Copywriter Karen Goldfarb » social networking

5 things I’ve learned doing Facebook marketing campaigns

Karen — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 16:05:06 +0000

For the past couple of years, I’ve worked on several Facebook marketing campaigns for brands like Gevalia, Country Time Lemonade, The Peanuts (Countdown to The Great Pumpkin), and Organic Beauty Now. Here are a few tidbits I’ve picked up along the way:

People love freebies. This is not news. Unless you’re a big-name brand, top celeb or a natural social networking guru, people will not flock to you unless you give them treats. Said treats can be in the form of cash money, products, or just superb content, but it has to be of value. It has to be worth their time. We’re all fragmented and another amusing opportunity for something “free” is just a click away. Don’t get clicked away. Give good stuff.
Your freebies don’t have to break the bank. We got perfectly decent mileage from giving away a lot of lower-value gift cards as opposed to $500 worth of merchandise at Organic Beauty Now. For The Peanuts, we made excellent use of existing content to get fans engaged in a new way. Get creative.
Make your Facebook friends love you. Don’t be afraid to ask for your Facebook friends’ participation. We tested a campaign where we asked Organic Beauty Now Facebook friends to name the number one non-organic beauty product they wanted to switch to an organic version. Called The Big Organic Beauty Switch, it included a giveaway of five gift certificates to winners among the list of those who posted a comment about their wishlist switcheroo. First week, it seemed like a dud and we nearly pulled it, but then it grew, and grew, and grew. By the second week, we had the best level of interaction we’d ever had, 200 new Facebook likes, a huge opportunity to interact with them (as we gave personal recommendations to everyone, not just winners) and a lot of free consumer research. We’ve gotten similar results with campaigns that require our Facebook friends to dig into our website and name products they want to win. All of it is designed to deepen the interaction between your Facebook friends and your brand. It works.
Your Facebook friends will stab you in the back, in public. We had a customer service issue come to light on Facebook. Our CEO spent over an hour on the phone with the upset party, making everything right, smoothing her ruffled feathers, and ending the call with what seemed like a very satisfied customer. This same party went back to our Facebook page and flamed the heck out of us again. Why? Who knows. We did our best. The moral of the story is this: practice excellent customer service, and when, not if, mistakes happen, solve them, then watch the web for ongoing embers even when you think the flames have died. You cannot let your guard down. It’s just too easy for people to rethink and post something you don’t want out there, whether they’re a “friend” or not.
Be a celebrity. That’s my motto as Andy Warhol’s vision of everyone’s 15 minutes of fame comes to rampaging life now that we all have a worldwide podium. No, you don’t have to be Oprah or a Kim Kardashian (heaven forbid). I’m talking about being a persona in your own way, in your own market. We like bright, shiny, engaging people who we can follow with our hearts, minds and dollars. If you’re not the guy or gal in your company, find someone who is. That kooky guy who makes everyone laugh at the water cooler. A dedicated team of customer service people who are super enthusiastic. Or a hired spokesperson that you make a real part of your company, not just a talking head. Whatever it takes, be a person of note and people will follow you. Celebrities don’t become celebrities by staying on the margins and keeping quiet. Get out there, get known, and watch how it changes your business.

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5 marketing megatrends you can’t ignore

Karen — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:43:53 +0000

This is a fascinating article about marketing megatrends by my friend Adam Kleinberg, CEO of Traction.

Our society is undergoing massive fundamental transitions. Learn how these forward-thinking brands seized the underlying marketing opportunities.

Article Highlights

Savvy marketers are recognizing the impact of mass collaboration and constant connectivity
The broader trends of globalization and corporate distrust are reshaping how consumers interact with brands
The global sense of urgency to fix the world’s problems goes well beyond the green movement

Read the article

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Writing About Technology, Plus Why Agencies Suck at Social Strategies

Karen — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 08:01:11 +0000

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Social Media Advisor for Gap Presents Results from Twitter & Facebook

Karen — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 02:19:11 +0000

I had the privilege of hoodwinking Robin Frank, Social Media Advisor for Gap Inc. among others, into speaking on a panel of social media pundits, at the first meeting of the Marin County chapter of Women In Consulting.

At this fascinating presentation, Robin discussed strategies including engaging consumers by being more than a “coupon channel”and using social media in geographically relevant areas to help successfully launch Gap Generation stores. You can view her presentation right here.

