Making Your Facebook Fan Page a Success

Whenever organizations think of joining the bandwagon of Facebook marketing, the first thing they come up with is "we want to create a Facebook page and have lots of fans for that page". 

But, the more crucial points are how to attract fans to the page or how to engage them and how to measure the success or failure of the page.

Let us touch base on both these points in this post.

Attracting fans to the page:

Following are some of the ways to attract more users to your fan page:

1. Make the page attractive and informative: Create an appealing page with good display picture, complete and authentic information about your business, product and services. Include photos, videos and events on the page. Provide something which is exclusive for Facebook users (such as free trial of your product or a free consultation). A well completed page attracts more users because that allows the users to make a more informed decision about 'liking' your page.

2. Cross promotion: Promote the fan page extensively wherever possible – on your website, Twitter, YouTube account, LinkedIn, email signatures, company newsletters etc. With such cross promotion, more and more people will know about the page and there are more chances that people will 'Like' it.

3. Campaigns: Promotion of the page through emails or mobile campaigns. You can always club these campaigns with some contests or promotions on your page to get better results.

4. Facebook Ads: Facebook ads give you very good results for attracting fans to your page. Make sure that you monitor the ads very closely and tweak them often based on the kind of results you get. Include nice pictures in your ad and provide compelling reason to people for liking your page.

5. Contests and Promotions: Contests, sweepstakes and promotions (with some good prizes) help you go viral in terms of your Facebook marketing efforts. Make the contests easy to participate, give nice prizes and give users reasons to spread the word about the contest on your page.

Of course all these ways can fail if you do not have good content on your page to engage the users.

Only promotion about your product or services is a strict NO. Share interesting content, news and educate the audience – in short, offer value. Facebook can act as a very strong platform for you to establish yourself as an expert in your area of business. You can also ask questions and get valuable feedback from the users – they will offer very honest opinion.

Measuring Engagement of Fans on Facebook Page:

It is very important to keep the fans engaged with the page. The engagement can be measured very effectively through the 'Insights' provided by Facebook.

1. Fan base growth or decline: Facebook shows you how the fan base of your page is shaping up – check out if and how it is increasing by tracking the 'New Likes'. You can track these weekly or monthly, depending on your needs and goals. Try and co-relate these with other campaigns which you are running.

2. Active fan base: Only numbers don't matter much. You need an engaged and active fan base. You can see how active the fan base is by checking out the kind of interactions you had for each of your post. The 'Interactions' report shows the engagement of your fans (in terms of commenting, liking or sharing) vis-à-vis the number of times each of your post was displayed on the wall of the fans. This is a very valuable insight to check how engaged the fans are with the page and how much value they are finding in the content which you have shared.

3. Likes and Comments: Keep track of the 'Likes' and 'Comments' happening for the wall posts. Monitor the kind of posts for which you receive more interaction. This can help you decide your strategy about the kind of posts you would like to have.

Apart from 'Insights', there are also tools various tools, which allow you to check the grade, engagement and value of your page. But remember that the objectives of your page and your strategy define the matrices of success/ failure of your page and those are way beyond the numbers or grades. These can act just as pointers for you but not the concluding points. So needless to add, measure the results vis-à-vis your goals.

This article first appeared on Technorati at: http://technorati.com/business/advertising/article/making-your-facebook-fan-page-a/

Entrepreneurship and Marketing Lessons Learnt from Goli Vada Pav

Last week I attended a very invigorating session by Venkatesh Iyer (Venky as he is fondly called) of Goli Vada Pav organized by TiE. While the session title was “My Story to Entrepreneurship”, the actual session was much more than that.

The passion with which Venky spoke demonstrated how much can be achieved if you just have true belief in the idea about which you truly passionate. Venky spoke about entrepreneurship, beliefs, passion and marketing.

After thoroughly enjoying the interactive talk, I jotted some key takeaways. 

Thought these would be really valuable for those who are passionate about some idea and want to make it big - because Goli’s story is all about that:

1.     Premium Sells:  Before Goli Vada Pav, people were used to eating vada pav at much lesser cost than what Goli charges it. Goli charges premium for the quality it provides – the quality is in the menu, the ambience, the service and everything. Once the consumers see the quality, they are ready to pay premium for that. Be convinced about the quality you provide and you won’t ever have to ‘justify’ high price.

