as part of your social media marketing strategy.

1. Visually appeal to your market. Pinterest is a visual social network, so if your business is largely design based or pumps out infographics, create a board that highlights this content. For example, an architecture firm could pin images of great architecture onto a board called ‘architecture inspiration’. Ensure that you are strategic about pinning content and you mix in a range of images to amplify the visual appeal of your pinboard.
2. Create engagement. A great way to get your target market engaging with your pins is to create a user-generated pinboard. This gives your fans the opportunity to become involved in your Pinterest page and display images that reflect what your product or service allows them to achieve. You can ask your customers to pin images that showcase the lifestyle that your product or service allows them to enjoy. Think of this strategy as a way to showcase customer testimonials through images.
3. Make it easy for users to pin your content. Make it super dooper easy so your 80 year old grandma can pin your visual content by adding a pin-it button to your website. This is no different to other social media sharing buttons such as ‘tweet’ or ‘like’.
4. Re-pin. Ensure that you re-pin what your followers are pinning. This will create a non-promotional yet engaging way to show your followers that you are genuinely interested in their visual lifestyles.
5. Run a promotion. First, consult Pinterest’s terms of use to ensure that your promotion doesn’t infringe upon its guidelines. Pinterest can allow you to host promotions that ask users to create a pinboard on their own account to demonstrate what they love about your brand, products or services. You can then view their pinboard to evaluate entrants. Even better – you can re-pin these boards to your own Pinterest page and ask followers to vote on the boards to select the winner.
6. Gather data. You can very quickly begin to understand the visual and emotional appeal that your brand, products and services have on your customers. This is invaluable data as this can fuel future marketing and advertising creative ideas.
7. Show your business’ personality. Don’t be boring! Pinterest has a heavy lifestyle focus, so what better opportunity is there to give people a peek into the personality of your brand. You could create a pinboard to display your organisation’s corporate culture around the office by uploading images of parties and award ceremonies etc. This will humanise your brand and allow your Pinterest followers to relate to you.
8. Social Media Optimisation. Sure, Pinterest sounds fun and could be a great opportunity for many businesses, but you need to make sure it’s generating results. Whenever possible, include links back to your website and landing pages and track the amount of referral traffic and leads generated through Google Analytics. Obviously social media marketing should be focused towards building an engaged community first, and then shifting the focus to getting this community to purchase. Subsequently, sales from social media marketing can often come months or years after social media marketing, however it is imperative that you are measuring social networks and their performance on your business’ bottom line.

Are you using Pinterest? Let us know your creative ways of showcasing lifestyle in the below comments.

P.s. Feel free to follow Rhys on Pinterest here. He has a pinboard of highly entertaining moustaches.

Now we are starting to see a new generation of start-ups focusing on moving transactions back to local neighborhoods through location-based mobile advertising.

Imagine this….

The Broncos are kicking off at Suncorp Stadium against your favorite team in 1 hour’s time.  Instead of going to eBay and bidding on tickets that won’t arrive until next week, now you can utilise location based apps on your mobile.  These apps allow you to see what is available within your local area, meaning that you may only have to make a short trip down the road to purchase those hallowed footy tickets.

But these apps don’t stop at tickets! You can see garage sales, jobs, real estate properties, restaurants, surfboards and more, all based on where you are located.

Some app development companies have been very specific in what they are targeting. Real Estate start-ups Zillow and Trulia have focused purely on Real Estate listings. Both apps allow users to instantly browse properties nearby and Trulia has noted that the percentage of its online visitors who also used its mobile app was as high as 46% in some US cities.

Another market that is inherently local is the job market. In the US, startup Zaarly is gaining some traction by creating a peer-to-peer job market. Zaarly allows users to state what they want done – bring me a drink, mow my lawn, teach me algebra – and the price they are willing to pay. Users can apply for jobs that appeal to them in their local area.

