Make the Most of Facebook "Like" Button

Everything you need to know to make the most of the new Facebook “Like” Button ...

You may have noticed a new Facebook ‘Like’ button popping up on many sites (e.g. CNN, ABC, Fandango, etc.) across the web, but what does this actually mean for your business? We’ve broken this new feature (the so-called Facebook “Open Graph”) down to it’s essentials so you can understand exactly what it means for your company and how to make the most of it in your marketing strategy.

In case you haven’t come across the new Facebook ‘Like’ buttons, see the example below. Any company can now display these Facebook ‘Like’ buttons on their website; read on to find out what they mean for you and how you can implement them.

Fact # 1: The ‘Like’ button enables you to build your Facebook fans

When someone clicks the ‘Like’ button on a website they essentially become a ‘Fan’ of that website. What this means is that the owner of this website can publish Facebook status updates to these consumers just as they currently do to fans of their Facebook Fan Page. So adding the ‘Like’ button to your website is a great way to convert your existing users into ‘Fans’ and to build an audience that you can regularly communicate with via Facebook status updates.

Fact # 2: The ‘Like’ button spreads the word about your website to friends of your website visitors

When someone clicks the ‘Like’ button a newfeed story is generated on Facebook. So if a visitor to your website clicks the ‘Like’ button and they have 250 Facebook friends, up to 250 people might be exposed to a message about this website visitor liking your company website. This is a very powerful way for you to utilize your website visitors to spread the word about your business to their friends.

Fact # 3: Clicking the ‘Like’ button adds your site to Facebook user profiles

When someone clicks the ‘Like’ button on your website, not only does a newsfeed get generated but a link also gets added to the ‘interests’ section of the person’s Facebook profile. So, for example, if I visit RottenTomatoes.com and click the ‘Like’ button on the Godfather movie page, the Godfather movie will automatically be listed among my favorite movies on Facebook. The interest topics on Facebook include: Interests, Music, Movies, Television, but even if your website doesn’t fit neatly into these categories it’ll still be listed under other ‘Likes’ and interests. This means that anyone visting the profile of a person who ‘liked’ your website can discover your business and click directly through to your website. This is an entirely new way for your business to get discovered.

Fact # 4: Users can ‘Like’ sub-topics on your website
You don’t just have to put one generic ‘Like’ button on your website; instead you can create ‘Like’ buttons for different sections or topics on your website. For example, if you own a travel website you could put a ‘Like’ button on your homepage for people to become ‘Fans’ of your website but you could also put a ‘Like’ button on each of the pages for your specific tours so people could ‘Like’ your Mexican Surfing Tour or your France Biking Tour. This enables you to have several very specific groups of fans that you can push highly targeted status updates to, such as all people who are fans of your surf tours or all people who are fans of your biking tours.

Fact # 5: In addition to the ‘Like’ button you can add a ‘Like’ activity widget

In addition to the ‘Like’ button Facebook makes it easy for you to add a like ‘box’ to your website which displays a live stream of all people who have ‘Liked’ or shared (“recommended”) on your website. For websites that get a lot of engagement, this is a great way to provide a ‘window’ into the activities of your various users. If you’re a smaller website with limited traffic keep in mind that the content in the ‘Like’ box is not likely to change very regularly so it may get a little ‘stale’.

Fact # 6: It’s easy to install the ‘Like’ button & other Facebook widgets on your site
Adding the ‘like’ button and other Facebook widgets is easy – it’s simply a matter of pasting a line of code onto your website. If you’re not able to do this yourself, your webmaster will be able to do it in a matter of minutes. Here’s instructions for how to do this: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like

Fact # 7: You still need to encourage people to ‘Like’ your brand
While the Facebook ‘Like’ button provides a great opportunity for you to get the word out about your business and to grow your ‘fan’ base it’s important to remember that unless you have a website with massive traffic and a super popular brand it won’t be enough for you to simply put a ‘Like’ button on your site. This will certainly help and is something that you should take the time to do, but you’ll still need to be proactive in encouraging people to ‘Like’ your brand. This, of course, is where Wildfire specializes – running contests, giveaways, and other Wildfire campaigns are some of the most powerful ways to grow your audience of ‘Fans/Likers’ and our platform makes it dead easy to run a promotion both on your Facebook Fan Page and on your website simultaneously.

Original Article Post on Wildfireapp.com

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Getting Social with Email Marketing

Leverage social media and email marketing to build stronger customer relationships

You use email marketing to reach your customers. You might be using social media to connect with them too. But are you enjoying the best of both worlds and getting the most out of your online marketing efforts by leveraging the two in one unified communications strategy? By doing so, you can drive those on your email list to "like" your Facebook page or follow your tweets on Twitter. At the same time, your presence on these networks can help drive subscribers to your coveted email list.

In this article, we'll give you some tips for bringing together your social media and email marketing efforts.

