Keep reading to discover nine ways you can build loyal fans who’ll love your business.

In a recently published infographic, Moontoast illustrates a Facebook fan’s journey from a “Potential Fan” all the way to a “Super Fan.” The image below shows a fan’s progression.

Moontoast shows how a fan's level of interest with a brand can move from light to heavy engagement.

Moontoast says Super Fans are Facebook users who have given you access to their data via their Facebook profile, purchased from you and also encouraged another fan to purchase from you as well. There’s no doubt we all want an abundance of Super Fans!

So how do you move a Potential Fan all the way up the ranks to Super Fan?

For starters, it takes time. Facebook success rarely happens overnight and unless you are a huge brand like Zappos or Target, patience, persistence, and hustle are all required to create a successful Facebook page.

There are also specific actions you can take to create a thriving Facebook page full of Super Fans.

The following nine core strategies will help you streamline your Facebook activity and turn your Facebook page into a success story.

#1: Give your page a human touch

The most successful companies on Facebook are those that step out from behind their logo and let the people behind the brand represent their Facebook page. The goal is to communicate with your fans as though you were talking to your friends, and let your personality come through in each post.

One of the ways to do this is to step away from your niche once in a while and show your personal side through entertaining posts and photos. Change things up a bit and share details about your experiences and everyday life.

Have you taken a fun trip recently? Post some pictures of your vacation to let your fans see a different side of you. Or maybe you see something funny while you’re out and about—share it! Snap a photo of it and post it to your wall with a fun caption.

Guy Kawasaki, author of Enchantment, does this on a regular basis and his fans love it. The reason we are intrigued with Guy’s posts is because we get to see the real side of him, not just the author/expert side of Guy.

When you visit Guy's Facebook page, you'll often find posts and photos that give you a peek at Guy's entertaining journeys outside of work.

#2: Become a content machine

Always make sure that your content educates, entertains and empowers your fans to keep them engaged and coming back for more. The key to a successful content strategy is to consistently create new content and mix up your media often.

For example, some of your fans might respond better to video than text, while others might be drawn to the images in your posts. To make sure you’re attracting the attention of your diverse group of fans, post your content in a variety of ways.

iPhone Life Magazine does a great job of always showing fun images with each text post. Images and videos are the top two types of content that Facebook users gravitate to the most.

One simple way to do this is mix up your blog posts by posting written blogs, video blogs and audio posts. Regularly drive traffic from your Facebook page to your blog to introduce your fans to a variety of content.

#3: Cultivate engagement with two-way dialogue

Imagine this: You haven’t talked to your good friend in a while, so you call her up. When she answers the phone you say, “Hi! How’ve you been?” But before your friend can answer, you hang up the phone. That would be odd, right?

Well, essentially that’s what you are doing each time you post a Facebook update and then instantly move on to a new task before waiting for a few fan responses so you can engage in a conversation.

Make sure you never miss an opportunity to thank a fan for reaching out. Replying to your fans' posts shows them you really do care about what they have to say.

Real success on Facebook happens when you mirror real-life situations. Don’t “post and ditch;”  instead, stay around a few minutes to get involved in the conversation. True engagement happens in the “back and forth.”

#4: Create consistent calls to action

Facebook gives brands the optimal opportunity to create genuine relationships with their prospects and customers. But it’s also a great platform for moving your fans to action. One of the best ways to move a Potential Fan to a Super Fan is to start out with simple calls to action.

To do this, start out by posting valuable content, such as interesting articles and videos related to your niche, and accompany this content with simple calls to action such as “click this” or “watch this.” The valuable content will show your fans that you’re an authority and consistently post good stuff.

Also, consider offering discounts and specials or ask your fans to sign up for your newsletter. These are all low-investment calls to action that will help you build trust and affinity over time.

Zappos does a great job of mixing up their calls to action on their Facebook page. Some include value-added content as you can see above with the call to "CLICK PLAY" to participate in the live fashion Q&A video. Others are more promotional, such as "Click here to check out our new summer flip flops!"

#5: Make word-of-mouth advocacy easy

Studies have shown that social media users tend to trust their friends and peers more than they trust brands. It makes sense. If you were looking to try out a new restaurant, would you rather get a recommendation from a friend who just had a great meal or the restaurant that’s promoting its latest special?

Word of mouth matters, especially on Facebook. To get your fans talking about you, the key is to make it easy to spread the word.

One great way to do this is to create a contest or promotion that rewards fans for spreading the word. By using a platform such as Wildfire, you can track and reward the fans who invite their friends to join your contest.

This sweepstakes by Kudzu promises extra chances to win for every friend you encourage to enter the contest.

#6: Encourage fan-to-fan conversations

Enhance your fans’ experience by creating a community that encourages your fans to interact with each other. One surefire way to do this is to spotlight your fans. When you create opportunities such as “fan of the week” or recognize top contributors, you are giving your fans an opportunity to get to know each other.

Social Media Examiner regularly highlights a fan of the week on their Facebook page and always makes a point to link to their fans’ websites to give them free exposure.

