Facebook Insights makes it easy to analyze the performance of your content marketing in real time. So much so that I find myself drawn to look on a constant basis. It’s your best source to determine which type of content your audience engages with the most and which to promote. Let’s first develop an understanding of the different types of Facebook content that can be posted on a Facebook Page.

Posting Engaging Images

Facebook Posts that include a single image generate 120% more engagement than the average post. Photos are engaging and easy to digest, making them your most effective tool for content marketing. Photos also allow you to take up a much larger portion of a user’s News Feed, boosting the attention you’ll receive. Just take a look at how much more prominently photo posts are displayed on a Facebook Page compared to a link-based post that pulls in just a small thumbnail image. And as you can see, you can include links in photo posts, too:

Grab your audience’s attention by using simple images with a clear focal point. Images with highly saturated colors also help the creative stand out against the site’s white background.

To maximize your image posts, include relevant text to help tell a quick story. These most engaging way to do this is in the normal format of online memes, which include relevant text in large font directly on top of the image:

One great way to engage your audience around your photos is by including a call-to-action to write your best caption for a funny/ridiculous photo, like the one below:

One last way to engage fans using images is to give them two options to vote on. Walmart does this perfectly by getting users to “Like” for one option and “Share” for the other, thereby maximizing the posts reach:

Photo Albums

Facebook Posts that include a photo album generate 180% more engagement than the average post. Photo albums are a great way to promote content from events, new product lines, and photo galleries of related content. Photo albums allow you to post multiple pieces of content at once without annoying users with multiple posts, giving each post the ability to be engaging/interesting to more users at once.

Posting a Video

Facebook Posts that include a video generate 100% more engagement than the average post. When posting a video, follow these easy rules:

● Have a killer default frame image
● Keep it short
● Keep it simple

Videos are great for behind-the-scenes looks of your company, how-to’s and event clips.

Text

Text is best used in a short fashion. Posts between 100 and 250 characters (less than 3 lines of text) see about 60% more likes, comments and shares than posts greater than 250 characters. The best types of text content is “Fill-in-the-blank” posts. This is where you ask an open-ended question for fans to answer in the comments section. These generate about 90% more engagement than the average text post.

When posting links to outside content follow these best practices:
● Keep it short
● Make the call-to-action clear and within the first 90 characters of the post
● Use an image to draw attention to the post

Analyzing Content with Facebook Insights

Now let’s take a look at how to analyze your content using Facebook Insights. You can get to the Page Posts Dashboard by click on Page Insights on your Facebook Page’s Admin Panel and then scrolling down the page.

The first, and most important metric to look at is Virality. Viraity refers to the percentage of people who have created a story (liked, commented on or shared) from your post out of the total number of unique people who have seen it. As a rule, I consider a post engaging enough to promote (or continue a promotion) if it is getting 4% – 5% Virality.

The metrics:

Total Reach: The number of unique people who have seen your post

Organic: The number of unique people who have seen your post in their News Feed or on your Facebook Page. This includes people who have Liked your page and those that haven’t

Paid: The number of unique people who have seen your post through a paid channel such as a Promoted Post or Promoted Page Post

Viral: The number of unique people who have seen your post because one of their friends interacted with it by liking it, commenting on it or sharing it

Engaged Users

Engaged users are the number of unique users who have clicked on your post. Depending on your post type, you can see a complete breakdown of the type of clicks:

Talking About This

Talking About This refers to the number of unique people who have created a story (liked, shared or commented on) from your post. This number is very important in determining the performance of your post: The higher the number of people talking about your post, the more engaged they are with it, and the more they are engaged with your brand.

Analyzing Promoted Posts

A Promoted Post gives your post reach to more of your fans and your fans’ friends (a normal post is only seen by approx. 16% of your fans). To create a Promoted Post, simply create a post as normal and click the “Promote” link in the bottom-right corner of the post. During a Promotion you can see the performance stats by clicking on the “Promoted” hyperlink:

You can also see the level of paid vs. organic vs. viral engagement by clicking on the “## people saw this post” hyperlink in the bottom-left-corner of the post:

Facebook on content is a powerful way to engage users and drive new sales. Using Facebook Insights you’ll be able to see what’s working and what isn’t in real-time. This allows you to use your time (and advertising dollars) as efficiently as possible.

Nick Steeves is the Director of Marketing at Wishpond. Learn about Wishpond’s easy social marketing apps at corp.wishpond.com

We talk with 20×200′s Social Media Manager, Jennette Mullaney, about how 20×200 does social media marketing and what businesses can learn from their success.

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Facebook recently hosted a panel discussion with Facebook experts that discusses and identified 4 best practices for performance marketing on Facebook. Here are the 4 key best practices from the discussion:

• Go beyond the basics: Performance marketers have traditionally used standard domain ads on the right-hand side of Facebook. However, Facebook offers a variety of placements and ad formats that can drive results. The news feed is premier real estate on Facebook: we see over eight times the engagement for ads in the news feed versus the right-hand side. So how can your brand get into the news feed? We recommend photo Page post ads, link Page post ads,Offers, and mobile app install ads to create rich experiences that enable engagement.

• Start with photo Page post ads: Photo Page post ads are an excellent choice across industries and marketing objectives. Use a shortened URL in the ad text to link offsite. An independent study by Nanigans of almost a billion Facebook ad impressions found that photo Page post ads in the news feed drove 14% higher ROI and 48% lower CPA than domain ads on the right-hand side. Advertisers report strong performance, too. Yepme, an Indian e-commerce company, reported a 125% increase in conversion rate using photo Page post ads compared to domain ads and PeixeUrbano, a Brazilian daily deals site, reported a 5x higher ROI using photo Page post ads compared to the average of previous campaigns.

• Use Optimized cost per impression to reach the right audience: While bidded cost per click (CPC) and cost per impression (CPM) are standard, we recommend a powerful bidding option unique to Facebook: Optimized CPM. Optimized CPM delivers your ads to people most likely to convert. To maximize results, combine Optimized CPM bidding with conversion measurement tags, which count relevant conversion actions on your website, such as registrations and shopping cart checkouts, driven by people seeing an ad on Facebook. Beta tests show that this combination reduces the cost per conversion by 40% when compared to CPC ads using the same budget.

• Take a “test and iterate” approach: Testing multiple campaign factors before allocating spend is nothing new for performance marketers—and Facebook is no different. We encourage you to run test campaigns, and track and measure the results to determine what works best for your brand. The first step is to prepare your performance marketing plan: identify key performance indicators, set up click tags and view tags, and ensure a process for delivering enough creative combinations. Once you are operationally ready to execute these campaigns, conduct low-cost tests and iterate. Our community of Preferred Marketing Developers can help you optimize your campaigns at scale.

For more details and tips, check out the full discussion here.

Source: https://www.facebook-studio.com/news/item/steps-to-successful-performance-marketing-on-facebook

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We will take a look at how they are successfully using online marketing tactics, and how you can apply these too.

About The Book Depository

The Book Depository is the UK’s largest dedicated online bookseller, offering the largest range of titles in the world, available for dispatch within 48 hours. Founded in 2004 to make ‘All Books available to All’, they focus on selling ‘less of more’ rather than ‘more of less’, differentiating themselves from other retailers who increasingly focus on best sellers.

Currently, The Book Depository is able to ship over eight million unique titles, within 48 hours. This figure is increasing every day. Apart from publishers, distributors and wholesalers, they even list and supply books from other retailers.

