You can’t look at your news feed on Facebook nowadays without running into someone giving away a free iPad or a $100 gift card. Contests and promotions are everywhere. Third-party contesting applications are making it easy to run promotions on your Facebook pages. Be careful, though, because even though setting up a Facebook contest may be simple, not all promotions are going to be effective. You can increase your chances of success by following some simple Facebook contest creation guidelines.

It’s not a guarantee, but if you’re rushing your contest design (as with any piece of marketing), you’re going to run into problems. Ask yourself a few basic questions before you begin configuring your promotion:

What is your overall goal? What are you trying to achieve with a contest? Typical contests are trying to either increase brand awareness and the number of “Likes” on a page, or attempting to engage user through gathering feedback and developing brand advocates. Tailor your contest to your overall goals, and be careful not to run contests “just because.” Make sure you’re getting something valuable for your efforts.

Who is your audience? Generally, there are only four types of contests that people run on Facebook: sweepstakes, essay, photo and video. Each type of contest speaks to an entirely different audience, so make sure you identify who you want your entrants to be. While video, photo and essay contests are a great way to collect content for your page, they’re designed for highly engaged users, so expect to see a low entry rate if your typical wall post has many “Likes” but few comments.

How much can you spend? Breaking the bank isn’t something you need to (or should) do, but you still need to keep your budget in mind. Setting a budget dictates both the quality of prize you’re able to give away, and the type of contest you should run. It’s OK to make users “work” to enter the contest, but the quality of the prize has to be worth the effort. Don’t ask participants to submit a video if the prize is just a sticker.

Once you’ve answered these question, think about the design of your contests. It needs to be two things: simple and social.

Make it social. Social media is word-of-mouth marketing on steroids. If your contest isn’t inherently social, you’re missing the whole point of hosting it on a social media platform. The contest itself should engage users using the tools at hand. Let entrants share their entries or their voting choices, and make sure these votes get shared to their walls, too! Give users the chance to spread your promotion by inviting them to share the contest on their walls after they enter.

Keep it simple. While innovative contest concepts may get big brands some awesome PR, keep in mind that these are just the success stories — there are just as many promotions that have majorly flopped due, in part, to their complexity. Better your odds of running a successful promotion by keeping things simple. Do you really need to know job titles, marital statuses or numbers of children? Every field a user has to submit directly affects the number of entries you receive, and fewer entries mean less exposure.

Your contest tab should be easy to find, easy to answer and easy to share. Nobody wants spend time searching your contest (and they won’t). Link directly to your contest tab by regularly posting about it on the page’s wall. Buying Facebook ads can also be an effective strategy.

Make it easy. The contest tab itself shouldn’t let users miss the “Enter Now” button, and the same thing goes for the “Share” link. Don’t let potential uber-fans miss out on the chance to enter and brag about your contest by making things too complicated.

This post is by Jim Belosic, co-founder and president of Pancake Laboratories.

One of the hardest parts about trying to be social is overhearing others talking about how much fun they are having. Creating questions, discussions and sparking engagement is at the root of social success. It’s not about sharing content anymore — it’s about shaping and moving communities of people.

However, if your company is trying to create relationships with its customers via social channels, you may find it’s near impossible to get the ball rolling.

We’ve all heard someone say, “It’s not about how many followers you have; it’s how many interactions.” This isn’t the easiest of tasks, especially if you operate in the B2B industry, where “almost 60% of B2B marketers have little or no engagement in social media,” according to a 2010 study by White Horse.

This data comes as a relief to many because it illustrates how many businesses are doing it wrong, which gives you a viable opportunity to stand out amongst a crowd. Nearly 60% of B2B marketers are talking, but no one is talking back.

The difficulty lies in changing people’s expectations of a medium. According to a Brian Solis study, 37% of people followed a company to gain access to exclusive content, whereas only 24% of people followed to be a part of a like-minded community. Managing these expectations and showing them you value their input is one of the fundamental introductory lessons for social media use.

Create something of value

What is your niche? What does your business do better than everyone else in your industry? If you are a low-cost leader, create a graphic presentation of how customers in your industry can save money with services like yours. Don’t give them a sales pitch; instead create something that makes people go “Aha!”

Try to create catchy headers, but don’t kill off your followers by linking to a product or a service. Remaining credible on social channels is heavily based on delivering quality content. If you think you have something with true value, it will likely catch on with an audience. Your goal is make it catch on with enough authoritative socialites to go viral.

Try social bookmarking

Try a social bookmarking service if you are new to social. If you aren’t engaging on Twitter, you are likely having a tough time driving traffic with your links. A social bookmarking service will get your content more views — some services can boost your traffic by 300%.

Once you get more traffic, your retweets will follow. People who share and comment on your article are invitations for communication. Thank them for the mention, comment on something they’ve said or give them a follow. Building your network with social bookmarking really isn’t too difficult because it gives you grounds for introduction.

Humanize

Humanizing is more than speaking with a human voice. It is breaking down the corporate façade to allow consumers to see the person behind the brand. This is a very risky and sometimes complicated strategy, but humanized brands allow users to relate to a brand. In efforts to humanize, brands are tweeting emotions, activities and personal shout-outs.

If you want to humanize, treat each member of your community and surrounding community like he is your best friend. Ask them things that don’t necessarily relate to your specific industry. Drop the corporate persona and make friends.

Talking when no one else is talking may feel embarrassing, but most brands (especially in the B2B industry) are failing to engage because they aren’t actively seeking out opportunities to introduce themselves. The first step is putting yourself out there. The great thing about social media is that it doesn’t require extensive structure. It does, however, require a knack for satisfying needs and inspiring people with zeal and zest.

This guest post was written by Matt Krautstrunk, a writer and social entrepreneur touching on social media marketing topics for Resource Nation. You can also follow him on Twitter @MattKrautstrunk.

The number of people spending time online is rapidly increasing — a brand advertiser’s dream, right? But the brand dollars spent offline haven’t really translated to online spend at the same rate as direct response dollars. While brand marketers have tried with banners and other forms of display ads, users aren’t taking to it. Why? Simple: Display ads don’t focus on users.

Focus on the Customer and All Else Will Follow
Direct marketing works online because of one reason: intent. When a user knows what she is looking for, what is better than typing into a search engine and finding exactly what she was looking for, even if it’s a commercial offer? Satisfying this intent is the user value, and direct response marketing on the internet accomplishes this better than yellow page ads and classifieds ever could.

But brands don’t work this way. Brand interactions aren’t necessarily rooted with intent, but rather with a core need for satisfaction. They strive for, “I like this.”

Satisfaction: The Difference Between Expectation and Experience.
Brands can’t satisfy users with banner ads because they are misfiring on the two key ingredients in the satisfaction calculus: expectation and experience.

Imagine it’s a hot day and you expect a Coca-Cola to quench your thirst. You put money into the vending machine and out comes that classic red can. There are two scenarios: “your first sip is ice cold” versus “your first sip is lukewarm.”

In scenario one, your experience meets or exceeds your expectation; you are satisfied. In scenario two (lukewarm), your experience is below what you expected; you have negative satisfaction, or dissatisfaction.

TV ads are the ice cold can of Coke. When you sit down to watch your favorite show, you expect entertainment. You hope the ads aren’t boring. Then you see a cute kid dressed as Darth Vader playing with his dad’s new Volkswagen. Your experience exceeds your expectation. You are satisfied, and in turn, so is Volkswagen.

Online banner ads are that tepid soda. The next time you sit down to read about restaurants in your neighborhood, you will likely see a 728×90 leaderboard, a 300×250 on the right rail, and a photo to start the article. Here’s what’s missing: the content! Users expect to read an article, and they experience a distraction while trying to hunt for the content they wanted.

Social is a Good Start, but the Expectation is Missing
Brand marketing has begun to improve online with hypertargeting. Take a social network, for example. You can serve an ad to someone who clearly indicates that they have an affinity for football, high fives and drinking Miller Lite. If you’re Bud Light, you can serve a small ad to the right side of the user’s experience.

Amazing for a brand, right? Find your target age, gender and psychographics… and serve an ad to them! But your odds of interaction are pretty low. Why? Because the user is expecting to go and stay in touch with their friends.

If your friend happens to endorse a brand based on a great experience (with the product or with one of their TV ads), you may or may not interact with the brand. The targeting is there, but the likelihood isn’t. Users don’t expect to discover your brand when they’re on a social network.

Surpassing Expectation is Key to Brand Advertising
Do you remember the first time you saw the E*Trade baby? What about the Geico Cavemen? You were likely entertained. You discovered a new brand (or at least a new side of one) that you may not have thought of. Expectations were set that you would be a drone in front of the TV and then you were entertained. Eureka! You experienced discovery.