This generous gesture also allows fans to get to know the fan of the week even better.

#7: Focus on smart branding

You have multiple opportunities when it comes to branding your Facebook page. One option is to make your Facebook page an extension of your website to spark familiarity when your existing customers visit your page. Another option is to make it different from your own website so your fans experience a sense of exclusivity when they become a fan of your Facebook community.

Crafty Mumma's Facebook page is a great example of smart branding.

No matter if you want to create familiarity or a sense of exclusivity, it’s important to make your page dynamic and interesting so it will stand out from the rest. One way to do this is to create custom tabs that showcase your programs, products and services and tie in the look and feel of your brand. The key is to make it obvious who you are and what you’re about. Short videos that tell your fans about your business, mission statements and easily identifiable logos and images are great additions to a branded custom tab.

#8: Be deliberate and manage expectations

One of the most important questions to ask as you create your Facebook marketing plan is, “What do we want to achieve with our Facebook page and overall marketing on Facebook?” Often your Facebook vision will be closely aligned with your company’s vision.

For example, let’s say you own a local running shoe store. Your vision for your retail store may be to sell the most high-tech, top-of-the-line running shoes and running gear to all the avid runners in your local community.

As an extension of your company vision, your vision on Facebook may be to create a community of like-minded people who openly share their running stories and give each other support and advice. Over time your Facebook page becomes the ultimate hub for avid runners and you begin to attract runners from cities beyond your local community and you start to sell your top-of-the-line running shoes to people all over the world. Setting a clear vision can lead to lucrative opportunities.

When you create a vision for your Facebook efforts, your actions are more deliberate and have purpose and your fans clearly understand what your page has to offer.

If you’re just starting out developing your Facebook mission, one great place to start is with your fans’ expectations. What can your fans expect when they become a fan of your page? One optimal place to display expectations is on a custom welcome tab so all of your new fans will know what to expect before they start engaging on your wall. The following example is from the Facebook page of Pam Hendrickson Consulting.

Notice how Pam tells her fans exactly what they can expect when they join her Facebook community. This is the first step in creating your Facebook vision.

#9: Monitor, measure, and track

With the rise of social media, your customers are now all social customers. They love to share, chat, post, Like and comment, and when they have something important to say (good, bad or worse), they are quick to share it on their social networks. Their comments run the gamut from the best raves to the worst rants. This is why monitoring is so essential to social media marketing.

Social Media Examiner often gets great raves on their Facebook page. They monitor their page closely so they can respond to all comments.

In addition to listening to your fans, you should also do a reality check to find out whether all of your social media activities are worth your time and effort. To make sure you’re on track, first you want to set your key performance indicators.

To figure these out, ask these three questions:

1. What do I want to achieve?
2. What does success look like? What are the indicators of my success?
3. How often will I check in to evaluate my progress?

Once you answer these questions, make sure you have surefire methods in place that enable you to consistently track your Facebook marketing progress. The tools you choose will largely depend on the level of measuring and tracking your company needs. Most likely you’ll want to use a few different tools to get a clear picture of the overall activity on your Facebook page.

If you’re new to social media analytics or are looking for a few new ideas to add to your tracking arsenal, consider these areas for monitoring and tracking.

Here are a few areas you might consider monitoring:

• The names of key people in your company
• Your company name
• All brand names associated with your company
• Product and service names
• Competitor names
• Industry- or niche-specific keywords

Here are a few areas you might consider measuring and tracking:

• Engagement
• Brand awareness
• Influence
• Sentiment
• New Likes/unsubscribes
• Click activity
• Financial return
• Conversion rates

Now it’s your turn! Applying these nine strategies will help you sort through the many layers of Facebook marketing. If you’ve tested any of these strategies already or plan to do so in the near future, leave a comment in the box below and let us know.

Practically every other online retailer – and Logos is 100% online – blasted customers with their post-Thanksgiving email promotions.

But this software company solely relied on social media, from testing its ideas to launching the promotion to letting the resulting word of mouth do the work for them.

In response, Logos generated $300,000 in sales in those few days – three times what it brought in during the same period the year before. Not only did it add to the bottom line, but also Logos significantly expanded its fans, followers and customer connections to support future efforts.

“Without social marketing, it [the promotion] would have gone nowhere because we didn’t spread the word ourselves,” explained Dan Pritchett, VP marketing and business development at Logos. “We wanted to give a reward to people who are socially connected in our community.”

Testing the Waters

Since opening in 1992, Logos Research Systems, Inc. has grown from a couple of programmers in a basement into the largest developer of Bible software and a worldwide leader in multilingual electronic publishing.

With 220 employees, the Bellingham, WA company partners with approximately 130 publishers to make over 12,000 electronic Bible study resources available to customers in more than 160 countries in a dozen languages. Typical customers are pastors and anyone with an interest in Bible study.

In recent years, Logos has run Black Friday promotions, but as of four days before Thanksgiving 2010, the company had not planned anything. With some of his marketing team already off for the holiday, Pritchett tested the beginnings of an idea using Facebook.

