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

Earlier this year, I picked up a copy of Marketing in the age of Google by Vanessa Fox, a renowned internet marketer and former Google employee. In the book Vanessa attempts to show how businesses develop a successful search engine marketing strategy, and how best to use the data provided by the search engines. Google certainly ushered in a new era of internet marketing, but I can’t help but feel like yet another era is upon us: Marketing in the age of Facebook.

What methods have you used to market on Facebook? What have you felt that has or hasn’t worked? I have some of my own thoughts that I would like to share:

Individual Profiles

Some hyper-active Facebook users use their own profiles to market to their friends. This works really well for anyone with a high level of name recognition. The downside is that you must first accept or receive a friend request from an individual in order to market to them.

There are many upsides to marketing through your individual profile page. By granting your users access to your profile page, you are giving them a glimpse into the life of you the individual. Putting a real face on a company has the potential to increase brand loyalty and trust. You are also giving your users another method of contacting you if they need customer service. To the user, this feels like a true one-on-one personal experience.

There are also a number of downsides to this. By granting customers access to your Facebook profile page you may be giving them more access to your personal life than you feel comfortable with. In many instances your users may contact you with customer support issues when they should be emailing your website or opening a support ticket. Many of these privacy issues can be controlled in the Facebook settings. For example, you can close off a user’s access to your wall or shut down the ability of a reader to send you messages. Of course, by doing so are cutting down some of the personal contact with your user, and thus are defeating much of the purpose of marketing to them on Facebook.

I believe there’s a better way for individuals to market on Facebook while maintaining a separation from their personal and professional lives: Facebook Fan Pages

Facebook Fan Pages

These pages are similar in function to the profile pages; however, they are much easier to market themselves. Unlike profiles, there is no need to become a friend of a fan page before you can see its pictures or content. All you have to do is click on the “like” button. Users can browse the profiles or easily become a fan of such personalities as Tom "durrrr" Dwan, US President Barack Obama and even Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Anyone can follow them on Facebook with a single click.

Do you have a Facebook fan page for your brand? Check out the Facebook fan page of Your Poker Cash for what we believe is a good example of well-executed social media marketing.

Paid Advertising

Facebook also offers the classic paid advertising model but with a twist. Companies are given the option to simply advertise their brands on Facebook or advertise their Facebook Fan page. Which is better? Well, that depends entirely on your goals. Are you looking to drive traffic to your company’s website or are you looking to build up your Facebook fan base? That’s the decision you have to ask yourself when creating an ad campaign with Facebook.

What is the biggest upside in marketing on Facebook versus Google? User engagement. Facebook fan pages give you an opportunity to interact with your fans in a public forum alongside your advertisements. You can easily put a face and name to your brand. In my next post I will discuss some of the best practices associated with user engagement and Facebook fan pages.

Cheers!

For the last few months Gonzo and I have been working on adding content to the front end of the PAS website. As such, we have spent a great deal of time working on the review pages for each poker room affiliate program to give publishers as much general information as possible about our partners.

When we put together these reviews, we knew we wanted to add a basic summary about each of the rooms and their respective programs, but what other information would be helpful and informative to publishers? Knowing that our publishers often ask questions about commissions one of our goals was to display the default commission rates publicly for all to see. Now publishers have a handy guide on the commission schemes available at all rooms.



Next up, we mapped out the content we wanted on the rest of the page and the questions we would like answered if were new publishers wishing to know more about a room . We based this on a combination of common information anyone would want to know about each advertiser at PAS, and the questions I would see coming in through the publisher support system.

What are the CPA Requirements at Poker Room X?

This is an example of a common question I receive. Each room now lists its commission requirements within the reviews and at the bottom of each page. We have these requirements listed in the forum but it was really important that they be listed in each rooms review page.



We have tons of additional quality information on the review pages. If you haven’t checked the new PAS reviews out, definitely give them a look as we feel this room specific information is very valuable to publishers. As always, please let us know any questions or suggestions you may have regarding these reviews.

Often times publishers and affiliate managers ask PAS to add a new "hot" room to the network. From the perspective of the outside world this is an easy process, but behind the scenes there are a lot of considerations that we must address before adding a new offer to the PAS network.

Question Number One: Is this partner reputable?

Before adding any new offer to the PAS network we have to research the company behind the scenes. Are they reputable? Will affiliates be paid? Will we receive the levels of customer support that we expect.

Question Number Two: Is there value in adding this offer?

There are already 30+ offers on the PAS network. Will a new offer bring value to our publishers, and in turn the players they signup? This is a question we must carefully evaluate as we do not want to dilute any of our existing advertising partners. Each offer is carefully evaluated and the pros and cons are weighted.

Bear in mind that some offers we add to the network are done so to target a specific region. A US publisher may not see much value in promoting Betfred, but a UK publisher will be very pleased to add it to his website.

Now what happens?

After careful consideration and research the PAS team has decided to add a new offer to the network. Now what? Next week I will walk our publishers through the step by step process we follow within the office when adding a new offer to the network.

Stay tuned!

Updated 12-02-2010 at 04:15 PM by TimPAS

Tags: behind the scenes, new offers, pas

Categories

‎ PAS News , ‎ Marketing Services

When I first working in the affiliate industry I tracked everything through a series of spreadsheets, emails, and word documents. As business grew I quickly discovered that those tools simply wouldn’t be enough. I started using BasecampHQ by 37 Signals.

Powered by the same Ruby On Rails technology as the PAS software, Basecamp allows you to effectively manage your entire businesses projects from the ground up. You can assign tasks, set important dates, send internal messages, track time spent on tasks, and so much more.

If you aren’t using project management software you should be. If not BasecampHQ, then something else that fits your company’s needs, culture, and process.

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How Do You Organize Your Ideas?

Ideas and projects are very different things, and require a different tool set. Have you ever been sitting in a restaurant and had an amazing idea come into your head, only to forget about it by the time you got home?

If you are lucky enough to own a smartphone then you have a plethora of options from emailing ideas to yourself for later review to using cloud note taking software programs like Docs To Go or Evernote. ;

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Keeping your documents in sync

I have discussed my favorite project management and organizational tools, now its time to discuss one of my favorite all around tools. Dropbox. What is Dropbox exactly? It’s a file syncing program. It allows you to keep all of your documents in the cloud, allowing you to access them from work, home, or on the go with your smartphone. The initial service offers a free 2GB of online storage, and you can upgrade to 100 full gigs for $19.99 a month.

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