Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Will ‘Like To Enter’ Kill Your Facebook Fanpage?

Facebook-dislike-button

If you think a ‘like to enter’ competition on your company Facebook
page is a cunning way to grow your follower numbers you are probably
right- in the short term.

There seems to be a proliferation of the little thumbs up competitions
rolling through New Zealand at the moment and excited marketing
managers are finally ‘doing’ social media. Or so their agency tells
them.

The promotional mechanic is not new. It’s the modern version of
putting your business card in a bowl for a $50 bar tab draw. As
customers, we all know how this goes down. They company will then add
your details to their database and send you offers via email or text.
Continuously. To the point where you can’t take their noisy crap
anymore and you unsubscribe.  Or, in Facebook’s case, hit the ‘hide’
button.

If companies continue to treat Facebook as a loyalty database they
will end up with the same problems that direct marketers have fought
with since Claude C Hopkins first started busting out coupons in the
1920s.

Getting the balance right between engagement and spam requires people
driving the accounts to understand their community and have a sense
for what they will tolerate (in commercial messaging) versus making
them find your company unbearably annoying.

You need to keep an eye on the stats running in the background of your
Facebook fan pages and keep an eye on your exit and hide rates; not
just your engagement rates (likes and comments). All standard issue
loyalty marketing stuff that you need to report on as you would with a
Farmer’s Beauty Club or a Flybuys card database.  Watch your campaign
flight planning and make sure you aren’t fatiguing the community with
stuff that is exciting for you e.g. ‘check out our new TV ad!’, but
that is of no interest to your punters.

In the tips for new players category, read the Facebook competition
terms of service and stick to them. Big brother is watching you and
they will kindly send you a warning email that you should kindly
comply with or your fanpage will be disabled.  ‘Comment to enter’,
‘upload to enter’ and ‘like to enter’ have to be setup a certain way
to meet Facebook legal requirements and it pays to educate yourself on
what’s in and what’s out.

>

Posted via email from cjlambert's posterous

No comments: