Presidential Google+ Hangout

This isn’t the first Social Media takeover from politics; last summer, Obama held a “Twitter Town Hall Meeting” that didn’t go so well since the questions were preselected.

This time, there will be a few preselected questions, but most will be directly from Google + users who were invited into the chat.  Lucky…

The chat will be live today at 5:30 est on Barack Obama’s Google+ Page

Questions this arises:

We know that Obama is going to use Social Media in an unprecedented way for this 2012 election.

If you were a Social Media Manager in the Obama camp, what sort of strategies would you use going forward into the 2012 election?

How could you better integrate Facebook?

Other Fun Questions:

Some other fun questions this made me think about:

What other President in history would you most want to meet in a Google+ hangout?

If Social Media is changing the way we “interact” with our candidates, do you feel that rightfully so, the internet should also change the way we actually participate?  By participate, I mean vote!

If you made it into the Google+ hangout tonight, what would you ask?

With the turn of the New Year I thought it would be great to publish a post on the Do’s and Don’ts to exercise when marketing your brand on Social Media for 2012.

I consulted the other professors of Social Media Schools to give me their input and collectively we put together this fun list below.

Enjoy,

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Social Media Do’s

• Try multiple media types - It’s 2012 already… Don’t just use text, start to incorporate video, mp3, slides, pictures… This is your year!
• GIVE GIVE GIVE; Networking works both ways!
• Utilize a like gate with a lead gen offer after the gate is lifted.
• Offer exclusive deals -  58% of people like pages for exclusive deals and content.
• Leverage organizational groups to increase the value of communication.
• Curate content and give credit to the source.
• Hire a marketer to manage your SM – not just somebody that knows how to use Facebook!
• Save time and re-purpose content, but do so in context…  Change up the post to fit a new message
• Proactively monitor online reviews. Thank the positive reviewers and follow-up with the negative ones to find out what you can do to win them over again.
• Practice consistency. If you’re going to participate, don’t go silent for weeks at a time. Stick with it.
• Assess your goals and go through the motions to meet those goals.
• Listen and respond; not respond and listen.
• Network on a consistent basis.  This way help is there before you need it
• Cater to mobile users through location-based engagements.
• Differentiate the content on each online profile.

Social Media Don’ts…

• Grow your network for the numbers… It is NOT a numbers game.  It is a QUALITY game!
• Never connect your twitter to your FB wall.  It over posts and pisses FB fans off.
• Get into back-and-forth debates one update at a time.
• Friend/Follow ANYONE or EVERYONE
• Sell products directly. Instead, create content that passively links to your products/services within.
• Only post about you or your brand
• Be so negative all of the time. People like seeing positivity.
• Over-Market. Be social and converse with people.  Remember it happens on Social Networks.
• Retweet Retweets
• Post every “once in a while”
• Just go through the motions everyday. Strategize content schedules and plans for SM action.
• Create a nameless, faceless SM presence
• Neglect replies. If someone talks to you, respond to them – no matter what.
• Create profiles that go un-used
• Don’t be afraid to admit mistakes
• Get too hung up on QR codes. They aren’t here to stay.
• Over-share. Too much information can backfire.
• Never, under any circumstances, ever invite your Facebook friends to Farmville!

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There you have it.  Follow those rules and you will be on the top of your Social Media game in 2012!

p.s.  Today happens to be my birthday so if your could be so kind, please give me the gift of sharing this with your audience.

Either click the social icons in the share-bar on the left or you can even click this tweet ready to go! Click that for an already assembled tweet!

And on top of that… It sells stuff!!!

I’m excited to share with you this simple technique that can grow your brand message, promote a product, AND get people into your store or onto your site – ALL AT THE SAME TIME.

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In this example below, you will see how this technique works with a physical location to bring in more foot traffic to a store .  At the end of the post, I’ll make a brief mention on how you can replicate this with a virtual/or online store.

* Quick Note:  Cape Surf was an actual social client of mine, so this is both a “case study” and “how to” type post…

THE RAFFLE TECHNIQUE

How I did it:

The surfboard in the image below COST the surf shop somewhere around $80.  As you can see in the Facebook post below, I told our audience “This Board Can Be Yours for ONLY $10“  -  I didn’t use the word “ONLY” but I should have…

10 dollars for a surf board that would retail around 250 dollars is a REALLY high perceived value and a big motivator for the consumer to join the raffle game.

It works great for Sales too because as the retail store, we only had to sell about 8 raffle tickets to break even.  Anything above that magic number was profit!

Here are some points I made sure to hit that made this work:

• Posted on FB during high traffic times.  – For us this was around noon on a Saturday
• Engage with the audience to hype it up – Notice I said in the comments “…the more tickets that are yours, the more chance you have in winning…”
• I sold the ticket INSIDE the shop so they HAD to come in and see the rest of the merchandise!

The outcome: I remember a pregnant lady won the board for her husbands birthday.  She only bought one ticket, so you can imagine how stoked she was to have a $250.00 surf board to give as a gift for ONLY $10.00.

Take it Even Further

Go Viral With It:

If I was to do this again – especially for an online store/offer – instead of selling physical “raffle tickets” I would make the participant make a donation and SHARE a status on facebook about the contest.  Also, make sure that the status post has the @TAG to make sure you get notified of it.  Then you can simply choose a notification at random to win.

That strategy would help add more people to your fan base AND the raffle game at the same time.

Make $$$ With Info Products:

To break even with the surf board we had to sell about 8 tickets, but what if you were selling an info product that costs next to NOTHING to distribute?

If you had an info product that was priced around $97.00, how excited would your audience be to see that they could win it for only a $3.oo virtual raffle ticket!?!

You can even WOW your customers some more by saying that $1.00 for every raffle ticket was going to benefit a charity.  This way they can feel even better about purchasing a ticket that could win them your product at a GREAT price!

To Take Away

It’s all about perceived value with this technique.  Obviously if you are a retail store then you have to cover your costs.  If that is the case, you just have to know how many tickets it would take to break even and if you are confident in hitting that number.

Entice the audience to purchase more tickets by saying “the more you get the better your chances,” and even donate some of that money to charity to help your customers feel better about purchasing them.

Hope you enjoyed this post, if so… please use those share-buttons on the left side. It’s how the good stuff spreads

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