When you run a social channel as a brand, band, or business, you’re really the ringleader, rockstar, and emcee to a world-size pool of people. The show you bring to stage is going to determine how much and what segment of that pool will pay attention and fall in love with you. How do you start to deliver amazing experiences to an online audience? Be a gracious and entertaining host. 

What does that even mean? All of the content you create and share should not be created from the perspective that you’re doing this for the benefit of the brand. You’re creating and sharing for them. The long tail result of great content is a growing fan base and increased brand awareness. Give people a great experience and not only will they build deeper relationships with your brand, but they begin to tell their friends. 

Here are some ideas to help get you started:

• Create a content calendar.
• Follow the calendar.
• Do two big things each month. This could be a sweepstakes, special sale, or free download of new music.
• Do one meaningful thing each week. It’s easy to run mini-contests in which you simply give away product to a handful of fans. 
• Dish. Give behind-the-scenes content, useful tips, etc.
• Be awesome regularly.

Big things get people’s attention. Little things keep them around.

Delivering happiness through social channels is all about creating interesting content and special offers that surprise and delight. By giving people access to special events online, you can easily capture new email addresses, acquire new customers, and generate word-of-mouth and brand awareness.

Moontoast’s Social Activation Engine is a platform that lets social media marketers create sweepstakes, contests, giveaways, and commerce offers quickly and easily to manage effective social campaigns. Our apps also tie back to our Social Analytics Suite to enable you to measure the performance of each and use that data to understand not only what fans react to, but also how you can better distribute the offers. We measure using DITE methodology (discovery, interaction, transaction, endorsement) to understand strengths and weaknesses of an offer. For example, a strong transaction rate but low discovery means you can increase revenue or leads by posting more often. High discoveries but a low conversion rate can mean you need to take a look at how compelling the offer is. Looking at these and other data in the Social Analytics Suite helps to drive better campaign performance.

For day-to-day content, here are some tips we’ve seen to be highly engaging:

• Post big images. Bands can post images with song lyrics. Brands can post lifestyle or ‘results’ images from projects. Photos and videos also have a greater EdgeRank weight. 
• Go on-camera. Let people behind the curtain and see the face of the brand with behind-the-scenes content or even show the social team answering questions. 
• Pay attention to analytics. Some posts will get broadcast to more people than others. If a post is getting low impressions, share the post again at different times of the day to try to get more eyeballs on it. 
• Remember the feed. Social content appears in people’s feeds and then fall down and off the page as other content replaces it. People do not, by and large, visit a brand’s main page once they have Liked or Followed your brand; they don’t need to return as they then receive updates in the feed. The lesson here is to post content to reach a broad audience and don’t worry about posting too often. The half-life of a post is around 80 minutes. 
• Use the voice of a human, not a robot. Don’t be afraid to showcase a little (or a lot of) brand personality, not just in graphics or videos, but as the voice of the brand.

So there you go. Get into the habit of doing little surprises weekly and a couple bigger campaigns monthly. Take the stage and make it a great show!

Photo by Incase

There, I said it. It’s been said before and increasingly it’s become real due to the Social Revolution. As the revolution gains momentum, brands have the need to reach out directly to consumers because they expect on-demand engagement and offers.

Here are some consumer stats giving weight to this Social Revolution:

• 70% active online adult social networkers shop online (Nielsen)
• 23% of online time is spent on social networks (Experian)
• 68% of consumers say they use social networks when shopping online (Ogilvy)
• 6.3 - the number of retailers ‘followed’ by the average consumer (Social Commerce Study)
• The average Facebook store sees a 10% month-to-month increase in transactions (Ogilvy)

Social consumers are there, conversing and willing to discover new brands, interact with those brands, transact directly and endorse the brands in increasing numbers.

The age of the consumer has the “Big Mo” with them! They are armed with more information and content than ever before. They have a voice to converse, share and comment on a particular brand. The social consumer is an empowered consumer with on-demand expectations. These expectations include finding unique content, engaging in differentiated offers, and connecting in the social experiences they are spending an increasing amount of their time in.

The purchase journey from discovery of a brand to consumer is still confusing. How do you engage them? How do you find them? What do they want? Will they buy? Will they endorse? Think about the myriad of items floating through the mind of the brand manager. They know the social market is big: $30 billion in 2015 according to Booz & Company. But how do they get to the consumer?