Announcing Your Presence

One of the first things you want to do after you set up your social media accounts is let people know you're there, and that your readers should join you there too. Connect your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts, and insert the appropriate logos into your email blasts, so all your readers have to do is click and they'll find you.  I also put similar links right in the signature of my regular email, which makes it easy for friends and clients to find and connect with me wherever they choose.

It's tempting to just say a simple "I'm on Twitter. Follow me," but sometimes your customers and members will need a little more incentive or a reason to connect with you in one more place. "Get free downloads and updated tour information by following me on Twitter" is one way to get more followers. "Learn more about the impact your donations have on the community by becoming our fan on Facebook" is another.

Email to Social Media

By adding one or more social networks to your marketing mix, you may be saying to yourself, "An article for my newsletter, a Tweet, and a Facebook post: That's three things I have to write in a week."

The good news is that this is not the case at all. You can -- and should -- repurpose content from your newsletter (and blog, if you have one) on Twitter and Facebook. If you archive your emails or post your newsletter content to your website, you can use your subject line or headline as the text for your tweet, with a link to the piece. Do something similar on Facebook, though that site will do more with the information than post a link. When you paste a URL into Facebook's "What's on your mind?" box, the headline, description, and related image (if available) will appear, making your content even more attractive to potential readers.

If your newsletter typically contains multiple articles, break each issue up into chunks and share one piece every day (or every week) on social media. Now you have multiple days' worth of content to feed your social media channels without involving much extra work. And remember to add the Share button to your outgoing newsletters; this will allow your recipients to easily share your newsletter content with their own social media circle.

Social Media to Email

Social media can also be used to generate content for your newsletter efforts and drive new subscribers to your list.

From a content perspective, if a client, prospect, or member asks you a question on a social media site (or you see a question whose answer would benefit your audience) use the question and your answer as the basis for a newsletter article. You can also watch for industry-related trends on your social media sites and comment on them in your newsletter.

If the idea well is at an extreme -- either running dry or overflowing -- you can ask your social media fans and followers for help. When ideas are running short, ask them what they want to hear about. If you have too many ideas, ask which of the items you're considering resonates the most and go with the winner.

So how do you get your social media audience to subscribe to your email newsletter if they're not already?

Give them a tease!!! Let's say you own a tennis equipment store and happen to land a quick interview with tennis star Rafael Nadal that you plan to publish in your next newsletter. Post a note on your social media sites: "I scored an interview with Rafael Nadel. Subscribe to my newsletter to read what he has to say." Don't forget to include a link to your Join My Mailing List page. (Note: Facebook users can add a Join My Mailing List application5 directly to their page.)

If you're just getting started

Social media can also be used as a great customer service tool, to monitor when people are happy or unhappy with your products or services. And it has other uses too. Yes, posting your email newsletter content to social media sites is just the beginning.

by Ron Cates4, Constant Contact Development Director

You Launched Your Campaign, now what?

PATIENCE PLEASE....

So you launch your campaign, the excitement is high, everyone is on board…Then about two weeks later, the excitement fizzles and you are looking for results.


A great social media campaign yielding determined results takes approximately 3-6 months (depending on the aggressiveness and goals of the campaign). The impatience of a campaign and lack of adhering to a social strategy is the reason why most campaigns don’t succeed.

Let’s break it down by the results and goals of the campaign:

Exposure and buzz: Exposure and buzz happen by reaching new audiences and making a repeat appearance in a strategic and relevant way. Reaching the audiences with useful information over and over will start to create the presence and allow audiences to start buzzing. The more you appear in their social networks, the more likely they will start buzzing and help fuel the exposure.


Branding: Reinforcing and recreating a brand is also based on repetitive exposure. Determining what the brand is and what it wants socially, will help form the online brand will ultimately help boost customer loyalty, and build the brand. By sharing industry knowledge and answering questions or helping others your image will be constructed and over time, the brand will be recognized and understood.

Reputation management: Social media networking can produce reputation management in two different ways such as helping irritated customers or solving problems and using search engines by having their social pages rank well on the search engines and push other results lower in the SERPs. Both creating a presence and letting customers know you have a social presence and they can utilize the accounts as necessary and search engine results, take time and effort to start achieving the goals.

Sales and new business: Different types of social media campaigns can have a direct influence on sales (and should if that is a defined goal). A strategic targeted message about specific sales information can be appreciated if done in moderation. The messages can direct users to viewing new products, blog posts, current specials or free offers, which can result in sales conversions. It takes some time to build the reputation and relationships before hitting the audience with a sales message, and then some additional lag time before they actually pick up the messages and respond to the call-to-action.

So don’t get mad, don’t get discouraged, and be patient. After 3-6 months, the results will start showing and the effort will be understood…and appreciated!

Jen Cohen is a social media and marketing maven knocked down many times in 26 yrs. Something Creative http://somethingcreativemarketing.com