As an international bookseller they ship books free of charge, worldwide, to over 100 countries.

6 marketing tactics of The Book Depository you can apply as well:

Website

1. Highlight product values through website

2. Create a referral program to increase the number of customers

3. Publish reviews from your customers to influence consumers’ decisions

Blog

4. Promote contests on different channels to generate more participants

Twitter

5. Use Twitter as a customer service platform to solve problems fast

Pinterest

6. Create catalogues to bring in sales & to attract users across all your target markets

Website

1. Highlight product values

The Book Depository launches their books with informative descriptions including the content of the book and information about the author to highlight its values for customers.

Example of the Book: “How to create the perfect wife”

They included a separate tab on their website called “Book of the Week” where they highlight a specific book every week. Furthermore, they offer a special discount for it.

The Book Depository also post the “Book of the Week” on their Facebook Page. This makes it more shareable which can lead to more viral views of the books, and increased sales. Customers are on different social sites. Make sure they can see the value of the product wherever the like to be online. They may not visit your website daily, but surf through social media channels every day.

What can retailers learn from this?

• Tell your consumers that you have a love for your products.
• Give your customers an idea about a product they could buy as a present for a birthday, wedding or farewell. It gives value to your customers.
• Having a product suggestion with a special discount every week or month is a great way to push that product.

2. Create a referral program to increase the number of customers

The Book Depository created an Affiliate program which enables people to earn a commission from products purchased by people they send to their website. People can refer clients to The Book Depository in a number of ways, including: links in their e-mails, links on their blog, Twitter accounts or via banners and buttons they add to their site. The affiliates will earn 5% in commissions that will be paid via Paypal, but only once their balance has reached £25.

What can retailers learn from this?

• Merchants have a wider environment generating more products and services signifying more sales.
• No additional time is spent in marketing with merchants and you can obtain more customers this way too.
• To entice more customers, promote your referral program information on all of your social media channels.

3. Publish reviews from your customers to influence consumers’ decisions

The website of The Book Depository includes a tab with “Book Reviews” where customers publish personal opinions and facts about a book they’ve read.

How much does a review affect your customers’ buying habits? How important are customer reviews?

90% of consumers online trust recommendations from people they know; 70% trust opinions of unknown users. (Econsultancy, July 2009)

Reviews are a major influence on people’s decisions, provides a company with constructive criticism and is a competitive advantage. Online reviews on a company’s website or on another site, increase confidence in your product or service and ultimately will lead to more sales.

Additionally, if you start to receive poor reviews, your company can change what needs to be changed. In this example: People have various tastes and not everyone likes the same kind of books. There is no need to take the negative criticized books out of the online store. Someone will like and purchase the book.
It is better to know that your customers aren’t happy rather than have someone telling everyone else other than your company that they are not happy.

However, the online review system can be criticized because potential customers have to find your content and then read the reviews. It would be better to create a social media referral/review network on Facebook, Twitter, etc. because people ask their community and are referred to a website based on the recommendations of the social media community. This increases brand awareness.

What can retailers learn from this?

• Each reviews posted online by a customer is a form of advertising for your business. Let your customers write online reviews to influence your customers decisions and increase confidence in your product.
• Not every company is doing online reviews. If your competitors aren’t doing them yet, then you have a great opportunity to increase your business.
• Social Media is influential for people who are looking to make a purchase in the future.
• Online reviews gives you the chance to develop a closer relationship with your customers.
• Consumers trust recommendations more than they trust advertising.

Blog

4. Promote contests on different channels to generate more participants

Creating contests and sweepstakes are one of the absolute best ways to engage your online community. The Book Depository launches almost every week limited time contest to quickly immerse their fanbase over social media and gain new customers.

Their contests information is posted on their own blog and other social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. To win the specific prize, users have to answer questions which are related to the winning product.

Blog Post of the contest

Facebook Post of the contest

Pinterest Board with all the contests

Posting on different channels, they generate engagement and drive traffic to the other channels. Brilliantly, they offer products from their online store as the prize. They also share the winner of the contests every time to present themselves more transparently.
What can retailers learn from this?

• Use your products as the prize. When showcased well, contests generate excitement for your product.
• Promote your contest on multiple social platforms. Use one hashtag, to create a clear community for your contest across all platforms.
• Did we mention: Wishpond has created many easy to use contest apps, such as photo caption contests, photo contests and sweepstakes. All you have to do is add your branded marketing smarts!

Twitter

5. Twitter – Use it as a customer service platform to solve problems fast

The Book Depository uses Twitter as an excellent platform to carry out interactive customer support services with their consumers.

They handle all complaints and questions very professionally which marks them as a positive brand on Twitter and brings them followers and observers who could purchase their products for a future need of their own.

Their keys to excellent customer service on Twitter are definitely the speed, quality and transparency of their response. They show the public that they are addressing all issues so that they are seen as a transparent and reliable company.

If you are watching conversations on Twitter it gives you a good idea of your brand’s reputation but it is a passive approach. Great customer service is active. The Book Depository makes customers aware of their presence.They placed a Twitter button on their website and advertise that they are trying to solve customers problems via social media.

They not only answer to complaints and questions but also comment on other tweets.

What can retailers learn from this?

• Positive Branding! When problems are solved quickly, consumers begin to trust in the brand itself and may even become more interactive participants on your Twitter account .
• Customer service via Twitter eliminates some of the costs for email or phone customer service staff in a call enter
• Problem resolution: While phone conversations can help solve problems, wait times do not. Twitter is a fast platform that can help solve problems quickly. For a more complex problem, the brand can initiate a deeper conversation with the customer.
• Make your Twitter presence known. Customer Service on Twitter won’t work if no one knows where to find you.

Pinterest

6. Create catalogues to bring in sales & to attract users across all your target markets

Pinterest is one of the hottest social media sites at the moment. Studies show, how Pinterest has been bringing in more traffic to websites than LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube put together. Brands are benefiting with Pinterest in generating traffic and sales. So does The Book Depository.

They created catalogues for different categories like “Craft & Hobbies”, “Kid’s Room”, “Home & Design”, etc. to showcase specifically their various products and to attract users different interests.

Every Pin has a short description of the content of the book. All pins of their books links back to The Book Depository online store, on the landing page for purchasing that particular item. The interested consumer is well within the sales funnel, with just a few simple clicks to finalize the sale.

Book Covers are very visual. Thats why it is very smart of the Book Depository to bond the book covers on Pinterest.

What can retailers learn from this?

• Categorize each Pinboard specifically and uniquely. It’s important to appeal to a wide range of target audience and to generate more customers.
• Creating catalogs on Pinterest can be a very effective way to drive traffic to your website and increase sales.
• Did we mention: Wishpond has created a Pinterest Tab to showcase your boards & pins on your Facebook Page and website. Cross-promote your products to drive new sales through more channels. Install the Pinterest Tab for FREE!

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Evo has a flagship store in Seattle. All other sales are generated from their online store. With a strong presence on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Pinterest and writing their own blog, they are a perfect example of how to use online marketing successfully.

In this article, we will show you what can you learn for your online retail business.