Moontoast has the answer. Our powerful engagement and commerce apps bring the necessary tools, methodology and insights to the brand manager to reach these powerful consumers. These apps follow a simple methodology:

• Discovery - Reach out to multiple social and mobile networks to find the consumer.
• Interact - Allow the consumer to engage with your brand on their time, in their environment. Whether it’s listening to a song, watching a video, or being presented with a unique offer, the consumer is in charge and can interact where and when they want.
• Transact - Incent the consumer to take action. It could be as simple as an email capture for a free song, a sweepstakes entry, contest, or an actual purchase, all taking place without friction within the experience the consumer is in.
• Endorse – Allow the consumer to easily comment on and share their experience, purchase, or interaction with their friends. This brings the brand additional potential consumer acquisition through their fans’ networks.

Moontoast facilitates this DITE (discovery, interaction, transaction, endorsement) methodology for the brands we work with. These brands understand the details of this methodology and its results through our Social Analytics Suite. It solves the brands needs to fulfill the consumer’s demands!

When a consumer likes your brand on Facebook, follows your company on Twitter, or adds you to a circle on Google+ they are making a statement.  As we’ve seen and stated in the past there is definitely a disconnect between what marketers utilizing these channels think and what fans want.  Overwhelmingly, consumers are looking for deals, coupons, rewards and other discounts.

We recently wrote about the value of a Like, the importance of creating interactive events and content as well as how to lead the social revolution.  We hope that you are catching on to a theme here.  What you do in social matters.  It’s tempting to reduce your marketing efforts to the lowest common denominator and just sell over and over again.  But that’s no way to reward fans who have come forward and said “I like what you’re doing.”

Brands who get it realize that when fans Like or Follow your page that it comes with some expectations.  They expect to be rewarded and they should be!  When relationship comes first, they will reward you by taking advantage of your offers and spreading the word on what you are doing.  This is a continual process of interaction, transaction and endorsement that we call Return on Fan™. Do something cool for your fans and they’ll do something cool for you.

Operating a Facebook page or Twitter account is a lot different than running an advertisement in a magazine.  Magazines don’t talk back!  You’ll get a really good idea of how well you’re doing via instant feedback mechanisms of comments and replies.

All of these efforts should come together to foster loyalty and build relationship.  Don’t over complicate it!  After all, the internet is just people.  Think about how you deal with friends and colleagues in the real world.  There is a give and take and back and forth that lives and dies on communication.  Stop communicating and see how quickly the relationship sours or ends altogether.  Fans should be treated with respect, positivity and thankfulness.  This should spill out of all your messaging:

- Thank you for liking our page.
- Here’s a coupon for 25% off just because you are awesome!
- Every person who retweets this message will be entered to win a free t-shirt.
- Just to say thanks for helping us get to 1 million fans, free shipping for the month of July!

Think about what kind of offers and messages inspire you.  Treat your fans the same way you would like to be treated.  You will be amazed at how far this goes to inspire loyalty to you and your brand.

What if I told you a Facebook Like is worth $2.50 to your brand. Would you be ecstatic? Or would you be sorely disappointed?

What if that number was, say, $250? Would that change your perception?

It’s all relative, of course, to what others in your industry are achieving with their social efforts, but when you think about it…why are we trying so hard to find out exactly what the value of a Like, fan, or follower is in the first place?

What Value is Considered “Good” Anyway?

So you’re researching all you can about how much a Facebook Like is worth so you can make sure your brand is up to par with its own campaigns. The problem is measuring the relationship you are developing with your fans. How do you put a dollar value on that?

You don’t.

Your job is to make that Like worth whatever you can make it worth to the fan. This isn’t something to be quantified by crunching numbers. This is a long-term relationship you are creating by offering great experiences to your community, and learning from the feedback and reactions you receive.

Turn the statement around and you’ll see it’s not really about the value of the Like – How much value do you add to the fan’s experience?