His simple post asked what customers wanted to see on sale for the biggest shopping weekend of the year. Customers responded enthusiastically, with 116 weighing in about what they wanted.

What do customers want to buy on sale? Just ask.

“I don’t think I had figured out what we were doing at the time. That first post was to help me get some ideas,” Pritchett said.

With that, the idea came. Pritchett didn’t want to publish low prices on the web that might live online forever, leaving customers to wonder when they might dip that low again. Instead, the promotion he conceived was designed to give customers deals on what they really wanted, rather than on what Logos wanted them to buy.

Here’s how the deals worked:

1. Logos asked customers to email in the three titles they most wished were on sale.
2. Sales reps then looked up the special prices for those items and replied personally to each customer.
3. Customers had just 48 hours to decide to buy any or all of the products.

“You tell me what you want to buy and I’ll give you great deal on it,” Pritchett said. “Let’s have some excitement on Black Friday, a virtual door buster.”

One Hour – From Concept to Launch

While the sale was unique in itself, the promotion was equally impressive. From concept to launch, Pritchett spent just one hour on the promotion.

He simply blogged about the sale, and followed with a post each on Facebook, Twitter and the company’s own forum. That was it. No emailing the customer base.

A single blog post, and one post each on Facebook, Twitter and the company's forum, launched the promotion.

From there, social media’s snowball effect took over.

“Originally we were considering emailing our entire customer list, but soon realized that the word of mouth had already spread far enough on our deal that we couldn’t handle any more business!” he said.

Fans began spreading the word to friends on Facebook and retweeting the link to the blog post. Some of those same customers posted and tweeted again after they purchased their sale items. Two bloggers created spinoff posts about the sale.

Logos further encouraged word of mouth by including hyperlinked Twitter and Facebook icons on the electronic receipt emailed to customers. Through Twitter and Facebook application programming interfaces (APIs), customers could click those icons to populate tweets and posts automatically with news that the customer had just purchased from Logos.

However, the biggest traffic took place on the software company’s own social site – its forum – home of 42,000 registered customers. The thread generated 241 comments and 13,182 views.

“Our users picked up the message and created their own thread on the forums. We didn’t even start it – they did,” Pritchett said.

Customers started their own thread about the sale, generating more than 13,000 views.

Staffing Up

The response well exceeded the company’s expectations.

“Immediately after posting the offer we began to receive email requests, and by the time our staff came into work around 6 am, we had hundreds of requests for pricing already in the inbox,” Pritchett said.

Logos beefed up the sales team to respond to emails as quickly as possible. Easing the launch of the sale, lower price points were already in the sales database, ready for reps to extend to customers when asked. Nearly all products had some discount associated with them, though at varying percentage reductions.

Yet, Logos didn’t see any direct costs for the promotion. Those scheduled to work later in the week simply changed shifts to that weekend. And of course, getting the word out required no investment.

“It was pretty magical,” Pritchett said. “There really were no other costs associated with it. No printing, no postage, no mailing.”

2,000 Products Sold

In total, the team handled about 2,000 emails, generating sales of 2,000 Logos Bible Software titles.

“Sales for the same period last year were $200,000 lower and we had a better economy last year – and our Christmas special was already available during a portion of last years’ period,” Pritchett said.

But the benefits go beyond the weekend’s sales. Through the promotion, Logos added hundreds of new fans and followers to its social media community. Plus, the company now has a record of what specific customers want but didn’t yet buy, and their most current contact information, which will empower future direct sales efforts. The company also plans to leverage the feedback from Facebook about what products customers wanted most.

“In one weekend the sales staff was able to generate a list of the top three favorite titles of 2,000 of our best customers!” Pritchett said. “For all the people who weren’t able to buy, we now have a great prospecting list, and we also have a better idea of the preferences of some of our most engaged consumers.”

What do you think? How have you used social media to learn what your customers want? Can you cut out traditional outbound channels like email marketing and rely solely on interactive means such as social media? Leave your comments in the box below.

Andy is also author of the book Word of Mouth Marketing and founder of GasPedal, a group that advises big brands such as TiVo, Dell, Sprint and Kimberly-Clark.

During this interview, you’ll gain insight into how large corporations are employing social media and you’ll also gain Andy’s insight into word-of-mouth marketing.

Word of Mouth Marketing & Social Media

Mike: Let’s go ahead and start with the first question.  What exactly is word of mouth marketing, and how, if at all, is it any different than social media marketing?

Andy: Word of mouth marketing is the art of getting people to fall in love with your brand. Getting them to be so thrilled and so turned on by what you do that they’ve got to tell people how awesome you are.

It’s a series of tactical things that I teach in my book. It’s a philosophy that says if we earn the respect and the recommendation of our customers, they’ll do all of our advertising for free.

Mike: Because they become advocates for you, right?

Andy: Because they love you. This is the Southwest and the Starbucks and the Zappos. When people love a brand, they love to talk about those brands.

