Posts Tagged 'social networking'

What are the plans for your office over the Xmas period? Closed for well-earned break? Nothing to worry about until the New Year? Great, time to sit back relax and slip on some classic Nat King Cole.

Whilst you’re drowning in mulled wine and Quality Street this Xmas, Google, Social Media and essentially your social and search strategy continues to work away, because Google’s not having a break for Xmas, neither is Facebook or Twitter. So what plans have you got in place for the Xmas Period to ensure your digital channels are looked after?

For those lucky enough, the business you work in will be closed between the 24^th December and the 3rd January 2012. Nearly 2 whole weeks. So in that time, have you got plans in place to keep an eye on your Facebook page? Is Twitter taken care of? If the Social Media Platform manager is off, who will be responding and posting to your loyal army of Fans? Who will be keeping them entertained, informed and up to date with Boxing day deals?

Similarly, who’s managing the search activity? Will content still be produced and published; will you be keeping an eye on PPC bid values and keyword opportunities?

If you’re reading this and mild panic is setting in, fear not, it’s not too late to act. Just remember the 6 P’s (Proper Planning Prevents Pi… you know the rest). It’s time to sit down and map the next few weeks of activity.

Like the perfect Xmas dinner. Planning is essential.

Tweetdeck, HootSuite whatever your platform of choice, the best place to start is with your content plan. What are you saying, who are you saying it too and how frequently? Once you’ve decided this, get your updates written, scheduled and ready to go.

Blog posts. Get them written in advance and schedule their release for a number of days over the two week festive period. Ensure you’ve setup up your blog posts to be automatically tweeted and added to your Facebook page too.

Crisis management. Have a plan for the worst, have a key person monitor the social platforms over the Xmas period, setup keyword alerts and ensure you have an elevation plan in case there is something urgent to respond to. Leaving a customer complaint or query unanswered is not an option.

PPC. Ensure you’ve set your maximum bids, is someone monitoring the impact that a boxing day push from a competitor might have on your performance? Just like crisis management have someone monitor performance intermittently over the festive period.

If you plan your festive support right, then roasting your chestnuts on an open fire are the only thing you’ll have to worry about over the next couple of weeks.

So it’s here. Facebook deals has arrived in the UK. The extension of the Facebook Places functionaility that now allows brands and stores to offer geo-location specific deals when you check-in at one of their outlets.

Starbucks are offering a free coffee for the first 30,000 checking in to thier stores, Mazda are offering a chance to win one of their cars if you check-in at their dealerships over the next 3 months, O2 are offering a free Xbox or Playstation if you take out a contract with them in store this weekend. For the early adopters there are some compelling offers out there, but how easy are the new deals to redeem?

We’ve already tried it out, and the answer, very easy. Starbucks in bankside was visited by two of Pancentric’s finest, their phones held aloft showing their check-in and a tall filter coffee was duly handed over. The news of the free coffee was posted to their Facebook pages and now over 500 people know of Starbucks places deal. Brilliant word of mouth marketing.

But most interesting of all is the how brands with no physical locations will be able to benefit from Facebook’s new Deals platform. No doubt brands will be falling over themselves to offer their social media consumers a fantastic deal, but without the buy-in of a retail outlet, it won’t be possible. So if Facebook places really takes off and truly becomes the ‘next big thing’ how much power will the retail outlets hold over the brands they stock? Have the supermarkets just be handed an intiative that gives them even more power over the brands they stock?

Watch this space…

Very interesting article on how to engage and attract fans in Facebook this week on PPA Marketing. Made all the better by the contribution to the article from your favourite digital marketing agency…. What do you mean who?

For thoughts on how best to develop a serious presence on the world’s largest social media platform have a read of the full article here