Some frictionless sharing from the Hobbit Premiere in Berlin

This shows how a social media operating system at events can create frictionless sharing of professional grade photos for guest and at the same time very effective native advertising for the clients (in this case Facebook and Warner Brothers)

#EventTech deck on Doubling Social Media Reach from Events

This is the first of two talks I gave in Las Vegas last week to a sold out crowd at EventTech – EventMarketer magazine’s big fall conference on technology for event marketing.

I gave the talk to a standing-room-only crowd which was great fun and it was voted one of the best talks of the show! I was really excited by the engagement and feed back so I thought I would add some more text to the slides and post up here for blog followers. I’d love your feedback and thoughts – is anything missing, anything need to be added, etc?

From Event Marketer – 10 Ways to Double Social Media Reach at Events – Sweeney-dwinQ from Patrick Sweeney

Optimizing Facebook Sponosred Stories

Facebook’s most effective advertising is in the stream. No one is looking on the sidelines, and I’ve said it a million times, no one goes to Facebook to shop. However FB is tremendously influential. Sponsored stories so far have the best success for marketing a brand on Facebook, but how can you really amp up the Facebook marketing success?

The problem arises from the typical misconception that advertisers do not have any creative control over sponsored stories ad types because they are generated from an organic user action. At most advertisers wrongly believe, these ads might include a page or current profile photo. If you are not familiar with the make-up of a sponsored story it usually is when someone likes a page or brand, or item. This is relatively lackluster content, although it comes in the form of a trusted source (a friend’s user stream), or appears on a mobile device so you will see it and the brand gets an earned impression. The way to take sponosred stories to the next level is to show actual interaction with your brand.

If you are a car dealer and you capture a person jumping in the air the moment they take delivery of a new car – that will drive engagement. It is dramatically different than someone liking the Ford page.

Take a look at this first sponsored story – no interaction, a quick glance because it is in the user’s stream:

A typical Facebook sponsored story

That is a typical Facebook sponsored story. It is much more effective than the ads on the right side, no doubt. Rosetta Stone is getting good take-up rate for a medium that is not focused on buying.

But check out the engagement of this user-generated content that can then be further amplified by creating a sponsored story:

User Generated Content on dwinQ’s Product Placement Platform

 

 

 

 

 

 

850% more people clicked on this picture from the user’s timeline! There was real-world engagement and very positive brand association.

Capture people interacting with your brand. Let users generate amazing and genuine real world content and you will have Facebook advertising on steroids!

Facebook search – what is your marketing strategy?

How many things do you “Like” on Facebook. How many do you like in the real world. The place you ate lunch, your sneakers, your bike, the movie you saw last night. You might like them all but I bet you haven’t Liked them. I would bet money that nine out of ten times the answer is you haven’t Liked what you like int eh real world. Even though you like something doesn’t mean you’ve Liked it. And if you are a brand marketer that fact should really worry you.

Facebook’s new search is all about finding out what kind of car your friends like. What restaurant people in Chamonix like best après-ski, or which bike is the fastest for your first triathlon. Users know those are very valuable recommendations. Marketing professionals want to be at the top of the list for those recommendations. The problem is, right now, you probably are not controlling that brand message. The key to getting the most out of Facebook’s new search engine is to start optimizing it early. The first people buying Google paid ads were the ones who, for pennies, got the top of the search engine. Be first optimizing Facebook’s search and you’ll be a pioneer mining a heart of gold.

social media product placement

One of the best ways to ensure your brand is searched in user-created content is to fricitonlessly embed your brand in the users photos. How? Find events you already sponsor with lots of people and do a bit of automagic social media. Combine RFID or NFC with Facebook. Look at the picture from my Facebook page on the right. I used an RFID tag to wave infront of a photobooth to generate that cool image (at an event where they don’t allow cameras). 

dwinQ used RFID & Facebook to drive high brand recognition for Lexus at the US Open – this is high ranking searchable content.

If you can create a positive brand message that is shared automatically by thousands, or even millions of people you will optimize Facebook search engine. Photo marketing solutions are one powerful way.

The message talks about Lexus and Excellence in the timeline of a user. This brand message was seen by hundreds of thousands of people because the thousands of fans who engaged at the US Open

Driving Social Media Growth – the secret is in your events

For the past eighteen months companies have been setting up Facebook pages, collecting fans and spending money on consultants. Why? Because their competition is – not necessarily because they had a goal in mind. Smart brands are wising up and are setting the goal where it should be – on revenue. Today I’ll give you some insight into best practices for companies making the most of social media to drive revenue.

Focus on Engagement not Building Facebook Fans

Look at two very different Facebook pages – check out GoPro and then look at Red Bull. Both brands target the exact same demographic, with very similar lifestyle. Red Bull has significantly higher Fans on Facebook than GoPro – in fact Red Bull’s 28 million fans is more than thirteen times more than GoPro’s 2.1 million. But as Bill James figured out in Baseball (see: Moneyball the movie or book) batting average doesn’t really matter – it’s how often you get on base that wins game. Similarly Facebook Fans don’t matter, it’s how often they engage with your brand that drives revenue.

The Brand Audience Rate of Engagement (BARE) is the best way to measure social media success and likelihood of driving revenue from your social media efforts. BARE measures how many people Like, Comment, or Share your content on Facebook. In other words how engaged people are with our brand in an on-going way. Red Bull’s BARE is less than 1% (.92% to be exact). Compare that to GoPro with over 6.7% BARE Score.

GoPro interacts with fans 600% better than Red Bull.

Social Media Driving Revenue

The higher the BARE, the more people are interacting with your brand. This means you can drive a more active and consistent message. You can glean feedback, increase brand equity and most importantly create a call to action that people will heed – such as a sales offer.

One aspect of Facebook that is a mystery to many people is the EdgeRank algorithm. This is the highly secretive formula that determines what makes it to a person’s newsfeed or timeline. The one-shot offers to convince people to be a Fan of a corporate page are just the start to social media marketing. Once you have them you have to engage them consistently, with high quality content and do it in a timely manner. There is one way to do this that is better than anything else – and it ensures your brand will get high engagement in front of your targeted audience.

Events are the key to Facebook success.

If you run marekting for a Fortune 500 company chances are your brand is already spending millions on real world events. Do you sponsor sporting events? Co-host concerts? Have naming right at an arena? Your goal is probably to get impressions and brand recognition thourgh those people at the event or with those covering the event in the press. With the new digital word-of-mouth that is social media you can now reach on average 200 other people for every person at your event who is on Facebook. You just have to make it frictionless and make sure your brand is associated with it.

Combine RFID as a single sign on to social media so your attendees don’t have to use a phone and create photos that are not obtainable anywhere else. Mount cameras on the bow of your ships, at the top of your Jumbotrons, on the Green Monsta! You get the idea – then use dwinQ’s social media software to automatically update the images, tag them and then post to Facebook in real time– with your logo superimposed on the photo. It will increase your event ROI by 10-50 times what you were getting before. Read more about it by downloading our free whitepaper on social media at events.