And how do you know if you’re creating value? What can you measure? At Moontoast, we use the DITE Methodology to track the reach and relevancy of social campaigns. DITE (discovery, interaction, transaction, endorsement) is a reflection of the love your content gets from fans. How many people are finding it? Is there a boost in discovery that tells you an influencer shared your post? How are people interacting with your post? Are they playing a video, listening to music, or clicking any other clickable plaything within your post? Are they entering your sweepstakes? Are they Liking what you’re saying? That’s value.

It’s liberating, really, to know that you can add an infinite amount of value, enhance the relationship, and help mold the perception of your brand. That’s how you create ambassadors who will tell their friends, family, and co-workers about their experiences.

It’s kinda like life. Easier said than done. . . or accepted.

The fundamental reality that sending marketing campaigns into social networks is not a controllable exercise has turned out to be a very difficult thing for marketers to adjust to. There is inherently less control in social. There is more learning involved in social; very public learning. Frankly speaking, you have to have thick skin, and you have to be willing to experiment because this stuff is all new.

That’s why we call it the Social Revolution. At Moontoast we try to avoid buzzwords, but sometimes it’s hard for even us to do, as one of our Moontoaster’s friends pointed out to him (and us) to demonstrate just how much we don’t control the conversation anymore. . .

So, let’s try to backup our choice of words, shall we?

Revolution: (2nd definition from Dictionary.Reference.com) “a radical and pervasive change in society and the social structure, especially one made suddenly and often accompanied by violence.”

So, it’s clear here that social structure is core to the term ‘revolution’. It makes sense that social networks could result in a revolution. But what we are referencing is the radical and pervasive change in the way that consumers relate to and choose allegiance to a brand. This shift has been sudden. And to some online marketers, the shift could be described (with a little poetic license) as violent indeed.

So how exactly does one lead in a revolution? Here is a short list to live by in your efforts:

1. First, you have to acknowledge that the revolution is happening. That means that your expectations of your campaigns can only be bolstered by experience in running them in social. If you haven’t been doing a lot of work here, expect for the first 6-12 months to be learning. And not optional learning, but required learning. The Social Revolution requires it.
2. Measure your learnings both quantitatively and qualitatively. It’s a strong advantage of the Social Revolution that your feedback is not just numbers in a funnel, but it’s fully equipped with thoughts directly from people as they interact with your brand offer. There is a huge benefit to this, so don’t miss out on the qualitative learnings.
3. Accept that results will come in many forms. These are relationships you’re dealing with here. Not relationships as in CRM (which we all know is acronym-ese for sales funnel), but relationships as in “keep things fresh and new or I will find someone (or some brand) who will.” Don’t always drive for the hard sell. Mix sales with contests with games with conversations with polls with pictures and video and more. The more diverse your array, the more insightful your learnings will be.

You may have noticed that in each one of those points, learning was a key point of focus. That is, in fact, how you lead in the Social Revolution. Retrain yourself (and your brand’s team) to remember that you aren’t in control anymore and you must learn what your fans want before you can deliver it to them. The only way you will be successful is by being brave enough to try new things, but smart enough to know that the goal is to learn, not to be successful every single time. Your ability to learn and adjust will send a message to your fans that you are paying attention, and they will repay you with the most valuable currency they have, their attention.

If you’ve spent any amount of time marketing on the web, you probably have taken these terms to heart and use them every day to make decisions:

• Visits
• Pageviews
• Time on Site
• Bounce Rate
• Conversion Rate

While it’s true that you can’t improve on what you don’t measure, many brands focus solely on these metrics when it comes to their online efforts. What a brutal way to look at the relationships with your customers!

Think about it from your customers’ perspectives and what it would sound like if you spoke about these data points directly to them; “Hey look, you were on the site for 4 minutes 37 seconds. Congratulations! Hmmm, you only looked at 3 pages, though, and you abandoned your shopping cart.” Sounds like a great exercise in relationship-building!

People Aren’t Supposed to be Pushed Through a Funnel

No one wants to be converted.

Think about the definition of “conversion” – 1. a change in character, form, or function. 2. a spiritual change from sinfulness to righteousness. 3. a change from one religion, belief, viewpoint, etc., to another

Harsh. Your customers most likely aren’t looking to change their character when dealing with you. They’re just looking for a really good deal from a great brand. It’s that simple.

For brands, the Social Revolution isn’t about lifeless terms like “traffic” or “conversion.” What does any of that do to further the relationship you have with your customers? It’s really about developing those relationships with relevant offers that deliver great results.