Here are 6 digital marketing tactics to learn from Evo:

1. Categorize your online store by product, price, gender, color or brand to make your online store user friendly
2. Use coupon codes for special offers in order to drive more sales
3. Create a company blog to be seen as an expert in your field
4. Write guides about how to use your products
5. Use contests to promote new and popular products
6. Interact with your customers on Facebook to get users’ opinions
7. Create a personal board about your business to give your customers insider access

1. Categorize your online store by product, price, gender, color or brand to make your online store user friendly

The Evo online browsing system is remarkably user friendly.

If a customer is looking for a snowboard, they simply click on “Snowboards”, and they are able to feast their eyes on categories like Goggles, Helmets, Boots, Face Masks, etc.

The products are also narrowed by gender, series, color and brand. The customer can look for low prices or the highest rated product within that product section as well.

What can retailers learn from this?

• Make the online shopping experience easy.
• If your focus is on price conscious consumers, show your prices, and organize your online store to make your price conscious items simple to find.
• Make the buying experience a good one, and keep your customers returning for more.

2. Use coupon codes for special offers in order to drive more sales

When customers enter the website of Evo, the first thing they see in the header is a promotion announcement: “Extra 27% Off Snowboard Gear”.

The deals are accessible, with codes in the cart before checkout, for a limited time. The deadline of the deal is shown on the left side of the banner.

They post promotions and coupons frequently, with a quick call to action, a limited number and limited time frame. Coupons tend to work best for product-oriented businesses where customers can realize quick and easy savings.

Whether you operate online or are a location-based business, be sure that your staff are trained and your operations can scale quickly and seamlessly to deal with the new foot traffic. Make sure you can afford the discount for the duration of its validity. Set your long term goals and see if you the special offer can benefit these. Do you have enough profitable business coming from other product lines? These are all components which need to be carefully considered.

What can retailers learn from this?

• Post promotions frequently, with a quick call to action, a limited number and limited time frame.
• Look at your numbers and decide on the level of discount you can handle. How long should it run for and what changes you need to implement to support it.
• If you can, focus on new customers, outside your current market or demographic.
• Use special offers sparingly – you don’t want regular customers to think that they are being gouged when they see how much you are willing to discount to gain new customers.
• By the way, Wishpond has created easy to use group offers to entice users to claim a coupon or special offer on a brand’s products and services. The app can run on a brand’s Facebook Pages, website and on mobile. All you have to do is add your branded marketing smarts!

3. Create a company blog to be seen as an expert in your field

Evo uses blog posts to write about new product arrivals, their opinion on topics and specific content that is relevant for their business and customers. This is one of the key components of their personality and unique voice. For example they post about new product arrivals, special outdoor sport events that are coming up, Instagram accounts that are interesting to follow or videos about how to make your own beanie. Their blog posts are dynamic, interesting and enjoyable due to interactions through blog comments and shares.

Blog posts may seem like a lot of work and resources expended. But there are several key reasons to be blogging:

• It helps your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as Google loves new content
• You can engage and understand your customers better.cle
• You are seen as an expert in your field, a ” Thought Leader”
• Great new content gives people a reason to keep coming back to your site.
• Blogs are a much more trusted source than companies press releases and official company PR.

Most importantly it helps you improve your rank on search engines and assists in getting found, when people enter those important keywords in Google.

The most important thing that brings visitors to a blog is the value of it. A blog needs to bring something useful or interesting to readers or there is no point in their visiting. Evo adds value by publishing posts that provide more than just news recaps or a list of links to other websites.
What makes their blog successful as well is their frequently updates.

It is also clearly organized. The blog includes a blog categories, which is relevant for the readers in order to be helpful to find relevant topics.

What retailers can learn from this:

• Writing blog posts in a personal tone, and on relevant topics you and your business are passionate about, will connect with your customer. Don’t write news releases, write personal, relatable stories.
• Add value to readers’ lives for them to take the time to read what you have to say
• Reflect the personality of your business. Write like you speak.
• Don’t publish a blog post and then disappear for a week or two. Readers want to rely on you and read frequently posts. If they can’t, they’ll look elsewhere.

4. Write guides about how to use your products

Evo provides a “Size and Buying Guide” tab on their website where users can read guides about “Ski Boots – How to Choose & Fit Guide; Wetsuits – How To Put On; Wetsuit – Repair and Care Guide; Climbing Skins – How to Cut”.
If users click on the links, they can find a specific description.

The purpose is to clearly express the benefits they provide to their customers. All the background they provide is focusing on that goal. They want to make their customers decisions easier.

What can retailers learn from this:

• Keep it simple: You are the expert in the industry, but the basics may not be as clear to those reading your guides. Assume the reader has little to no understanding of your industry or product.
• Make your customers decisions and life easier. Give them advice in the first place to prevent customer service calls and an overflow of emails.

5. Use contests to promote new and popular products

In January, Evo ran a contest on their website, which they actively promoted through many of their social sites like Twitter and Facebook.

The contest they ran was a vote-contest which engaged all their fans to participate in order to win some rad new gear just in time for the best part of the winter. Brilliantly, the gear they offered was one of their own products.

The contest engaged their customer by asking contestants for their opinions on each brand.

They shared not just the winner in each category, but also the top runner-ups.

What can retailers learn from this?

• Use your products as the prize. When showcased well, contests generate excitement for your product.
• Promote your contest on multiple social platforms.
• Keep it engaging. Ask your customer for their opinions. Show you value your customers’ views.
• Did we mention: Wishpond has created many easy to use contest apps, such as photo caption contests, photo contests and sweepstakes. All you have to do is add your branded marketing smarts!

6. Interact with your customers on Facebook to get users’ opinions

The Evo Facebook Page has 47,740 Likes. It is a very active community with comments and shares on every post. Evo uses their Facebook Page to connect with their consumer on a more personal level, to build loyalty, to create opportunities to generate sales and to get more options for touch points with their fans.

Evo excellently shows how personal and relatable they are in posting content every day. They interact with their fans, asking questions and present their tricks and tips like “how to do a corked 360 on a snowboard”.

If you know your brand’s online community well enough, you can easily get them interacting with you by asking their opinion and testing their knowledge on your products.

In this example, Evo asks their fans if snowboarding has lost its edge, as stated in an article in the New York Times.

Evo also posts new products and asks the users if they like them or not.

Additionally, Evo uses an Instagram and Twitter tab on their Facebook Page so that the community can see the content without having to open the other social websites.

The more a consumer feels uniquely connected to Evo, and the more a fan sees Evo and its products, the more likely that consumer will buy a product from them.

Create content that will keep your audience interested.

What can retailers learn from this?

• Social media sites like Facebook are about connecting with friends. Show your company with a personality, and let your fans feel like they are your friends.
• When people like your page, they’re saying that they care about your business and want to know what’s going on. Posting relevant content is the most important thing you can do to keep them interested.
• Create multiple touchpoints. The more options you have for your customer to choose to connect with you, the better.

How to write quality posts?

• Make sure your posts are relevant to your audience and business
• Be friendly and conversational
• Share photos and videos because they tend to be more engaging
• Ask questions or seek input
• Give access to exclusive information and specials
• Be timely by posting about current events, holidays or news

7. Create a personal board about your business to give your customers insider access

Pinterest is a very visual site. For an outdoor gear retailer, Pinterest is an ideal locale.

The Evo Pinterest page has around 300 followers, and 16 Boards.

Boards include categories such as “Lady Summer Styles”, “Snowboarding”, “Skateboarding”, “Woman’s Spring Looks” and even “Snowboarding Method Madness”.

