In order to put together video that is presentable for your business (excluding real time events), we suggest investing in a quality SLR camera and video marketing studio capable of shooting HD video. Just getting your video marketing studio set up? We would highly recommend having a look at Vidyard’s Ultimate Video Marketing Studio checklist.

Now that we’ve got the equipment, we need to determine the proper steps to take to make sure quality material is being delivered, whether that’s for personal use or for clients.

We’ve put together five essential lessons that we’ve learned from experience when preparing and shooting video, by sticking to these principles we’ll create videos that delight everyone involved and are also ready to implement into our video marketing and content strategy.

Step 1: Knowing is half the battle – have your equipment prepared and ready to go!

One of the worst things that could happen is heading out for the shoot, showing up at the location, unloading the equipment and realizing some of your equipment is missing. The best thing to do to make sure the equipment is always ready to go is to have all of the video equipment stored in the same location; this way, upon packing anything left behind will be clearly visible.

Also, a checklist. On a phone or old fashion pen and paper, make a check list! It may sound unnecessary, but believe us it works. Checking off each piece of equipment before heading out for the day will make sure nothing is left behind.

Re- scheduling with a client because of this simple mistake will cost you both money and professional credibility.

Step 2: To thine own setup be true.

Positioning, lighting and angles are three important aspects of the video to nail. All three of these aspects work in the same process – the camera operator will decide on the angel and position based on the lighting and other distraction that could occur in the background of the shot.

When the shot is backlit, the viewer will not be able to see the interviewee or items that are expected to be shown. If anything, shoot the camera the opposite direction of the window to use that natural sunlight to enhance the image.

The angle at which the video is shot from is all up to the person behind the camera.

At Honeypot, we like to set the camera just off to the side for interview type videos so it actually appears the interviewee is talking to someone slightly off-camera. For any videos targeting products or services, we like to position the camera head on so the host is speaking directly to the viewer.

Pro tip: when a subject is looking directly at the camera it can in fact add an “infomercial” or “television commercial” quality to your interview style video. Be wary of the impact this can have on your content.

Below is an example of an “interview style” video we shot for our friends at Beertown Waterloo – you can see how we positioned the camera off to the side to create the appearance that Megan is actually having a conversation with someone and not the camera.

Step 3: When you think you’re ready to record, you’re not.

The equipment is ready, position and angle is set, now it’s time to roll!

Well maybe not yet.

Before pressing record there are some things to check on your camera that will save you from disaster. Do a couple test runs having the interviewee speaking into the mic to make sure all volume levels are where they should be. Depending on the lighting, determine the correct white balance level to be used in the camera settings, this can make a big difference on the quality of picture shot.

Of course, we cannot forget to check the focus; probably the most important aspect of the setup to check before shooting. If the camera is out of focus for some or all of the video shoot, the clips are only going to be suitable for the cutting room floor. Time has just been wasted, more importantly everyone’s time. You know what they say, ‘Time is money’.

Once these volume levels and focus are where they should be, now is the time to push that little red button and spin it up!

Pro tip: fine focus “loupes” can be purchased for about $100, they fit over the LCD display on many DSLR cameras. Although it may seem like overkill, if you get back to your office with hours of ever so slightly out of focus video you’ll be glad you purchased that $100 magnifying glass!

Step 4: Remember when we had to clean up our toys? The post-shoot clean up

Once the video shoot is complete and the team is happy with the footage that has been captured, it’s time to tear down the set.

I probably don’t have to tell say ‘carefully’ dismantle the equipment setup, because I’m sure no one wants to damage the equipment the company invested in – but if the set is located in the clients office or building, quietly and carefully is the best way to assure those around the set are not disrupted.

Remember that checklist from Step 1?

Time to take it out again. Check off each item of equipment that was brought to the shoot to make sure nothing was left behind – Nothing’s worse then getting a call from a client afterwards saying “Hi there, you forgot your camera, mics and lights”.

This will help with that organization thing you’ve been working on.

Step 5: Mama said there ain’t no such thing as bad footage

When back at the office, immediately import the recently shot footage to a computer or hard drive. Doing this right away will eliminate the chance that that exact memory card will get used again and either deleted or recorded over; losing the time and footage shot.