Social media is a subset of that. It is one tool you can use to make it easier for your fans to talk about you.

These days, we’re really hot on social media. Everyone is saying, “Twitter, Twitter, Twitter.” We love the stuff, but we’re starting to let the tool take over the purpose.

Mike: Just so I understand what you’re saying, word-of-mouth marketing is about getting your customers, followers, or fans—whatever you want to call them—to love your brand so much that they’re going to ultimately advocate for it and spread the word on your behalf, so you don’t have to invest a lot of money.

And social media marketing is just a subset of that, which is leveraging these social media tools to do the exact same thing. Is that what I hear you saying?

Andy: Exactly. Social media is a great tool. I’m a huge user and fan, but it only applies to the online half of word of mouth. Even if you look at the online half, there are probably more recommendations happening by email than Twitter or all the other social media put together.

Word of Mouth Marketing Story

Mike: That transitions really well into my next question.  How has word of mouth marketing evolved, in your opinion, over the last decade? What do you think the catalysts have been?

Andy: We used to think word of mouth was luck. You did a good campaign, you did a good press release and it got buzzed—this magical word buzzed—and everyone was talking about you.

What’s happened is we figured out that it isn’t luck. It’s a planned series of things that you do to get people talking. It’s this idea that word-of-mouth marketing is similar to any other kind of marketing.

I guess what’s new is the “marketing” part. “Word of mouth” is old. “Word of mouth marketing” is new.

Then we layered social media on that. Now we’ve got this big tool to take word of mouth that might have been one-to-one or one-to-two, and suddenly it’s one-to-1,000 or one-to-50,000.

Mike: What did a typical word of mouth campaign look like a decade ago?

Andy: I don’t think the word campaign would have been there. It wasn’t word of mouth marketing yet. We didn’t understand it’s something that you can earn, that you can accelerate or that you can enhance. It just sort of happened.

Mike: The medium was probably email back then, right?

Andy: It was then, and probably is still today, more offline than anything.

If a friend tells you about a restaurant, you tell another friend about the restaurant. You go there for lunch with the office. Now everybody knows about it. Somebody emails a friend, somebody else posts a review, somebody else tweets it and somebody else puts it on Facebook. Then you read it on Facebook and you tell your spouse. Then you tell your coworkers.

The conversations weave in and out online and offline. None of these tools are the sole channel for one particular conversation. Your recommendations are flowing in and out of whatever format makes the most sense.

Word of Mouth Marketing Steps

Mike: What might be some of the word of mouth marketing steps at a very basic level?

Andy: I like to talk about the five Ts. If you go to my blog, there’s a download where you can get all of these written up, which is the framework for any kind of word-of-mouth campaign.

1. Finding the Talkers

Who is going to spread the word about you? They might be fans, customers, just people thrilled by who you or are maybe neighbors. There are all those people who could speak for you.

2. Giving Them a Topic

What are they going to say? That’s unique to the product and the talker who’s spreading the message.

Customers are saying something different than fans. Fans are saying something different than particular user groups. You have to find the topic that people love to repeat, that’s easy to repeat, and that travels.

3. Tools

Tools are all these things we use to accelerate and extend the scale of the conversation.

Mike: Like Twitter, for example.

Andy: Everything social media falls in that tool bucket. But it’s also something like the stickers that come with every Apple product. It’s classic offline word of mouth. Everybody shares those stickers.

The tool can be a T-shirt. If your customers really want to put your logo all over their chest and run around and advertise you for free, they should have a T-shirt!

The tools are all the stuff of this. The tools are things that real estate agents love to do—the refrigerator magnets and the calendars and the rulers and all the other doodads. It’s the stuff that lets the conversation travel.

4. Taking Part

Once people start talking about you, you need to respond, participate and become part of that conversation.

If you don’t join the conversation, either the conversation ends or it goes negative because people think you’re a snob.

5. Tracking

How do you measure this conversation, how do you measure the results and how do you drive through to your business objectives?

Mike: That’s some brilliant simplicity to describe the components of what makes word-of-mouth marketing work.

Andy’s Story

At what point in your career or in the last few years did you decide to focus on social media? What was the turning point for you that made you decide to focus on that?

Andy: There are two. Of the two brands that are part of my company, one is the GasPedal side, but we teach word-of-mouth marketing. It’s the word-of-mouth marketing company.

Then on the SocialMedia.org side, we run the Social Media Business Council.

I think what happened is about 3 years ago, we realized that social media is something that anyone can get up and do. If you’re a small business or an individual, it has that simplicity.

But when you’re a big company, it gets so much harder. It requires significant philosophical, behavioral and operational changes. It’s just not the same inside a major enterprise.

We started this group to be the home base and the peer group for people at big companies who are using social media and want to learn how to adopt it and learn from each other and share. That’s where this started.

Mike: Was this just about when Twitter was exploding in popularity or was it actually even a little bit before then?

Andy: Twitter had just begun. We started in the summer of ’08.