One of the great benefits of pinning photos to Pinterest is that a link is automatically included back to the source of the pinned photo. So when the customer clicks on the pin and he likes what he sees, he will be forwarded to the online store where he can purchase the product right away.

Evo also named a board “evo Store” and uploaded pictures of the flagship store in Seattle, a funny polaroid shot of the founder, and the staff of Evo. This is a great way to get your customers feel close and trustworthy to your business. Turn the customer into a personal friend and show him behind the scenes of your business.

Post uncommon pictures like the one below, where Evo presents their store in a winter wonderland.

Storytelling is one of the most important things businesses can do as they seek to engage customers online. We all love a good story, but especially love it when we get an insider’s view of things.

What can retailers learn from this?

• Pinterest is a visual site. Use the best pictures of your product to showcase them in the best light, to obtain the most likes and repins.
• Create multiple boards. Categorize your products. Make it easy for your customer to find the niche product they want.
• Create a board about business insights. By giving your customers insider access, they’ll begin to appreciate what you do, and trust you as someone willing to share.
• Link your pictures to specific landing pages on your website with clear call to actions.This works particularly well for online shopping stores. Your potential customer is interested in your product when they click on the picture – make it easy for them to get it!
• You could even connect the picture to your Facebook social store, to increase traffic to your Facebook Page.

Wishpond has many products that can help you to be the best marketer you can be. We have easy to use apps for contests, group offers, social stores and more. And prices start at just $29/month.

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Easy: you should run a photo contest on Facebook.

Facebook photo contests are proving to be an excellent online marketing tool. Here’s a list of 5 ways running a photo contest can create a Return On Investment (or ROI) for your business:

1. Customer Engagement

Photo contests are a personal way for your customers to interact with your business. Customers are sharing something with you, and this helps strengthen the bond between both parties.

2. Branded User-Generated Content

Involving your brand in the photo contest is an excellent way to immerse your brand in the lives of your customers, and to acquire user-generated content.

An example of this is what apparel company CrooksnCastles did with their snapback hat giveaway:

What this does is create a degree of obedience; a hoop the customer has to jump through in order to receive a reward, in the form of a prize. This will create a level of immersion with your brand, thus giving it more importance in the mind of the customer.

You can ask users to upload photos of themselves using your products. You can also use entrants’ photos as free promotional material for you: Though this isn’t talked about all that much, it is well within your right when launching a photo contest to mention in the terms and conditions the fact that you may use the entrant’s picture for future promotions, much like Fur-Ever Homes did. If the pictures are good, this could bring your promotional costs down considerably.

3. Increase Your Brand’s Reach & User Attention

Not only has it been scientifically proven that pictures really do say a thousand words, but they also generate more Likes. 53% more Likes, according to Hubspot

Pictures convey emotions an average text post cannot. And unlike video, you can just glance at a photo and see everything you need to. This means that photos on Facebook are a powerful thing; they’re attention-getting. There is precious little on Facebook that can extend your brand’s reach than a good picture.

4. New Customer Referrals

According to Krista Neher from Mashable, the most effective Facebook marketing is not to your fans, but to the friends of your fans (http://mashable.com/2012/11/20/business-facebook-engagement/). People that have “Liked” your page are already believers in your product. You’re preaching to the choir. Their friends, however, are ripe for the picking.

The most effective contest we’ve found for converting the friends of your fans to becoming engaged customers is through photo contests. As we mentioned before, photos receive 53% more likes than any other kind of post. Also, if you launch a contest where the barrier of entry is the fan must be in the picture would make the contest more personal.

5. Grow fan base and Generate Opt-In & Subscriber Emails

A brilliant feature Facebook Contest App makers include is opt-in email subscription. As a barrier to entry, users must include an email address, thus beefing up business’ subscriber email lists. This supremely augments future drip email campaigns, creates leads and hopefully sales.

How to Make a SUCCESSFUL Photo Contest:

So you’ve read the aforementioned list and you’re convinced Facebook photo contests are totally awesome and will help your brand engage with its customers. But how do you make a good one? These five steps will ensure that your photo contest is so good people get their friends to enter.

One: Be Creative

There is nothing that inspires indifference like mediocrity. If you want to get a high level of involvement from your Facebook fans, you’ve gotta think outside the box.

Two: Give Away An Awesome, Relevant Prize

It’s tempting to give away something popular like an iPad or an Amazon gift cards, but there is one fatal flaw in this decision: you’re only going to get new leads who are interested in iPads and the Amazon Marketplace.

To make sure that every person who enters your sweepstakes is interested in your products you need to make the prize either one of your products or a gift card to your store.
I recommend giving away a gift card – this way it’s applicable to every person who is interested in your products, not just to those who are interested in a certain product.

How big does my prize need to be?

Don’t worry, you don’t need to give away $1000’s to generate interest. A gift card (or prize value) of $50 to $250 is enough to get people to take the time to enter. Our client Diamond Candles ran two contests for $50 gift cards to their store and received 10,000 new leads alone.

Three: Plant A Seed To Build A Large Buzz

Your photo contest needs to start with a BANG to create a viral spread. Once you have your initial seed you can (somewhat) sit back and watch it spread through Facebook and grow on its own through the power of sharing.

Where do I get this large seed?

The best starting seeds are email lists, Facebook fans & Twitter followers. If these combined total AT LEAST 1,000 – 2,000 (and are especially email list heavy) your sweepstakes will have no problem growing on its own.

Here is what I mean: If you’re giving away a gift card to your store, it’s a no-brainer for your current customers to enter – they love your products and would love a free gift card. When they enter your photo contest they all start sharing with their friends on Facebook. This gives you access to each entrants entire social network. They see the post made by their friend, click it to enter your photo contest and become a new lead for your business.

I don’t have a big email list or a lot of fans on Facebook – what do I do?

If you know anything about online marketing, you will know the power of ads – especially on Google and Facebook. If you don’t have a current base to start with these are perfect avenues to give your photo contest the boost it needs.

Our Wishpond Ads Gurus are here to help if you need any information on how to use Google or Facebook Ads.

Four: Get ‘Em Interacting With Your Brand

Entice your audience to interact with your brand in their photo submissions.

A great example of this is what Tap House Grill did for their contest: a picture of the entrant at their restaurant:

This idea accomplishes a couple a goals. First, Tap House received many photos during the contest in which they could use for promotional material. Second, the photo reminded the entrant about the (presumably) positive experience they had there, thus endearing the brand to them.

Five: Cater to the Egos of Your Fans

With the continued success of reality television, and the surge to the mainstream social media sites like Instagram had this year, it is not hard to see that we are living in the age of the narcissist. As such, a culture of people desperate for their beauty and talents to be acknowledged is in full swing. Facebook Photo Contests can absolutely play into this mentality. Any brand can launch a contest looking for its Brand Girl. For example, Shimmer & Bliss, a scarf company based in Austin, Texas, launched a photo contest looking for its “Next Shimmer & Bliss Girl”:

On the surface, it is implied that the community surrounding your Facebook page would do the majority of the voting; but not so fast. Photo contests featuring the photos of your fans has the awesome potential to bring out the friends of your fans, thus satisfying Mashable’s definition of a successful Facebook campaign.