An online delivery platform yielding a discovery experience has not been in the forefront. Yes, we can play a mid-roll video with high targeting, but how is that an improvement to the user from what we do on TV? Targeted audience, sure, but it still disrupts the overall entertainment value proposition.

Interactive websites are a brand marketers dream. Sony Pictures (Salt), Electronic Arts (Deadspace 2), and Nike (Air Jordan) have shown that there are new and engaging ways that we can create content for prospective brand enthusiasts. They have shown what marketers can do with a tabula rosa: create rich treasures for customers to discover.

The Discovery Mindset
Browsing content across the internet is a mostly pointed activity. You want to read news: you probably go to NYTimes.com. Want to shop? Go to Amazon. What about when you just want to see things that are interesting?

Humans are curious beings, yet the options for discovery across the internet have been limited in number. Curiosity breeds complexity, which has made for a difficult product challenge. StumbleUpon was created to address this challenge directly: how do we discover content that is geared specifically toward us.

In a world where URLs become less relevant, advertisers’ need for discovery becomes increasingly important. A brand must find a way to create an experience that delights a user when they are expecting to discover something new.

Jack Krawczyk is senior product marketing manager at StumbleUpon.

Retailers and brands are increasingly recognizing the value of social marketing and are integrating this channel into their overall marketing efforts. Three-quarters of those polled in a recent Alterian study said they plan to increase spending on social and digital media this year. Marketers focusing on social recommendations, empowering customers to advocate for the brand, are the ones seeing measurable results. Recommendation marketing is driving an increase in transactional activity, such as lead generation and sales, and strategic assets, such as brand equity and customer loyalty.

Roku, maker of a streaming-entertainment device for TV — and an Extole customer — is one such company. Roku already manages an online marketing portfolio of search-engine optimization and marketing, affiliate programs, online display advertising and public relations. While these efforts have worked well together to form a strong marketing plan, Roku discovered that recommendations from happy customers are one of the most effective ways to leverage these channels to increase its customer base.

Roku adopted Extole’s recommendation platform, which lets customers earn rewards for referrals. The program provides Roku advocates a way to reach out to their networks via Facebook, Twitter, embedded links in e-mails and personalized URLs. In return, Roku provides referrers — more than 80% are Netflix subscribers — one free month of Netflix movies for every referral that results in a purchase through the Roku website.

Over six months, Roku attained 10,000 customer referrals per month and increased customer-based referrals by 30%. It generated more than $250,000 in revenue through the program and more than 20,000 site registrations.

Roku’s results underscore market research: Nielsen data show that 90% of consumers rely on friends’ recommendations, compared with 14% who trust mass advertising.

Thinking about adopting a referral program? Here are a few tips to consider.

• Go multichannel. Create multiple ways — e-mail, blogs, social networks — for customers to share referrals. Everyone has a preference for reaching out to friends.
• Be consistent. Ensure your branding within the referral program is consistent, as consistency leads to credibility. Avoid programs that do not permit white labeling to preserve your brand identity and customer experience.
• Encourage your referrers. Because there was considerable overlap between Roku and Netflix customers, a Netflix reward was a logical motivator. Determine what your customers value, and give it to them. Even better: Tier your rewards to accelerate customers’ engagement.
• Track your progress. Keep tabs on who is sharing, how they are sharing and whether the sharing is resulting in customers and sales. Often, you can refine your campaign based on early results to maximize its effectiveness.
• Marketers, don’t forget to market! A referral program must be promoted to be successful. Avenues for promotion include your website, e-mail, social channels and newsletters. Also, prompt your customers to take part in the program shortly after they make a purchase, when your company is fresh on their minds.

Have you experimented with social recommendations? What has your experience been?

This post is by Greg Brown, chief revenue officer of Extole, a social-recommendation marketing platform that helps brands harness the marketing force of their social graphs.

How would you like to end the debate that ‘Twitter is just for sharing what you had for lunch’ once and for all?  This post is about how to use Twitter for a common good, much like I’m doing with the help of my Tweeps in Burlington, VT.

The whole project started with a simple idea, my Twitter handle, and a few hundred interested followers… Let me back up to share what we’re up to.  The Vermont Video Resume Project is dedicated to helping every unemployed Vermonter who wants one get a free Web video resume.  We’re shooting our first round of resumes August 29th to help people find jobs using the social Web.

