karmaback

Research Brief: how to write “engaging” Social Posts on Facebook and Twitter

According to eMarketer.com’s recent study, having a picture and a clear call to action (e.g. request for likes or comments) leads to the most engaging social posts: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1008677.  My own research by running social campaigns for 6 Fanpages simultaneously has led me to agree with this, except for 1 additional comment: Keep it short!

Keeping your posts short, and varying the time of their postings (possibly using my companies own tool: postontime.com) is the way to go!  Shorter posts are more likely to get read, and short posts with calls to action (“Like this if…”).

For more tips on making your social campaigns work, check out my white paper here.

Harlan

Top Tips for Social Network Marketing!

My top tips for Social Network Marketing are very simple: * full details and white-paper here

  1. Acquire lots of fans.  (try a Karmaback Sweepstakes to help!)
  2. Engage fans with REGULAR and ENGAGING posts.
  3. Convert fans into customers by making them unique/special offers (only for fans).

It is nice when the marketing industry in general agrees with you!  Check out “Involver’s” top tips as well (note: matches mine very closely):
http://blog.involver.com/2011/10/07/social-media-marketing-tips-to-i

  1. Post Regularly
  2. Time your Posts.

So, how can you do 1 and 2 VERY easily?
For Facebook and Twitter try my new tool: http://postontime.com

Marketers want to better measure Social

Ever wanted to know exactly what Social Network Marketing is doing for you?  You are not alone.
According to eMarketer.com measuring social effectiveness is of paramount concern.

My question is what do you want to measure?

Respond to me here or by email to harlan@karmaback.com

Karmaback builds tools to improve Social Marketing effectivness… tell me what you want us to measure, and if we’re not doing it already, we will be!

PostOnTime lets you post to Facebook and Twitter while you are away.

If you are “into” social network marketing like I am, then you already know that posting to your Facebook and Twitter page on a consistent (and constant) basis is vital to keeping your Fans and Followers active and growing.  A daily or twice daily post is not at all too much.  However, knowing and doing are 2 different things.  My company, Karmaback, has just launched PostOnTime  to make the doing part of posting to Facebook and Twitter on a regular basis MUCH easier.  You can now schedule posts for any time of the day, even when you are away from your computer.  You can even post on weekends, evenings, and when you are travelling or on vacation!  It is free for 30-days, and as low as $4.99/mo after that, so give it a try!  It’s awesome!

http://karmaback.com/tw_postontime/

90% of Sweepstakes entrants are interested in buying the product.

According to http://www.sweepstakestoday.com, 90% of Sweepstakes entrants are interested in buying the product.
Source:  http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/9/prweb8786147.htm

That means that if you get 1000 entries to your sweepstakes, 900 of them are actually considering BUYING your product.

Those numbers are hard to deny… why aren’t you running branded sweepstakes on your Facebook, Twitter, and Web pages?  

Karmaback makes it extremely easy to setup a branded and fully hosted sweepstakes AND we now guarantee it:  http://karmaback.com/platform/signup_success_guarantee/ 

Referral Marketing and League of Legends

First, if you love PC games… or even just like them… you HAVE to try this Free downloadable game: League of Legends.  It is really an amazing game, and it’s free.  How easy is that.  Best of all, if you use MY track-able link: http://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4e80eb3ecc45f219796048  then, I get bonuses for you joining and could even earn the right to “design my own character”!

What was that?  A perfect example of referral marketing in action.  In truth, I do love the free game league of legends, and I do want you to try the game!  Here is that link again in case you missed it: http://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4e80eb3ecc45f219796048 .   Why do I care?  Because IF people use my referral link (which is easily track-able and associated with my account), THEN I get stuff.  Some of it REALLY cool!  

Referral Marketing works.  It worked “before” Facebook.  It works “after” Facebook.  

Before Facebook:  People got paid to get their friends to buy stuff (Tupperware Party), and they could get a discount if they brought a friend, and they could get real hard cash if they referred somebody to somebody else…  

During Facebook: Everybody got crazy about this “Free” system that seemed to do referrals for free… but there was a cost: it was called SPAM.  And Facebook couldn’t afford to pay that cost any more.