Six: Entice Entrants With A “Fan of the Month” Promotion

Photo contests make it extremely easy to create a “Fan of the Month” promotion. Doing so accomplishes three goals: one, it creates an intense amount of immersion for the customer into the brand. Two, as aformentioned in the fourth column, it plays into one’s ego. Third, and most importantly, it shows how appreciative your company is of your customers. As Stephen Covey would say, a “Fan of the Month” photo contest is Win-Win.

Seven: Make Sure Your Contest is Optimized For Mobile

Every year more and more people are doing the majority of their Facebook browsing on smartphones and tablets. Not having your Facebook contests optimized for mobile severely limits potential entrants and subsequent participation.

Conversely, You’ll find more participation from a different set of fans than you’d get from traditional browsing.

Eight: Follow Up With Entrants by Email to Turn Them Into Customers

Once all the hoopla is over and you’ve picked your winner, what do you do?

You can sit back and hope that some of the non-winners of your sweepstakes come to your store and shop, but they may have simply forgotten that they even entered.

Wishpond Social Sweepstakes gives you the email addresses of each of your entrants – so this is the perfect time to convert those interested entrants into CUSTOMERS.

You can send a warm email by offering them a small consolation prize – like a 25% off gift card – as a thank you for entering. This will quell their immediate negative feelings of not winning and leave them feeling positive towards you. It will also give them an excuse to head to your store and start shopping.

Nine: Be Consistent

It’s best to run a Photo Contest one-to-two times per month to maintain a constant flow of traffic to your Facebook page. Trust us, it works awesome :)

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Facebook Marketing Return On Investment (ROI) for Health Food & Supplement Retailers:

1. Engage with your customers personally; see what products they’re talking about.

2. Boost traffic to your website.

3. Find new customers through the friends of your fans.

4. Augment your drip email campaigns.

5. Use Facebook’s Opengraph to dig deeper into the demographics of your fans.

An excellent way of achieving these ROIs is through the use of promotions. Four very useful types of promotions you can launch on Facebook are:

-Sweepstakes
-Photo Contests
-Vote Contests
-Product Showcase

Sweepstakes:

Sweepstakes are the simplest to execute of the four and are highly recommended for health food and supplement retailers who are just starting out. The barrier for entry is minimal; all an entrant needs to do is submit their email. Sweepstakes create buzz, engage customers, and can lure the friends of your fans into liking your page.

This example, courtesy of Murray’s Natural Health Solutions, is both simple and effective. The store is looking to forge relationships with new customers and improve relationships with current ones, and thus has decided to give away a $50 gift card.

Pro Tip: Although this may seem like common sense, make sure you give away your business’ own products. Sweepstakes are meant to be promotion for your products, to build buzz and get customers excited. You’d be amazed how many companies that aren’t Apple give away iPads.

Photo Contests:

With the advent and subsequent widespread use of smartphone technology, taking digital photos and sharing them on Facebook has become easy as pie. Such simplicity has resulted in hundreds of millions of photos being added to Facebook every day. Coupling this information with the fact that photos on Facebook receive 53% more likes than other content, and hosting a photo contest begins to look like a pretty good idea.

User-submitted photo contests are an excellent way to have your customers immersed with your brand. For health food and supplement retailers, you can make the theme anything from “Show us what you look like after your workout” to “Feature our product in the photo”, which is perfect for both getting the entrant engaged with what you’re selling, but it also doubles as free publicity.

This example features Murray’s Natural Health Solutions again. In it, they are running a photo contest to entice their customers to submit a photo of their best workout photo. This will bring them a ton of new reach from the people sharing the photos.

Pro Tip: Unless you have a large Facebook fanbase who engage with your page frequently, you’re going to want to keep your photo contest simple. However, don’t forget that photo contests are perfect for immersing your customers in your products, and as free promotion. Maintain a balance between both.

Vote Contests:

Like photo contests, vote contests get customers interacting with your brand in a personal way. Unlike photo contests, however, the barrier of entry is much less. Entrants don’t have to upload any of their own content, thus many more people are likely to enter.

Vote contests also serve as a way to find out, direct from your customers, what your most popular products are. And, depending on the prize you’re giving away, entrants may get their friends to enter, increasing feedback and adding new potential customers.

Here’s a great example of how you can run a Vote Contest for your retail location:

Murray’s Natural Health Solutions’ three best selling supplements are multivitamins, vitamin D, and omega 3s. In exchange for what is essentially feedback to determine their most popular item, Murray’s is offering a $50 gift card.

In addition, you can send targeted email campaigns based on each voter’s candidate of choice. This is perfect for drip email campaigns.

Pro Tip: A straight and to the point title for your vote contest is essential to its success. Keep it direct so customers know exactly what’s going on.

Product Showcase:

Showcasing your products on your Facebook page is an easy way to get users browsing and sharing the items you carry. No doubt your fans will share the products they are passionate about, effectively engaging them.

WIth the myriad of health products and nutritional supplements out there, it can be hard for customers to choose which product best suits them, so by presenting as much of your catalogue on Facebook as possible, you’re making yourself an easy choice.

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With a passion for art, and more specifically, art for everyone, Jen Bekman launched a first in the modern art world: an art gallery that supplies limited edition artwork at low prices, and strategically uses the power of the internet to provide art for everyone.

Founded in 2007, last year, 20×200 had expected revenues of over $7 million.

How could such an obscure concept with limited, niche market potential have such success?

In this article, we will show you what can you learn for your retail business.

6 digital marketing tactics to learn from 20×200:

1. Syndicate coupons to popular websites to drive new traffic
2. Use contests to promote new and popular products
3. Create personal interactions on Facebook between your customers and CEO
4. Create boards to attract users across all of your target markets
5. Make product posts interesting and directly linked to your website sales funnel
6. Categorize your products by price to make your online store user friendly

1. Syndicate coupons to popular websites to drive new traffic

Coupons are in keeping with the vision of 20×200 to bring art to the masses.

And to reach everyone, 20×200 coupons can be found on about every coupon site out there.

From Retail Me Not, Ulitmate Coupons, Coupon Follow, Savings.com, Coupons.webcrawler.com, Deal Catcher, Discounted Code Stores, and more: you will find 20×200 with coupons galore.

The coupons are accessible with deals and coupons for a limited number of their limited editions, for a limited time.

20×200 markets to consumers looking for a deal. By including every deal and coupon site, 20×200 hits their reach to every prospective consumer in this niche.

What can retailers learn from this?

• Coupon lovers are on coupon sites. Get your discount products to your market. Get on coupon sites.
• Post coupons frequently, with a quick call to action, a limited number and limited time frame.
• Use a coupon syndication site, such as Nextgenshopping.
• By the way, Wishpond has created easy to use group offers to entice users to claim a coupon or special offer on a brand’s products and services. The app can run on a brand’s Facebook Pages, website, and on mobile. All you have to do is add your branded marketing smarts!

2. Use contests to promote new and popular products

20×200 runs a variety of contests which they promote through many of their social sites.

On Tumblr, for example, they run contests, and actively promote them through Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook.

The contests they run are engaging, ranging from captioning artwork, short essay contests about the artwork, to sweepstakes for amazing giveaways.

Brilliantly, 20×200 showcase their current products for sale, and offer 20×200 products as the prize.

A recent contest, in which they showcased artwork with the caption “Why Can’t You Just Be Nice” garnered over 2,300 notes and shares on Tumblr alone.

The contest perfectly showcased their artwork, and engaged their customer by asking contestants for their views on why can’t you be nice, in 10 words or less.

