This article will help with three case studies.

But first, about that ROI… It took some time after the advent of online advertising before marketers started asking, “What are these ‘eyeballs’ worth that I’m paying for?”

With social media, the tough questions around metrics started being asked much sooner. As marketing budgets stay tight, it’s no surprise that the need to show results is high.

So when it comes to contests on the social web, how do we go about evaluating ROI?

Investing in Your Social Media Contest

Before you can demonstrate a return, you must first make an investment!

As mentioned in my previous post on social media contests, it’s important to have a well thought out marketing plan for any promotional campaign. The first step is always to define objectives: are you trying to engage existing customers, acquire new users or gather data? Only then can you set realistic goals and build a campaign to deliver on them.

Once the objectives are set, you can determine the type of promotion and how you’ll communicate. You’ll likely need to invest in marketing beyond the cost of merely setting up your contest.

This investment will generally focus on driving traffic to the promotion site or application. If you’re running a contest that includes user-contributed content, be sure you take advantage of sharing this content in both your social and traditional marketing efforts.

If you’re running your contest in Facebook, Sponsored Stories are a great way to promote. While the platform you use to run your contest should include integrated sharing tools, those shared items may get buried in the news feed.

With Sponsored Stories, your promotion will remain visible as users see that their friends just interacted with your page or application.

Other forms of investment outside of Facebook advertising could include Sponsored Tweets on Twitter, targeted online advertising and email campaigns to your existing customer list or through partner email channels. Note that co-marketing can be a huge bonus if you find partners that can be brought into your campaign (potentially as sponsors).

Of course there are some campaigns that can succeed, again depending on your objectives, without major cash investment. However, even in these instances, it’s rare that a campaign simply “goes viral.” Generally there’s a good deal of forethought and effort that goes into building the momentum for something to truly take on a life of its own. So even if you aren’t investing hard costs in advertising, you must be prepared to allocate resources in the form of human and social capital.

What’s the Return on Social Contests?

Return on investment doesn’t have to mean solely financial return. Bottom-line results clearly matter, but they can’t be the sole objective for any social media campaign.

Objectives drive outcomes. By setting your objectives clearly up front you can establish what goals matter to you and track against them.

Return on investment doesn’t have to mean solely financial return. Bottom-line results clearly matter, but they can’t be the sole objective for any social media campaign.  In this post, Dag Holmboe provides a good perspective on social media ROI.

Depending on how you set up your promotion, these are some of the key metrics to consider:

• How many people visited your promotion? How much time did they spend engaging?
• Of those who visited, how many actively participated? How many entered? How many voted (if applicable)?
• How much sharing took place?
• What type of content generated the most interaction (i.e., comments, Likes, retweets)?
• How many new Likes on Facebook or followers on Twitter?
• What was the level of Twitter activity (especially if you have a contest-specific hashtag)?
• What was the redemption rate of any coupons or offers?
• How many users opted in to your email list?
• If you included any outbound links to drive traffic, what was the click-through rate?
• And ultimately what new business (revenue/profit) can be attributed to the promotion?

Here are several case examples to compare and contrast different forms of investment and return on that investment.

Crate and Barrel’s Ultimate Wedding

Giving one lucky couple $100,000 to create their ultimate event.

Objectives

With its Ultimate Wedding contest, multi-channel home furnishings retailer Crate and Barrel sought to drive gift registry creation and engage consumers online.

How it Was Done

Users were required to create a gift registry through Crate and Barrel before being eligible to enter the promotion. (Note: Requiring this type of “consideration” to enter a contest introduces greater legal complexities than a contest with no consideration to enter.) After a user’s registry was verified, he or she could submit an entry to the contest, which consisted of a photo and short answers. Public voting narrowed the field and a panel of judges ultimately picked the winner of a $100,000 dream wedding. The contest was promoted on the Crate and Barrel website and through other online advertising, as well as in-store.

Results

This contest has now run two consecutive years and generated more than 17,000 entries, each associated with a registry valued at more than $2,000. That’s $34 million in registry value, the majority of which represents new customers for the retailer.

While the amount of product purchased from these registries is confidential, even a conservative estimate yields a large number. In addition to the financial results, Crate and Barrel also experienced a lift on numerous key social metrics as well.

Comments

So after all I said about focusing on results beyond the bottom line I’m starting with one that shows some impressive financial metrics. Obviously not everyone has the ability to offer a $100,000 prize and to put such significant resources into marketing a contest. Read on to see how smaller investments can also yield powerful results.

But remember that there are lessons here that apply to any contest: First, prize matters—even if it’s not $100,000, it must be something appealing to the target audience and must be commensurate with the level of effort users are expected to put in. Second, it’s important to tap into all possible channels to promote your contest, whether that’s social media, online ads, email lists or offline promotion.

