In my last blog post I discussed what I believe is the disparity between standard web marketing and social media marketing: user engagement. My previous post focused on Facebook, but my advice is applicable anywhere in the social space.

Two Way Communication is Important

A big mistake that many social media marketers make is by using tools like Twitter and Facebook strictly for one way communication: using social media as a tool to send information out but never as an outlet to absorb information. As a Twitter or Facebook marketer, you can expect that your users will be posting on your fan page wall and using the hashtag and mention functions of Twitter. It’s important that your users see this public engagement.

Now bear in mind that not all of your interactions will be positive. Unhappy customers will often take to the airwaves with their issues. Your first instinct may be to delete these users' posts from your Facebook wall (as many large companies do), but that’s generally seen by your followers and fans as poor customer service and may further damage your brand. Some marketers turn this into an opportunity by using social media as another tool to provide customer service for their users. If the situations are being handled professionally and adequately, this will reflect very positively on your organization.

The United States Air Force has a methodology of dealing with social media commenters both positive and negative. Take a moment to review their policies and think about how you could integrate their strategies into your own campaigns.

A Case Study of Social Media Marketing

Written by Jonathon of Your Poker Cash


Our Early Experiences with Social Marketing

In 2010, the YPC fan page on Facebook had a lot of ups and downs. Thankfully, it’s been mostly positive, as we went from 27 fans on Jan 1, 2010 to 3963+ fans by the end of December 31st 2010! That is a staggering 14677% increase in our fan base in 12 months. Along the way we had lots of people unlike our page, but the vast majority stuck with us, despite several public PR nightmares that have tested our brand and have given me more than a few gray hairs.

Early on we had little to no interaction with our fans. Our communication consisted of one or two generic posts each month, and in our limited efforts we gained one or two fans a day. Things didn’t get interesting until we launched a new bankroll offer via our Facebook Fan page. All players that clicked on our mystery bankroll offer -- highlighted by a big question mark on the homepage of YPC -- were taken to our Facebook page where they could see and request the offer. In less than a week we saw a 3 fold increase in fans.

Creative Solutions Bring Success and Drawbacks

As we sought to further increase our fan base we decided to offer an exclusive freeroll for Facebook fans. We even let players vote on where the tournament would be held. This was the start of real interaction with our fans. When the day of the freeroll arrived we posted a password on a page that only fans could access. Due to the tournament being held on a Saturday, I was three or four minutes late posting the password; more than a few fans were there to let me know that I was not as prompt as they would have liked. However, we more than doubled our fan base with this event.

Things were still easy sailing until we crossed the 1000-fans barrier. By then, fans were starting to post on our page with CS questions which we were unable to answer on FB because of our privacy policy. We were continually directing fans to log into their accounts for personal questions which just adds another step to the CS process.

It is these minor annoyances that can make or break your page. It is a huge boost to your credibility if you can answer these questions in a timely fashion as there is a public record of your actions. However, if you ignore your page and these minor questions, it will be a disaster.

Even if you stay on top of your page you can experience some serious outrage from your fan base. They will be there to call you out on the slightest mistake, they will be very vocal, and they will post when you are least likely to be able to respond. Do not ban these people! As easy as it is to ban them and not deal with them going forward, that sends the wrong message. If you don’t know what your shortcomings are, how will you be able to fix them? It is the latter of these two things that will serve you best in the long run.

An Example

On September 1st we changed some promotions on YPC which did not go over well with a small fraction of our Fans. Even though we were increasing total prize pools from a few thousand dollars to over $100k each month, people were furious that we were sharing the prize pool with PAS. Fans were coming out of the woodwork to say bad things and swear off using YPC forever. Without the Facebook page, this outrage would have been contained to email and PMs on our site. However, we took these lemons and made lemonade. We reverted back to some of our older promos that were cheaper, widely pleasing our fans. Even our most vocal critic acknowledged this and thanked us.

I know going forward that one small misstep will bring out our critics, but this keeps me on my toes and forces me to do my best each day.

The Future

For 2011, I would love to see our Fan page grow to over 10,000 fans, even though that will mean more hypercritical eyes on us, so when things are not 100% perfect there will be more fingers on keyboards ready to swiftly and emphatically tell us how horrible we are. It also means more people to click the “Likes This” button, which is more than enough reason to check the Fan page 15 times a day.

Thanks for reading,

JonathonYPC

Some Final Thoughts

As Jonathan has eloquently illustrated, there can be positives and negatives to a social marketing campaign, if done right. Yes, the experience can leave one going grey or pulling out the hairs that remain. Nevertheless, YourPokerCash is a great case study in how social marketing can work, demonstrating how to overcome the drawbacks of a marketing scheme into an overwhelming positive.

Of course, with anything on the internet these days, there are tools/freeware and add-ons available to make our marketing lives easier:

Social Media Tools

Are you managing multiple websites? If so, it can be a hassle to manage multiple Facebook and Twitter accounts for each of your web properties. Thankfully, there are some great tools at your disposal which we highly recommend:

Hoot Suite

Tweet Deck

Ping.FM