So how is Twitter such a critical piece of the equation?  Well, when I bought my first HD camcorder I was excited about shooting videos to share on YouTube.  Then I noticed by posting the URLs to Twitter my audience increased exponentially.  That got me to thinking what else is possible using Web video, and how the Twitter community could use it for a good cause.

My community of followers loved the idea of using Web video to help the unemployed, and our local independent newspaper/website offered to partner with me to spread the word.  The project gained critical mass and we eventually joined forces with the local community media station to record the videos at no cost to the participants.

Here’s how you can replicate this project in your own community:

- Crowdsource: Spread your idea like a virus by asking your community of Twitter followers to participate.  You’ll be surprised how the idea can be improved and distributed dramatically with the help of others.

- Establish a Hashtag: This is important.  Using a hashtag enables you to form a community around your cause, and creates a central point of reference using Twitter Search.

- Partner and Promote: Ask for help, because the media loves a worthy cause.  I recommend pinging your local media to participate using their own Twitter feeds, because distribution of your message is critical for awareness and success.  By asking people to become ‘Founding Members’ of your project they will be empowered to spread the word for you.

Finally, have fun!  Be open to new ideas and don’t be afraid if the project changes form.  Twitter is an incredible distribution medium and will help you spearhead a cause that promotes a common good.

source: twi tip by Joe Mescher

There are a lot of sites out there offering links for free products. I receive emails from one such site womensfreebies.com which provided a link to try a free sample of arthritis cream.

Yesterday I received an email from the company. Here is the copy:

Hello,
>
> Within the past several weeks you or a friend or family member ordered samples of Australian Dream Arthritis Pain Relief Cream for you.
>
> During this period our free sample offer was placed on a bunch of freebie sites and the amount of sample requests we received jumped enormously. We actually started receiving thousands of requests per day instead of our normal 100 per day. This massive increase has resulted in a delay in getting many samples mailed.
>
> To help sort out those that really need pain relief and those requesting samples just because it is something free, we are sending this email to you.
>
> Please reply to this email if you really wish to try our Australian Dream Arthritis Pain Relief Cream. Once your reply is received, we will mail replacement samples to you as quickly as possible.
>
> We sincerely want anyone that suffers from joint or muscle pain to be able to give our cream a try!
>
> I hope the samples work for you!
>

This suggestion that I am just requesting because it is free may have some validity for samples but isn’t that the point? Samples have been used for a long time as a way to increase visibility for a new product, build good-will and acquire new customers. After the offer is made to question a potential customers motives is hardly a way achieve these results.

A different tactic

There are many ways to handle this type of situation but if I were advising this company I would say “suck it up” and send out the samples with a letter explaining the overwhelming response apologizing for the delay and offering a coupon in addition to the sample by signing in on the website. This would clean up the email list and give your potential customers a chance to purchase your product after the sample.

If this was your company how would you have handled it?

One of the challenges in working with start-ups is to convince them of the value of the personal story. Most entrepreneurs want to talk only about the service or product they are offering. No matter how wonderful the product is in order to capture attention you must give people a reason to listen. You must be enchanting. Not sure how? Then you will want to hear Guy Kawasaki’s talk on his new book Enchantment.

Are colleges using social media as part of the student admissions process?  Schools.com explored this topic with the Reading Students like an Open Facebook infographic.  It’s hard enough to get teenagers to understand that online photos and status updates will be a permanent record of their behavior for the rest of their life, but even more immediately it could impact their entrance into college!

As Facebook has become more and more popular—if it were a country, it would be the third largest in the world—its use in the field of education has expanded, too. In fact, more than 80% of college admissions officers report using Facebook as part of their recruiting process.

Are admissions officers really looking at the Facebook profiles of prospective students? And if so, are they making admissions decisions based on these profiles? Below is an infographic that highlights the answers to these questions and more—which might surprise you.

Courtesy of: Schools.com

I get really tired of less than forthcoming geeks trying to make this sound more complicated than it is in order to make themselves sound intelligent while keep all of you in the dark.

Google Algorithms use very simple logic: easy for a human to understand, albeit difficult to to get a machine to do.

Google, simply put, serves us.

Just as the newspaper that we used to get on our doorstep was free – the quarter paid the paper boy.

The news was free because you had to look on page 134 section d to read the rest of your personal interest article, and you couldn’t avoid seeing the ads along the way.