The Three R’s of the Social Revolution

Relationships – What can your brand do, regardless of platform, to enhance the relationship you have with your customers?

Relevancy – Create campaigns that resonate with your fan base and gets them interacting, transacting, and sharing with their own networks.

Results – Learn from the feedback you receive from your customers’ own mouths, not just how many items they purchased or how many pages they viewed.

This is Your Return on Fan™

That’s how you create your Return on Fan™. It’s not about finding the ROI of every single dollar you spend on social or your website or your marketing or your brick-and-mortar location.

Why let the experts tell you how much a fan is worth when you are in business to develop that relationship however you see fit?

It’s about creating that worth yourself.

As a brand or community manager it’s important to build an audience that is excited, engaged and rewarded.  One of the best ways to accomplish this through social media is by creating interactive events and content.

Photos

It’s not entirely surprising that simple photo driven platforms like Instagram and Pinterest have seen such stunning success. Who doesn’t like looking at photos? Photographs are a great way to tell a story, to communicate your message and to connect emotionally or otherwise with your fans. A great way to make photos interactive is to have a photo contest.  For example if you are a retail brand you could do a contest where fans submit photos of themselves wearing one of your t-shirts. Or for a music artist you could have fans turn in photos of themselves holding up your latest CD on release date. Have fans vote for a winner! Photos posted on Facebook get heavier Edge Rank (are seen more) than other types of posts. You could put up behind-the-scenes office shots, manufacturing scenes, as well as fan submitted photos.

Videos

The second most viewed type of content is video. 82 million U.S. Internet users watch an average of 23.2 hours of video a month – a number which keeps growing. In the same way that you can use photos to spur on fan generated content, this is also true of video. If you are a music artist, you could ask fans to create their own music videos for your songs. Every year around Super Bowl time Doritos does a fan-generated commercial contest in which the winner is chosen and their content used as an actual commercial campaign. Any kind of video event which engages fans in the process is fine, even better if it’s able to be rolled into current marketing efforts.

Questions

Asking questions might be one of the easiest way to interact at a basic level with your audience. You want to ask questions that are simple and specific. Ask things that are relevant to your community, are fun and preferential. For example, “What is your favorite travel destination?” or “Who’s going to the Lady Antebellum concert on Saturday in Chicago?” or “What’s your favorite track on the new Chamillionaire CD?” It’s also essential to reply and thank those who respond.

E-Mail / Code For Download

We’ve had the privilege recently of facilitating a several successful campaigns with code redemption and e-mail for download. A recent one was for General Mills, Big Machine Records and their Outnumber Hunger campaign which placed redemption codes on physical products in stores that were able to be entered online for music downloads. Giving away a song or other content in exchange for an e-mail address is also another painless way to build your marketing base. Make sure if you’re offering music that the download is something special or unique and not just a track that is already readily available.

Contests & Giveaways

Contests and giveaways are a perfect way of saying “thanks” to those who have stepped up to Like your brand. Create something of value that can only be obtained through your offer. You might want to do the contest around a theme or season, something like “Summer Fun” or  “Back To School Pack.” Another good follow-up to reward fans who don’t win a contest or promotion is to e-mail them a discount code for future orders. It’s a small way to reward loyalty and buffer disappointment for entries who were not winners.

How Can I Tell What’s Working?

There is, of course, a story that flows through all these interactions. By making use of our Social Analytics Suite, you no longer have to guess what is working. Using a measurement we call Return on Fan™ it’s easy to understand if your content is creating relationships, building relevancy and delivering the results you want in social spaces. We’ll help you connect the dots between impressions, fan growth, revenue and messaging that fans like and want most. It would not hurt to also do a poll and just ask your followers what types of content they would like to see.

Mix & Match

There’s no reason that you can’t do a campaign that is a mash-up of all these different ideas.  Use photos, videos and other content in conjunction to create an online scavenger hunt that culminates in a product launch. Crowd source new ideas by asking people to submit their own through a variety of mediums and channels. Leave clues in the different posts. Pull up your sleeves and get creative!