Also, the editing mind is fresh after shooting the footage. Even if it’s a rough edit, through all the clips in an editor, add simple transitions and share it privately with those involved. Once feedback is received, begin to finalize the editing process and implement the video in a marketing strategy!

These five simple steps have helped us on the days of our video shoots. There’s no sense in rushing the process when mistakes are bound to be made.

Although we say ‘Time is money’ it costs a lot more time to go back and re- shoot then it does to take the time needed in the moment and make sure everything is running smoothly.

The post 5 essential tips for the video marketer appeared first on Honeypot Marketing.

We spend many hours writing, creating wire frames, designing, testing and optimizing landing pages that convert. We’ve put together some handy tips to get you started down the road of successful landing pages. Let’s get started debunking some common landing page myths.

Myth #1: Long form is ineffective

There is a common conception in the world of design and online marketing that everything needs to be “above the fold”. In the case of sales landing pages the goal is engagement – once we have a consumer’s attention we can open a dialogue with them. The long form strategy gives us an opportunity to tell a story.

This is where the long form is most effective, it gives us the opportunity to address consumer objections, questions, and comments on a longer single form page. Length in these case is good and will provide a central location for future reference during a purchase or registration decision making process.

Myth #2: We have to do the “hard” sell.

Calls to action do not need to be “Buy Now” or “Register before it’s too late!” – quite often these hard selling techniques illicit a barrier in the consumers mind and drive them away. Rather, try to lead the consumer through your “story” using techniques such as questions, referring to other customers or proof points for your product.

Here’s an admittedly very generic example:

Yup! “What do saavy individuals do when they need a solution to their problem?”

Hmm? “Buy now and get 50% off our awesome solution!”

Try to remove any “hard” selling techniques, soften and create engagement through questions and enticing headlines. It’s a tough hurdle to jump, but once you’re there, you’ll see the benefits!

Myth #3: Once it’s written, we’re done.

Landing pages are always in a state of flux, what worked today may not work tomorrow.

Be flexible and open-minded to testing various copy iterations, never become too deeply attached to one message or angle when describing your product. Testing the copy and variants of that copy to determine what resonates is key to our success.

Myth #4: You know the message.

I’ll guarantee you one thing, you’re too close to the project.

You’ve possibly spent years thinking about your product, determining features and benefits and in the course of that process have become “attached” to those sentiments.

Let them go and understand that the customer you’re talking to knows a heck of alot more than we do about the product or service. Here are a few pro tips to illicit feedback to refine your message:

1. Have sales ask customers and leads what they like, don’t like, what made them leave or not join.
2. Ask paying members what they liked most about Demeure, what ultimately convinced them to sign up, and how they would describe the service to a friend.
3. Next, ask non-paying members many questions, including what would make them sign up for the service, which tools they liked the most and the least, and what their most time-consuming travel tasks and issues are.
4. Talk with customers who have canceled or gone inactive, asking them the obvious question: “Why did you cancel?” We also wanted them to tell us the one thing that would bring them back.

Myth #5: Offline sales are irrelevant.

Learn from face-to-face selling. We can sell a product or a service face-to-face but quite often our website is not nearly as effective at communicating in the same way. Why is that? Because we view a website as something separated from real life when in fact it is not.

Here’s an exercise to help you through the process: pretend someone in your office is the prospect while we record the sales approach taken by the CEO, VP Sales or your rock star sales person.

Then, compared what was on the current landing page (and website) with the details used to sell your product face to face. It’s a simple technique that will enable us to identify what is missing from the message, and it’s highly effective!

Pro tip: using video in your landing pages is a massively effective way to both humanize and convey your message. More on video in future conversion optimization posts.

Bringing it all home.

A landing page is a channel used to convey a message, and in order to be effective we have to “become the customer”, it’s a great way to see first-hand the good and not-so-good aspects of the actual customer experience.

It’s a non-technical and very useful way to view your online marketing, conversion and sales efforts. This is our starting point for developing extremely useful and highly converting landing pages that will address the current brand and messaging direction of your company, regardless of what you’re selling.