The prize? The print, framed.

Entries could be submitted through Tumblr, or Twitter, using the #BNice hashtag.

They shared not just the winning caption, but also the top ten runner-ups.

What can retailers learn from this?

• Use your products as the prize. When showcased well, contests generate excitement for your product.
• Promote your contest on multiple social platforms. Use one hashtag, to create a clear community for your contest across all platforms.
• Keep it engaging. Ask your customer for their opinions. Show you value your customers’ views.
• Did we mention: Wishpond has created many easy to use contest apps, such as photo caption contests, photo contests and sweepstakes. All you have to do is add your branded marketing smarts!

3. Create personal interactions on Facebook between your customers and CEO

The 20×200 Facebook Page has just shy of 28,000 likes. But it is an active community, with likes, comments and shares on every post.

20×200 uses their Facebook Page to connect with their consumer on a more personal level, and to create more options for touch points with their fans.

Keeping it personal, Jen Bekman does what many old-school CEO’s would never do.

On the embedded how-to YouTube video, Jen Bekman herself shows how personal and relatable she is. Jen describes step-by-step how to frame your art, how to do it inexpensively, and relates that this is how she frames for her home too.

Additionally, 20×200 makes brilliant use of tabs.

By making it easy to sign up for enewsletters, for example, 20×200 creates additional personalized touchpoints with their customer.

The more a consumer feels uniquely connected to 20×200, and the more a fan sees 20×200 and its products, the more likely that consumer will buy from 20×200.

What can retailers learn from this?

• Social media sites like Facebook are about connecting with friends. Show your company with a personality, and let your fans feel like they are your friends.
• Create multiple touchpoints. The more options you have for your customer to choose to connect with you, the better.
• Make signing up for your newsletters easy.

4. Create boards to attract users across all of your target markets

Pinterest is a very visual site. For an art gallery, Pinterest is an ideal locale.

The 20×200 Pinterest page has nearly 5,000 followers, and 63 Boards.

True to its vision, 20×200 caters to everyone, and every niche, within the market for art.

Boards include categories such as “Live With Art. It’s Good For You”, “Art for Night Owls”, “Art for Geeks”, “Contests”, “Art for Lovebirds”, and even “Art for Baseball Fans” (how’s that for a niche?).

Every Pin has the price of the item, and a short description of the artwork.

Every Pin of their product links back to the 20×200 online store, on the landing page for purchasing that particular item. The interested consumer is well within the sales funnel, with just a few simple clicks to finalize the sale.

What can retailers learn from this?

• Pinterest is a visual site. Use the best pictures of your product to showcase them in the best light, to obtain the most likes and repins.
• Create multiple boards. Categorize your products. Make it easy for your niche customer to find the niche product they want.
• Link your pictures to specific landing pages on your website with clear call to actions.This works particularly well for online shopping stores. Your potential customer is interested in your product when they click on the picture – make it easy for them to get it!
• You could even connect the picture to your Facebook social store, to increase traffic to your Facebook Page.

5. Make product posts interesting and directly linked to your website sales funnel

Tumblr demographics generally skew to those under 30. For sellers of inexpensive art, this is a perfect demographic to reach. Students and young professionals want to decorate their rooms and dorm rooms. Cheap art does the trick.

Like Pinterest, Tumblr is very visual. Artwork shares well on such a site.

Tumblr is very successful for 20×200, with most posts getting at least 100 notes and shares.

Each post is of their product.

The product has the price, and a description written in a friendly, inclusive tone.

Strategically making their artwork accessible, 20×200 makes purchasing their products easy too.

Every post on Tumblr links back to the online store, with a few simple clicks for the interested customer to purchase the artwork.

When a customer clicks on the Tumblr picture, above, it leads directly to the 20×200 online store, below.

What can retailers learn from this?

• Make your product visually appealing.
• Describe your product to give your customers information, and to get them intrigued by what you have to offer.
• Link your product pictures to specific landing pages on your website with clear call to actions. When a customer is interested enough to click on your product – this is the time to lead them to a quick, and easy purchase.

6. Categorize your products by price to make your online store user friendly

Jen Bekman’s store is her website.

The 20×200 online browsing system is remarkably user friendly. And true to being the provider of art for the masses, the website store cleanly compartmentalizes art pieces by price.

If a customer is looking for a $24 piece, they simply click on “$24”, and they are able to feast their eyes on over 300 works of art.

If a customer is looking for high-end art, they could peruse through the over 100 pieces in the “$1200+” category.

The website store is also very user friendly to search by category of content, and even by color.

What can retailers learn from this?

• Make the online shopping experience easy.
• If your focus is on price conscious consumers, show your prices, and organize your online store to make your price conscious items simple to find.
• Just as would in a bricks and mortar store, make the buying experience a good one, and keep your customers returning for more.

If you have a niche product, you will find a buyer for it somewhere online. Seek out as many of the relevant sites, and be a part of them.

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First, let’s cover the Return on Investment (or ROIs) Facebook marketing can bring to both florists and gift shop owners:

1. Engage with your customers personally.

2. Boost traffic to your website.

3. Find new customers through the friends of your fans.

4. Create a showcase to display and receive feedback on your new products

5. Create a lasting bond with customers.

An excellent way of achieving these ROIs is through the use of promotions. Four very useful types of promotions you can launch on Facebook are:

-Sweepstakes
-Photo Contests
-Vote Contests
-Product Showcase

Sweepstakes:

Sweepstakes are the simplest to execute of the four and are highly recommended for florists and gift shop owners who are just starting out. The barrier for entry is minimal; all an entrant needs to do is submit their email. Sweepstakes create buzz, engage customers, and can lure the friends of your fans into liking your page.

This example, courtesy of Mama’s Flower Shop, is both simple and effective. The store is looking to forge relationships with new customers and improve relationships with current ones, and thus has decided to give away a $50 gift card.
Pro Tip: Although this may seem like common sense, make sure you give away your business’ own products. Sweepstakes are meant to be promotion for your products, to build buzz and get customers excited. You’d be amazed how many companies that aren’t Apple give away iPads.

Photo Contests:

With the advent and subsequent widespread use of smartphone technology, taking digital photos and sharing them on Facebook has become easy as pie. Such simplicity has resulted in hundreds of millions of photos being added to Facebook every day. Coupling this information with the fact that photos on Facebook receive 53% more likes than other content, and hosting a photo contest begins to look like a pretty good idea.

User-submitted photo contests are an excellent way to have your customers immersed with your brand. For florists and gift shop owners, you can make the theme anything from “Show us your prettiest flower” to “Feature our product in the photo”, which is perfect for both getting the entrant engaged with what you’re selling, but it also doubles as free publicity.

This examples features Mama’s Flower Shop again. In it, they are running a photo contest to entice their customers to submit a photo of their best floral-themed photo. This will bring them a ton of new reach from the people sharing the photos.

Pro Tip: Unless you have a large Facebook fanbase who engage with your page frequently, you’re going to want to keep your photo contest simple. However, don’t forget that photo contests are perfect for immersing your customers in your products, and as free promotion. Maintain a balance between both.

Vote Contests:

Like photo contests, vote contests get customers interacting with your brand in a personal way. Unlike photo contests, however, the barrier of entry is much less. Entrants don’t have to upload any of their own content, thus many more people are likely to enter.

