“Great Barrier Reef Competition Winners Have Been Notified #QldBlog” plus 2 more

Great Barrier Reef Competition Winners Have Been Notified #QldBlog
9 Facebook Marketing Tactics that’ll Triple Your Fans
Top Twitter Blog Marketing Tips

Great Barrier Reef Competition Winners Have Been Notified #QldBlog

Posted: 23 Apr 2012 07:20 PM PDT

I’m really excited to announce that the ten winners of the Great Barrier Reef Competition that we’ve been running here on ProBlogger the last couple of weeks have been chosen.

Over 800 entries were received. It was no easy task to shortlist them and choose the final winners because there were some amazing bloggers. As I looked through the entries I just kept saying to myself, “I’d love to have them on the trip!”

In fact, my wishlist of winners probably numbered over 100 so the job the team at Tourism Queensland had in selecting the final ten was a huge challenge.

But only ten can win and I received the list last night from the judges at Tourism Queensland. I simply can’t wait to meet all of the winners in June.

As outlined in the Terms and Conditions of the competition, winners will have received an email in the last few minutes letting them know that they’ve won and asking them to confirm that they are accepting the prize (so if you entered, check your inbox now!).

Winners have 72 hours to confirm that they’re coming and on Friday (Aussie time) I’ll publicly publish the names of those winners so we can all see who is coming on the trip!

If you’ve won, please don’t celebrate publicly yet. We’ll do the big announcement Friday (Aussie time) where you can share the news with your own audience.

If you were not selected, I can only say that I’m sorry you won’t be joining us and that I hope we might do something like this again in the future (tell @Queensland) if you do, too). I also hope you’ll follow along with us as we blog/tweet the trip in June.

Thanks to everyone for entering. This has been one of the most fun things I’ve done so far in my almost ten years of blogging … and the best part is still ahead!

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Great Barrier Reef Competition Winners Have Been Notified #QldBlog

9 Facebook Marketing Tactics that’ll Triple Your Fans

Posted: 23 Apr 2012 07:06 AM PDT

This guest post is by Neil Patel of Quick Sprout.

Would you like to double, or even triple the number of fans you have on your Facebook business page? Are you looking to turn those fans into loyal and active fans?

Your Facebook business page can die on the vine without a loyal and active following.

But success will never come overnight. Instead it will require that you apply the marketing strategies you are about to read … plus a little bit of hustle.

Tactic #1: Crank out a lot of content

People like Facebook business pages for many reasons. They want to learn more about the brand, discover new products, and get educated.

So the very first Facebook marketing strategy you need to use is providing a lot of content in different media like photos, posts, videos, and surveys and you have to do it consistently.

The passionate community around eCycler was developed because the brand posted great content on recycling in the Notes sections on a consistent basis.

In addition, they posted fun videos and used Facebook to show its 10,000 plus fans how the inside of the company works. This transparency from the co-founders of this Illinois-based company has made it a great communication channel between the brand and the fans.

Meanwhile, the community over at the SmartPak Facebook page is very active, leaving hundreds of comments on the dozens of videos and 1,000 plus photos that SmartPak has posted.

The company uses Facebook to market new products on nutritional supplements and medications for horses, but it's developed into something so much more over time. Over 110,000 fans talk, share ideas and like the consistent content that SmartPak shares. In turn Facebook has become the seventh highest source of traffic to their website.

SmartPak's director of new media, however, says that it's really become a place where they deliver great customer service, responding to complaints and trying to help users of their products to solve problems.

Tactic 2: Run weekly giveaways and discounts

One way to drive a loyal following to your Facebook page is to have weekly giveaways. The candle company Candles Off Main’s Facebook page not only provides weekly discounts on its products, but also shares great instructional videos and very detailed photos that help educate and entice potential buyers.

The company has been around for five years but joined Facebook only in 2009. In that time they've grown their fans to over 3,500 with a blend of giveaways. But this is not just about tripling their following: it's about a community they created where members are active on discussion boards and constantly giving responses to posts.

Their Facebook fan page isn't a big driver of sales—it produces less than ten percent of sales, but it provides something way more valuable. The community they built with giveaways and then cultivated into a thriving community gives the company insight and suggestions on how to make better products that followers will buy.

Tactic #3: Train your staff

Stella & Dot is a direct-selling company that gives women who work from home an entrepreneurial business platform. And their Facebook fan page, with over 166,000 fans, is a hive of activity. There, fans rave about products, people share ideas on how to be stylish, and direct-sellers share testimonials about happy customers.

But the unique thing about Stella & Dot is that they use Facebook to train a staff team that’s spread across the country. For each product that the company creates, they also create a video demonstrating how the jewelry should be worn and what it should be worn with. Then they post it on Faceboook so their direct sellers can watch it.

The neat thing about this is everyone gets to see the content—each instructional video serves to entice potential customers as well as training the staff.

Tactic #4: Create a culture

Clothing company Threadless has turned the tables on the conventional business model by putting all the power in the customers' hands. It's more of a culture than it is a business, and its using its Facebook fan page to drive that culture.