IRCE 2012 – Chicago, IL June 5, 2012 – Mercent™, a leading technology company that enables retailers to profitably reach and convert more shoppers online, and Moontoast, a leading provider of social activation applications and analytics, today announced a partnership that integrates Moontoast’s Social Activation Engine with Mercent Retail™. Through the partnership, Mercent and Moontoast will provide leading brand name retailers with the ability to drive online sales and profits through robust social media, interaction and commerce.

Moontoast’s Social Activation Engine will be integrated with the award-winning Mercent Retail™ platform, enabling leading retailers to drive lead generation, email acquisition, and product sales through social networks, ad networks, and affiliate websites.

“Mercent is a trusted, leading technology company that enables retailers to profitably reach and convert more shoppers online,” said Blair Heavey, CEO of Moontoast. “We are pleased and excited to help Mercent customers to be able to seamlessly use Moontoast’s Social
Activation Engine and social apps to improve their social reach and engagement while delivering meaningful customer acquisition and sales through social networks, including sites such as Facebook, ad networks, and affiliate sites.”

According to Mercent CEO Eric Best, “We’re excited to partner with Moontoast to offer Mercent clients a dynamic, proven and revenue-generating social media platform. This partnership expands channel reach and product capabilities Mercent offers
to its portfolio of brand name retailers and we look forward to driving even greater revenue and profits for this growing base.”

Moontoast’s platform is based on four stages of fan activation – discovery, interaction, transaction, and endorsement – to give “fans” relevant content while giving online marketers the ability to interact and transact with consumers through a series of powerful apps distributed to engage users on social networks, ad networks and websites.  Moontoast’s Social Analytics provides online marketers rich intelligence on the relationships between social reach, engagement and transactions with fans, enabling marketers to achieve meaningful business results.  Retailers will have direct access to Moontoast’s patent-pending Social Analytics Suite, which provides rich data that ties social
activity to interaction and revenue, improving social performance and measuring Return on Fan™. Moontoast Social Analytics delivers critical insights to help better understand relationships, relevancy, and results. 

Mercent optimizes retail product and offer visibility across leading shopping destinations that include online marketplaces Amazon.com and eBay; paid search platforms Google AdWords and Microsoft AdCenter; product ad platforms Google Shopping, Google Product Listing Ads (PLA) and Amazon Product Ads; comparison shopping engines
(CSEs); affiliate networks; and social and mobile shopping channels. The Mercent Retail™ platform complements product ad placement with deep retail analytics and business intelligence tools that highlight the products, categories, brands, promotions, ads, and channels contributing most to online performance and ROI. Mercent’s proprietary tools allow retail marketers to take action on these real-time insights.

Moontoast and Mercent are attending and exhibiting at Booths #132 and #529 respectively, speaking and blogging at the world’s largest eCommerce tradeshow in the nation – Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition (IRCE), which is being held at the McCormick Place West in Chicago June 5-8, 2012.

To learn more about Mercent’s complete product portfolio, or for an in-person demo of Mercent Retail for Google Shopping at IRCE, please contact Mercent at 206-832-3900 or hello@mercent.com. Information regarding Mercent Retail shopping feed management technology, Mercent Performance marketing services, and the complete list of online marketing channels in the Mercent Shopping Network is also available at www.mercent.com.

To see Moontoast in action or schedule an in-person demo of the Social Activation Engine and Social Analytics Suite at IRCE, contact Moontoast at sales@moontoast.com. To learn more about how Moontoast helps brands activate their fans, please visit www.moontoast.com or contact Mercent.

About Mercent

Mercent is an industry-leading retail technology company that drives product advertising, merchandising and business intelligence solutions to ensure merchants are visible, competitive, and profitable where consumers shop online. The company is integrated with the most popular online marketing and shopping channels and serves more than 400 retail brands including Redcats, 1-800-Flowers,
HSN, GUESS?, Office Depot, Home Depot, Bloomingdale’s, Microsoft, and Liberty brands. The company founded by Amazon.com veterans is based in Seattle, WA. For more information visit www.mercent.com.

About Moontoast

Moontoast is an industry leader in social marketing, social commerce and social analytics. Moontoast’s Social Activation Engine enables brands to effectively focus their social efforts on relationships, relevancy and results through a library of engagement and commerce applications. Brands can directly measure social and transactional results using Moontoast’s patent-pending Social Analytics Suite. Moontoast is a Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer, qualified by the PMD program in Apps. With Moontoast, brands activate their fans to interact in Facebook and Twitter and content networks where the brand is a beacon. For more information, visit www.moontoast.com.