As advertising shifts local, here are some tips to ensure that your business is ready:

• Crawl before you can walk. If you’re a startup, or you are making your first investment into online marketing, get your backyard right first. Too many companies try to target everything under the sun and forget where their real customers come from.
• Be Specific. If you’re a restaurant, make sure that you’re listed on relevant apps like Urban Spoon etc. Keep an eye on what people are saying about your food. After all, if you’re only down the road from someone and they like your food, you’re likely to get them in your restaurant regularly.
• Target Local Keywords. When it comes to promoting your website, ensure that you are targeting a mixture of generic and local keywords. People are getting savvier and more specific in the way they search. Searchers are less willing to travel far distances.
• Remain Competitively Priced. With everything being at people’s fingertips through online and app-based devices, it’s imperative that your products/services are competitively priced.
• Get Social! Social Media strategies are incredibly effective in breaking down demographics amongst target markets. If your business hasn’t taken advantage of Facebook or Twitter, get in touch with Reload today!

Let us know how your business is ‘going local’.

Firstly,  as search engines are now factoring in social media content and interactions into their algorithms more and more, it is a no-brainer that social media is becoming a critical factor in the online success of your business. However, it is important that your chosen social media  partner develops a strategy to suit your business needs and objectives.

I see a few parallels with the late 90′s. Back then, many web design companies were trying to push every business into building an eCommerce powered website – even if there was no strategy behind it.

I see this happening in the Social Media landscape today. Many companies and ‘experts’ are simply pushing for their clients to build Facebook pages and twitter accounts without giving a second thought as to the reasons why the client needs these mediums or how they should be using these channels.

Choosing the right channels is a critical factor in any Social Media strategy. Where a Facebook page might be the best way to engage customers for one client, a poignant, industry leading blog might be the best solution for another.

It is also important to remember that, although social media can be very powerful, it often cannot replace the relationship building power that a simple lunch with a client can have.

Does your business rely heavily on offline relationship building and high valued, ongoing clients? If so, your social media strategy would not be customer relationship management focused.

However, I do personally believe that the integration of social media is critical to the success of the modern business; but only if an air tight social media strategy has been drafted first.

So where do you start when looking to hire a social media marketing company or strategist?

I have complied six top tips that I believe will help you narrow your search:

1. Look for a company who is aligned with your business vision and mission. They need to understand your “DNA” and all that you stand for so that they can correctly look at the reasons for setting up your social media strategy.
2. Choose someone with proven success and a good track record in developing successful, custom social media strategies for their clients.
3. Make sure you have a meeting with your company/strategist to discuss or determine your social media goals and objectives.
4. Find out from your company/strategist what they envision to be the optimum strategy for your business. Do you agree with this? You don’t want to pay lots of money on a strategy you are not comfortable with or do not have the resources for.
5. Demand that a content calendar is developed as part of your social media strategy. If they don’t know what this is then do not hire them!
6. Find out if your Brisbane social media company offers ongoing strategy and co-management of accounts.

There are other factors just as important, but these should get you started on the road to social media success!

Our crafty friends at Google have found a way to compete with Facebook’s much loved ‘Like’ button – Introducing Google +1.

Google is making a huge push into social with +1, a similar feature to Facebook’s ‘Like’ button.

Starting next Wednesday, users can opt in to taking part of the +1 experiment. Essentially, the aim of +1 is to add a ‘public stamp of approval’ to search results. According to Google, using the +1 feature will result in your name becoming associated with a link, an ad, a search result or anything where you think “this is pretty cool” across the web.

Google does however face a steep uphill battle against Facebook’s ‘Like’ button. Over 2 million sites and counting have the Facebook ‘Like’ button installed.

Ad experts seem to be split on whether Google’s +1 will take off, however if it does, it’s likely to further an existing move toward marketing transparency.

Voicing the most pessimistic view on +1 was David Hallerman, a senior analyst at eMarketer. He notes that search is more a utility than a social activity, making recommendations an odd fit. “It’s not a medium where people spend time,” Hallerman says. “It’s a tool that people use.”

But as DeepFocus CEO Ian Schafer suggests, +1 could make search more social, changing behaviors in the process. “When someone is searching for a piece of information about a product, a review, or insightful commentary, it is typically a very insular activity,” says Schafer. “But being able to place a ‘seal of approval’ next to a search result may have the effect of making a typically insular activity more collaborative – hopefully improving the ‘algorithm’ through the quality of your connections.”