There, the business invite fans to share t-shirt designs and then vote on their favorites. Threadless will then make that product. You can also buy products straight from the Facebook site. Of course, the company shares interesting videos and photos on the stream, but it encourages face-to-face meetings through the page.

Thousands of people share their ideas via the company's website, but it is on Facebook that the actual voting occurs. That voting, and the interaction between the designers and the fans, creates a powerful culture that continues to grow as Threadless advocates talk about the company across the social web.

Tactic #5: Make word-of-mouth advocacy easy

There is no denying it: you trust people you know more than you trust strangers. So when you see a product shared by a friend, you are more likely to consider using that product. It's that word of mouth that really works on Facebook, which Brendan’s Irish Pub in Camarillo, CA used to grow its fan base before the business opened its doors.

It created a business fan page to generate buzz about parties, sell products, and get commitments from first-time customers about coming to the grand opening.

The Facebook page existed months before the pub did, and owner Tyler Rex used that time to create hype around the Camarillo area. In just those few months he gained over 3,500 fans in a city of 65,000 people.

Tactic #6: Encourage fan-to-fan conversations

Your Facebook business community will get much better if you have fans talking to each other, and the best way to do this is by putting the spotlight on those very fans.

One way you can do this is by creating a "Fan of the Week" post to recognize top contributors to the community. But if you have a Facebook fan base like Bare Escentuals you can take a hands-off marketing approach, and still get fans to talk to each other.

Fans totally dominate the conversation here. Bare Escentuals has adopted a strategy in which they do not ask for testimonials, yet the 550,000+ fans leave hundreds of them, which in turn leads to traffic being driven to their resellers and shops.

But this fan-to-fan conversation has also given the company recommendations on how to improve the product. The chief marketing officer said that their new "Click, Lock, Go" container was created as a result of suggestions from fans.

Tactic #7: Focus on your brand

When it comes to how your Facebook page should look, you can go about it in two ways. One way you can brand it to look just like your website. The other way is to create a completely different experience so that fans have a feeling of exclusivity when they like your page.

Community Coffee chose to keep the brand consistent, using the same colors, style, and even images from their website to their Facebook page. But they deliver that feeling of exclusivity through the use of recipe posts, and inviting fans to post their own recipes, contests and trivia.

Facebook has proven to be a great new media marketing tool for this company, which is over 90 years old. The active fan base is exposed to the brand, which in turn builds awareness of the business, generates more leads, and engages customers.

Tactic #8: Donate a dollar to quickly build a fan base

You can build a terrific following by pledging to donate $1 to a charity every time someone Likes your Facebook page. That's exactly what Clarisonic did last year. They increased their fan base by over 80 percent and raised $30,000 to help women with cancer.

But once you are a fan of Clarisonic, you’re treated to lots of activities that get you involved, such as contests that invite users to share pictures of themselves using the brand’s products. That's the key to running this type of pledge: once you have fans, you need to keep them engaged using some of the tactics that I've shared above.

When you follow up with good user-interaction content like Calrisonic did (they’re doing pretty well, with over 118,000 fans) you can build on that momentum from the quick injection of fans as they spread the word about your company across the social web.

Tactic #9: Reward your social media users

If you have a brick-and-motor store like Fresh Brothers, a southern CA pizza chain, then you can use your Facebook business page as a place to reward your fans with discount codes for products.

The company actually shares a weekly special to thank fans, and if you Like their page, you’ll get access to these weekly deals. This is applying the exclusivity trick to entice people to follow Fresh Brothers.

But Fresh Brothers also rewards fans with great stories about their family, as the company is run by three brothers, employee tales, and snippets of company history. This is a really great way to deliver that human touch that shows customers that this isn’t just another business who wants to get its hands on their money—it’s a company with personality that truly cares about customers.

What’s your favorite tactic?

One of the keys to running a successful business Facebook fan page is to create a very human feel to it. That can be done through great content like photos and videos, all the way to providing awesome deals to fans as a thank you for their following you.

You will be rewarded with an active community of fans sharing their own stories, creating conversations about your brand across the social web, and even driving traffic to your website.

What other Facebook marketing strategies have you found effective for building a fan base? Share them with us below.

Neil Patel is an online marketing consultant and the co-founder of KISSmetrics. He also blogs at Quick Sprout.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

9 Facebook Marketing Tactics that’ll Triple Your Fans

Top Twitter Blog Marketing Tips

Posted: 23 Apr 2012 07:00 AM PDT

This guest post is by Lior Levin.

Twitter is one of the top three or four social media marketing tools today, with roughly 12% of online adults using Twitter according to this Pew Internet report.

It's easy to quickly share promotions and ideas on Twitter, and if they catch on, they can spread quickly, even crossing over to platforms such as Facebook or Pinterest in the process. Since the cost of using Twitter is so low and the process of sharing tweets is so simple, it is an ideal tool for blog marketing.