[Boston, MA] – [June 4, 2012] – Moontoast announced today it was recognized by the Facebook® Preferred Marketing Developer (“PMD”) team and accepted as a Facebook PMD. Moontoast develops social and mobile interactive experiences that load directly in the Facebook news feed or through Sponsored Stories, enabling brands to more effectively acquire, engage and transact with fans directly.

Facebook marketing helps brands connect with existing customers create relationships with new customers.. Moontoast’s Social Activation Engine is based on the four stages of fan activation – discovery, interaction, transaction, and endorsement – to give people relevant content while providing online marketers the ability to interact and transact with consumers through a series of powerful apps. Moontoast’s Social Analytics provide online marketers with intelligence insights to see clear connections between social reach, engagement and transactions with fans, enabling marketers to achieve meaningful business results.

Moontoast is a market leader in social engagement, social commerce, and social analytics. Moontoast’s socially distributable marketing applications and patent-pending social analytics facilitate social marketing and help brands drive lead generation, email acquisition, and product sales.

To be accepted into the PMD program, Moontoast had to demonstrate unique capabilities that help marketers scale and achieve efficiency, and extend measurably beyond the functionality of Facebook’s native tools. As a Preferred Marketing Developer, Moontoast will further enhance its clients social solutions by benefiting from access to the Facebook platform’s APIs, the Facebook Mobile Platform, and guidance from the PMD community.

“We are very excited to have qualified for the PMD program which recognizes Moontoast’s approach to social marketing and social analytics,” said Blair Heavey, Moontoast CEO. “The program will enable Moontoast to add additional social context and features to our product which will improve our clients’ ability to reach and engage their audience with relevant content and measure the results.”
Moontoast clients have achieved impressive returns within the Facebook platform, including:

• Average 69% lift in new fan acquisition

• Average 6.75x greater engagement

• As high as 18% conversion for product transactions

• 75% to 90% new customer acquisition rates

Moontoast’s clients include global and Fortune 500 brands like Procter & Gamble, Time Inc., Simon & Schuster, and Universal Music. Gartner Research has named Moontoast a “Cool Vendor” in Music and eCommerce, and Billboard Magazine called Moontoast a “Top Startup of 2011”.

The Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer Program recognizes companies that have developed technologies in one or more of the following specialty areas: Page management solutions, Ads management solutions, services and platforms for building socially enabled integrations, and/or tools for Page Insights analysis.

About Moontoast

Moontoast is an industry leader in social marketing, social commerce and social analytics. Moontoast’s Social Activation Engine enables brands to effectively focus their social efforts on relationships, relevancy and results through a library of engagement and commerce applications. Brands can directly measure social and transactional results using Moontoast’s patent-pending Social Analytics Suite. With Moontoast, brands activate their fans to interact in Facebook and Twitter and content networks where the brand is a beacon. For more information, visit www.moontoast.com.

Facebook® is a registered trademark of Facebook, Inc.

The first iteration of this was traditional e-commerce which eventually spawned self-serve portals like Big Cartel, Storenvy and crafting site Etsy.  An area where this is growing is, of course, in the social media environment with sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter and now Pinterest.  A subset of that environment has been flash sale sites such as Fab who live on both the web and through mobile applications.

Recently an independent rock band from Philadelphia called mewithoutYou finished up their contractual obligations to their record company and made the decision to go direct-to-consumer with a new full length album.  The pre-sale offer was only made available on the bands website, mewithoutYou.com.  They had four options available, but the highest priced “Ten Stories Deluxe Box Set” for $40 (including double vinyl, etching, lyric book, poster, CD, digital download, 7” single) was a runaway success.  According to the bands own blog, “we initially thought 1,000 of these were going to last us 5 weeks but we sold out in less than 24 hours.”  They were able to bump their order up to 2,000 and promptly sold through the next 1,000.  The campaign was one of the best, if not the best, in the groups 5 album career.