Now After Facebook (because they virtually removed the SPAM capabilities of viral apps): Referral systems STILL work.

If you are NOT giving rewards for referrals for your business… I ask, why not?  Isn’t that cheaper than advertising?

Karmaback has actually built a FULLY track-able Online Referral system…. but we shut down the project once our Sweepstakes began to take off in popularity.

Any interest in us restarting the referral SaaS tool?

Marketing is WAY harder than Engineering

I’ve written on this topic before, but I just thought it would be worth a mention again.  I do think Marketing is harder/more challenging than Engineering, and I’m starting to think I understand why…

  1. Marketers have to figure out “what” to build… Engineers figure out how to build it.
  2. Marketers have to choose what to say, and when to say it… Engineers get to stay quiet in public.
  3. Marketers have to figure out why something isn’t selling well… Engineers get to work on the next thing.
  4. Marketers stress over business success and deadlines… Engineers fret over deadlines (sometimes).
  5. Marketers micro-optimize the un-measurable… Engineers optimize the measurable.
  6. Marketers have to deal with shifts in culture, business, and fashion… Engineers work with laws of physics.
Having been (and loved being) an Engineer, I can also make 1 more statement that I think perhaps most interesting of all….
Engineers get to see, daily, their progress and fruits of labor… they are appreciated for it.
Marketers often can’t see the effects of their work at all… and many question a Marketers value.
So, pat a Marketing guy on the back next time you see one… believe me, they are likely stressing more than you are!

ALWAYS provide an “Easy Button” for your customers.

It doesn’t matter what you sell, who you sell to, or how much you are charging.  There should always be an “easy” button for your customers.  In fact, the most basic, core functionality of  your product should be so easy, it barely even needs a button.  How do you do that, you ask?  Well, simple.  First, find the core functionality of your product.  Knowing that can be a huge help!  Second, make sure that the user can see (and use) the core functionality of your product in 1-click (or less).  If you don’t have a software product, let them see/use your product with no clicks… right out of the box… no assembly required.

At Karmaback, we recently improved our entire setup flow to require just 2 clicks.  Yah it’s not 1 yet.. (we’re working on it!)… but its a huge improvement.  Companies can now setup a fully functional, completely operational, fully hosted Sweepstakes for Facebook or Twitter or Web or all three, in 2 clicks.  Nice. 
How did we do it?  Easy Default Settings.  Simplified setup process… and most of all, the “Save” button.  (see screenshot below)
Setting up a Viral and Social Sweepsakes to run in your Facebook Fanpage or Twitter Feed couldn’t be more easier that it is now!  Well maybe a tiny bit easier… we want to get it down to 1 Click… we’re working on that.  Maybe we’ll call the 1 button “Easy”.  

Why do Social Marketing?

Social Marketing is more than just a buzzword.  If you are not doing “basic” Social Marketing, you are missing out in a revolution of internet marketing; and failing to market where your customers live.

This video explains (statistically) why the hype about Social Marketing is important… I’ll summarize it: BECAUSE ALMOST EVERYONE IS THERE!  e.g. almost your entire market is spending more and more of their time on social networks!!!

Got it?  Here are 3 levels of Social Marketing you should be considering:

  1. Just be there!  Make a Facebook Fanpage and a Twitter account.  Link Facebook to Twitter, so when you post to Facebook, it posts to Twitter automatically.  And write 1 post per week about something new at your company.
  2. Grow your page by getting more fans, likes, and followers.  Simply run some sweepstakes (using Karmaback of course), or ads, to encourage your fans/followers to join!
  3. Reward your Fans/Followers for following you.. and encourage them to talk to you on Social networks.  You can reward them by doing give-aways (using Karmaback of course), and by offering them special discounts/offers.
Now stop procrastinating and make a Facebook Fanpage or Twitter Account.  It’s super easy!

Karmaback has been upgrading its servers in advance of the roll-out of our new upgraded Social Sweepstakes systems from companies.  Watch the video to learn just how many TPS (transactions per second) we can handle! *hint=it’s a lot!*

Special thanks to the Disqus team for showing us the way to MASSIVE scale!

Also, check out the video to get a sneak preview of the many new customizations you can do with our sweepstakes system.