Mike: I think it was really about 18 months ago when Twitter started exploding in a massive way. Then Facebook, of course, just a few months behind, started exploding as well. It seems like you were a bit ahead of the curve.

Did you get there because you started to hear some of your clients on the GasPedal side saying, “We’re starting to hear a lot from our customers about this social media stuff, and we need to get onboard” or had you seen this coming for a while?

Andy: It’s interesting. Our name used to be the “Blog Council” because blogs were the only thing. Social media hadn’t really become part of the mix yet.

We were at Dell headquarters and Dell was doing what they then called a “buzz marketing” conference. Dell had been inviting other companies over to learn how they ran their blogging, social media and conversations department.

I was at lunch with some folks from Dell, Proctor & Gamble, Microsoft and Intuit. We had been sharing our unique challenges with this stuff. We had been talking to each other informally, ending up with “Why don’t we start a group that lets us formalize the sharing, scale it up, and bring a whole lot of companies together?” That was the formation.

Social Media in Business

Mike: That’s incredible. I’m imagining social media has grown into a very popular tool for a lot of these huge corporations now.  Do you agree with that?

Andy: I think every company is using it. What’s most interesting is that the marketing side is such a small part of where social media adds value. It’s really becoming transformative across the entire enterprise. HR is using it, customer service is using it, research is using it and internal communications is using it.

Mike: Do you find it’s often starting from marketing and then spreading to other parts of the organization?

Andy: I would say with 50% of the companies, it starts in PR, which actually makes a lot of sense when you think about PR being much more structured for conversation. You build relationships with reporters, you tell stories and you build long-term dialogues. It’s about words, whereas marketing is about numbers and campaigns.

Mike: You’ve spoken to a lot of big brands when it comes to social media. What are some of the important challenges today that many of these big brands are facing and how are you suggesting they deal with those challenges?

Andy: Probably the biggest challenge is what we call “Guffman,” as in the movie Waiting for Guffman. Everyone is waiting for this special person to show up and be in charge.

In a big company, every department gets it. They know what to do and they want to start using it, but then, “Is the Twitter account for the PR department or should HR use it or are the marketing guys going to use it? Is our Facebook page going to be for campaigns for marketing or customer service?”

You get all of these people moving around in the company trying to figure out who runs it and owns it.

Mike: How do you recommend they deal with this issue?

Andy: It really depends on the nature of the business. A lot of really big companies have a center for excellence, which is a centralized council of folks from all different departments who become the governing or guiding voice of social media across the enterprise.

I think, less formally, it’s about locking into wins. When it’s working over here in this department, you do more of that. They tell the department next to them and they tell the department next to them. It’s a series of small growing successes.

Dark Side of Social Media

Mike: Let’s talk about the dark side of social media. There’s a lot of hype around the phrase social media. Are there certain misconceptions, do you think, among businesses? Do they think it’s the Holy Grail and can solve all their problems? Does it fall short in any particular areas? What are the downsides to social media, in your opinion?

Andy: People think it’s an advertising technique and that it’s about campaigns. If your ad guys take over your social media voice, you’re in trouble. It’s not a customer acquisition tool like, “What’s our ROI?” It’s a conversation tool.

If you start jamming what are really TV ads onto YouTube and calling it social media, it’s not going to work. Equally important, you’re going to miss the point.

Search has made us completely addicted to the numbers. We know to the 800th decimal point our search engine lead generation costs every second of every day. But we don’t know if someone posted an Amazon review about our product that is going to sit right next to the Buy button forever.

Thinking about social media as advertising is really where the danger is.

Social Media Outsourcing

Mike: Let’s talk about outsourcing. Do you think big businesses can outsource their social media activities? If so, what kind of transparency needs to be in place? What are your thoughts on outsourcing social media?

Andy: It’s hard to do a lot of it outsourced. There’s a reason why our group is a ‘brands only’ group. We can talk about these things without the agencies in the room.

The mechanics, you can outsource.

Mike: The Twitter background or something like that.

Andy: Yes, setting it up and doing the creative, some of the heavy lifting on the execution, the analytics and all of that kind of stuff.

But what we’re talking about is fundamentally your customer voice, your brand voice, and your personality. The whole point of this is to connect with people and talk to people. How do you outsource being friends with someone?

And if you think you went bad with all of the tech support that went overseas where everyone just tried to save a buck and it was a disaster for any brand who did it, imagine when your brand is being represented by somebody who’s only in it as long as their agency has the account.

There are exceptions. There are great agencies and PR firms that have long-standing customer relationships with their clients, where the agency is speaking with the customer voice and has been doing it for years and knows how to do it.

Mike: Do you think there needs to be any kind of transparency or do you think that’s not necessary when it comes to this kind of outsourcing if a big company does choose to outsource some aspects of this?

Andy: I am the single biggest advocate and maniac when it comes to absolute transparency all of the time. You’ll see me running all around the country pounding the podiums screaming about ethics because this is what it all comes down to. You can’t build a trust-based relationship that starts with lying to somebody about who you are.

