Tag: Social Media

Posted on

Post-event quick web & social analysis for the Southland Street Fair 2015

Special notes about the event:

There are MANY factors outside of my own efforts that impacted the success of this event. From the 10th district video clip that ran on G3TV and youtube to Kristy going on Lex18 and Channel36 the day before the event. And many people shared this event info with their own subscriber lists via email and social media. So this kind of growth in this short of a period of time was accomplished through participation of many different parties and individuals.

What some of you might not know however is the efforts that I put into social media and the website and are some of the things I do for clients of Fascination Design. The things that weren’t event paperwork to secure police or the stage (because I don’t do that for clients!) Since I don’t often speak about what I do for the Southland Association and also because website details and social media efforts are often ignored if they aren’t mentioned, I put together this quick overview.

The Website:

  • The website is multi platform multi device friendly and worked on browsers back to ie 8 (older still worked but wasn’t as pretty in older browsers.) It is a responsive website and will adjust in size and look good from desktop to smartphone.
  • The website evolved as deadlines passed. Vendors & sponsorship opportunities were in main menu and moved to a less prominent location for example.
  • FAQ information was added as people asked questions that were general enough that other people might also ask the same questions.

Website Analytics:

  • Unique viewers “user” growth: from March 27th when the site went live at zero to May 18th 2015 there were a total of 4,733 people who visited the site at least once.
  • 2,690 (56.82%) Mobile / 1,628 (34.39%) desktop / 416 (8.79%) tablet
  • Traffic sources :
    • 8% social : of that percent 95.62% facebook / 1.80% twitter / 1.43% yelp / 1.15% meetup
    • 8% direct
      17.3% organic search (google, bing, yahoo)
    • 1% referral (other websites, e-blast/enewsletters etc.)

 

Facebook:

  • Growth of likes to page: 0 January 14th to 825 likes May 18th 2015
  • Issues and benefits of a Facebook event. For an event there’s no tracking of posts made to the event listing and inaccurate tracking of event info in insights BUT each announcement posted to an event goes to entire audience. Too many announcements and you annoy people. Final tally on the Facebook event was 1.7k “went” and 2.1k had been invited
  • There were jumps in followers, shares and likes each time posts were made to the page and event listing.
  • Posts to event were made at specific intervals and ramped up closer to the event. All posts to the event were also made to the page as well. Posts were intended to give people something visual and informative so they could get an idea of what the event might be like. Many also included the date and time info in case someone shared the photo instead of the page or event.
  • Most questions from users were responded to in a timely manner. Interaction increases likelihood that someone would attend.
  • Photos were posted the day of the event by a variety of people (Fred, Jamie, Jim and Kristy each had access to the facebook page to post as it.)

 

Twitter:

  • Twitter ended up a low priority due to character length but posts were made and shared there and still had an impact.
  • Impressions: 8,405 tweet impressions in May. 2,200 tweet impressions in April. 265 tweet impressions in March. Total of 10,870 tweet impressions.
  • With only 86 twitter followers.
  • Each post on Facebook had a Twitter counterpart I just wasn’t able to tag as many people on twitter because of how I had done some of the post graphics.

 

Instagram:

  • 134 followers on Instagram as of May 18 2015
  • Photo centric posts pre-event tagging businesses that were on Instagram. Hash tagged as well.
  • Photos day of the event.
  • Regrammed (shared) other peoples hash tagged photos of the event with attribution.

 

Social media general:

  • Leveraging partner social media – posts created specifically tagged to entice sharing on Facebook and Instagram. Could have been explored more with more vendors and Twitter wasn’t implemented as ideally but posts were made to entice vendors and partners to share them. (Leveraging the brand recognition of with those who would be there was also one of the reasons I put so much info on the poster.)
  • If someone was a vendor or sponsor for the event I looked for them and followed them as the Southland Street Fair on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter if I could find them there. Not all businesses were on all platforms and there may be some I missed if they were difficult to find. This caused some people to like/follow back and share information as it was posted.
  • Hashtag #southlandstreetfair was used on posts starting a month prior to the event. #sharethelex was also often used and #lexky #lexingtonky and #solex and a few others were used here and there.
  • Select posts were shared on the existing Southland Jamboree accounts and Southland Association accounts. Facebook/Twitter/Instagram
  • Information was also posted once to: Neighborhood Association groups, Bike Lexington group, you grew up in South Lexington if… group. Each message tailored to the group and their interests.
  • Stats for Social media and also on the website were something I loosely monitored throughout the last month and a half.

