How to use email marketing with a Facebook fan page  After we posted about the drop in Facebook Likes on fan pages, we set about looking for some examples of brands that are doing it right. (It's easy to find plenty of ones that are doing it wrong.) We do a lot of work in the daily email marketing world and one of the heavy hitters is Tasting Table. With a huge email list of rabid foodies, the brand does a nice job of letting you opt-in to particular areas of interest. Things like "Chef's Recipes...

The always interesting digital marketing and tech rag, Mashable, had an interesting article on the slowing of Facebook “Likes” for brand pages.  Ah, it appears the easy days of throwing up a Facebook fan page and getting tons of instant likes are over. Now the hard work begins around having to provide a remarkable experience for interacting with a brand on the platform. The chart below shows a remarkable downturn for the top 50 brands. By the end of last year the growth was hovering around 2%. (Source: Ignite Social Media) Have we all grown blase of the complete...

We had the chance to spend the afternoon at an event hosted by Webtrends around Facebook marketing tactics.  The presenter, Justin Kistner (@justinkistner), did a great job of pulling research numbers together to guide digital strategy. Perhaps the most cited graph of the afternoon was this: Chart from Webtrends Social Commerce Whitepaper. That 'thud' you see was a 23% drop in visits in 1 year. That's an incredible shift in online behavior - so where did everybody go? Facebook. One of the speakers characterized the shift above as the end of the Google era. While Search is still important, many...

We recently had the opportunity to grab lunch with one of the admins for the State of Montana's official Facebook page.  At ~98K fans (at the time of this writing) the Montana fan page is extremely active. Each week there are several updates by admins, dozens of posts from fans and hundreds of 'likes' and comments. This got us wondering what type of Facebook presence the other 49 states have. Does every state have an official page? If so, what are they doing with it? And do they all enjoy a huge following of highly engaged fans like Montana? ...

The fall semester at Montana State University is winding down and we finished up with our class covering Online Marketing.  When it came to the section on Social Media, questions from the students included: "Should we be on Facebook?" "I don't get Twitter, do I have to do it?" "What impact do user reviews have?" Fortunately, Forrester Research provides a free tool using some basic demographic info to help guide these decisions.  If you're using a Persona to form your web strategy, this comes in pretty handy, as you'll...

Every now and then I'll come across a Twitter user who's following an insane amount of people.  I've seen people follow anywhere from a few thousand to more than 50,000 people.  And I'm sure that's just the tip of the iceberg. Personally, I've never understood the point of this.  It would be akin to standing in a room with 50,000 TVs.  The activity level so high it would be nearly impossible to filter the interesting and important tweets from the boring ones.  And tuning in at any one time would give you a short, inaccurate view of what's been happening.Now, I...

Each day countless businesses flock to Twitter in the hopes of getting their name in front of its 10+ million users.  Some businesses keep it simple with the occasional tweet about a product special.  Others actively engage their audience in a 24/7/365 conversation.  The strategies and goals are as varied as the businesses themselves.  But most share at least one thing in common - a desire to increase their business' reach and/or improve their relationship with existing customers.The tricky part comes in measuring the return on investment (ROI) for your time on Twitter.  Ask any Twitter regular and they'll probably...

We often times hear from our clients that they want a "social media" presence.They hear the buzz around Twitter.  Or have a suspicion that Facebook is fundamentally changing the way brands are being built and feel they're missing out because they're not on board.Our answer is typically pretty unsexy - what is your strategy behind using these tools?Next, how much time do you have to devote to this?Ugh. Not what they want to hear.  "Yes, yes, but can you hook up our Facebook fan page to our website for a live stream?"  Sure. But why does...