One of the main reasons that I am glad that they aren’t around anymore is that no one, including me, connected with this project ever asked the question: What do you want this site to do for you? Of course now I ask the question as a matter of routine.

What I am noticing now that time has passed, business owners are doing the same thing with social media. ” We need a social media presence” and that’s the end of the sentence, and I suspect, the end of the thought process. That’s unfortunate, because with social media, you’re playing with fire.

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Brand Love

So how does a company build a community around their brand? There are a few steps, and not all of them are simple.

Define your brand as a persona: What does your brand like? Dislike? Stand for? Stand against? What is the ethos of your brand? What is your brand promise? Your brand story? And what kind of car would it drive? Some of these questions sound silly, but you’ll need to look at your brand as an individual actor amongst a group of actors in the social media ecosystem.

Once you have defined your brand as a persona, then develop a list of keywords that have a connection to your brand. This is a good time to break out that mind-mapping app and gather people who know your brand and whose judgement you trust. The more diverse the group the better.

Now that you have found your brand’s persona, who are the people that would gravitate towards the products and services that represent your brand at it’s best? What do they like? Dislike? Stand for? Once you have identified that audience, then come up with the keywords that connect to that audience.

See how those keywords mesh. When you combine those lists, you may come up with new keywords. Make that your master list.

Now, if you haven’t already, set up your social media touch points; Facebook and Twitter at a minimum. Once those are set up, make sure that all of your other touch points mention your social media presence. Current customers can be a great way to build your fan base.

Okay. So everything is set up to go after new fans. Four steps:

Invite: Through your social media and other channels, invite your target audience to join your fan page or follow you on Twitter. You can find these people by searching the Twitterverse or Facebook using your previously developed keywords and see who comes up. Engage them honestly in your authentic brand voice and ask them to check you out. Some will, some won’t. The trick is to keep at it.

Incentivize: Integral to the invite process is to create an incentive for them to like your brand or follow you. This incentive needs to align with the values of your brand and the values of your audience. If your brand is aligned against an environmentally-conscious group, perhaps a $1.00 contribution to reduce their carbon footprint for every like might get them to sign up.

Impress: Show your audience how authentic your brand is and gain credibility with this group and their trust. Give examples of when you’re putting your money where your mouth is, or show real world examples of how your product is helping people just like them.

Interact: Here is where many businesses drop the ball. Once you have initiated a conversation with your audience, you must continue to communicate with them and respond to them as if you are in a real conversation (because you are). You must also remember that your brand is just one of the people speaking in this many-to-many communications model. Of those that actually try your product or service, make sure that they are blown away. If you do create an impression on (hopefully delight) a customer, invite them (again) to make their thoughts known on your social media page, regardless of their experience. They will feel heard. Through this process, you will create brand advocates who will make the job of getting new sign-ups easier.

Remember those keywords? When you make a post, any post, make sure that at least one of those keywords are included in every post or tweet. Make good use of the hash-tag (#) in Twitter AND Facebook. This will make it easier for others to find you. Over time, your brand will become associated with those keywords and in the minds of your new, growing, vibrant fan base.

Mind map of social media strategy for Celebrations on Market

I’d love to hear any thoughts you may have on the subject and any details about your experience creating/maintaining your social media strategy.

Now we have been working with some pretty traditional stuff but giving it a whole new twist with Facebook’s ability to mircotarget audiences and drill down to that set of people that will really respond to the marketing message. But now that we have the audience and they are ready to follow the call to action, what do we do with them then?

As I mentioned in the last post, we’re looking for conversions. And in this scenario, the conversion occurs when the user clicks to read an excerpt from Cal’s book. The hope is that the reader will then continue down the funnel and choose to purchase a book. When I started tracking the conversion rates, the numbers were fairly low. We needed a way to get people to perform the call to action.

Enter design and usability!

One of the things that I noticed first was that when users got to the landing page, that they were going straight for the top-level navigation. Under normal circumstances, that would be a good thing, but I wanted them to click a button further down the page. The client didn’t have the budget to build a dedicated landing page, so a page within the site would have to be modified.

Here is the landing page:

One little design element can make all the difference!

You’ve seen this before in my last post. What is new from the other version is the large badge in the bottom right corner of the first read image.

Chances are, the user will be attracted to the image first. Remembering the lessons in usablity from the web, I placed the badge in the lower right corner, where people tend to look for calls to action. The badge tell them “Right here! This is what you’re looking for!”

So far, conversions are up nearly 50% from a 14.29% goal completion rate just last week to a 24.19% goal completion rate today. Just from one little badge.

Sales are up, too. The numbers are still small, yes, but there was a whopping 850% increase in sales from the week before the change to the week after. Can’t argue with those facts. I’ll keep monitoring the stats and report back.

So when you are looking for a creative provider, make sure that they understand those tenets of usability, task-oriented design and the analytic that drive strategic creative decisions.

So let me give you a little more background: The user is presented with a Facebook ad that directs them to a landing page within the site. It is not a dedicated landing page per se, it is a page within the site that is germane to the ask in the ad. The user is instructed to read an excerpt from the author’s latest book. When a user clicks on the excerpt link, then we consider that a conversion goal achieved.

Landing Page for Facebook ads

This is a landing page screenshot for Cal’s Facebook ad campaign. In an effort to boost conversion rates, I added the badge on the first read. So far the numbers have gotten a small boost, running at about 11 15% since implementation. Actual landing page.

Conversion rates have been running from 0% on some days to over 20% on others, coming in at around 11 15% on most days. The research that I have done has indicated that I might be in the right range, although this is not quite a sales pitch nor is it an opt in. What I have noticed is that users are exploring the rest of the site which is good for brand engagement.

Email marketing opt-ins are coming in steadily at 1 per day, so a nice little audience is building which will make future marketing efforts that much easier.

More to come!