Mike: How would you go about doing this then? If big brands are outsourcing certain aspects—let’s say they have a bunch of Twitter accounts and one of them is maintained by an outsourced agency—how would they disclose that kind of detail?

Andy: It’s surprisingly simple. You say, “Hey, I’m working at so-and-so helping out with branding.”

Everyone thinks this transparency thing is hard. It’s really easy. “Hi, I’m on Brand Company’s team over at the such-and-such agency. How can I help?”

It’s a phrase that goes from total lack of disclosure to complete transparency.

Social Media Success Story

Mike: Let’s talk about a company that’s doing social media marketing. Is there any one particular standout story or company you think is doing it really well? Who are they and what are they doing right?

Andy: I think Starbucks is doing a fantastic job right now.

Mike: What do you think they’re doing right? They’ve been getting an enormous amount of press regarding their Facebook content. I’m trying to figure out if it’s because they’re a big brand. Is it the “Ford” effect? Ford was one of the first big brands to get on Twitter, thus they got all the focus of the press. Is it the same deal with Starbucks and Facebook, or is there something more going on here?

Andy: Starbucks uses social media like it’s supposed to be used. They have a big team of smart people who are out there every day talking to folks. Their followers are earned because they love the brand, they love the products and they love the people they talk to.

When you become a friend of Starbucks on Facebook or you follow them on Twitter and start having conversations, it’s really awesome. That begets more which begets more and that’s how this stuff happens.

Mike: Do you think part of the reason they’re so successful is because they already had a loyal, crazed fan base to begin with, and Facebook and Twitter just allowed them to come together?

Andy: Yes, this goes back to the sort of framework for word of mouth.

People love Starbucks, but it’s hard to have six people in Seattle talk to 150,000 friends every day until you add the social media tools. Suddenly, you can have relationships with lots of people—meaningful relationships—and you can do it with science.

It’s interesting. They presented a case study at our last conference. They did a new Facebook page and Twitter accounts for Frappuccino®, which is a very new brand, separate from the Starbucks Facebook and Twitter pages. Millions of people went from being fans of Starbucks to fans of Frappuccino. That kind of transition doesn’t happen unless people were enjoying the first relationship and they found it beneficial and meaningful, or they wouldn’t have bothered to friend a sub-product.

Mike: Do you know whether Starbucks is actually encouraging people to participate by putting on the cups “Join us on Facebook” or that kind of stuff?

Andy: I don’t know.

Mike: It may just be that their brand was so great to begin with, and then they applied a really great strategy to it that has exploded. It certainly seems as though it follows the five Ts that you’re talking about.

Are there any B2B brands you can think of that are doing social media well?

Andy: There are a lot of good brands. Some of the big ones, some of the pure-plays are Intel, Cisco, SAP and a lot of those tech brands. I forget the exact number, but SAP is picking up something like 20,000 new members of their communities per month. That’s a lot of people.

Future of Social Media

Mike: Let’s look to the future. Where do you see this whole social media thing going in the next couple of years? Do you think the words social media are going to be obsolete? Do you think there’s some new stuff coming on the horizon?

Andy: I think it will get normal. We’ll stop thinking of it as “media.” That’s a bad word. It implies it’s something you buy to get your message out.

Mike: It will be another channel as ubiquitous as email or the fax machine.

Andy: Yes.

Mike: For those businesses that are just now getting started with social media, what would be the single piece of advice you would give them, even if they are a mid-sized or small corporation?

Andy: It’s the same advice for everybody, which is to just do the little stuff. Pick one thing you can do—whether it’s a Facebook page or a Twitter account or one particular product—and keep it really simple. Don’t spend any money. You’ll find it’s surprisingly easy and you’ll have some nice overall results. All of the politics and the fears and the objections that are getting in the way, they all go away because you can prove that it worked.

More Word of Mouth Marketing

Mike: Andy, this has been a really exciting and interesting conversation. If folks want to learn more about you and your organization, where might they go?

Andy: If you want to learn word of mouth marketing, go to GasPedal and check out our Word of Mouth Supergenius conference, our blogs, newsletters and the like.

If you want to learn about social media for big business, go to SocialMedia.org.

Mike: Andy, I really appreciate you taking some time out of your schedule today and I wish you the best.

Andy: Thanks for having me.

Listen to the full interview below to hear more from Andy.

What do you think about this interview?  Do you agree with Andy? Leave your comments in the box below.

However, many businesses are starting to use social media as a tool for listening and providing customer service.

When a crisis or emergency erupts, the power of social media can be an amazing tool for businesses.  A crisis can include anything from a simple website outage to negative publicity.  This article will reveal how to use social media during a crisis and provide many examples you can model.

Why Your Reputation in Social Media Is Important

Why should a company be concerned about social media’s influence on their image?  The answer is simple: Social media allows consumer opinions to spread far and wide quickly.  Word of mouth and social search are two powerful reasons to manage your social media reputation.

Word of mouth

Imagine you’re a restaurant owner, and you recognize a customer walking into your establishment as someone who has a wide influence in your community, such as a newspaper writer.  You would want him to have the best experience possible so if he chooses to write about your restaurant, those who read the review would be impressed and possibly come in to have a wonderful experience as well.