2.      Don’t give up on the idea: Goli failed twice, with the same idea, for different reasons. But Venky and his team did not give up on the idea thinking that it is not working out. Only when you believe in an idea, you can sustain multiple failures and never blame the idea. You look out for the solutions which will actually solve the problems.

3.    Keep it simple: Complex things might sound good in books but keep things simple when it comes to actual implementation. This applies to everything – right from talent acquisition, training, franchisee setup, branding, promotion – just about everything !

4.   Effective branding and promotion only requires currency of creativity: Venky narrated some incidences about how he used railway announcement system or TiE event for branding and promotion of Goli. None of these were paid. All these just needed the currency of creativity. Venky’s blog also is an excellent piece of writing demonstrating how a very creatively written blog can attract attention of the right crowd.

5.      Piggybacking works: Goli used the technique piggybacking very effectively – Be it the usage of brand (as Venky calls it) of Vada Pav or the famous dialogue of movie Sholay (toh aaj goli kha…) or in the franchisees setup.

6.   Speak consumers' language: I was amazed to see how Goli speaks consumers’ language. The consistency can be seen in: brand name, brand mascot, Facebook page name, blog language, ambience at the Goli center, pictures on the site, cartoons – just about everything!  

I left the room with a mixed feeling of inspiration, awe and respect for passion and with a definite plan to visit Goli Vada Pav center – more for experiencing the passion turned into reality.

Cheers to Goli !! 

Social Media ROI – Measuring the Quantitative and Qualitative Results

I was recently invited to speak on Social Media at the Startup Saturday Event in Pune.

During my interactions with various organizations and people, I realized that while many people do agree that social media is powerful and should be used for marketing; lot of them are concerned about the ROI and the measurement of the same. This made me choose “Social Media ROI – Why, What and How?” as the topic for the speaker session.

Here is an excerpt of what was covered in the session.



As a first step, we need to acknowledge that social media a combination of psychology, sociology and technology. So while defining the social media strategy for your company/ brand, you need to be extremely cautious about ALL these aspects.

The next thing is the approach which is taken while planning the social media campaigns. The ideal approach is: 

1. Define Goal
2. Identify Tools
3. Decide Approach
4. Execute

Many of the social media campaigns do not yield the desired results because many companies and brands directly jump to execution without going through the first three steps.

Companies need to first define as to what exactly they would like to achieve from their social media campaign – is it customer feedback, user engagement, leads or sales. Once the goal is defined, companies need to choose the right tools. For example: Although Twitter and Facebook are the popular social media platforms, there is no point in being on Facebook if your target audience hangs out on MySpace! Once the tools are identified, get a clear consensus on the approach and tone of your communication. And then the final step is execution.

Assuming that you followed all the steps and have started with your social media campaign, the next question comes to mind is – how do I calculate the Return on Investment (ROI). While considering the ROI, you need to decide what exactly you want to measure? Because social media has got “media” which has quantitative measurement matrices and “social” which has qualitative measurement matrices. By quantitative measurement matrices, I mean number of leads or increase in sales/ revenue. By qualitative measurement matrices, I mean interaction, feedback, loyalty, passion and brand awareness.

Here are some examples which describe how companies have got both, qualitative as well as quantitative ROI through social media.

ROI Examples - QUANTITATIVE

1. Southwest Airlines: Southwest Airlines attributes more than $1 million in additional ticket sales to its presence on Twitter.
2. Marriott: Marriott has made more than $5 million in bookings from people who clicked through to the reservation page from Marriott's blog.
3. Dell: Dell Outlet made more than $6.5M sale through its Twitter presence.
4. Lenevo: Lenovo attributed a 20% reduction in call center activity to use of a community website for answers.
5. Naked Pizza: 68.60% of total dollar sales for Naked Pizza came from customers who said they are “calling from twitter”. 
6. Blendtec: Increased sales 5x by running the humorous "Will it Blend" Videos on YouTube.