If +1 gains popularity, there’s a strong possibility that businesses will begin trying to collect +1s the way they currently try to accumulate Facebook ‘Likes’. “It encourages that kind of behavior — the gamification of marketing,” says Josh Rose, executive vice president and digital creative director of ad agency Deutsch LA. “This will definitely play into those hands.”

If +1′s aren’t gamed too much, Rose and others see the new recommendation aspect of search as a positive force, holding brands and their advertising more accountable. Leonard points out that if the +1′s contribute to a marketer’s Quality Score, they will pay less for advertising than others with lower scores, giving consumers a new way to, in effect, vote on a brand. A large number of +1s could raise expectations about a product, Leonard says.

Overall, there is exciting times ahead with the movement into social search. Would you be more likely to click on results that your friends have recommended? Let us know your thoughts below.

You can view ‘Everything You Need To Know on Google’s +1 here.

With its open graph protocol spreading around the internet like wildfire, over 500 million active and interconnected users and a critically acclaimed motion picture now released, Facebook has not only anchored itself within the very fabric of the internet, it has embedded itself within modern popular culture as we know it – and there are no signs of slowing down.

The Facebook website itself states that a standard Facebook user creates 90 pieces of content per month and is connected to an average of 80 pages, groups and events.

So how can your business connect with these consciously connected consumers?

Whether you already have a Facebook page or not, the following tips will help you create a presence for your business on this social behemoth and, furthermore, will keep them coming back for more!

1. STRATEGY

With all the hype surrounding Facebook these days, it’s easy for many businesses to forget the importance of strategy and just dive right in. However, these businesses often neglect the fact that they don’t yet know how to swim in the murky waters of social media and in turn, find themselves flailing and sinking (Paul ‘likes’ this self indulgent analogy).

It is imperative that you make sure you have a clear objective and goal for your page. Is your strategy based on:

• Customer Relationship Management?
• Customer Engagement/Loyalty?
• Recruitment?
• Sales?
• Branding?
• Awareness? etc

The list goes on. It is vital to know where you’re headed on Facebook so that you know you have arrived when you get there!

2. CONTENT, CONTENT SCHEDULES & CONTENT TIMING

Content is not only ‘King’ on Facebook, it is the lifeblood of the entire network. I cannot stress the importance of quality, consistent and engaging content enough.

There are three common content questions you should ask yourself before you submit a piece of content to your Facebook page:

Is this content engaging while still being relevant to my business?

Is this content entertaining while still being relevant to my business?

Is this content educational while still being relevant to my business?

If you cannot consciously answer ‘yes’ to any of these questions, then CAN THAT CONTENT!  Post it somewhere else if you need to but not on your business page. It will dilute your strategy and confuse your customers. Good content should have your fans consistently returning to your page for more.

Secondly, at Reload Media we recommend to every client who is about to implement a social media strategy to have a comprehensive content schedule prepared before they even think about setting up their page.

A content schedule is basically a guide as to what content/promotions/events you will be posting to your page and when.  It can often be set out similar to a media plan and simply creates a blueprint for you to follow throughout a set time period (e.g. 6 months).

And finally, remember to keep your content flow steady in volume and well paced. This stuff is getting posted to your customer’s news feeds so you don’t want to upset them by posting too much & too often!

3. LANDING PAGES

Landing pages are a great way to increase the amount of unique likes or fans that your business page has. This is obviously important as, the more fans your page has, the more viral your content can become.

You can make this page to only be visible to people who do not yet like your page in order to create a customised experience for different Facebook users.

Here are some examples of successful Facebook landing pages:

4. VANITY URLS

Vanity URLs allow you to have a short and simple url for your business page as opposed to the default, long winded and convoluted url you will be provided with.

Once your page has 25 people ‘liking’ it, you can snatch up a vanity url for your page (for example Facebook.com/ReloadMedia).

Simply head to Facebook.com/Username and follow the prompts.

5. FACEBOOK PROMOTIONS & APPS

One great way of supplying your fans with a creative and engaging ‘content moment’ (as described by David Smerdon of Clemenger BBDO), is to create a custom Facebook app centered around your business in some way.

Here is a great example of an engaging and viral Facebook app by Sony Vaio.

Facebook apps however are a bit more tricky and you would need to find a developer capable of creating custom Facebook applications.