Generating Business Results and Dollars from Social Media

View more documents from Robin Frank.

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5 steps to going viral on Twitter

Karen — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 18:44:37 +0000

This is a fascinating article by Copyblogger writer Dan Zarella on going viral on Twitter. In it, he susses out some particulars such as best time of day to retweet, why the word “please” is important, etc. As a copywriter, I’m pleased that some of it is good old fashioned direct marketing, such as the first recommendation.

1. Call to Action. Ask people to retweet your posts to get more retweets. Yet another simple marketing strategy, which I’m always fond of. The most ReTweeted Tweets in his ReTweet mapper shows that the explicit “please ReTweet” call to action occurs the most.

2. Timing. Dan says the first few days of the business week, Monday through Wednesday, typically see more ReTweeting than Thursday, Friday and the weekend. Interestingly, this was also true in printed direct marketing. We often try to ensure that direct marketing campaigns drop on these days, as people are more focused on work and getting things done. As the week wears on, not so much.

Dan’s research adds a timing element, as he says “Time of day also seems to be important; between 9am and 6pm EST the amount of ReTweets sees a sharp increase.” Which also makes sense, as this is the heart of the business day, even taking time differences into account.

3. Links. Straight from Dan: “The data also showed that almost 70% of all ReTweets contain a link. This is good news for marketers in that it demonstrates that the mechanism of ReTweeting is an acceptable way to spread your off-Twitter content, and it tells us that a link is an important ingredient to ReTweetable Tweets.”

4. Social Proof. “The likelihood of a tweet being ReTweeted increases dramatically each time it is ReTweeted. One tactic to increasing your ReTweetability could be to message or otherwise persuade other users to ReTweet your content for you, in order to stimulate further organic ReTweeting. This can be especially powerful if you can get well known users to share your content, as they’ll then be lending their authority and reach to your message as well as your calls to action.”

5. Value. Common-sense for copywriters and everyone else: If your tweet has value, it will gain pass-along momentum.

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Dirty Jobs’ Mike Rowe on lamb castration, PETA, and the war on American labor

Karen — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 06:58:43 +0000

Drawing on his experiences picking up roadkill, feeding swine, and castrating a lamb with his teeth, Mike Rowe, host of Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs, discusses how modern American culture belittles necessary labor. And, as he points out, not only is the labor these people do necessary, but many of the people doing it are actually–wait for it–happy. Fascinating to think how we all may still get it wrong in our marketing strategy endeavors to understand “target markets” and psychographics in so-called blue collar industries. How refreshing to think that social networking can just mean grabbing a beer with some buddies. All lessons this copywriter will try to always pass along.

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Is the end of traditional media truly nigh?

Karen — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:44:42 +0000

From one of this copywriter’s favorite social networking experts, Sorel Denholtz, in her most recent blog post for Digital Axle.

“If you’re in advertising, you’d better learn to speak digital, because that’s the way the world is going.”

Those words come from Josh Bernoff’s Groundswell blog today, summing up Forrester Research’s just completed five-year interactive marketing forecast. Over 70% of the marketers they surveyed expected the effectiveness of channels like created social media, online video, and mobile marketing to increase, while the effectiveness of direct mail, television, magazines, outdoor, newspapers, and radio would stay the same or decrease.

They expect digital marketing to grow to about 21% of advertising spend in five years, while overall budgets are declining. And of all aspects of digital marketing, social media is the area expected to show the greatest growth, growing from $716 million this year to $3 billion in five years, between social networking campaigns and agency fees. (And this doesn’t include ads on social networks, because those are considered display ads.)

What does all this mean for you, dear friends? Time to get your digital on. Old school just won’t cut it for much longer.

We leave you with this eulogy from, well, a social media site.

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Stop killing pre-qualified leads

Karen — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 20:06:55 +0000

There’s a simple mistake many marketers make day in, day out that kills pre-qualified leads. Leads that are coming in via organic search, paid search and paid advertising.

It goes something like this.

You’ve isolated the keywords your potential customers are most likely to use. You’ve put them in your meta tags, your copywriting, maybe even in the text wrapper around your videos. So when a prospect types in “mousetraps”, your extermination company ranks pretty well in Google.

Then one of a number of things goes wrong.