ROI Examples - QUALITATIVE

1. Starbucks: Generated lot of new product ideas by asking users what want from Starbucks.
2. TurboTax: TurboTax started a Twitter campaign to respond and answer questions during key tax season. This helped them in establishing themselves as experts in their field whom the users could trust for opinion.
3. Kogi Korean BBQ: Uses Twitter to let the customers know where the truck was and when it would be in their neighborhood. This made the customers happy and of course more number of customers for Kogi.
4. Comcast: Provides customer support on Twitter which has got it more satisfied customers who are happy to receive instant online support
5. Home Depot: Appreciates technical support employees on Twitter - Whoever provides the support through support tags the tweet with his/ her name. Customers love this because they exactly know who is supporting them and the employees’ moral is boosted with such public appreciation!

So, in a nutshell, for a successful social media campaign:

- DEFINE what you want to measure

- DEFINE your message and tone

- DECIDE your approach

- SELECT appropriate tools

- EXECUTE with diligence and consistency

If you have any more examples of successful social media campaigns, do share those as comments!

Building Pre-Launch Buzz – Mix of Creativity, Diligence and Focus

While launching a new product, many miss out on pre-launch buzz, that is creating buzz about the product and making people interested in it even before the product is launched. The concept of pre-launch buzz is not new. Film industry has been using it for many years.  The purpose of pre-launch buzz is to create desire, need and excitement for the product in the market. With this, when the product becomes available, it starts selling like hot cake.

The best way to use the pre-launch phase is to warm up the market, your prospects, your customers. Use this time to engage with the market, look for feedback, ask questions, address objections, conduct surveys and answer questions.

I believe that for the pre-launch buzz to be successful, it needs to have a right mix of creativity, diligence and focus.

Creativity: Pre-launch buzz creation definitely requires a lot of creativity. Rather than going by the regularly mentioned things like putting up a teaser, offering a whitepaper etc, you need to identify what will appeal to your audience, what will excite them and what will make them talking about your product/ service? Of course, this requires a thorough understanding of your market, research of your target group, your competition (if any), detailed understanding of the problem you are trying to solve and so on.

Focus: What do you want to achieve from your pre-launch buzz creation campaign?  What exactly do you mean by creating buzz? Yes, the end result is to get more customers or users for your product, but that need not be the sole objective of your campaign. You need to widen the scope and achieve more than that. As mentioned above, some of it could be getting some insights through surveys, handling objections, establishing your thought leadership in the market and so on.

Diligence: The reason I have included this factor here is because the pre-launch is a delicate and sensitive phase in your product lifecycle. It could make or break the product. The right kind of buzz can make the product very successful while a poorly executed pre-launch campaign can make the product introduced with a negative impression. So spend some good, quality time in planning and executing your pre-launch buzz campaign. Spend dedicated time in managing the campaigns and monitor the responses carefully.

I recently came across an interesting pre-launch buzz campaign. This company, IDYeah Labs, has not yet revealed what it is planning to launch but has just introduced a contest asking its Facebook fans to guess what it is up to? Certainly an interesting and welcome effort of using social media (only) for creating the buzz. Let us wait and watch how it works out for the company.

Have you come across any pre-launch buzz campaign which really appealed to you?

Cricket World Cup 2011 Advertising: Which One Caught Your Attention?

All the conversations these days are revolving around the Cricket World Cup. Many a times, I am a silent observer and few times an active participant in such conversations around who will win the match, who played better, how a catch should have been taken or how it was missed and so on. As a marketer, I heard many conversations as to which company is doing well in terms of its branding and promotion and which could have done better.

Surprisingly, as a consumer, I don't hear many conversions revolving around which brand has got some great deal, which is my preferred drink while watching the match, which watch will I wear this cricket season or which pizza I will order when India plays.

Although the consumers are not consciously taking any decisions about choosing any particular brand, companies are spending heftily on branding and advertising during this Cricket season. Because these ads and campaigns are unconsciously playing a very important role in making the consumers choose a particular brand.

Companies now are choosing multiple options like TV channels, websites, social media, SMS, email, videos etc to reach out to consumers. But, in this clutter, it has become harder to get the required attention and mindset of consumer. It is no surprise that brands are coming up with innovative and catchy ways for making their presence felt.