The local car dealership, grocery store, and furniture dealer paid for the news, by buying those big colorful ads that are no longer cost effective because the readership has dwindled as real time news has become available online.

Now there is Google: the source of everything: news, sports, weather, information, research, and all of us, and again, all free.

This is all paid for by ads: ads in the margins and at the top that we cannot avoid seeing, as we use Google search: and also ads on billions of other web pages that we visit: built by other people (some of them by us) which display Google ads, put there by Google after following you around, before you reach the web page! Google has a toolbar that follows you around, tracks your habits, places the right ads…

If you want to understand Google completely, understand that Google serves us. Google serves up to us what we are most interested in, according to us. Google is an it, not a they: it is a machine, with many components, that simply tracks us, determines what we like, and does a good job of giving it to us. Google is controlled by us, by the data that we provide: information about what we want, and information about what we have to offer. In a way, Google is just a great big free middleman for information: the information still does not come from Google: it comes from us.

In order to understand Google, (and the other search engines) you must understand us; Google search is a machine that simply serves us: our desires, our whims, our fetishes, and our needs. Google serves.

• Because we search for an item or word or video a great deal, Google rates it as important.
• Because we subscribe to an author, that ‘”source” of our authority (or what is called an RSS FEED) becomes rated in Google’s data base as being important: an “authority source”
• All Google or any machine can do: they can follow patterns, and do predetermined things that we tell them to do in certain circumstances: in the case of the search algorithms, this is done bey tracing traffic patterns, analyzing the data, and rating information based on those patterns
• The main algorithm is popularity: the more we historically like a page, the longer we spend there, the more often we visit: the more powerful that page is on competitive search.
• While the proper formatting and arrangement of the data is also important, it is the value of the data that matters the most
• As various unrighteous would-be manipulating hackers of the system are systematically foiled by filters and and layers as the technology improves: code standards will continue to become more uniform, and the temporary technical arbitrage enjoyed by, for instance, the “SEO” industry fro the last several years, will systematically evaporate, leaving only the value of the data as a criteria for organic search.
• There are actually two ways to get on the top of search results; you can pay more than anybody else (PPC) for each click until your money is gone, or you can contribute the data that rest of us consider to be most valuable.
• What we do here, at upLog.org as a team, and jointly on the social networks, search engines and even occasionally in the main stream ‘shrinking media’; is to intentionally become the best source of that best data: thus we rank on purpose without breaking any rules every time.

Summary:

By first researching what is currently available from a certain search: then by intentionally creating a more useful resource, we are certain of instant rankings: because we are 100% sure that Google’s algorithms match our opinions. It works every time. If you understand the above, that should not surprise you.

by Israel Rothman

Every business needs a base of loyalists to build it up — a community, a fan club, a tribe. At the recent South by Southwest Interactive Festival, Andrew Warner, the founder of Mixergy.com, and Timothy Sykes, the CEO of TLC Media, shared some tips that can help businesses that are unsure how to build a following and keep it strong.

* Aim for the evangelists first. When building a following, you shouldn’t be targeting all your current customers, Warner says. Instead you should focus on people who are extremely passionate and supportive of what you are doing. If you create a product or an idea and sell it to a customer who’s really excited by your brand, his enthusiastic explanations to his friends about what you offer will multiply your fan base. Enthusiasm spreads, so always be working to build a web of passionate people.
* Create a sense of demand. False urgencies, such as deals that “end in 24 hours,” lead people to feel like they have to get involved or risk missing out. Missed opportunities break hearts, and nobody likes the feeling that they can’t go back and change their actions. It’s the same concept that exclusive nightclubs use when they turn people away. You get a sense of fulfillment when you make it in, so you continue going back instead of trying that new bar down the street. Make your brand an exclusive club and people want to be a part of it.
* Have a common enemy. Anger is a powerful emotion that sparks ambition and motivation. If you and your tribe are united against something, that shared opposition will keep your bond strong.
* Don’t let them forget what you’re all about. Never let people forget what your selling or trying to accomplish. Feature your product on every page of your website. Be bold in your requests and be willing to urge customers to take their commitment to your business to the next level.
* Bring in a ringer. Involve something that’s bigger than your brand, then capitalize on the benefits of association.
* Treat your people well. Their loyalty and appreciation comes from mutual giving, so once you have them, help them enjoy being there.

This guest post is by Daley Epstein, a contributing writer for SmartBrief.