E-news:

  • Summaries of event info was sent out to Southland Association enews subscribers.
  • List was created for vendors and vendors were updated several times this way (we should have also made phone calls to all vendors, not just emailed. Note for 2016.)
  • List was created for vendors who were late and interested in the 2016 street fair (early notice list includes 2015 vendors.)

Snail mail:

  • With Jamie and Hilary A’s help, we mailed 310 vendor packets with info about the SA to Southland area business addresses.

If you’re interested in seeing additional reports or figures for this event, please contact Fascination Design.

Fascination Design also provided the designs for the posters, banners, and other key materials throughout.

It’s enough to deserve an additional post or two outlining those processes.

 

 

New SA members since mid-March: 7 new Southland Association members

Related goal for new SA Members: material on new SA website showing what we’ve done and public oriented info about event. Fun photos. Community. Should also help bring in more members once completed.

 

Overall this was an amazingly successful event.

The primary goal of the event was to have a large community event to show the viability of the Southland Drive area to the rest of Lexington and drive more people to area businesses over the long haul and emphasize our sense of community that Southland has. We incorporated a lot of businesses that were local to the Southland Drive area but also brought in other local Lexington businesses to participate as vendors.

We estimate that 7-9000 people attended the event over the 5 hour period that it ran. We had over 75 vendors. And LOTS of happy people despite the heat.

Hilary Baumann as well as Jamie Giles were involved in a lot of the logistics of planning the event from vendor organization to proper paperwork filed.

And we had a very strong committee and people key in making this event happen: Kristy Yowell of Good Foods Co-op, Jim Kreiner and Catherine Trout Mitchell of ReStore, Billy Sherrow of Sherrow, Sutherland & Associates, Bill Cole, Lori Rowland Houlihan,  Howard Stovall at Image360, , Fred Wholestein of Donut Days Bakery, previous 10th District Council member Harry Clarke,  11th Dist. Council Peggy Henson & aide Hilary Angelucci, Art Howard of the Ketch, Gail Lightner of Hill N Dale Neighborhood Association, Tom D’Adrea, and current 10th District Council Member Amanda Mays Bledsoe. And SO many more.

Posted on

Paid, Owned, Earned marketing approach {article worth sharing}

The Marketer’s Approach to Balancing a Paid, Owned, and Earned Social Media Strategy – via SumAll http://blog.sumall.com/journal/marketers-approach-balancing-paid-owned-earned-social-media-strategy.html

Some Key takeaways:

“…The ‘paid, owned, earned’ approach. The idea is essentially that all marketing falls into three different categories.

First there is the media that you pay for. This is traditional advertisements and promotions.

Then there is media that you own – think blog content, visuals and other offerings that you or your team will create.

And finally, there is the Holy Grail of marketing– earned media. This is the fabled word-of-mouth that everyone is always talking about.”

. . . . .

“… without doing or collecting things worth talking about, brands just end up talking about themselves. Not only does nobody listen to, or interact with shameless self-promoters, it actually turns users off to your brand.”

Hilary’s Note: This second takeaway is one I see small businesses doing all of the time. They think that marketing is standing on the soap box and just shouting that they exist and expecting people to care. And it’s even worse when they won’t acknowledge that they could at least talk about the benefits or unique qualities of their product or service.

In the case of some products or services it doesn’t even have to be words. With clothes or jewelry for example, a good photo, as they say, is worth a 1000 words (though some descriptions for SEO reasons are also important when online.)