Cosmopolitan Orthodontics Photo Contest

Contests have proven to be an effective marketing tool in a field not traditionally perceived as fun or cool.

Objectives

Ingenuity, a marketing firm catering to orthodontists, wanted to develop a creative means to drive new patients into orthodontists’ offices.

How it Was Done

Utilizing the simple premise of a photo contest, existing patients (generally children and young adults) were asked to “show their smile” for a chance to win an iPad or similar prize. The entrants were then encouraged to share through Facebook. Their friends, and more importantly the parents of their friends (who were potentially in the market for orthodontics services), would then see the mention on Facebook.

Results

Based on a number of contests that Ingenuity has run with multiple orthodontists, the approach has proven quite effective. While there’s no guarantee of new patients with each contest, in a field such as orthodontics a single new referral is worth quite a lot. And social media contests can greatly amplify exposure to new potential clients. In the case of Cosmopolitan Orthodontics, you can see the amplification effect as follows: 50 entries generated 100 shares, which yielded more than 1,500 clicks and 800 voters!

Comments

This is a great example of how a small independent business can tap into the power of social media to drive meaningful results. I’m certain that there are other service industries (that have historically relied on word of mouth or traditional channels such as Yellow Pages) that can utilize contests as a great entry into social media.

While any business with a high lifetime customer value can benefit from this type of promotion, you need to be prepared to potentially invest in running more than one before seeing that new business convert.

“Help Me Launch” Contest

This contest was geared to small business owners.

Objectives

Social Media Examiner’s own Mike Stelzner wanted to create awareness for the release of his book Launch.

How it Was Done

A contest was held on the book’s Facebook Page where people were asked to submit a photo with the words “Help Me Launch.” Entries were voted on by the public and then judged to select the winner. The grand prize was 3 hours of private consultation with the author.

The Facebook Page started with virtually no existing fan base (50 Likes), so building awareness for the contest required tapping into other channels. Social media was the primary means of promoting the contest, with regular Twitter messages to a base of approximately 70,000 followers across two accounts (80,000+ subscribers). The contest was also featured on the Social Media Examiner Facebook Page (40,000+ fans), in email newsletters and to an audience at a webinar event.

Results

Approximately 80 entries were received and these entries generated 4,475 voters. At the conclusion of the contest, the page had 1,300 Likes, an increase of 2600%! This provided a much larger fan base with which to share information and to begin an engaging dialogue about the principles outlined in the book.

Comments

I realize 80 entries may not sound like a large number to some of you, but bear in mind that this contest was targeted at a niche audience of small business owners and entrepreneurs rather than the mainstream consumer. Had Stelzner chosen to give away an iPad, he might have generated more entries, but might not have connected with the audience he wanted.

When setting up the contest, Stelzner was clear about his objectives (it wasn’t just about sheer numbers, but about reaching the right people). However, it’s worth noting that attention was paid to both driving entries and driving votes as it became clear that voters also represented a valuable group who were engaging with the page.

Hopefully these examples help frame a variety of ways that social media contests can generate ROI beyond what you may currently be considering.

What do you think? How do you measure ROI on your social media endeavors? What do you feel are the important metrics to track when it comes to contests and promotions? Leave your comments in the box below.

In this article we’ll cover the two major players—Foursquare and Facebook Places—and see how they stack up.

What are location-based services?

Location-based services allow users to connect with others based on their current locations. In most cases, people use their smartphones (iPhone, Android, Blackberry) to “check in” to businesses like restaurants, bars and stores they visit. These locations are then broadcasted to their online friends.

Many of these services also have a gaming component, allowing members to compete against one another or to collect rewards (like online badges) for their activities.

Foursquare offers badges that are unlocked as an incentive for checking in at local venues and events.

So why do marketers love location-based tools so much?

A few reasons:

#1: Free word of mouth

Because each check-in is broadcasted to a user’s friends, there’s natural word of mouth advertising that occurs through the site. Marketers’ theory is that if users see their friends check in to a location, they may be more likely to visit.

#2: Reviews

Most location-based tools allow users to write reviews of the places they frequent. These reviews are then shared with other users who check in to those locations. This can have a real impact (either positive or negative) for businesses hoping to be discovered by new customers.

#3: Specials

Sites like Foursquare and Facebook Places allow businesses to run specials that are unlocked by users who check in to their locations. For example, a pizza place could create a special that gives free breadsticks to customers who check in five times. These specials encourage frequency, first-time visits and competition among customers. More on this later.

Now let’s compare the two major players—Facebook Places and Foursquare.

Users

In 2010, Foursquare announced that it had more than 6.5 million members worldwide.

Facebook, on the other hand, said that as of October 2010 (just two months after its launch), more than 30 million had tried its Places service.

It’s unclear how many of these users can be considered active versus simply setting up accounts. But based on download volumes, it’s clear that Facebook made a big splash upon its launch.

Activity

In 2010, Foursquare claimed that its users checked in to locations more than 380 million times.

Facebook has not yet released its Places check-in numbers.

But Business Insider (2010) recently ran a one-month comparison between the two services, looking at the difference in total check-ins at several popular NYC restaurants.

Business Insider found that five times as many users checked in on Foursquare than Facebook during a one-month period at a NYC restaurant.

Foursquare overwhelmingly dominated in the experiment, with 5x (or more) the number of check-ins in some cases. It’s unclear if these numbers apply to all businesses in all cities, but Foursquare users appear to be far more active than Facebook Places users.

Deal Options

As mentioned, both Foursquare and Facebook Places encourage businesses to create specials that reward users for checking in to their locations. But options for these specials vary slightly per site.

For example, as part of its “Charity Deals,” Facebook lets businesses donate a certain amount of money per check-in. This type of special is not currently available through Foursquare.

Subway recently offered a Charity Deal on Facebook, offering $.10 per check-in to promote heart health.

Using Facebook Places Deals, businesses can choose to offer one of four types of deals and can set restrictions on date, time and availability of the deal.

Foursquare, on the other hand, allows businesses to run what’s known as “Mayor” specials. These deals reward the individual who has checked in the most to a location.

Foursquare is also in the midst of expanding their check-in deal options for businesses to better compete with Facebook, so you’ll begin to see a lot of overlap between the two.

Reach

One of Facebook’s key advantages over Foursquare is its large, built-in network of users (600 million+ of them!). And because Facebook launched long before Foursquare, many of its users had time to build up their own networks of friends.

In fact, the average Facebook user is connected to 130 friends. This means that on average, each Facebook Places check-in has the potential to be seen by 130 of a user’s Facebook friends.

Foursquare users appear to have much smaller networks, and thus a much smaller reach. The site doesn’t appear to disclose data about the size of its average user’s network. But anecdotally, it’s hard to find many users with more than 50 friends, meaning that each check-in may be seen by just a small group of users.

Quality of Reach

The majority of Facebook users are connected to their intimate social networks—friends, family, co-workers, etc.—while many Foursquare users are connected to those they’ve never met (e.g., Twitter followers).

From a word-of-mouth standpoint, it can therefore be argued that Facebook check-ins are more valuable than those spread strictly through Foursquare. It’s the difference between telling your best friend where you’re hanging out versus telling a complete stranger. Your best friends are going to be far more likely to trust your recommendations.

Facebook check-ins are published on the user's wall and unlike Foursquare, Facebook Places allows users to tag a friend in their check-in.

Foursquare offers the option to post check-ins to users' Facebook walls and Twitter feeds.

Please note that Foursquare users are able to share their locations to Facebook and Twitter, but very few choose to do so.

Tips

Let’s look at five tips on how you can begin capitalizing on one or both location-based services:

#1: Set goals

Looking to increase foot traffic? Want to see your regulars visiting more often? Before you launch your first Foursquare or Places special, be sure you’ve defined what you’re trying to accomplish. This will help you to better analyze your results and adjust your campaigns as needed.

#2: Educate yourself

As with most social media tactics, it’s important that you first understand the tools from a user’s perspective. Doing so will give you better insight into how and why your customers are using these tools, and may give you insight into what your competition is doing.

#3: Learn from others

Sometimes the best ideas can come from the least expected places. So before launching into a large location-based campaign, make sure you know what others are doing out there. Take a look at your competition, obviously. But also venture outside of your industry. You never know when you’re going to stumble across the idea that kicks your brain into high gear.

#4: Be creative

The biggest mistake you could make in launching a special would be to do something that’s already being done. Find something that’s going to make people turn their heads. Something that makes them say “Huh?” And, most importantly, something they’re going to tell their friends about. If you’re not excited about your deal, they probably won’t be either.

#5: Promote, promote, promote

Once you’ve launched a promotion through Foursquare, Places or any other location-based network, make sure you get the word out. These technologies are still relatively new for most consumers, so there’s a certain level of education that has to go into making these things successful. So upon launching, make sure you have in-store signage to promote your special. Send out an email blast with information on how to use the sites. And if your special is unique enough, send information out to local bloggers and media.

There’s no cost associated with setting up a profile on Facebook Places or Foursquare, so if you’re looking to launch a location-based promotion, there’s no harm in giving both a try to see which service generates more buzz and drives traffic to your business. Just consider the above tips before you launch your campaign.

Have you been thinking about launching a location-based campaign? What results have you had? Leave your comments in the box below.

Look no further.  This article will provide an in-depth look at Facebook’s promotional rules.

The Tricky Rules

Running a contest on Facebook is a powerful way to generate buzz, increase engagement, boost your fan count and build your email list. But Facebook has rigorous rules governing what campaigns you can and cannot administer and promote on their platform.

For several years, the contest rules were fairly loose and Facebook users and page admins could pretty much administer whatever campaigns they wished within the confines of Facebook’s general terms (now called Statement of Rights and Responsibilities).

However, in 2009, Facebook severely tightened up their promotion guidelines, causing a great deal of confusion even two years later. To quote Susan Getgood on her post about Facebook contests:

Bottom line, Facebook doesn’t want any explicit involvement in ANY of your contests. It’s all about liability, and the Facebook promo guidelines are designed to distance the social network from whatever companies and bloggers do with their contests.

Every day, vast numbers of page admins—from small businesses to major brands—administer promotions that violate Facebook’s rules.  They are running the risk of having their pages disabled completely. I strongly recommend all Facebook page admins become very familiar with how to safely run contests within the rules.

This post will tell you what you need to know.

What does Facebook mean by a “promotion”?

To quote Facebook:

These Promotions Guidelines govern your communication about or administration of any sweepstakes, contest, competition or other similar offering (each, a “promotion”) on Facebook.

A “sweepstakes” is a promotion that includes a prize and a winner selected on the basis of chance.

A “contest” or “competition” is a promotion that includes a prize and a winner determined on the basis of skill (i.e., through judging based on specific criteria).

So, anytime you run a campaign on Facebook where you wish to select a winner, that would fall into the terms of Facebook’s Promotions Guidelines.

Facebook also says:

You will not administer a promotion through Facebook, except through an application on the Facebook Platform. Administration includes operation of any element of the promotion, such as collecting entries, conducting a drawing, judging entries, or notifying winners.

Simply said: You can’t use Facebook’s features for your promotions!

A promotion where you select winners is not to be confused with you simply promoting and marketing your business—that’s exactly the reason Facebook (fan) pages were designed!

What are Facebook’s contest rules in plain English?

On November 6, 2009, Facebook changed their Promotions Guidelines significantly. Prior to this date, it was pretty much a free-for-all. With the changed rules, Facebook basically went from one extreme to the other.

In order to administer any kind of contest, you had to (1) get written approval from Facebook at least seven days prior to running your campaign, (2) have an account rep at Facebook and meet the minimum ad spend of $10,000 per month and (3) use a third-party app on the Facebook platform.

Then, on November 29, 2010, Facebook loosened up a bit and changed rules.  So, the good news is:

1. You no longer need written permission from Facebook in order to run a contest.
2. You no longer need an account rep at Facebook, nor do you need to meet the minimum monthly ad spend.
3. BUT you still must administer ALL contests on Facebook via a third-party app ON the Facebook platform.

That’s right! You MUST use an app to conduct a contest or risk having Facebook come down on you. Unless of course you’re a big time advertiser with Facebook.

What apps are best for running contests?

One of the most widely used apps is Wildfire app. Their interface is fairly easy to use and their fees are competitive.

Wildfire app

You can choose among 10 different types of promotions, including photo, video, quiz, trivia and more:

Wildfire app promotion choices

Wildfire app promotion choices

See Wildfire’s FAQ to decide among running a sweepstakes, contest or coupon/giveaway campaign.

A wide variety of third-party apps offer promotion services that meet Facebook’s rules. Check out any of the following:

• Fanappz
• Vitrue
• BuddyMedia
• Votigo
• ContextOptional
• BulbStorm
• NorthSocial
• Momentus Media
• Friend2Friend
• Strutta

• UPDATE March 5, 2011: Two additional promotions app services to check out include Offerpop and PromoBoxx.
• UPDATE March 14, 2011: Another promotions app to add to this list is Freepromos (currently 400k monthly active users!). Free for Pages with fewer than 5,000 fans. $100 for Pages with 5,000-50,000. White label also available.

See also this related post: Top 75 Apps for Enhancing Your Facebook Page. Plus, see Facebook’s list of preferred developers here.

Can I select a fan at random to give away a prize?

No. This constitutes a drawing where winners get selected. You’re effectively using Facebook to “collect entries.” Plus, you cannot contact winners inside Facebook at all—via email, chat or posting on their wall—nor can you post winners on your page wall.

What you can do, for example, is select a fan at random and feature him or her in your page photo. Or possibly feature chosen fan(s) on a custom tab (link). As long as you don’t have other fans vote or submit nominations, etc.

Toys R Us Featured Fan!

Toys ”R” Us currently runs a fun Featured Fan promotion. Keep in mind the submission and voting is, of course, part of an official sanctioned promotion being run on a third-party app.

Toys "R" Us Featured Photo Facebook contest. Note the link to terms and conditions.

Can I have my fans enter a contest by uploading photos?

Not if you ask fans to upload photos directly to Facebook. Photos, or any content, submitted for entry into a contest can only be done via a third-party app on the Facebook platform. The Facebook app doesn’t count.

From the Promotions Guidelines:

You cannot: Condition entry in the promotion upon a user providing content on Facebook, such as posting on a wall of a page, uploading a photo, or posting a status update.

You can: Use a third-party application to condition entry to the promotion upon a user providing content to the application. For example, you may administer a photo contest whereby a user uploads a photo to a third-party application to enter the contest.

I searched extensively for a Flickr Facebook app, for example, that might be a good workaround for running a contest, but came up blank.

If you do a Google search for “Facebook photo contest,” unfortunately, you’ll see there are scores of Facebook pages running photo contests that do not adhere to Facebook’s terms.

Here’s a fun example of a photo contest—that does comply with Facebook’s Promotions Guidelines—by the United States Potato Board:

Twice Baked, Twice as Smart recipe photo contest

Can I give away a prize to anyone who likes my page?

You CAN restrict your promotion only to entrants who have first liked your page, as long as the promotion is administered through a third-party app on a separate canvas page (now a link, formerly a tab).

Plus, good news! You CAN provide a giveaway and even collect names and emails from fans and visitors to your page. I highly recommend you add a custom contact form to your page. Use the sign-up box code from your own email management system, or create your own form code using something like JotForm, reviewed here.

You can use a piece of “fan only” reveal code to give away a coupon code or special gift to everyone who likes your page. Check out Guy Kawasaki‘s Facebook page for his forthcoming book, Enchantment, where he gives away a free ebook just for liking his page.

Guy Kawasaki—Enchantment Facebook page

See the Facebook page of 1-800-Flowers for a discount code, only revealed to users who like their page.

How can I tell if a contest on Facebook adheres to the guidelines?

Promotions on Facebook need to have clearly set-out terms that are visible right on the canvas page. For example, here’s the Twice Baked, Twice as Smart photo contest rules:

Contest rules for Twice Baked, Twice as Smart

Can I promote a contest on my Facebook page that I run on my blog?

Yes. As long as there’s no requirement to do anything on Facebook; e.g., like your page, comment, upload content, etc. You can simply post a link on your page to the contest. And, to be fully safe, I would also include this disclosure, “This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook.”

Is it worth the risk to run a contest without a third-party app?

No, the risks are far too great, in my opinion.  Yes, Facebook does not have the resources to monitor every single promotion on the platform. But, you never know when you might catch the attention of their legal department.

In addition to our other remedies, we may remove any materials relating to the promotion or disable your page, application or account if we determine in our sole discretion that you violate any of our policies.

Facebook is serious about taking action if they discover a violation. My friend, Jonathan Rivera, had an experience with his real estate referral Facebook page where there was an inadvertent use of a trademark. Despite Rivera’s becoming compliant, Facebook shut down the very popular page with tens of thousands of fans. Fortunately, the issue got resolved in a fairly timely manner and Jonathan got his page back intact… under a new name.

So, just take note that any violation of Facebook’s terms is obviously a risk. (Along with directly administering contests and promotions on your Facebook page, two other common violations are setting up more than one personal profile and/or setting up a personal profile in the name of a business.)

Hopefully the fog around contests on Facebook has lifted for you now! All you need to remember is anytime you wish to run any kind of promotion where you select a winner, you’ll have to use a third-party application on the Facebook platform. I’ll be writing a follow-up post covering the specifics of what makes a successful contest. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, what questions do you have about contests? Have you run any successful promotions yourself? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

UPDATE March 5, 2011: It may be that you can run a contest using Facebook‘s new iFrames feature and remain in compliance with the Promotions Guidelines. Essentially, you are creating your own app in order to use iFrames and you host the content on your own site. I’m waiting to hear back from Facebook with the definitive answer and will keep you posted. Also, please note that my use of the term “third party app” includes an app you create yourself if you have the know-how/resources to do so – you basically become the “third party” in this case.

Until they invited customers to post product reviews on their website. Only then did they discover the problem was the bottle – it was too tall to fit in refrigerator doors! They redesigned the bottle and their sales immediately increased.

That’s user-generated content directly leading to an increase in sales. That’s the power of social media marketing.

Are you still sitting on the sidelines when it comes to social media marketing because you know you can’t control the conversations about your company, your products and your services? And because you have no idea how to respond to negative comments?

“Give up control and drop the ego!” says Liana Evans in her book, Social Media Marketing: Strategies for Engaging in Facebook, Twitter & Other Social Media. Compared to traditional marketing, “social media is a totally different ballgame. The people in these social media communities talk about you whenever they want, however they want, and to whomever they want. The conversation goes on with or without you!”

So wouldn’t it be better to actively participate in these conversations? “Consumer-generated content is having wide-ranging effects on both the perception of a company and whether a purchase is eventually made,” writes Evans. “Can your company afford not to participate in the conversation?”

She uses comic books as an example of the difference between traditional Internet advertising and social media marketing. Comic book collectors all over the world began communicating with each other online in the 1990s. They used online bulletin board systems (BBS) and CompuServe and AOL forums.

But when comic book publishers jumped into online advertising, they just created banner ads and other flashy promotional ads. Even if they placed these ads in forums, forum members just ignored them.

Why didn’t the comic book publishers just ask an employee to join the forums and start responding to other members’ messages? “This would have garnered a lot more engagement and interest than a banner advertisement ever could have,” writes Evans.

This Is Not Your Father’s Marketing

And that’s the difference between traditional marketing and social media marketing. In traditional marketing, you throw out a message where it will be seen by millions of people who couldn’t care less.

In social media marketing, you find the people who are already talking about your message and join the conversation. It’s really that simple and that complicated.

It’s complicated because you have to know your audience so well that you know exactly what social media platforms they use regularly. Is it Facebook? Twitter? YouTube? Digg?

Why create a Facebook fan page if your audience never uses Facebook? Why open a Twitter account if they never use Twitter?

As Evans repeatedly emphasizes in her book, understanding your audience is the first step in creating a social media marketing strategy. Here are the rest of the steps:

#2: Define your goals.

#3: Choose your metrics.

#4: Open accounts on the platforms your audience uses.

#5: Listen to what your audience is saying on those platforms.

#6: Respond to their concerns.

#7: Provide content that they value.

#8: Measure the results.

#9: Repeat steps 1 through 8.

Yes, I said “repeat steps 1 through 8.” Because just as real-life communities change, social media communities also change. “If you had included Twitter in your marketing plan in early 2007,” writes Evans, “you would have been very disappointed by its results.”

Follow Your Audience Wherever They Go

Suppose one of the top “influencers” in one online community leaves and joins another community? And what if your audience follows that person? You’d better be prepared to join a brand new platform.

So you must constantly monitor your audience’s participation in various social media communities and learn how to use new platforms.

Yes, it’s a lot of work, but as Zappos and Southwest Airlines have discovered, creating and managing customer relationships using social media can be very profitable. Even Dell overcame its “Dell Hell” reputation using social media.

And Evans strongly recommends that you do all this work in-house. Don’t outsource anything, including blogging and tweeting. “Social media sites can propel a person’s experience with your company across the globe within seconds. Not being active in these social media sites can be detrimental to your company, whether that customer’s experience was good or bad,” she writes.

She even includes tips on how to select a company that develops social media marketing campaigns for its clients.  Ask all prospective consultants the following questions:

• Will you create our website entirely in Flash? (Flash isn’t search-engine friendly.)
• Do you focus on one or two strategies to the exclusion of all others?
• Do you define success as the number of Facebook fans or Twitter followers?
• Do you recommend following a “laundry list” of tactics because everyone else is using them?

If their answer to all those questions is “Yes,” keep looking.

This book will NOT tell you how to create a Facebook fan page, customize your Twitter background or upload a video to YouTube. It doesn’t tell you how to measure anything, how to use Google Analytics or how to SEO your website.

Instead, Evans takes you by the hand and leads you through the entire process of creating and managing a social media marketing campaign. No tech stuff, just solid, practical advice from a professional who “has been active full-time in search marketing and social media since 1999,” according to her bio on the back cover.

The book has 45 chapters, all of which are fewer than 10 pages long. And every chapter has several informative subheadings, so you can quickly zero in on the information you need when you need to know it. Or you can read the entire book from front to back.

If you already know a lot about social media marketing, this book isn’t for you. It’s for those of you who are still standing by the social media pool, wondering if you should jump in.

Come on in, the water’s fine!

Social Media Examiner gives this book a 4-star rating.

Recently, my company managed to inspire 60 such influencers to participate in our event, called The Influencer Project, and they even took it upon themselves to help spread the word.

People like Social Media Examiner’s own Michael Stelzner, Guy Kawasaki, Robert Scoble, Gary Vaynerchuk, David Meerman Scott, and others all signed on. We were grateful beyond belief.

Some of the brightest minds in social media spoke at The Influencer Project.

Why’d they come on board? And how’d we do it?

First Things First: No-one Cares About Your Brand

It takes creativity to inspire others.

Many of us who are new to the social media space want influencers to “get behind” our brands, products and special events.

We think we can just reach out to them, and if we have a great thing going on, they’ll naturally want to endorse what we’re doing.

It’s an honest mistake, usually, but it does backfire—or at least, it won’t get you the results you’re looking for.

Of course, if you have deep reserves of cash, you may be able to afford paying handsomely for a big name to review your product—although, to be sure, that can get into very tricky ethical territory and is a delicate issue.

But for the rest of us—for those who don’t have tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend on “influencer outreach”—we have to be a little more creative.

In fact, we have to get rid of the very idea of “trying” to “get” a social media influencer to “back” our brand.

Instead, we need to create innovative ways to inspire not only well-known influencers, but also large numbers of participants, to join a project, a cause, an initiative. And that takes a different kind of thinking—one that I’ll explain below.

How to Inspire a Social Media Influencer

The thing is, no-one wants to be your salesperson—unless they are, of course, being paid to sell your products. But everyone—social media influencers included—wants to be part of something that’s bigger than them, that’s creative and that brings new ideas into the world.

So, without any further ado, here are my 5 creative ways for inspiring web celebrities to come on board with what you’re doing:

#1: Don’t Ask for an Endorsement

Don’t ask them to endorse a product or site. Instead, create a project—related to, but independent of, your brand—that they can get behind. Think about the “Yes We Can” video that will.i.am created for Barack Obama’s campaign.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsV2O4fCgjk

Regardless of your political leaning, there’s a lesson here. Yes, will.i.am’s a celebrity. And yes, Hollywood is known for bringing other celebrities on board political campaigns. But that’s not the fundamental point. The point is that there was a cause, an initiative, a project that people wanted to get behind, that inspired them to act—and they did.

This is what you need. You want to create something that many people will join. A cause, a vision.

#2: Make it “Memetic”

Memetic means that it has a meme-like quality. Well, what’s a meme, you ask? In its simplest definition, a meme is an idea that spreads from person to person, one that’s so “catchy” that people almost can’t help but to spread it.

“Yes We Can” was a meme.

A meme is bigger than a brand. Just Do It is a meme. No Fear is a meme. The Red Bull Flugtag is a meme. It’s something that people can identify with, make their own and share with others. If you’re simply trying to strong-arm a social media influencer into singing your brand’s praises, good luck. But if you have a project that has memetic quality, then you’re on the right track.

#3: But Make it Values-Driven, too

A meme unto itself isn’t enough. Sure, you could get lots of YouTube video views by trying to replicate something like a funny hamster, but you won’t be enrolling people in a vision.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8Kyi0WNg40

In other words, you won’t be providing extraordinary value—to the end user or to the influencer.

On the other hand, if your project provides overwhelming value and is memetic, then you’re not only sure to inspire people, you’ll also be making the world a better place.

It makes business sense, too. Simply trying to make a campaign “go viral” for the sake of going viral is far riskier than creating a project that offers tremendous benefit. In our case, we provided users with more than 60 helpful tips that they could use to increase their digital influence in 60 minutes. They heard from luminaries they respected.

Everyone won. There was no attempt to manipulate people to act on our behalf for a hollow goal. It was values-driven all the way around.

#4: Reduce the Barriers to Entry

There are two things all of us have an increasingly short supply of: time and attention. Unless you’re Apple or Microsoft and you’re offering a blogger a sneak peek at your new product, asking someone to write a whole blog post about you—or, for example, do an hour-long webinar to your not-quite-robust-enough-yet list of subscribers—is going to make getting a “yes” a lot harder.

In our case, we only asked for 60 seconds of the speaker’s time. The proposition was often met with enthusiasm. “Sure, I’d love to do a 60-second interview!” It was fun, short and interesting. There’s no way we would have gotten 60 busy people to do full-hour interviews each right off the bat. So we made it radically easy for them to say “yes.”

But that’s only part of the picture: we also made it incredibly easy for the audience to say “yes.” For only an hour of their time, we were going to give them 60 tips from 60 experts. Not a bad deal. And that’s exactly what we heard from participants: it was completely manageable and reasonable to take one hour to learn from so many people.

So don’t just reduce the barriers for those you want to headline your campaign, also make it easy for your intended audience to participate.

#5: Be Creative, but Err on the Side of Accessibility

When describing his company’s financial practices, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff said that while his software-as-a-service platform may have been revolutionary, his bookkeeping methods were as traditional as they get.

Similarly, I believe that it’s important to let your creativity and imagination run wild, and to create something new—for example, to take a conventional idea (say, marketing conference) and challenge it (the shortest marketing conference ever). But I see far too many campaigns that feature weird, wild and avant-garde stuff without making it accessible to the end users.

The “60-in-60″ idea was new. But it wasn’t “43-in-68.” We didn’t ask them to speak for 10 seconds. We didn’t request that they sing, dance or rap. In other words, it all made sense—both to them and to the audience. “60 tips” is still an attractive value proposition, and participants felt that they truly benefited from the advice.

But the other side of completely inaccessible and avant-garde is utter banality. Think of the typical webinar, conference or jargon-ridden special report. Sure, those can be great as ongoing lead-generation sources, but not as a way to get noticed and build digital influence rapidly.

So even though I’d recommend erring on the side of accessibility, I still want to challenge and encourage you to come up with something innovative.

Now the Ball’s in Your Court

Hopefully, these tips have given your creative faculties some juice to explore what you can do to inspire social media influencers—and your target audience—to join your cause.

What do you think? Have you had success recruiting influencers? Put your comments in the box below.

Social media is no more a one-off playground for brands than television advertising, direct mail campaigns or customer relationship management programs. It’s serious business and should be treated as such.

The following question then becomes relevant: “How do we think about social media strategically?” The good news is that it’s not that difficult, provided your planning team has an understanding of two things and a healthy grounding in another.

The two essential knowledge bases you’ll need are an understanding of the social media tools available (from blogs and social networks to wikis and beyond) and the philosophical foundations to be successful in social media (think share, not sell). The healthy grounding should be in the 5 essential pillars of a social media campaign.

This is the point in the post where most social media marketers would throw out a standard list of five things to guide your social media thinking that generally parallels the marketing mix variables you’re used to. Product, place, price, promotions and public relations can be a starting point. You can even define your product, your target audience, your competition, environmental factors and your metrics or measures of success.

But to take full advantage of your social media efforts and drive buzz, business or both, read on.

Social Media Examiner’s
5 Essential Pillars of a Social Media Campaign:

1. Connectivity

If you aren’t connected to your consumers, and conversely they are not connected to you, then social media success is impossible.

Whether you have customer service chat available on your website, a support forum, commenting enabled on the company blog or even a company presence on Twitter, you must have a connecting point for your customers to find you. Social media is about conversations. Conversations cannot be had if you’re nowhere to be found.

Being connected doesn’t just mean you throw up a form on your website, though. It means you have a person or persons monitoring conversations about your brand online, answering questions, even if the questions weren’t posed directly to them. Connectivity means not just being plugged in, but also being turned on.

2. Generosity

If you’ve read anything about social media on- or offline, you’ve probably heard the phrase, “Give to Get.”

Online social media is an almost identical environment to a social gathering offline. People gravitate to individuals, groups or conversations they feel they can get the most out of. By providing something of value to your customers, or potential customers, in your online activities, you earn trust. The more trust you earn, the more influence you’ll have.

Generosity requires a cultural shift, however, in the way most marketers think. You cannot be generous to others if your top priority is selling more stuff. That is selfish.

You have to approach the online consumer with the attitude that you have something of value to provide, free of charge. In exchange for that, you hope to build and strengthen relationships with others. Those relationships, over time, will equal a much higher return on investment than one-off, one-time customers.

3. Honesty

Have you ever heard a politician or professional athlete respond to a reporter’s question with, “No comment?” It appears as if they’re hiding something, doesn’t it?

If what you’re doing in social media is building relationships, you can’t build them without honesty.

If your product is made with a lesser material than your competitor’s, don’t hide it. Either get better material or find a positive reason it’s made that way (e.g., it’s cheaper, thus saves consumers money).

If the company makes a mistake and has to recall a product, simply say, “We made a mistake. We’re very sorry.” As long as you mean it, people will believe you.

And you don’t have to suddenly treat confidential company information with open records policies, either. The public is a lot smarter than you think. When sensitive information is in question, simply say, “I’m sorry. That’s information we don’t talk about outside the company for competitive reasons.” That answer is honest. “No comment?” Not so much.

4. Personality

If you had to boil successful communication in the social media realm down to an essence, it would be to be human. Consumers flocked to social networking sites and blogs to get away from one-way blasted marketing messages hurled at them all day.

By visiting only the websites they want to visit and finding like-minded consumers to share recommendations and conversations with in social networks, the public has created a new environment for communications—one that requires you, even as a company, to be human.

To put it simply, people want to talk to another human being when making buying decisions, discussing products and services and discovering new products and services. You cannot have a conversation with a logo, a building or a company. You have conversations with human beings.

5. Imagination

Social media is much like a social event. But after a while, social events or conversations with the same groups of people become stale and predictable. The conversations that last are those where at least one person always has something new to say, a never-ending stream of stories or jokes.

Approach your planning as if you’re the person who will keep the life in the party. Develop an editorial calendar for website or blog content and brainstorm a contest, promotion or game for customers and fans to engage with on a monthly or quarterly basis. Remember that you’re building relationships, but, like dating or even marriage, you have to be creative to keep the relationship fresh and invigorating.

Your Turn

If you think through the 5 Essential Pillars of a Social Media Campaign, you’ll at least be well on your way to success in social media. But these are meant to be guidelines, not rules. What other topics or areas have you found equally as important to social media success? How are you using your imagination to keep campaigns fresh and alive? Inspire your fellow readers with a comment.

“Photo Credit: ‘Supreme Court Pillars‘ (CC) by David Paul Ohmer on Flickr.”