Vote contests also serve as a way to find out, direct from your customers, what your most popular products are. And, depending on the prize you’re giving away, entrants may get their friends to enter, increasing feedback and adding new potential customers.

Here’s a great example of how you can run a Vote Contest for your flower or gift shop:

Gord’s Gifts launched a vote contest to determine which one of their three best selling Valentine’s Day-centric items was most popular. In return, Gord’s offered a $50 gift card.

Pro Tip: A straight and to the point title for your vote contest is essential to its success. Keep it direct so customers know exactly what’s going on.

Product Showcase:

Showcasing your products on your Facebook page is an easy way to get users browsing and sharing the items you carry. No doubt your fans will share the products they are passionate about, effectively engaging them.

WIth the myriad of flowers and bric-a-brac out there, it can be hard for customers to choose which product best suits them, so by presenting as much of your catalogue on Facebook as possible, you’re making yourself an easy choice.

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In this article, we will show you how easy it is to get into online social marketing, how successful you can be in the digital sphere, and how you can create easy social promotions to reach markets you have dreamed about before.

Goals
Whether you are an NPO or not, an integral part of any good marketing plan is defining your goals.When you know what it is you want to achieve, creating distinct marketing campaigns and tactics become much more clear.

The goals of non-profit organizations can be as diverse as the myriad of organizations themselves. There are, however, a few major goals across the board.

5 major goals of a NPO include increasing:

• cause awareness
• brand awareness
• donations
• volunteers
• membership

You can take these goals and achieve them through digital media.

Social Promotions

A low cost way to boost your sharability – and thus potentially increase awareness, donations, volunteers and members – is through using social promotions. Social promotions are easy to run through your social platforms such as your Facebook page, or even your blog.

5 creative ways through which your NPO can succeed:

• Vote Contest
• Photo Contest
• Sweepstakes
• Essay Contest
• Video Contest

Vote Contest

With a Vote Contest, you can gain interaction with your supporters by asking them their views, and your supporters get to take action by voting.

Putting on a vote contest is a great way to listen to your fans, and respond to your donor stakeholders.

They are very simple to set up on your Facebook page, or blog. They have a low barrier to entry – all voters need to do is click “Enter Sweepstakes”, and enter their email. Then they get to share their views by clicking on their vote option preference.

You get to collect entrants’ emails, and you can track results in real-time to monitor campaign performance in our All-in-One marketing suite.

You can even set up team voting, community voting and/or get people to like your Page to enter.

Once a fan votes, a post is automatically shared on their Facebook profile, inviting their friends to vote their view too. This generates buzz for your campaign and creates a potential viral campaign for your cause/ brand/ donation/ volunteer or membership drive.

It is kind of like having a friend tell a friend about your organization, and if the vote topic resonates with a lot of people, you may just reach more markets than you’ve ever dared to dream.

Example:

The organization, Bite Hunger, is working to fight hunger, both locally and globally. They are using social promotions to achieve a greater reach.

In this example, they are having a Vote Contest to engage their supporters, by crowdsourcing advice on what to focus their next fundraising campaign. By engaging the voices of supporters, their fans will likely feel closer to the cause. In return, their fans are more likely to spread the word about Bite Hunger, and more willing to donate.

Photo Contest

Photo Contests are another great way to increase engagement. Whether you take photos on a camera or a phone, we are all passionate about photography these days. And everyone likes to shares their pics!

The Photo Contests through Wishpond are again very simple to set up. For your customer, too, they have a relative low barrier to entry, with fans simply submitting their email, and uploading a photo.

Photos are some of the most viral content on social platforms these days. For creating buzz with family and friends online, voting on photos can create an exponential amount of photo sharing, and sharing your cause and brand.

By keeping your contest cause related, you will resonate more with your market.

Example:

To raise awareness about local food growing, Bite Hunger has set up a Photo Contest to get participants to enter their best photo of a neighbourhood vegetable garden. The winners of the contest will receive a $50 gift certificate at the garden store of their choice.

Because you need the most votes to win, contestants are motivated to share the contest and get their family and friends to ‘Like’ Bite Hunger’s Page, give Bite Hunger their email, and vote. By voting in the photo contest, it shows up in the feeds of family and friends as well.

Sweepstakes

Sweepstakes are another simple type of contest. They can be set up in minutes and, like all of our apps, are automatically optimized for mobile.

With a low barrier to entry, they are easy for users, which maximizes engagement. Users simply click ‘Enter Sweepstakes’, submit their email, and they’re in.

Once signed up, entrants automatically share a post on their Facebook profile, inviting their friends to join too. This generates buzz for your campaign and creates a potential viral campaign for your organization.

Like all of our contests, you get to collect entrants’ emails, and you can track results in real-time to monitor campaign performance in our All-in-One marketing suite.

Example:
In the example, below, Bite Hunger has set up a Sweepstakes to give away free tickets to their next fundraising event. To enter, contestants must enter their email, and make a donation as little as $5 to the cause.

This is not only as easy way to motivate supporters to become donors, but it also promotes Bite Hunger’s next event.

Essay Contest

Essay contests ask more of your supporters, as you are asking them to express their views in words. Setting them up, however, is as simple for you as all our other apps.

With an essay contest, you can ask your supporters what makes them passionate about your cause. You can ask you fans if there a story they would like to share, and to give them a chance to make their voices heard. You could ask why they support a specific aspect of your organization, or even to write about the appreciation they have for a particular volunteer in your organization.

This not only gets your supporters more involved by knowing you want to hear from them, and to share their stories, you also are able to showcase this written passion, which may ignite a flame in others.

You can create prizes for the best essay, using those with the most votes (by getting the most votes, entrants are more motivated to share their essay through all of their social platforms, and their friends). Prizes don’t have to cost much if you are a smaller organization, they could be as simple as spending a day with those who you help, recognition by posting it on your website, and/ or a gift certificate related to your cause or target market.

Example:

Bite Hunger would like to engage their fans through an essay contest. In the example, below, they are offering a grand prize of $500 to spend in a local kitchenware store.

To enter, fans must write a maximum 500 word essay expressing why they are passionate about alleviating world hunger.

In order to vote, people must “like” the Bite Hunger Facebook Page. Entrants will be very engaged and motivated to share the contest to get the most likes with their online social connections.

Video Contest

Video contests are another easy to set up app. They can be used on your Facebook page and/ or embedded on your website. They are mobile compatible, and have auto-sharing by entrants.

Video contests, like essay contests require more effort from your entrants. They can be very motivating, too, for those who are passionate about your cause. And, like the essay contest, they can provide a spark in others, which may ignite a passion for your cause.

Again, like all of our apps in Wishpond’s All-in-One Marketing suite, you are able to easily collect participants emails in a exportable database.

Example:

In the example, below, Bite Hunger has set up a video contest to motivate their fans and increase awareness of their cause. The video must be under 5 minutes, and entrants are asked what they would do to alleviate hunger in their community.

Videos are voted on, and the one with the most votes wins.

Like photos, videos are some of the most viral content on the net. By encouraging the videos to be shared and voted on, Bite Hunger is getting user-generated content to promote their cause.

By Adella Choi
Content Marketer
Wishpond

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With over 150 millions users sharing 5,000,000 photos per day, Instagram is a killer channel to get users sharing about your establishment. And as Instagram still a (mostly) mobile-exclusive network, it’s the best one to engage guests when they’re out and only have their mobile phone.
In this guide you’ll learn how to:

• Choose the best types of photos to upload to Instagram
• Use hashtags to get found on Instagram
• Run contests to entice guests to share photos of your bar or nightclub

Types of photos to upload

Post photos that are relevant to, and focus on each category.