As a consumer, following few campaigns caught my attention:

1. Amul: Amul butter has tied up with Netherlands team. The Dutch team is sporting Amul logos on their jerseys. “Why not India team”, because “It is not available” comes the response from Amul. This is being treated as a very smart move by Amul because it has already generated a lot of buzz!
2. LG Mobile: LG has set up a ‘LG mobile army’ where it is recruiting 2,500 cadets from 38 cities to cheer inside stadiums.
3. Lays Flavor World Cup 2011: I liked the way Lays generated the curiosity and buzz even ahead of the World Cup and slowly unveiled its six new flavors. It won’t be a surprise to see Lay’s revenue going up with these ads
4. Brands on Social Media: Many brands such as Pizza Hut, Adidas, Smith and Jones, KFC are promoting deals through social media channels including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Good use of social media I would say.

Are there any campaigns which caught your attention as a consumer?

Taking Marketing Contribution Beyond Marketing Department

Most of the times, marketing is a separate department in the organizations. There is a ‘marketing team’ which handles all the aspects such branding, positioning, pricing etc. Well, it probably worked well in past when there were only handful ways of reaching out to users. However, with the new age of social media, don’t you think the definition of marketing has expanded to blogging, managing customer comments, reviews, creating and managing social media presence, analyzing results and all such things? Marketing has become a lot about conversation.

I believe that a lot of people in the company – outside the marketing department - can very well participate in this conversation with the users of your products and services.

How? Imagine this:

• Your engineers writing a blog article about the latest technology which your company has mastered
• Your support engineer providing responses to user queries on your online community and resolving issues – beyond email, phone or chat support
• Your technical engineer creating a video on using a particular feature in your product and posting it on YouTube
• Your sales teams posting interesting, informative and educative presentations on presentation sharing websites
• Your content writer gathering inputs about a latest paradigm by participating in discussion forums
• Your technical architect writing a post about a latest, cutting-edge technology and inviting comments from other tech-savvy people around

The list can just go on. So what’s happening here? Variety of people and not just the marketing team are contributing in creating an image, a brand about the company by utilizing their knowledge. Isn’t it great? What more can you expect when the best and experts are in action!

Well, I am convinced on this because I have tried this. Do you think it’s time for you to take a leap in this direction?

Be ‘Informed’ in Negotiations

In my earlier blog articles, ‘The Power of Power in Negotiations’ and ‘3 Golden Rules about time in Negotiations’, I presented the importance of 'Power' and 'Time' in negotiations as explained by Herb Cohen in his book 'You can Negotiate Anything'. In this post, we will have a look at ‘Information’ as the third crucial aspect in negotiations.

Negotiation, as Herb mentions, is not an event, but is a process. Information is at the heart of all negotiations. The more information you have about the other side about their needs, their real deadline and priorities, the more advantage you have. Chances of getting this information during the negotiations are rare.

So what to do? Start early. The earlier you start, the easier it is to gather information. Herb explains that it is a myth that the more informed and flawless we appear, the more easily we will get the information. In fact, the opposite is true. The more confused and defenseless we appear, the more easily we will get information and advice.

Where do you get information? From anywhere! Talk to the associates, people who are working or have worked with the person with whom you are going to meet at the negotiation event. If it is not possible to make such a direct contact with other side’s associates, find other ways. Make use of third parties, speak with people who have negotiated or dealt with them in past. Try to gather information from publications, journals etc.

Now, during the actual negotiation event, practice effective listening techniques. On careful concentration on what’s going on, you can learn more about other side’s deadlines, feelings, motivations and real needs. It will also help you listen to what is being said as well as what is not being necessarily said. You will be able to better interpret and understand the cues which could be unintentional, verbal or behavioral.

The key piece of information any negotiator would like to get is about the real limits of the other party or how much are they willing to sacrifice to make the deal. Many a times, this can be obtained by observing the concession behavior on the part of the other side.

In a nutshell, to be successful in negotiations, gather as much information as you can about the other party. For gathering information, start early. Practice listening technique during negotiation event and observe. The more information you have about the other party, the more power you will have in the bargain.

So here we come to the end of this 3 part series about crucial aspects for successful negotiations. Hope you enjoyed reading these articles.

Do share your comments with fellow blog readers!

Social Media ROI – Measurement Metrics

There is lot of excitement, curiosity and confusion around social media marketing. On one hand, there are a lot of organizations which are joining the social media bandwagon just because everyone seems to be there. On the other hand, there are others who are looking for ways to measure the ROI before they get into social media marketing.

