Musical Education: Social Media Lessons Learned with The Frank and Walters

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Blog, Cian Corbett, Facebook, Frank and Walters, Lessons, Social Media, tips

Any of my friends and colleagues and those who have attended my Social Media lectures will know that I first got into Social Media marketing due to my involvement in Music PR and marketing. In fact, my first Social Media campaign (or Nu-Marketing as it was known then) was for a band competition, which I was promoting on MySpace and Bebo. I became deeper involved in Digital Marketing when I took over the Digital Marketing for the Frank and Walters which I must credit as an invaluable learning experience.

Having the freedom to test new social media strategies and platforms has been a huge asset to me in being able to advise clients and lecture in social media so I thought I’d share a few lessons here.

1)   Add a personal touch

We know Social Media is not a traditional marketing or broadcasting channel to churn out offers. Social Media is a conversation tool which allows us to personally talk to our fans.

On Facebook this means answering your fans questions by tagging them in your replies (this has been made much easier with the new Facebook reply function!) This offers a much more personalized touch and this fan will get a notification that their question has been answered. Facebook will usually suggest the persons name and allow the page admin to select the user. I tend to click on the fan’s name and delete their surname so the answer is delivered with “Hi Tim, thanks for getting in touch”. This reply feels less automated and more personalized which usually pays dividends in turning a fan with a query into an ambassador for the brand if left satisfied.

Frank and Walters answering questions on Facebook by tagging Fan’s names

On Twitter, it goes without saying that you need to respond to your followers’ tweets when they include your handle in a tweet. However, you can go one step further by addressing tweets which you are mentioned in by listening out for keywords. This proactive Twitter strategy can lead to increased followers and retweets and at the very least can give a potential tweep a nice surprise!

A Frank’s Fan gets a Tweet Surprise

2)   Crowdsourcing doesn’t need to be complicated

Crowdsourcing is a fantastic way of recognizing your fans’ and followers’ comments and using their input to inform your products or social media content.  But along the way the notion of crowdsourcing became a little convoluted and intimidating! From speaking to attendees at the DMI classes some thought to crowdsource you needed to build an expensive microsite to collect fan comments or a Facebook application to capture data. Obviously if you have a nice budget these are great but if you are an SME typically these options are not available. Instead, a simple status update informing the community of what other fans have been looking for is a nice way of recognizing their input. The Frank and Walters crowdsourced Blog content by asking fans to send in question to Ashley Keating in a funny segment called Ask Ash.

Ask Ash: The Frank and Walters asked fans to send in questions which were answered in their blog

These simple crowdsourcing techniques include fans in the page’s social media content reminding them that their input matters.

3)   Creating Value: Give your fans a present!

Sometimes businesses need to be reminded that Facebook is a Social Network where people want to connect and share their time and info with friends and family. So if businesses want to play in this space they need to remind their fans why they became fans in the first place.

Add something to your fans Facebook experience:

• Make them laugh with some funny content
• Teach them something new with some quick nuggets of information
• Offer them a discount that is available only to Facebook fans or Twitter followers
• Give them a present of a free download

To celebrate the 20th Anniversary tour of Trains Boats and Planes the Franks asked fan what songs they would like as a free download

These content additions give fans and followers “a reason to believe”.  And as I noted in a previous blog, by creating valuable and shareable content, you earn a place in your fans’ newsfeeds leading to essential organic growth.

Well I hope these musical lessons were of some use to you and your Social Media strategies! And if you’re a fan of the Franks you can keep up to date with their Blog, Facebook Page or follow them on Twitter at @FrankandWs.

I’d love to hear your comments or answer any questions in the section below.

Mastering Facebook means Mastering Edgerank

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Bufferapp, Cian Corbett, Edgerank, Facebook, Hootsuite, Social Media, tips

I’ve spent the past year lecturing in Social Media in The Digital Marketing Institute and providing training to corporate clients and the same question crops up time and again:

“How do I improve my Facebook marketing?”

When I enquire what exactly the hope to achieve many times the real question is how do I get more impression on Facebook. The simple answer I provide is “Understand Facebook’s rules before you play the Facebook game”.  And where are the Facebook rules? In the algorithim which decides what appears in peoples newsfeeds, more commonly known as Edgerank.

Facebook’s Edgerank algorithim decides what appears in a Facebook users newsfeed. Why does such an algorithim exist? Well Facebook wants you to continuously use Facebook so they want your newsfeed to be full of content that appeals to you. They judge what appeals to you by taking into consideration:

1)   Time: The time decay between the time they post and when they’re online. Facebook wants to give you recent content not something that happened last week!

2)   Weight: How much effort did they put into their post e.g. A picture or a video is weighted more heavily than a status update or link.

3)   Affinity: The amount of times you’ve interacted with a person or a Brand

Cast your mind back to your own Newsfeed, does this sound familiar? It really made sense to me when I presumed a friend of mine was very quiet on Facebook but when I went to his page there was a lot of content there. And it made sense:

1) He’s now living in LA (so he’s posting at times when I’m not online)

2) He usually only posts status updates (so the weighting is quite low)

3) I haven’t commented or liked any of his content in a long while (so the affinity between us is very low).

The Edgerank between us was very low which was quickly remedied by commenting on and liking his content. Low and behold, he was suddenly back in my Newsfeed!

Similarly, this algorithm decides what business page content is shown in a newsfeed also.

In July 2012 Comscore released a whitepaper called “The Power of Like: How Brands Reach and Influence Fans Through Social Media Marketing” (a must-read for any Social Media Marketer). This insightful report revealed that users were 218% more likely to consume branded content in their newsfeeds than the brand page itself. Makes sense really: if I become a fan of Carlsberg on Facebook I’m not going to be sitting at home wondering how Carlsberg is doing and go visit their page. It’s up to Carlsberg to make it into my newsfeed to communicate with me. By posting at the right time, with the right content (weight) and enticing me to like or comment on their posts (affinity) their Edegrank will be higher ensuring a place in my Newsfeed.

So what practical tips could I give readers looking to master Edgerank?

1)   Use EdgerankChecker.com to see what your current Edgerank is. The free Edgerankchecker account will tell you what your business page’s Edgerank is and the days of the week when your Edgerank is highest and lowest. The pro account will rate multiple pages and give you access to expert white papers on how to improve your Facebook Marketing.

2)   Do your Facebook marketing in Facebook. Despite the convenience of tools such as Hootsuite and Buffer App for scheduling Facebook messaging, using external tools lowers your Facebook Edgerank. Essentially, what you gain in convenience you lose in Newsfeed exposure.

3)   Post photographs and videos with your statuses. Edgerank’s weighting system dictates that content with photographs, videos will appear in more newsfeeds than status updates alone.

4)   Aim for a reaction to increase Affinity: With every item you post on Social Media the aim should be to start a conversation. If it’s a picture you’re posting then it should be accompanied with an engaging question: “What do you guys think of our new Facebook App?” as opposed to “Here’s our new Facebook App” which does not really give an opportunity to reply.

By following these tips, marketers will find:

• Their content will appear in more fan’s newsfeeds, earning more impressions
• Their fans will become more engaged
• The number of fans will begin to increase as friends of fans are exposed to their content.

I hope you found this article helpful. If you have any thoughts or comments on Facebook’s Edgerank I’d be very happy to hear your comments below or tweet me at @Cian_Corbett.