You take these potential customers to your home page, which talks about everything you do, including termite control, wasp nest removal, snail abatement, plus your green story, pictures of your trucks, and, and…

Or you give them a little bit of copywriting about your years in the extermination business, maybe a sentence or two about your mousetraps and then ask them for their email address.

Or you give them some decent copywriting about your mousetraps, show a few pictures, and the conversation stops.

See the problem?

The person who typed in “mousetraps”, in all likelihood, wants mousetraps. Now’s your chance to use a little basic marketing strategy to give them—wait for it—targeted copywriting about mousetraps. Stuff like the benefits of the mousetraps you use, your fast mousetrap delivery process, your cruelty-free catch-and-release traps that don’t harm Mr. Rodent, your money-back guarantee if your mousetraps don’t catch the little guy within 48 hours. Get the picture?

Now that your prospect is excited about you, that’s when you ask them to take the next step. Invite them to buy. Ask for their email address so you can follow up. Whatever the next logical step in your sales cycle is, this is the time.

This kind of marketing strategy holds true no matter what type of medium you’re using. Twitter. Social networking. Online video. Direct mail. Direct TV. It doesn’t matter.

What matters is that you understand your sales process and think about where anyone coming into it is in that cycle.

This is why so many people writing about social networking talk about being relevant, friendly, “paying it forward” with useful tips and advice. This is, after all, networking. When you’re just putting your shingle out there, you’re trying to get noticed for being good at what you do and who you are. You’re casting a wide net with a view to the long term. That’s personal branding. The chances of getting a sale right away are much lower. They happen but not as often.

It’s also why your list and offer count so much when you’re sending a printed direct marketing piece. You’re relying entirely on the quality of the list (right people), your offer (right thing) and your timing (right time). The rest is up to them.

But when someone knocks on your Internet advertising door asking for mousetraps, they’re right there, asking for what you have. You’ve got a unique opportunity to guide them into a decision right there. But you still must guide them. Don’t distract them with everything else you sell. Don’t ask them to decide without paying off your promise.

One great way to do improve your sales cycle is to write it down where you can see it. Get a bird’s eye view by diagramming out all the possible places your suspects and prospects come to you. Then you can determine each point where you should take them. Look at the actual moments when a sale happens. Then look at your follow-up once they become customers. Once you’ve done that, you can compare your ideal sales cycle with your actual process and make refinements where needed.

Need help? Email me and together, we’ll build a better, er, you know the rest.

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7 and-a-half tips to start social networking

Karen — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 19:09:40 +0000

1. Get on Twitter.

2. Try Twitter Advanced Search to plug in keywords that apply to your business, ideas and interests. (You can even get an RSS feed as new tweets come in with your chosen terms. Personally, I prefer Tweetdeck as it creates columns with your searches in a nice interface and keeps updating them until you delete them.)

2.1/2. If you need help coming up with keywords, use the Google Keyword Tool on Google Adwords to generate keywords. (It’ll even scan your website and suggest keywords based on your content.)

3. Connect with Twitter users who are posting about the topics you’re interested in. Tweet them. Follow them. Let them do the same with you.

4. Do similar things on other social networks like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Orkut, etc. (Check Wikipedia for a list of social networking sites to try. But remember to focus. There’s overlap among social networking sites.)

5. Use Google Blog Search to search for bloggers who may be interested in your topics, too. Then email them, post on their blog, and make contact. Invite them to do the same when appropriate.

6. Consider using a social aggregator to manage all your networks in one place. (I’m using Minggl, mainly because it connects all the networks I’m on and features a status blast so I can update across all of them at once.)

7. Keep focused. Treat social networking like any other professional to-do. Set a goal and stick to it. Social networking is resource- and time-intensive. Enlist help as needed, especially if you’re doing this for a company or organization.

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There is gold in them there social media hills

Karen — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 18:55:40 +0000

Razorfish has data that shows the rush to profit from social media is working.

The big takeaway is that “those who discovered an application via a friend (aka, via a social connection) were almost four times more likely to download it. They were also more likely to spend money on the client site and spent much more on average.”

It’s not surprising. Consumer behavior (including my own) shows the value of customer reviews. It was the basis for Consumer Reports and has evolved to become a standard feature of online retailers large and small. We trust hearing from other people more than getting the message from an ad. Especially if we have an actual (or perceived) relationship with them. Developing those relationships is what social media is all about.

Check out Social Media Measurement: Widgets and Applications for details on the data points Razorfish collected.

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