Modern Insider – Online Marketing Blog

Following on my post earlier this week about showing fan posts on the main part of your facebook site I’ve been talking with other Fan Page admins about how they are building community on facebook rather than simply creating a messaging platform. Here’s a few tips from the successful facebook communities out there:

1. Don’t only rely on your posts for updates, respond. Many brands have resorted to simply posting occassional updates to their fan page and do nothing to nurture or even pay attention to the comments that come in. As a result all the dialogue is one way and doesn’t drive any reason for a user to engage.

Disney's fan page has millions of members but none can share photos

An unofficial Disney page allows photos and has hundreds from fans

2. Don’t be afraid to help users. Following on point 2, your users won’t always post good stories or photos, customer support issues come up too. Bring your support team in, or just take the action and respond yourself — this is a great way to show people that you’re involved & responsive which helps draw out advocates to get involved in any issue that may be coming up.

3. Make users know they can contribute. Facebook offers so many tools for users to participate but to “control” content many brands shut these down. As a result users may not know what they can do. Encourage fan photos, repost your favorite items, share videos that aren’t from the brand and always remind people that they can contribute. They will.

4. Give the users something to participate in. In a recent survey I found that on multiple fan pages the bulk of users were there looking for promotions and contests and if that’s what you want that’s exactly what you should deliver. Daily giveaways aren’t needed but if people know they have a shot at getting something they will be much more likely to keep following.

The Ahwahnee hotel in Yosemite is giving away a stay by having fans submit their memory / story

5. Reward your advocates. As with any community there will always be members who post more, who help others and who do lots of the lifting for you. Be sure you acknowledge these helpful members and don’t be afraid to send out a product sample here and there to say thanks, $10 in cost goes a long, long way.

The idea of your facebook fan page should always be to drive interaction as that’s what gets people excited, gets them to share content and starts building the network effect so as you build your page think about what users are doing now and how you can bring them into the fold at every step.

Comscore’s announcement of over 110 million unique visitors to Facebook in December should have been enough to convince any brand not living under a rock that it’s time to be on the platform and be there in a big way. Still Facebook is a relatively new channel for businesses and it can be difficult deciding just how involved to get.

One trend I’m still noticing is brands hiding their fan comments by using the “Posts by Page” option. This strikes me as a interesting decision to make in a world where you’re trying to engage the individual rather than just throw messages at them.

Choosing to put your fan comments on the second page has upsides; it lets you control the initial impression someone gets when they come to your page or wall and it lets people find your old posts and announcements much quicker.

But when it’s all said and done isn’t your page about engagement first and old content as an afterthought? Letting fans post to the main page gives your visitors something to immediately be involved in even if you haven’t made a post in a few days. It keeps things exciting and turns your page from a billboard of updates into community of individual discussions. If you’re doing things well and responding back on inquiries and posts it also gives your brand a chance to show that you are using social in an effective way – if your not, well, then perhaps you should be hiding your fan’s pleas for help a little more.

I’d like to hear what others think – are you enabling fan posts on the main wall or not? And why?

A great deal of time is spent talking about how to make money and get lots of exposure with social but there’s a lot more low hanging fruit out there than acquisition. One of the biggest reasons to have social isn’t getting new customers at all – it’s keeping the ones you’ve already got and improving that golden term “customer experience”. This is true every day of the year but when something goes wrong it’s just that much more meaningful.

Take for example the recent weather delays hitting east coast airports. Most airlines are getting slammed in their customer service departments but a few have taken the bright idea to use twitter to direct traffic to the web, offer up some real time updates and even get to customers using it. None have hit the nail on the head but having been stuck on a plane myself, seeing a tweet update from @unitedairlines beat the extraordinary wait time their phone center had put me on.

1 – Establish a clear social channel before the incident. Even if you don’t plan an aggressive social strategy for the day to day you should have a presence on all of the major networks to let your core customers follow you. This can be supported with links on your website, email and print communications. Keeping it alive can be as simple as periodic updates, offers and responses to direct inquiries.

2 – Make it known that your social channels are a place for information. By providing basic updates when stuff comes up you establish that twitter or facebook or your blog is where to go for the inside scoop and when it’s an issue rather than a product announcement, people will turn there.

3 – Get the disaster message out there. Whether it’s a snowstorm delaying flights or an incorrect article on CNN’s homepage, you want to have your response up in minutes to set the tone. The great thing about social is that you can post briefly and be accepted. You don’t even have to have the full solution, merely acknowledging the problem helps tell people you’re aware and working on it. @comcastcare tells me local coverage is out and I know that they know — expensive call avoided.

4 – When disaster strikes ramp up the social support. After going to all the trouble of establishing a following, the worst thing a company can do is use social as a one way communication channel. As quickly as you shoot out updates you want someone fielding the incoming ones. You may not be able to respond to them all like customer service and may have to transfer people over to service but chances are a rep can field a lot more tweets than complaining calls, especially when issues are repetitive and a few words is all you have to change to respond.

5 – After the event review what works and what didn’t. We’re you just posting updates without any sense of direction? Sounds like a good time to sync up with ops to be more impactful. Was the channel not used? Get back to marketing your social roles? Did you get a hundred thank yous? Bing! Share that with the exec team and get another resource.

I think it’s safe to say we all enjoy getting away from the office at least sometimes but for many companies, social stops when the clock strikes 5 (or maybe 6). While there’s a lot of logic behind this in the eyes of those doing the posting it doesn’t reflect the reality of the channel – customers don’t stop knocking. The notion of responding 24×7 or close to it isn’t new, many companies have customer service on 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, potentially every day of the year, but with so much of social being handled by more “senior” staff this philosophy is often forgotten.

When companies go away from their channels two important things happen – first the questions stack up which is an annoying experience for the customer who is waiting and the employee who must wade through tweets all of Monday but more importantly an opportunity is lost.

Think about it for a second – a few years ago your web traffic was probably minimal on the weekend and big during the week. Weekdays may still be bigger than weekends but it’s a digital world and people are online all days of the week, from the office, from the home, even the mall on their cell phone.
Think about it some more – issues happen 24×7 and in a connected world no one waits to hear back on Monday. By the time you respond to provide the insight your customer needs, they already bought or that new nasty video with an incorrect fact is already out there.

The solution is of course an unpleasant one for anyone reading this but it is reality. You need to be on more than from the office. Whether it’s a customer service rep taking an hourly glance at automated reports or your staff actually getting into the weeds the biggest gains happen when no one expects it. Respond at 9pm on a Sunday and you’ll wow a few power users. Get product announcement clarified and you’ll avoid the confusion from that one blog. It’s not like you aren’t already on checking your own accounts anyways…