One last piece of advice for the marketer: we <3 Unbounce for landing page development, monitoring, and optimization. You don’t need to be a code guru to create some very effective landing pages that are quick and easy to update!

The post 5 Landing Page Myths Debunked appeared first on Honeypot Marketing.

Like all of your online content – use of a meme for the sake of just using a meme or without any strategy to their use – could be annoying to your followers at best and down right insulting to them at worst. We have specific goals when generating content for social channels, our goals include:

1. Magnify our brand.
2. Reinforce the brand persona.
3. Increase engagement.

I’ll dig into each of those goals shortly but to reiterate: we need to develop a strategy for our online efforts and specifically those behind the meme, as well as having an understanding of our following – we will find that use of a meme creates significantly higher engagement then other types of content you develop.

The popularity of the Meme.

Meme’s have an undeniable je ne sais quois which delights nearly everyone who sees them. The most popular memes become a trend because they are easily shareable, understandable, funny, clever and allow us to feel like we are part of a “tribe”,  participating actively in popular culture.

Developing our Strategy

Our social content shouldn’t all be just about self-promotion and trying to make a sale. Sharing funny or thought provoking memes is a great way to provide value to those who follow our social accounts. Not only does it make following accounts more fun for the fan base but it will generate conversation and sharing. This shows that your brand is relevant and participatory players in current trends.

We outlined our strategic goals earlier, why we would use a meme as brand content, or to help assist our branded content which we are  pushing out to our fans. Let’s dig in!

Brand Magnification

The simplest, yet critical, brand strategy is the magnification of our brand. We want more eyes on our content, on our brand and in their minds. We want to ensure we have an actively engaged and interested audience. This is one of the key challenges in the world of “earned marketing”, social is tough, we have to keep it going at all times. On the bright side, the dividends to all of that hard work can be enormous.

If your account has remained stale over the last while – you may find your followers are no longer excited or engaged in your content. Memes help engage your followers – creating conversation, engaging likes and earning new followers and shares.

Your content doesn’t always reach who you are trying to reach on their newsfeed – so by creating engagement, you push your content to the top of followers news feeds.

Reinforce the Brand Persona

While your followers are a fan of your brand, when you are constantly pushing them the same content, they may get bored, frustrated or annoyed. We typically see this when we’ve overdone a specific type of content that was at one time clever and has run it’s course. It’s time to retire it for a bit.

It’s also important to understand that we are in the process of developing a persona, or a personality for your brand online. Memes go a long way in those efforts, we want to have fans look at our brand and feel like they’ve connected with an individual. That individual has a unoique brand personality: likes, dislikes, quirks, a sense of humour. These critical elements create a connection with fans and get us building brand advocates and fundamentally Love for the brand.

Pro tip – Switch it up and be creative: what’s new today will be old very quickly. Online marketing is unique that way. Never rest on your laurels or you will have a stale online presence.

Memes assist with pushing out your brand personality without having to be too salesy.

Increased engagement (and Open Graph optimization)

As social media marketers, it’s important for us to have an understanding of the Facebook Open Graph and how content becomes visible organically to our fan base. On average only 16% of fans actually see our brand page content. New fans and engaged fans will see more of your content, the Facebook algorithm is designed to work that way.

What does that mean? By creating engaging content such as a meme that does take off, you will increase the likelihood of your inactive fan base becoming active. That also means that you are much more likely to have future posts visible on their Newsfeed. Win-win.

Pro Tips for your Meme

There are several questions you need to ask yourself before choosing, creating and sharing memes on your social media channels:

• Do your followers share common interests? If your following shares a common interest – for instance, if you’re a cafe, it’s safe to assume most of your followers enjoy coffee. Share clever and funny memes related to coffee and the lingo coffee drinkers understand.
• Is your target audience internet saavy? If your following is not big on internet use, and might just check into Facebook every so often, you may want to avoid meme usage. Your following may not understand the memes you use – and see your posts as spam. Opposite end of the spectrum – if your following is young, internet saavy and trend followers, you must ensure you are using popular memes properly. If you choose a meme, and then change the voice or personality of the meme – you can expect a negative unwanted backlash.
• What type of media does your target consume? As we’ve learned there are several kinds of memes – does your following have the time to watch videos featured on YouTube? Are they the type to laugh at an image and share it? Or maybe they are more interactive and will participate in a hashtag trend.