Twitter’s blog benefits

There are three main reasons why bloggers need to use Twitter regularly:

1. Twitter increases blog traffic

Twitter is a top source of referral traffic, but it is likely far more effective than tools such as Google Analytics lets on.

Many referrals derive from Twitter originally, but Google Analytics isn't able to track all of their origin points. Entrepreneur Mark Suster explains this at Tech Crunch, saying, "Twitter is an amazing generator of social hooks to websites. Some of that comes from Twitter.com or other Twitter clients. But since many other websites pull in Twitter data, including links, you don't always know who is referring the traffic to you."

In order to understand the true reach of your Twitter campaigns, Suster recommends a tool called Awe.sm.

2. Twitter improves your Google Page Rank

A thorough study of the impact of Twitter and Facebook on Google page ranking by the website SEO Moz yielded a strong correlation between high shares on Twitter and Facebook.

Rand Fishkin writes in the conclusions, "Pages that earn tweets + Facebook shares also correlate well with earning links, and send direct traffic on their own—ignoring these services at this point seems foolish." If you want to improve your website's page rank on Google, then the data suggests that more tweets and Facebook shares will help get you there.

3. Twitter helps establish your brand

Twitter is one way to reveal who you are as a brand, showing customers what you care about and whether you have anything important to share with them—whether that's information or a promotion. The key is to connect in ways that prove your brand is consistent and reliable.

Top Twitter blog marketing tips

With these benefits in mind, here are some tips on how to use Twitter for online marketing.

Find influencers

As you look to expand your influence on Twitter, you'll need followers who are influential and engaged. However, this doesn't just mean networking with people who follow, or are followed by, a lot of people.

You can start by using Twellow to find Twitter users in your niche and then use Twitter Grader to evaluate the quality of their interactions on Twitter.

Beware of using tools such as Klout, as users with significant social media influence have been routinely undervalued by the Klout algorithm.

You can also search Twitter through hashtags (eg. "#marketing") in order to find users in your niche. The key is to review what they tweet about by looking at their feeds. Are they active? Do they interact with their followers on Twitter? Are they willing to retweet content frequently?

A quick scan of Twitter profiles will tell you quite a bit about who to follow, and whether those users will follow you back and provide valuable interactions.

Promote your posts

Use engaging titles when tweeting about your website's content, and link to promotions and information that will meet the specific needs of your followers. This all ties back to whether your company has a consistent focus and a clear brand image that can connect with customers. If it does, Twitter may be an excellent marketing tool for you.

Chris Brogan suggests that beyond tweeting your killer titles, you should also mention if content on your site has sparked a lively conversation, or if users are giving meaningful feedback.

Your followers may want to chip in to the conversation. In addition, you can ask for links on StumbleUpon or a retweet of your content if it's particularly valuable to your readers.

Be socially proactive

Don't just wait for people to find you. You need to find followers, retweet their content, and anticipate what they want. It's your job to spark conversations and to stir up interest, even asking for a little help in spreading the word when appropriate.

Share unique and useful information

Twitter users will only find you worth following if you can point them to valuable content, whether it's your own or someone else's. Since it's generally frowned upon to only post your own information, check out a site like All Top to find the best websites and news in your field. Between retweets of leaders in your field and links from All Top, you'll provide the kind of content that will make people want to follow you.

As you read information online that’s related to your niche throughout the day, use a service such as Hootsuite or Buffer to set up auto-tweets throughout the day, so you can space out the information you share.

By installing the Buffer button to your browser toolbar, you can easily set up a regular stream of tweets throughout your day and increase your brand’s value to your customers.

Share tweets frequently

The best way to tell your Twitter followers that you're personally invested in helping them is to retweet their tweets frequently. There's a good chance that the customers you follow are sharing information that the rest of your followers need anyway, so you can both share relevant information and build your connection with your Twitter followers at the same time through consistent retweets.

Avoid inconsistent profile pictures across platforms

In order to create a consistent brand image, choose one profile picture, whether a logo or picture of a CEO, for all of your social media platforms. PR expert Sarah Evans writes at Mashable, "The first rule for avatars and bios is to stay consistent across social platforms. If you're sharing information from your business account, decide whether you want your avatar to be your company logo or the face of the president."

In addition, a profile picture should convey an image that is consistent with your brand.

Don't spam followers with auto-direct messages

If your goal is to create authentic engagement with customers through social media, then the other golden rule is to never send auto-direct messages to new followers. Auto-direct messages are consistently viewed as spam by the majority of Twitter users and your brand will suffer if you send them.

An authentic Twitter presence

Twitter is easy to start using, but it's also quite easy to mess up. The golden rule is to be authentic and genuinely helpful.

If you're not helping your followers, then you're just trying to use them to make money. The more money you try to make, the less you'll help followers on Twitter—resulting in a lower return on your social media investment.

The more you try to help followers on Twitter, the more brand engagement you’ll build.

This guest post is written by Lior Levin, a marketing consultant for company that specializes in a to do list app, and who also consults for an inspection company that provides various services in pre shipment inspections.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Top Twitter Blog Marketing Tips

Google Adsense

Point of Authorithy