For those looking for ROI measurement, I think the first thing they need to do is to think a little differently. I believe that the ROI measurement needs to go beyond number of visits and clicks etc. Here, conversation is more important than conversion. I suggest, before you start with social media marketing, first clearly define your objectives: Are you looking for leads and sales, are you looking to build a community of engaged and involved prospects and customers, are you looking to create brand awareness, are you looking to gather new ideas or are you looking to create online brand?

Once the objectives are defined, I think measurements become easier because the measurement metrics change based on those. Just be careful to not get excited about worthless metrics like ‘number of followers or fans’. Remember to also focus on quality and not just quantity. Here, the measurement metrics could be ‘the kind of people following your blog’, ‘number of influencers who tweet about you’, ‘number of people who actually used your TwtQpon’, ‘kind of engagement around a discussion on your Facebook wall’, ‘Number of retweets you get and from whom’, ‘reduction in support investment because of support through online community’, ‘number of new features your product users suggested to you’ and so on.

Here are some of the successful social media campaigns. There are many such successful campaigns. I have just picked these few:

1. Starbucks: Starbucks started MyStarbucksidea. Here, Starbucks asked its customers as to what they want from Starbucks. The social media success metric in this case would be number of suggestions gathered, number of unique suggestions which the company might not have thought of and number of suggestions which the company actually implemented.
2. Dell: Dell announces offers and promotions on Twitter. Here, the ROI is clearly measurable in terms of sales coming from Twitter, the number of people who availed the ‘Twitter Exclusive’ offers.
3. Target: The retail chain Target donates 5% of its income to charity. Last year, it decided to donate the money to charities which are selected by Facebook users. It did ‘Bullseye Gives’ campaign which essentially was a voting application connected to Target’s existing Facebook page. On this, it allowed users to select which charities they would like to see the funds. Money was given based on percentages. Here, Target not only just did good through charity, but it also increased the fan following of the brand. It can now be able to communicate with these fans in future.

As we see, the ROI metrics go beyond click through and more towards audience engagement and involvement.

Do you have any thoughts on measuring social media ROI?

3 Golden Rules About Time in Successful Negotiations

In my earlier blog post ‘The Power of 'Power' in Negotiations’, I presented the importance of power in negotiations as explained by Herb Cohen in his book 'You can Negotiate Anything'. In this post, we will have a look at ‘Time’ as the second most crucial aspect in negotiations.

Herb describes 3 golden rules about time.

Rule #1: The passage of time affects negotiations in a very significant way. In any negotiation, the consensus or settlement action happens close to the deadline. So be patient. Patience pays. Wait for a favorable moment to act. When not sure, do nothing.

Rule #2: Never reveal your real deadline to the other side. Deadlines can be flexible. Never blindly follow a deadline but evaluate the real benefits. The ‘other side’, no matter what they try to show, always has a deadline.

Rule #3: Don't take an extreme action unless it is advantageous for you, cautions Herb. Many a times, as the deadline approaches, you might observe a sudden change in power. Because, as we know from rule #1, with the passage of time, although people remain the same, circumstances do change!

Social Buzz Creation through Unusual Celebration of Usability Day

A recent post about FREE website design on one of the social networking sites caught my attention. Well, it was for two reasons: 1) It was offering one FREE website design and 2) which is more peculiar is that the occasion which this company chose for this contest is the "World Usability Day".

Honestly, I had not heard of this day until I saw this post. All of us talk about (like experts) about usability in everything – phones, ipod, TV set, DVD and what not. But I don’t think many of us pay special attention to this aspect when it comes to designing products or experiences. The company, IDYeah Creations, which has announced this contest, offers usability services and UI solutions.

I thought this contest is a very interesting thing for few reasons:

1. By celebrating “Usability Day”, the company is showcasing its passion about usability
2. Website is something which every business needs and probably by doing one FREE website, the company will create an example of how to design a user friendly website and demonstrate the power of usability
3. The amount of buzz this is creating – of course there is some freebie, but more for its uncommon celebration of a not-usually-celebrated day. The company has said that it will choose the winners based on ‘genuine’ need and I am sure many people (like me) are thinking about how to demonstrate the genuine need – more controversy, more buzz!

Things like these convince me that social media and buzz creation have immense potential - provided you add a little bit of creativity to it.

I will be keen to see the website of the lucky winner which IDYeah creates!