Social media allows anyone to be a major influence in the community.  Any customer who walks through your door could possibly have hundreds or even thousands of followers in your region, or if not, his friends might.  Word of mouth marketing can reach a worldwide audience through social media; thus, one bad experience could be retold to the masses.

Social search

Google’s recent implementation of social media in their search results brings real-time conversation to the front page.  Twitter users in particular are fond of hashtags, and just adding a hashtag in front of a search for a name brand can reveal what is currently being talked about in relation to that brand.

Take Toyota for instance.  Adding the hashtag in front of the name reveals the following in the first page of search results.

Now, let’s look at what happens if you do the same for Ford.

You can see why social search could be very influential on a searcher’s perception of a brand.

Managing a Crisis Through Social Media

Now that you can see why social media is important to a company’s reputation, let’s look at how large and small businesses have used the following social networks to respond to their customers.

Twitter

Although Twitter communications happen in 140 character updates, these tweets are easily searchable by Google, Twitter, and the many Twitter applications available.  Businesses can be followed on Twitter by anyone – customers, potential customers, and competitors.

Therefore, it is extremely important that companies monitor Twitter mentions of their brands, products, and services in order to respond swiftly to any negative circumstances.   Best-practice examples of social media response through Twitter include:

@Toyota

By now, everyone has heard about the major recalls by Toyota due to defective “sticky” gas pedals in many of their vehicle models.  Toyota has been monitoring and responding to their customers’ questions on the recall via Twitter.

@Codero

Codero, a web hosting company, experienced a power outage that affected their servers, leaving their clients’ websites down. Codero responded directly to their clients through via Twitter throughout the next several days.  Although there were many complaints about websites being down, there were positive referrals to their followers by clients who were satisfied by the customer service they received.

YouTube

YouTube is the most popular video search engine, and no doubt the best (and fastest) way to send out a public announcement when your company needs to make a statement about an ongoing situation.

LexusVehicles

Lexus Group President and General Manager Mike Templin recorded a personal message on YouTube for their customers (see below) on the LexusVehicles channel, assuring them that Lexus is dedicated to building high-quality vehicles that surpass expectations and, in response to Consumer Reports’ review of the rollover risk of the GX 460 SUV, are voluntarily recalling this model to upgrade and improve the vehicle’s stability system.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M1Pj0KCjAs

CoderoTV

Codero Chief Operating Officer Ryan Elledge uploaded a video on CoderoTV the morning of their power outage, giving a preliminary explanation of the situation (see below).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=b78G5T9WfzA

One important thing to note when using YouTube for crisis management announcements is that unless you set your options to moderate comments, YouTube users can add comments to videos that are available for public consumption as well.

In both of the above examples, the company has an opportunity to include positive responses (when possible) to any negative comments made on their videos.

Facebook

If your company has a Facebook fan page, it will be another social media outlet to focus on supplying excellent customer response.  Depending on your page settings, fans can post comments to your page which be seen by fans and non-fans alike, so it is important to monitor your Facebook page and update it as needed with the latest news and responses to customer comments.

Toyota

Toyota’s Facebook page, having almost 100,000 fans, is constantly updated by both Toyota and fans with both praise and complaints alike.

Because of the volume of comments, Toyota does not seem to comment on each status, but that doesn’t mean they’re not responding at all – they simply may be making more comprehensive responses behind the scenes via private emails to the fans.  It’s good to see the public responses, assuring fans that someone is actively getting into the discussions, rather than just posting news updates.

Codero

Codero’s Facebook page did not receive as many responses from clients affected by the power outage as their Twitter accounts; however, they not only made an update directly on Facebook about the outage, but also directed customers to watch real-time discussion of the situation on their Twitter accounts and linked to blog posts which contained the YouTube video update.

They also updated their fan page to update customers to assure them that they were working on a comprehensive analysis of what went wrong and ways they would prevent such an outage from affecting their customers in the future.

Best Practices

So what are some best practices you can take away from these examples?

• Social media is public.  Your fans and followers have the right to make negative comments – it’s your company’s job to turn those negative comments around and defend yourself to change it from a negative to a positive situation.
• Monitor your business on social media and respond to tweets, mentions, and comments on your company’s profiles in a timely manner.  Social media is real-time, so the faster you respond, the better your customer service will look.
• If possible, suggest that customers contact you privately to send their email address or phone number for more in-depth discussion.
• On Twitter, you must follow the customer so she can direct message you.
• On Facebook fan pages, you must share a personal profile the customer can send a message to.
• On YouTube, customers can visit your company’s channel and send a message.
• Remember that aside from private messaging, anyone can read conversations between you and your customer.  If you provide thorough, great customer service, it can go a long way in impressing your customers, increasing their likelihood of giving you positive referrals.  And for other followers who are watching the situation unfold, it could be a great first impression that leads to a potential customer.

Your Experiences With Business Use of Social Media for Crisis Management

Do you own a business and have you used social media to respond to customers in times of crisis or in the face of negative publicity?  Or are you a customer who has had a positive or negative customer service experience from a business on social media? Please share your thoughts and best practices in the comment box below.

Here are two current studies that show how the integration of social media marketing is changing the way marketers connect and engage with their audiences—online and offline.

#1:  Marketers Ditch Silo Campaigns and Report Social Media as “Critical for Success” (Alterian)

As digital and social media marketing mature, the demand for greater integration is evident. Marketers are quickly realizing that operating in a one-way marketing tunnel makes success impossible in this social media–saturated world.

Listening first and then communicating and engaging have become “musts” for any successful social media campaign. Results of a 2009 survey by Alterian indicate that social media is becoming an integral part of most companies’ marketing campaigns:

• 50%+ direct at least “a fair amount” of effort toward integrating social media marketing into their overall strategy
• 66% will be investing in social media marketing in 2010
• 40% of the 66% plan to shift more than a fifth of their traditional direct marketing budget toward funding their social media marketing activities

eMarketer’s report on the findings of the Alterian study pointed out, “[Social Media] is yet another channel to be incorporated into an integrated communication strategy, rather than addressed on its own. And it can provide unique insights into the consumers who can now use earned media to build brands alongside marketers.”

As with earlier reports in 2009, marketers still feel a need for education and training with social media, as more than one-third reported only being “minimally prepared.”  The good news is 37% planned to invest in training in this area.  In addition to training, the survey also found that 36% are investing in social media monitoring and analysis tools.

It will be interesting to see how marketers begin to use not only Facebook and Twitter to reach their audiences, but also start to take even greater advantage of podcasting, message boards, forums, video sharing and the many other social media tools consumers are using today.

#2:  Online Forum Users Transcend Online and Offline Worlds, Becoming Influential Brand Advocates (Synovate/PostRelease)

Word-of-mouth has always been vital in building loyal customers. Friends—whether online or offline—and family are trusted sources when making purchasing decisions. As mentioned in my previous article, a recent study from PostRelease showed how online forum users are enthusiastic brand advocates and are taking their online activities to the streets, telling others about products and services they recommend. Not only are they recommending brands to their family and friends, they are also more likely to publish blogs and organize meet-ups, compared to non-forum users.

The PostRelease study focuses on consumer’s organization offline. Consumers are merging their online and offline influences, and this could be a huge opportunity for any savvy marketer who sees these new possibilities.

Marketers are becoming acutely aware of the need to integrate new media activities into their existing marketing plans and consumers are demanding greater social media engagement from the brands they follow most.  This could be a win-win situation if carried out strategically.

Now it’s your turn.  How have you seen the growing integration of social media marketing change your company’s marketing strategy? As social media matures, what are some ways you see this integration taking shape? We want to hear from you, so start talking!

#1: Social Media Engagement Big Challenge for Many Businesses (Deloitte)

Survey results from a recent Deloitte study (2009 Tribalization of Business Study), point to some key challenges that organizations are facing as they move toward integrating online communities into their social media strategy.

Here are the top three areas respondents identified as obstacles:

• Keeping visitors engaged:  30%
• Getting people to join:  24%
• Encouraging return visits to the online community:  21%

In addition, the majority of respondents agreed that the following are key business outcomes for their online communities:

• Increase word-of-mouth:  38%
• Increase customer loyalty:  34%
• Increase brand awareness:  30%

#2: Social Media Used as a Discovery Tool by 18% of Online Population (Nielson)

With the recent integration of Twitter and Facebook with Microsoft’s Bing, there is no doubt that social media has become a top player in the world of search.  A recent study by Nielson Company examined the relationship between social media and user search options.  The report compared social sites to search engines and portals like Yahoo! Of those surveyed, 18% reported social media sites as core to finding new information.

Jon Gibs, VP Media Analytics, reports, “While still a smaller percentage than those who use search engines or portals like Yahoo! or MSN, it is a significant figure. And as social media usage continues to increase I can only expect this figure to grow.”

It is speculated that the amount of information on the web, especially on social sites, contributes to the increase in content discovery on these sites.  The report goes into much more detail and is worth a read.

#3: Businesses Slow to Incorporate Social Media Into Practice

Although numerous recent reports show how businesses plan to incorporate social media into their 2010 marketing mix, a recent study by BIA/Kelsey reports that many small- to medium-sized businesses are slow to incorporate the strategies into their plans today.

When asked about their current social media experiences, results showed many businesses are slow to adopt social media:

• Have used Twitter to market in the last 12 months:  9%
• Have used social sites in the past 12 months:  23%
• Have incorporated video into their website: 16%

In addition, according to the survey results, adoption of social media by small- and medium-sized business is more prevalent among younger businesses:

• Businesses 3 years or younger: 16% report using Twitter
• Businesses 11+ years:  2% report using Twitter

What are your thoughts? What effect, if any, do the constant changes and shifts in social media have on your overall marketing strategy?