Posted on

15 minute Social Media Primer {worth sharing}

From After the Jump Episode 84, a quick primer on using or getting started with social media (facebook, twitter, instagram etc!)  http://www.heritageradionetwork.com/episodes/6587-After-the-Jump-Episode-84-Social-Media-Primer

afterthejumpcover170x170Listen to more from the After the Jump podcast series via:
itunes  || stitcher  ||  rss

Posted on

Two useful pieces of information that Klout.com can give you

I would take Klout.com with a grain of salt. The Klout score matters less than some of the other data it can give you. I had previously posted some info back when Klout’s homepage looked a bit different. This is the update to that.

The two things I think Klout excels as as a tool (screen shot to illustrate):

  1. I can see if I have been slacking on my social media activity. If I see a see a significant drop I know I’m not doing enough. But keep in mind, if you take a vacation or a weekend off, Klout doesn’t know or care so I wouldn’t worry about little drops here and there.
  2. I can see if I’m neglecting any social media network that I meant to be putting some focus on. (Not all in this list are items I’m focused on but it’s good for an overview.)

Klout useful stats Oct 2014

You have to log into Klout.com in order to see the screen that I have attached but it’s the current view at https://klout.com/#/measure

Posted on

PSA: Don’t feed the trolls – a boilerplate for moving the discussion away from social media

First let’s start with “what is a troll?”  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet)

The number on rule is “don’t feed the trolls.”  This doesn’t mean never respond but responses must be well thought out and diffusing. Nicer instead of simply defensive (but do not admit wrongdoing if there was no wrongdoing.)

Since some trolls will persist if you simply don’t respond, your next best bet is to move the conversation out of the public view when possible. But be aware that your private messages may get reposted publicly if a troll is particularly nasty.

Boilerplate for trying to get a troll into a private discussion:

“Can you email this and any additional information you have to our ___ department so it can be properly reviewed? Here’s the email address ________”

As for whether or not to delete a troll’s comments, the general rule of thumb is to leave it be. There are instances where deleting something (or more likely deleting something after a period of time) is ok but that decision has to be made on a per case basis.

Yes, they might have made false accusations that may make you look bad but your response can still be civil and indicate that you may be dealing with a potential crazy or that you are willing to deal with the situation if something IS actually wrong.

Example false complaint:

“You took a photo from my website. That’s not legal.” 

Example response to a false complaint:

“To the best of my knowledge all our photos come from the manufacturers, photos we’ve taken or stock photos aquired through proper channels. We take copyright ownership seriously. Can you email additional information and links to the photo in question to _________? We would be happy to review this.”

(Side note: You do know that you can’t take a photo from any random website and use it right? Just checking to make sure you do know that. Your staff should know that as well.)

When in doubt, don’t respond immediately or delete. Getting defensive or deleting the post will likely only make things worse.

 

Posted on

Pinterest marketing for business
Using Pinterest crash course

Pinterest Marketing for businesses – this is intended to be a crash course to Pinterest once you already have a general idea of what it is.

The Basics of Pinterest Marketing for Business

1) Before you pin anything:

  • Make sure you add your logo or profile image to the account.
  • Add a description about yourself and/or your business (depends on the size, type and branding of the business.)
  • Verify your website link in your profile. It will add a little check mark next to your URL that indicates you do in fact own that site and officially represent the site / business.
  • Add links to other social media accounts you are active on.

2)  Goal #1 – Show up in Pinterest search results :

People are more likely to click through on a pin than a profile link. As such, pinning something from your blog or website / ecommerce items is key to driving traffic to your website / business.

While Pinterest does not publish what affects their search results algorithm, many people have run tests that give a pretty clear picture of the things that most likely affect Pinterest’s search results.

The following will likely increase the chance that your pin will returns in pinterest search results:

  • Keywords / Keyword phrases Should be in the Description of Pins
  • Keywords / Keyword phrases Should be in the Name of the Picture / Photo File
  • The Number of Recent Re-pins Increase the odds your pin will return in someone’s search results
  • Keyword matching a keyword in the website it came from … not always possible / low priority. For most people I’m not going to recommend buying additional domain names for this minor factor. This does mean that you may want to include your website name in some pin descriptions however.
  • Keywords included in the name of the board that your pin is pinned to. Create and name your boards accordingly!  (And don’t forget to include a description for each board – the keywords in the descriptions of each board also matters.)