Another opportunity would be to launch a promotion through Facebook. Promotions allow users to not only engage with your brand, but be rewarded for doing so. Research shows that promotions are one of the best ways to create an active and engaged fan base on your business page.

Beware though!

Facebook have some very strict promotional guidelines now set in place. If you breach these guidelines you could find your page deleted without notice and all of your hard work and fan base can be undone in an instant.

For more information on Facebook’s promotion guidelines, visit their page here or call Reload Media for a walkthrough in layman’s terms!

Apologies for the acronym soup I’ve served up today. Before we indulge in the main course, here’s the menu in brief:

IMC

IMC stands for Integrated Marketing Communication. According to Wikipedia, IMC is a “holistic approach to marketing” that “aims to ensure consistency of message and the complementary use of media” (IMC, Wikipedia, 2010).

SEM

SEM is short for Search Engine Marketing. In many cases, search marketing includes a wide variety of disciplines but for the sake of this article, when we refer to SEM we will be referring to pay-per-click search advertising. This includes sponsored advertising on the Google, Yahoo and Bing search and display networks.

SEO

If you are an avid reader of this blog, you will likely already have some idea of what SEO is. SEO is short for Search Engine Optimisation (or, for the Americans reading this, Search Engine Optimization!). This involves the process of optimising your website in a bid to improve your search engine rankings on the keywords that are most valuable to you. SEO is achieved through a multitude of visible website changes (on-page SEO) and non-website (off-page SEO) strategies.

SMM

A relatively new acronym in the online marketing field, SMM simply stands for Social Media Marketing. This involves harnessing the communication and viral power of social media platforms in order to achieve a particular marketing objective.

The Main Course

Ok. Now that we know the dishes, it’s now time for the special – a combination of the four!

Consistency. This the main ingredient in a quality IMC campaign. IMC involves creating a consistent tone, character, appearance, personality and message across your entire marketing mix. IMC has been widely accepted as the most effective way to cut through media clutter and deliver a single minded brand proposition to your target market.

You have probably already experienced a quality Integrated Marketing Campaign without realising it. Consider Optus. The way Optus have developed their IMC campaign is through the use of a consistent brand theme throughout all of their visible customer touch points. This theme of course, revolves around the brand colours yellow and turquoise and the use of wild animals in all of their marketing discourse (open a new browser/tab and check out their website now – you’ll see what I mean).

So how can SEM, SEO and SMM be integrated into an IMC campaign? Here are a few tips:

SEM

• Ensure that you develop your PPC advertising campaigns to include keywords that are utlised in your offline marketing efforts (for example brand slogans, tvc messages, etc)
• If your brand has a recognisable and distinctive brand personality, try to incorporate this personality into the writing of your ads.
• If you have a special offer or promotion running offline, replicate and reinforce this offer though your ad copy in the search engines.
• Let users know they have landed in the right place by integrating your landing page/website design with offline marketing themes.

SEO

• Like with SEM, make sure you have optimised your website for keywords and phrases that a potential customer might type in after ingesting your offline marketing material.
• Increase your search engine real estate by dominating the most valuable keyword groups relating to your industry. This will increase your branding and will allow you to reinforce your integrated marketing message every time a user searches for a relevant term in your industry.
• Make sure that, in making on-page SEO changes to your website, that you are able to create a balance between SEO and readability so as to maintain a clear and consistent marketing message.

SMM

• If you have an actual brand character, consider integrating this character across all of your social media channels. Brand characters are very powerful marketing tools and work well to create instant brand recognition and connection.
• Once again, if you have offline promotions running, you can boost the profile of this promotion through a creative social media marketing strategy.
• If you have decided on the brand tone and personality you would like to convey to your audience (are you young with attitude or conservative and corporate?), make sure to convey this personality in your social media interactions. A great example of a brand with a consistent brand personality and theme is Virgin (cheeky, red and white, casual, innovative, slightly (and ironically) anti-corporate)).

Mmm delicious…

I hope you’ve enjoyed this quick taste test on some ways you can incorporate SEO, SEM and SMM into your integrated marketing campaigns.

Please feel free to add a comment below if you:

• Did or didn’t agree on any of the points,
• Know of another good IMC example?
• Or simply have a question about this post!