We’ve spent the last two Friday’s analyzing what a meme is, where it came from and now, how to properly use them to generate engagement amongst your various social profiles – we will now begin looking into various trending memes, and how brands are using them to benefit their brand.

The post Strategic Marketing & Memes : It’s Meme Friday! appeared first on Honeypot Marketing.

1. The social strategy was not well thought out and the individual managing the page has let it go stale.
2. The page administrator is no longer with the organization and administrative control has left with them.
3. A previous agency or contractor took the administration access with them when a relationship changed.
4. A zombie or company “user” profile was the only administrator and no one remembers how to access that account.

It’s not only frustrating and confusing for your fans, it can cause problems with the newly released Open Graph search tools and lastly it fragments previous work done on building your engaged fan base. Thankfully there’s a solution that can clean up this issue, it falls into 2 steps.

Step one: Claim your page

Claiming pages on Facebook is an easy process, even if you’re not the current administrator. The trick here is to ensure you are an official representative of the organization. This involves the submission of proof to Facebook such as a utility bill with the current address or through additional legal documentation.

We’ve found the utility bill is the easiest way to start the claim process. Once you submit your claim, you can then sit back and wait for typically 72 hours. Facebook is fairly good at expediting the process.

Pro Tip: there is also the soft glove approach, which is to send the current administrator a nice Facebook message asking that they add you as an administrator. In 99% of cases we’ve had success with regaining administrator status this rather than resorting to the official claim.

Step two: Merge your pages

Now we’re ready to roll. Following right along go to your brand page and from the top select: Edit Settings.

Now you’ll see your brand page dashboard. A few items down you’ll see: Request to merge duplicate Pages.

Et Voila! Select your master page and the pages you would like to merge into that master page:

Once you submit you should have word back from Facebook on the status of the merge within about 24 hours. If you’ve officially claimed the page already and are a verified location you should encounter no resistance from Facebook. The last and nicest benefit here is that you now consolidate the fans on both pages.

If Page A had 1343 fans and Page B has 5000 fans, the newly updated Page B will have 6343 fans (minus any cross-over).

Now go out there and get ‘em tiger!

The post Thanks Tips! Merging Facebook Pages appeared first on Honeypot Marketing.

Facebook insights give you a clear explanation for the increase or decrease in traffic to your page or your social content. Some of the most relevant key performance indicators tracked by Facebook insights includes:

• Most popular posts.
• Likes/Unlikes.
• Overall reach & engagement.
• Demographic breakdown (Age, location, sex, etc.)

So now that we know that Facebook insights exists, how do we use them to optimize and guide our communication strategy and tactics? Let’s walk through things right now and discuss a little bit about how we can use these analytics to our advantage.

How to access your Facebook Insights

Once you sign in to Facebook and select the company page whose analytics you’re looking to track, the page will look slightly different than a usual Facebook profile page, you will find these different categories located at the top of your brand page.

By selecting “See All” on the Insights tabs this will take us to the Insights dashboard. There’s some serious information throughout your dashboard, so let’s walk though some of the most important metrics that will get us on the road to optimizing our social communication schedule.

The Overview a.k.a The Big Picture

This is now where all your Facebook data can be found. Anything from the amount of total Likes, how many people are talking about your post and the total reach your post is receiving will be displayed in this part of the analytics tab.

Once you have noted the analytics displayed at the top of your page and would like to dig deeper into individual posts that are creating engagement, scroll further down the page to view each post that has been displayed to your companies Facebook page. One thing to keep in mind in this section is identifying the type of post each is.

From here you can easily view the date each post was posted, its content, the amount of total reach and how many of your follower actually engaged with that post. If you see posts that aren’t getting the engagement you thought it might, you may want to compare it to other posts that are getting positive engagement – Find out what was different and how you can change similar posts in the future to increase their engagement.

Most Popular Posts

Once you are done examining your content that has been published over the last week or month, head back up the top of the page to view the activity of your Likes and Reach throughout a specified date range.

We’re going to delve into the details of Likes, Reach, People talking about this and Checkins in a moment. I just wanted to step back for a second and lay the foundation of this insight. When you post content to your Facebook page, it’s important to understand that typically a small fraction of your fans will see your content. When you create engaging content that spurs interaction it also increases the number of people who will organically see your posts in their timeline.

This is why engagement is key and this report is one of the most important contained in Facebook Insights!

On this page of your analytics, you can choose the data you’re looking to view; Likes, Reach, People talking about this or check- ins. The unique feature here is that you can select a specific date range that you’re looking to gather information for. After your dates are selected, you can view data containing the male to female ratio viewing your content, which parts of the world they are from, and the amount of Like and Unlikes your page has received.

The Demographic Breakdown

To make viewing easier when looking at the Like/Unlike section, you can uncheck which one you do not need at that time; this gives the chart a more clear picture to follow.

Likes and Unlikes

Reach

Reach is defined as the total amount of “unique” users viewing your post. Not only can you determine how many people have seen your post, but if you dig deeper you can view the most reached post and the amount of engagement created within those viewers. Monitoring the Reach component in your data will help you determine the content material that is receiving the most Reach, allowing you to look back at what you did within that content and continue those strategies.

Engaged Users

The most Engaged Users are not necessarily the most Likes, Shares and Comments. The Engaged Users metric is actually determined by the amount of people clicking on your post. Although your followers may not have Liked, Shared or Commented on your post – they are clicking and being directed to where you want them to go. That’s a success.

Talking About This

Now this is where we get into the exciting Likes, Shares and Comments. When you view your Talking About This metrics, you are referring to the amount of people who are creating stories through your posts. By Liking, Commenting or Sharing your content, these followers are creating conversation with their followers, as well as yours. If you find these metrics slipping, change up your content – or refer back to past content that had positive metrics in this category and learn from those strategies used.

The post 4 Facebook Insights that will change your life [How To] appeared first on Honeypot Marketing.

We’ll cover a bit of the history of the meme and in future posts we’ll dig deeper into their popularity, how they can be used as an effective marketing tactic that can be leveraged in your integrated marketing strategy. I’ll also be pointing out some best practices that will ensure your brand doesn’t come off looking poorly when treading into the chaotic world of two-way social marketing.

The term “meme” was created by Richard Dawkins, long before the internet was our gateway to anything and everything; in 1976, in fact. A meme is a “package of culture”. So before the internet, this referred to fashion, design and ideals which are easily replicable and bridge across many cultures.

While carbon copied images flooding the internet with various witty captions is what people think of when they hear the word “meme” – they in fact come in a variety of forms, and entire list would be thousands of entries long!

One of the first meme aggregators is the famous Memepool.com – launched in 1998 it was talking about memes before there was such a thing as a Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook. Back then, memes were the exclusive domain of the saavy internet user or software programmer.

Fast forward to 2013 and you’re likely to hear your mother telling you about last great meme or watching the most popular trends on Good Morning America. You might recognize the following memes : Planking, Tebowing, The Most Interesting Man in the World, The Old Spice Guy and photos of individuals holding up signs announcing “I am the 99%”.

Video Memes:

You may have heard of the Harlem Shake. If you haven’t you’ve been living under a rock. As the latest trending video meme, it was over-used and undeservedly abused. The internet really only welcomed it with open arms for a few days before the majority grew tired of it – but that doesn’t seem to have hindered certain individuals from continuing to post videos of a group of piers or coworkers awkwardly dancing in bizarre costumes to Baauer’s “Harlem Shake”.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Macro Memes:

These memes generally tend to be a popular photo or illustration with different captions – following the pattern and personality of each meme. One of the most common is “The Most Interesting Man in the World”, playing off of Dos Equis Beer’s marketing campagin. This macro uses the Dos Equis “I don’t always drink beer, but when I do, I prefer Dos Equis.” tagline format and is applied to various relatable situations and scenarios.

 Photo Memes:

Photo memes is something which everyone can personally participate in. This meme features a photo of an individual participating in an action which is trending. Most commonly, in the past, photo memes have featured people planking, tebowing and owling.

Hashtags:

If there were ever to be a winner for the “Most Popular Meme of 2013″, it would be the hashtag. Referring back to Richard Dawkins definition of a meme, culturally, a hashtag is considered a meme as it is a replicable trend which has inspired a very broad range of users. Popular words and phrases with a hashtag (#) placed infront of them are given their time to shine when tweeted out in the Twitterverse – some notably  becoming “Trending Topics” on Twitter. Not only do hashtags engage those on Twitter to join in a global conversation – but it also has developed a brand connection, where hashtags such as #iphone are trending daily; a hashtag not even developed by Apple itself.

Part two of The History of the Meme will be posted next Friday, in which I will go more in depth into what makes a meme so popular, why they could be a successful marketing technique and how to properly use them.

The post What’s a Meme? Welcome to Meme Friday! appeared first on Honeypot Marketing.

This often leads to a rapid burn out your efforts may not see the immediate response anticipated or hoped for going into a program. However, if you don’t go viral, how can you really measure the ROI on your social media?

It’s simple…get IRATE! No, don’t get angry about the confusion from having to calculate your social media return on investment; monitor and calculate the Intelligence, Reach, Awareness, Traffic and Engagement of your posts.

Intelligence:

Measure the volume of positive and negative tweets, mentions and comments across your various social accounts in order to calculate what people are telling you about your brand.

Reach:

Per each reporting period, calculate your fan/follower growth or even any follower loss which may have taken place. At Honeypot, we use Facebook Insights and Hootsuite Reports to calculate our clients reach/impressions for Facebook and Twitter – but there are many other tools you can enlist to help you calculate the reach your posts may have.

Awareness:

Again, per reporting period ask yourself “Do more people know about your brand than before?” Take a look at mentions about your brand and the number of positive reviews which may have been made.

Traffic:

Here’s the key to an engaging social media profile; if you’re truly being interesting, funny and smart, you are sharing more than just your branded materials. When you do post branded materials, use Google Analytics to calculate the resulting traffic.

Engagement:

Most importantly – is what you’re posting engaging your following? Look at the responses on each post as well as the shares, retweets, reblogs and favorites each post may get.

One thing to remember when calculating social engagement metrics is that these key performance indicators lead towards empirical return on investment. Once we can connect engagement metrics with acquisition and conversion metrics then we will have insights into a true customer engagement and sales cycle through social channels!

While calculating your social media return on investment may not be black and white – when it’s broken down it becomes evident that if your following isn’t engaged and educated on your brand – it’s time to pivot your social media communication strategy tactics to your demographic, and don’t forget these are real people!

In future posts, I’ll walk you through how exactly we can measure and report on the IRATE indicators, give you some tips and tricks to get you there more quickly and how to create a social “persona” for you business that will really connect with your fans.

The post Social Media ROI is difficult to measure, so get IRATE about it! appeared first on Honeypot Marketing.

So, you’ve created your Facebook Brand Page. Now what? Has it been a week and you’re not seeing much engagement? Don’t get too frustrated, this stuff takes time. However, there are many things you can do to better your brand page and receive follower engagement.

Post Succinct Content

Posts between 100 and 200 characters (less than 3 lines of text) receive about 60% more likes, comments and shares than posts greater than 250 characters. Try to keep the novel writing to a minimum.

Post Photos and Videos

Rich media content tends to draw attention more than simple text – when you want to share something on your Page, consider what sort of media you can use to back up your message. Posting albums, a picture or video generate 180%, 120%, and 100% more engagement than the average post respectively.

Post Regularly

Your fans will be more likely to engage with your content if you remain top of mind for them. With that being said, ensure that you aren’t posting too much. If you clutter your follower’s newsfeeds with content – you might find you’re losing followers instead of engaging them.

Ask for Your Fans’ Opinion

Your page should be a place for conversations between you and your fans – engage your followers and let them get to know the personality behind the brand. Use your page to gather insights and feedback about your market. Ten years ago, marketers didn’t have the benefits of essentially a focus group at their fingertips.