 

3) Goal #2 – Entice people to re-pin your pins

Things that affect the number of re-pins once they’ve found your pin:

  • Quality of the photos – with smart phone cameras and DSLRs in the hands of many business owners these days, you don’t always have to hire a professional. BUT you should learn to shoot a decent photo. Blurry and dark isn’t going to cut it.
  • Setting of the photos / photo surroundings: aka photo styling.  A page from Martha Stewart’s magazine is more interesting and more likely to be re-pinned than the typical white background stock photo. (This is not an absolute rule.)
  • Desirability / compelling content: Someone may re-pin something that they want even if they can not afford if. They might not buy from you but this may put the item in front of someone who can afford it and will buy from you. Make sure your photos and descriptions help create a desire for your product.

 

MORE ADVANCED – Develop a following on pinterest

AKA Why you should also cultivate a following on pinterest

  • to gain more re-pins
  • to develop brand loyalty
  • to develop business / brand awareness
  • develop and enhance your business / brand community
  • Not all re-pins come from people searching. Often they can come from people browsing the RECENT pins of the people & brands they follow. The more followers, the more eyes on your recent pins.
  • This means that regularly pinning new items is important since Pinterest displays recent pins first for people browsing versus searching.
  • Pinning the same image repeatedly to your account, even if it’s at a different time, is not recommended – it LOOKS spammy and people are less likely to re-pin anything that they THINK might be spam.
  • Pinning the same thing to multiple boards on your own account can often look spammy as well.
  • Creating different pin boards allows you to group like items and allow people to follow one thing if they are only interested in one thing. Or unfollow one board if they are uninterested in that one board (Ex: I unfollow “after school kids activities” type boards because it doesn’t interest me.)

This is just the SHORT crash course on getting started with Pinterest.

 Make sure you explore and educate yourself, make sure you think about what other people are getting out of your pins (not just “me me me!”), and most of all,  make sure you have some fun while you pin!

If this is overwhelming or you want some help getting started, Fascination Design does offer initial setup as well as social media coaching & management as one of our services. 🙂

 

Pinterest user demographics summary:

  • 15% of internet users use Pinterest
  • Women are 5x as likely as men to use Pinterest
  • Pinterest users are primarily 18-49 years old
  • Rural dwellers are more likely to use Pinterest than City dwellers (but not by that much)
  • Pinterest attracts higher education affluent women
  • with household incomes primarily over $74,999

Demographic information via Social media user demographics 2013 (utilizes PEW Research information): http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/social-media-user-demographics_b38095

And in case you think that 15% of internet users isn’t enough to get your attention – that’s 70 MILLION Pinterest accounts and growing.

 

Related useful external articles on Pinterest for business:

More pinterest use stats:

Pinterest’s bookmarklet for your browser & the apps:

Optimizing pins on pinterest:

More advanced pins for products, recipes, and movies:

 

Posted on

Scheduled Facebook posts / Twitter Tweets

A great easy example of how I use scheduled facebook posts / tweets using hootsuite would be for the Southland Association and Southland Jamboree as pictured.

Hootsuite scheduled posts / tweets

I agree that not all posts/tweets should be automated but there is also a time and place for automation. Some social media experts would argue with me on this because social media should be social! I agree, but that doesn’t mean you can’t automate certain things!

You DO need to remember that you scheduled posts and adjust where needed. Example scenario: rained-out outdoor event. If you know early enough you should delete the automated post and post about the cancelation.

If say you aren’t sure, it might be wise to add a post about when the rain-out will be called. Example: “We’ll post by 6pm whether the event is rained out or you should bring your rain boots with your chair to catch some great bluegrass music!”

Scheduling can be a great tool, just don’t abuse it. 🙂