Hurdles Integrated

Effective Tactics for Acquiring Facebook Fans & Twitter Followers

Digital marketers do not believe that the most commonly used tactics for acquiring Facebook fans and Twitter followers are very effective in delivering quality community and audience members, according to a recent report from ExactTarget.

In the case of Facebook, the two most popular tactics are

(1) displaying a Facebook Like button or link on a website (93% use them, but only 46% rate them as effective), and

(2) including a Like button or link to a page in emails/newsletters (70% use, 35% rate effective).

Effective Facebook Tactics for acquiring fans
•Organic growth methods, such as engaging in conversations (58% use, 67% rate effective).
•Working with influencers/bloggers (33% use, 56% rate effective).
•Facebook contests requiring fans to submit their own content (36% use, 54% rate effective).
•Facebook ads: Sponsored Stories (25% use, 67% rate effective).
•Facebook ads: Display ads/non-Sponsored Stories (30% use, 52% rate effective).
•Answering customer service questions on Facebook (34% use, 69% rate effective).
•Directing people to Facebook for customer support (17% use, 50% rate effective).
•Regularly offering FAQs and how-to content on Facebook (29% use, 50% rate effective).

Twitter Tactics for acquiring followers
•Product/prize giveaways with “follow” required (20% use, 57% rate effective).
•Working with influencers/bloggers to promote a Twitter profile (28% use, 51% rate effective).
•Publicly answering customer service questions on Twitter (27% use, 60% rate effective).
•Regularly offering FAQs and how-to content in tweets (22% use, 59% rate effective).
•Adding a Twitter button or link to a website (65% use them, 43% rate them effective).
•Incorporating a Twitter button or link in emails/newsletters (64% use, 32% rate effective).

Only a small percentage of marketers surveyed use ads to acquire Twitter followers. However, the tactic shows promise: of the 6% of respondents who advertise their Twitter profiles via paid search ads 50% say the tactic is effective.

Key Questions to help develop your Twitter strategy

Following Twitter’s initial public offering, the company is now valued at $140 billion with 280 million monthly users, Twitter is not profitable – yet. But there is opportunity for your business… The ability to share updates, disseminate content to prospects, customers, influencers or even just people who are interested in your brand, presents you with the perfect tool for real-time brand awareness.

Of course we know there are also many other advantages of Twitter including service, lead generation and relationship building, with many great examples of brands using Twitter for customer care. So in fact the questions you should be asking are not only how does Twitter support our business objectives, but more so, do we have a Twitter marketing strategy? How your business uses Twitter should be aligned as part of your social media marketing strategy, key questions you should ask before delving into it are:

1.Is Twitter right for our audience? If yes, build up a persona of who your Twitter customer is and what will make them tick.

2.Are our users already using Twitter? Conducing social media listening will help to establish conversations already happening about your brand.

3.What are our goals for Twitter? Twitter can support marketing and sales, HR and recruitment, corporate communications, customer service, and many more business functions, but it is good to decide your approach and set KPIs beforehand.

4.What will we share on Twitter, how often and who will be responsible for it? Creating content planners, training and providing clear guidelines on who should use the channel will help to create a consistent tone of voice.

5.How will we measure the impact of Twitter? On a very basic level look at interaction with posts and traffic to your website. In more depth look at lifetime value of a customer, what they go on to do e.g. shop / sign up, and how Twitter improves the overall customer experience. These are a just a few questions that we cover in our Twitter marketing strategy guide, recently updated to include smart and practical ideas to integrate Twitter into your business.

Large Brands Increase Commitment to Mobile.
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32% of major brands surveyed by O**m are spending at least $300,00 on mobile annually and growth in the format is likely to surge next year.

The O**m study focused on the top 300 brands. Virtually all of these brands use mobile and 20% say they’ll be increasing their mobile commitment by 50% over the next couple of years. These merchants say the top developments in the mobile advertising ecosystem include responsive design, native ads and HTML5.

Mobile is not without challenges. The same privacy concerns that surround all digital advertising remain an issue for people who use their smartphones and tablets to research products and services. However, the number of merchants worried about privacy and its implications for consumer backlash has dropped from 40% to 22% in the past 2 years. Merchants are worrying less about the fragmentation of mobile operating systems in the market as well. Only 23% say this is an issue now. In 2011, 39% said they had concerns about OS.

This study also considered the differences between B2C and B2B operators. A significant percentage of B2B companies, 41%, say that mobile marketing is still experimental for them. Only 50% of B2B merchants are happy with their mobile ad outcomes. In addition, about 45% of B2B operators will focus their efforts on smartphones instead of feature phones, believing they’ll achieve a better outcome with this strategy.

The O**m study shows that while mobile is gaining ground, marketers are working hard to tweak the problems they have with this format. As they do so, the funds invested in mobile will continue to increase.

How much are you planning to spend on mobile next year?