Ask Questions Using the Questions Option

With questions, fans can either agree with an existing answer with a single click, or they can add a different response. It makes it easy for your fans to answer, gather lots of responses, and display the most popular ones at the top.

Try posting “Fill in the blank” posts

This can be tricky, with this tactic, you can come off very “Condescending Corporate Brand Page“. Make sure that you’re fill in the blank isn’t overly simple and can actually start a conversation with followers.

Example of a bad post: “I take my coffee with ______.”
Example of a good post: “My favourite place to get fresh fruit is ______.”

The second one is better because it sparks a community discussion about something relevant and useful.

Give your fans access to exclusive information

As a reward for liking your page give your fans access to exclusive information to make them feel special. Everyone enjoys feeling like they are apart of something special and exclusive – and followers who are true fans of your blog will really appreciate receiving information before everyone else.

Reward your fans with deals and perks

You should not only promote your existing deals via your page, but also think about specific deals or perks that you could make available only to your fans. Offer a coupon which can only be found on your Facebook Page, or a “Come in to the store, and mention this post for a free coffee!” This will show your clients that following your Page is beneficial.

Also consider using Facebook’s very own “Offers” tool. It will allow you to create a socially aware discount or value added offer, and because it is tightly integrated into a user’s timeline it will put your business in front of fans you wouldn’t normally have exposure to during the lifetime of your offer.

Be timely

Your audience will be more likely to engage with your posts if you are talking about topics that are already top of mind for them, such as current events, holidays or news.

Localize your posts if they’re only relevant to a specific audience

Facebook gives you the ability to use the geo-targeting feature in order to make sure that only the people who would find your post valuable will see it.

Don’t get too frustrated. Building up a fan base and developing your content strategy takes time – and lots of trial and error. However, if you stick to these ten tips, you’ll find you’ll be engaging the followers you do have – which will then lead to content sharing and follower growth.

The post 10 Simple Tricks to Increase Facebook Brand Page Engagement appeared first on Honeypot Marketing.

What We Did

This past holiday season, we decided to run a Facebook contest with Williams Fresh Cafe dubbed “The 5 days of Giveaways.” A large prize basket of Williams products would be awarded to a selected winner every Friday until the new year, which was 5. To participate in the contest, all fans had to do was take a picture showing how they enjoy Williams this time of year.

How We Did It

Throughout the duration of the campaign, we were focused on four critical elements: reminding users of the contest, displaying images of prize baskets, featuring individual items included in the prize basket and highlighting/celebrating user submissions.

By reminding users about the contest we were able to create steady interest around it. This helped keep interest constant throughout the campaign. It also aided in steady entrants each week of the contest.

By displaying images of the prize baskets on Facebook, we were able to provide incentive for people to participate in the contest. Fans were able to see what they could win, creating desire. They saw the value in the prize pack and this drove them to participate.

When we featured the individual items within the prize baskets, this provided further incentive. We were able to go into more detail about the product and how it could be used. Fans also appreciated seeing what goodies the prize back specifically contained. Giving this further details about the prizes drove fans to participate and become more involved in the contest.

The final tactic we used was highlighting user submissions. This was beneficial because it reminded fans what we were looking for in submissions and it was a nice way to show that we appreciate and enjoy looking at entries. It was also a great way to incite some friendly competitiveness. When fans saw we enjoyed a particular submission, they were determined to make their submission even better.

Why We Did It (Results)

This giveaway campaign enabled Williams Fresh Cafe to incite cafe purchases, reap the benefits of fan gifting, and obtain user-generated content.

By launching a photo contest where guests show how they enjoy Williams this holidays season, fans are encouraged to actually go into the cafes. If they are loyal cafe-goers they can easily participate in the contest by snapping a photo of their daily favourites. Even if there are fans that are only going in to take a picture for the contest, there is still a lot of value in these new customers.