• Copies of posters, banners, or e-newsletters
• Groups of nice-looking girls and guys at your bar
• DJs, live bands, dancers, and bartenders
• Events
• Winners of Contests
• VIP rooms
• Featured drinks and menus
• Theme, lights, or inside/outside of the place (bars, long guestline, sign, etc.)

See a couple examples below..

Which hashtags to use

Use common hashtags that people usually search for on Instagram when looking for pictures of parties, events, and nightclubs in their city:

• #[Event name]
• #Ilove[Club name]
• #Friday Night@[Club name]
• #[DJ, Live Band]
• #[City name]Nightlife

Run Contests to entice guests to share photos of your bar or nightclub

You can entice guests to share photos on Instagram by running a contest in which guests must share a photo on Instagram with certain hashtags to enter the contest. By giving away a simple prize like a $50 gift card, you’ll be able to get tons of reach on Instagram for your bar.
How to promote your contest to your guests:

• Install a temporary photo booth in your bar where guests can go to take photos with their friends.
• Hang posters with QR codes, NFC Chips, and shortlinks to make it easy for guests to scan and enter on their mobile phones.
• Promote it on your other social media channels.
• Share photos of previous contest winners with their prizes.

Check out an example below:

What if people don’t use the hashtags that you are looking for?

Even if guests are not tagging their photos with the best hashtags to promote your business, you can easily compensate for it: Display your banners or business logo as much as you can to be easily recognized as your bar in any picture. Even if a person didn’t put relevant hashtags on their photo taken at your establishment, people will know where that person was last night.

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With millions of parents actively posting on Facebook daily, for marketers of toys and kids stuff, your target is here.

In this article, we’ll show you how to reach your target market in droves through Facebook.

What RIO can you Achieve by Marketing on Facebook?

1. Increase engagement with more likes/ shares/ comments on your Facebook Page
2. Reach new customers, including friends and family of current fans
3. Promote your products to new markets
4. Obtain a deeper understanding of your customers through data pulled from Facebook’s Open Graph
5. And ultimately, generate new and more sales

How do you attain the results you want?

At Wishpond, be want you to be the best marketer you can be. To do so, we’ve created a whole range of social promotion apps – making your successes a little easier. Additionally, in our All-in-One Marketing Suite, we provide exclusive analytics for you to track and measure all of your achievements.

In this article, we will take a look at 3 of our popular apps, and explore how you can get the results you need.

3 Types of Facebook Promotions to use to Achieve your ROI:

1. Sweepstakes
2. Voting Contests
3. Photo Contests

Sweepstakes

Sweepstakes are some of the simplest types of contests. They can be set up in minutes and, like all of our apps, are automatically optimized for mobile.

With a low barrier to entry, they are easy for users, which maximizes engagement. Users simply click ‘Enter Sweepstakes’, submit their email, and they’re in.

Once signed up, entrants automatically share a post on their Facebook profile, inviting their friends to join too. This generates buzz for your campaign and creates a potential viral campaign for your business.

You get to collect entrants’ emails, and you can track results in real-time to monitor campaign performance in our all-in-one marketing suite.

Sweepstakes can be run for all kinds of products or gift certificates. You can use them to promote a new item your store has, or showcase a popular line of clothing, or just generate buzz.

People like to win. Sweepstakes are a great way to cater to this desire.

ProTip: The prize is key to making your sweepstakes a success. People are motivated to enter if they see the reward being worth it. And they will be more motivated if the prize is relevant to their wants. In other words, know your market and make the prize relevant to them and representative of your brand.

Example:

In the example, below, Sarah’s Place set up a sweepstakes for a high end stroller, to entice customers to buy products from her social store. Her market caters to new moms, and this popular stroller is much sought after by her clientele.

Vote Contests

A Vote Contest is another very easy contest to set up. And for your customers, they again provide a low barrier to entry. All voters need to do is sign in.

Vote Contests are a great way to understand your fans, and they are some of the easiest ways to get users to interact with your brand in a personal way. After all, voting is asking your fans for their opinions.

You can set up voting contests for all kinds of products. For example, you can set up a vote for which products should appear in your next product line. If you are choosing, say which Lego sets you want from your supplier on your next order, make it into a vote contest, and have your customers tell you what they want!

You can set up voting contests for two similar products you have in your store right now. Get your fans to tell you what they prefer. And in doing so, you are also promoting that product for your customers to buy.

And, going further, your voting could even be related to your brand, to reach your target market, without promoting specific products you have. For example, you might be marketing a popular infant product store. You could set up a vote, asking fans which they prefer: Cheerios or Apple Cinnamon Cheerios.

You can set up team voting, community voting and even get people to like your Page to enter.

Pro tip: Choosing the right products to vote on is important. Vote contests can get pretty passionate, if the chosen items resonate with your fan base. The more an item resonates with your fans, the more likely they will be to engage. They will also be more likely to share their vote, and get their friends to vote as well.

Example:

In the example, below, Sarah’s Place is ordering new LEGO sets for their shop. They are promoting the upcoming shipment by showcasing three new sets they may be getting. By setting up an easy vote contest, her clients are made aware of the LEGO, they get to feel like Sarah is listening to them, and they may just get pretty excited about their favourite set.

Once a fan votes, it shows up on their Facebook feed, so their friends and family can vote too!

Photo Contests

Photo Contests are another great way to increase engagement. With cameras on every phone these days, photos and your market go hand in hand. Sharing cute kids pictures with friends and family is a natural with Facebook. And photos are generally the most viewed posts on Facebook feeds.

The Photo Contests through Wishpond are again very simple to set up. For your customer, too, they have a relative low barrier to entry, with fans simply submitting their email, and uploading a photo.

For creating buzz with family and friends and more, they can easily go viral, and you can gain access to markets you’ve never reached before.

Did you know, for example, that 1 in 3 grandparents in America have a Facebook account? You can bet that if their grandchild was in a photo contest on Facebook, they would be voting for their photo, and getting everyone they know to do so too!

Your photo contest should have a theme. Your theme should be related to your products or brand or event you will be hosting.

For example, if you sell children’s clothing, and one of your better selling products were designer socks, you could set up a photo contest for cool socks. Get participants to submit their coolest photos of their kids wearing the coolest socks!

Pro Tip: Having a great title for your contest is important. The more enticing it sounds, the more photo entries you will generate. Additionally, choose a theme that is both related to your brand, and is easy for your customers to get photos for.

Example:

In the example, below, Sarah’s Place carries a range of children’s socks, and a new shipment is coming in soon. They set up a simple photo contest to get their fans excited about socks. They are giving away a gift certificate to entice their customers to share a cool photo of their kids in their favourite cool socks.

Because you need the most votes to win, contestants are motivated to share the contest and get their family and friends to ‘Like’ Sarah’s Place’s page, give Sarah’s Place their email, and vote. By voting in the photo contest, it shows up in the feeds of family and friends as well.

Wishpond also offers the following easy to use apps in our All-in-one Marketing Suite:

Video Contest
Pinterest Contest App
Photo Caption Contest
Social Store
and many more…

Contact us now for a consultation, or to get started with a free 30 day trial