Simply running a giveaway campaign has benefits for your fans, as well as benefits for you business. Giving away gifts will make your fans more loyal and appreciative. On social networks, fan gifting can help:

• Strengthen the relationship with your brand’s online community
• Increase the level of traffic on your page
• Increase the level of engagement on your page content
• Broaden your online following

Perhaps the most valuable outcome of this contest was the user generated content. User-generated content is very powerful in the world of social media. It is virtually no cost content that is highly relevant to your business. It is also an immensely ‘rich’ content, with relation to your page as well as a strong link with your online community.

Additionally, when guests participate and submit their photos for the contest, they are more likely to share this across their other social media channels, creating free online promotion for your business.

User-generated content is a fantastic way to increase your online presence in the world of social networks.

The post Simple Contests To Engage Your Customer – A UGC Case Study appeared first on Honeypot Marketing.

Let’s start at the beginning, rather than re-write history Twitter gives a good description of the hashtag, in their very useful help center article: Using Hashtags on Twitter.

Definition: The “#” symbol, called a hashtag, is used to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet. It was created organically by Twitter users as a way to categorize messages.

When used properly, hashtags can be a huge benefit on twitter. They categorize your tweets, making it so that your tweets are found more easily in searches. It also helps others find your tweets and your brand page, which usually leads to gaining a follower or at least gaining interaction.

Although they can quickly and easily boost your online visibility, it’s easy to make a hashtag blunder but don’t worry, we’ve got your back! We’ve put together what we believe are the top 5 hashtag mistakes and how they can easily be fixed or avoided.

Oh hai, this is the interweb: no spaces and punctuation in a hastag.

Wrong: #local food. Right: #localfood. Don’t use spaces or punctuation in your hashtags. It will end the hashtag at the exact spot you use them. Most likely, this will result in your hashtag not making sense, or not saying what you want it to say. To other twitter users, your brand will be seen as somewhat inept in the Twitterverse.

To @ or # that is the question: don’t hashtag a brand.

They most likely have a twitter handle – @ reference them instead. They are most likely to see it this way since they are notified when an @ reference is made, and you might have a side-benefit of receiving interaction from the brand or person you’re trying to talk to.

Jump on the bandwagon: use trending hashtags because they’re sexy.

If they don’t relate to your business they are best left unused becuase they will only detract from what your brand’s message is. Ex: #iHateHowPeople will probably never work in the context of a restaurant.

I want to understand you: using all lowercase letters.

You want people to be able to read your hashtag. #ImAProHashtagger is much easier to read than #imaprohashtagger so use capital letters to break up the words in your hashtag. If your hashtag is just one word or a shorter version then you can get away with it then all lower-case is fine. This comes down to readability and common sense, remember that twitter doesn’t distinguish between cases in search, for example: search for #ILoveTwitter and #ilovetwitter will return the same results.

Easy tiger: don’t use too many hashtags.

You only have 140 characters to use and actual words will be able to get a message across more than 10 hashtags. For example, if you are posting a tweet about this new coffee you have don’t post something like this: “New coffee #coffee #ground #java #fairtrade #new #feature.” Instead, describe using your words and hashtag one important element of the new product: “Today we are unveiling our new fair trade Sumatran dark roast coffee #fairtrade”

The science behind hashtags is pretty simple. While the hashtag has become a pop culture phenomenon, it was developed originally to help organize posts for the early days of Twitter search (which wasn’t all that clever at the time) and get it seen by those interested in the topic, who may not have seen it otherwise.

Here are some other great hashtag tips from the fine folks at Twitter:

Using hashtags correctly:

• If you Tweet with a hashtag on a public account, anyone who does a search for that hashtag may find your Tweet
• Don’t #spam #with #hashtags. Don’t over-tag a single Tweet. (Best practices recommend using no more than 2 hashtags per Tweet.)
• Use hashtags only on Tweets relevant to the topic.
• Keep an eye on how things are progressing by going to http://search.twitter.com or using http://socialmention.com to keep an eye out for your hashtag performance. Don’t be afraid to adjust appropriately.
• Don’t get down if people aren’t instantly loving your hashtag and you’re not internet famouz the instant you add your first hashtag, it takes time and it isn’t instant. 

Hopefully these simple tips will help you make smart hashtagging decisions!

The post The 5 Most Common Hashtag Mistakes and How To Avoid Them appeared first on Honeypot Marketing.