Stories like this, while incredible, are becoming more commonplace.  We often take for granted that the technology that makes these kinds of offers user friendly didn’t even exist just a few short years ago.  In the music space as more brick and mortar stores are closing each year, this type of transaction will become the norm.  You can count on it.

A recent example of this was with the grammy award winning rapper Chamillionaire, who ran a pre-order campaign through Moontoast. It was the first new music he had released in several years and fans were quick to respond and purchase his Ammunition EP via a splash page using our PopUpStore and Facebook and Twitter posts using the SocialStore.  

If you want to dig deeper into how to craft and deploy a great offer, check out our blog and video series by Professor Sullivan on Creating The Perfect D2C Offer – Part 1 The Before, Part 2 – The During and Part 3 – The After.

In order for fans to respond it’s important to be asking the right questions and to be making offers that fans want. You really can make it easy on yourself by just making sure that the answer to the following question is always a clear “yes”…

Is this offer so good that it feels like a gift?

It’s not good enough to put up an old product for the same price that it’s available elsewhere. This has always been true traditional e-commerce, but it’s doubly true in the social commerce space where most purchases are typically impulsive in nature.  You want the offer to stand out and to catch attention. Offers that stand out are not only a great deal for your fans, but a great offer can inspire endorsement from your fans to their friends, in creasing discovery. 

There has been a lot of noise lately about whether or not direct-to-consumer offers are working (something covered recently by our co-founder Marcus Whitney in a post called Why Fans Like Brands) in the social environment.  We already know the answer to this question – it’s a loud and emphatic YES!  Consumers are already expecting these offers and ready to respond.

We believe in taking offers directly to where fans are.  Operating in social and mobile is the future and will soon not just be an option but a requirement for success online.

Give the people what they want!

You see the stories pop up every now and then, about companies who go above and beyond when it comes to customer experiences and service. Zappos is built on it. Virgin disrupts entire industries by putting the focus back on the customer.

Put simply, brands like these just get it. They understand their customers’ needs and are able to deliver an experience that wows them. For companies like Zappos, this is primarily through post-sale interactions where a customer may need to return an item. For companies like Virgin, it’s through hospitality and making things like flying (yes, flying) fun. Customers of these types of brands tell everyone about their experiences through word-of-mouth, blog posts, status updates, and tweets.

But how do you provide those types of experiences online where your customers are, historically, faceless visitors to your website?

Create Rich Experiences, Offer Great Content, and Reward Your Fans

Don’t worry, this doesn’t require you to hire someone to develop your own social network and spend a boatload of money creating a community of fans. Your fans are already gathering online and you don’t need (or should even want) to recreate the wheel.

The key here is to get out of that paralyzing ROI mindset; one where there’s a dollar amount in your head of how much a fan is, or should be, worth. Think about what your fans are looking for from your brand, what would make them brand ambassadors, and focus on creating those experiences. Trust us, the revenue will come, but it’s the experiences that gets fans excited and talking.

So what does that look like, exactly?

Experiences don’t have to be crazy complicated. You may have a photo caption contest for your Facebook fans or a “best tweet” competition on Twitter. Do your fans love your products? (Hopefully they do!) Give them a chance to submit video testimonials for a promotional item.

In the words of Bonnie Raitt, give ‘em something to talk about! Create great content for your fans to engage with and, when the time is right, reward them with differentiated and unique offers.

Creating Your Brand’s Return On Fan

Think of it as creating, not just finding, your brand’s Return on Fan. Are you trying to build out your email list? Then offer a free digital good to your fans in exchange for signing up. Are you launching a new product and want to create some buzz? Launch it exclusively on Facebook or Twitter before making it available anywhere else.

Thinking of your customers as fans means you start to think of them as more than just one-time buyers. You begin to think of the relationship you can build with that fan over time, and that means not always thinking in terms of their monetary value but what you can do to turn them into true brand ambassadors.

Brands, wouldn’t you like your fans to be like football
fans, streaming into your social media site wanting to plaster themselves with
your brand, talking up your brand to friends, business colleagues and even the
guy sitting next to them on the train? 
And, on top of that, they want to buy more of your brand!  How can you get these fans?

First of all, you need to understand that the Fan has the
upper hand in this relationship.  He/she
comes to you, stays with you, and recommends you.  The Fan cannot be forced into a relationship.

Direct to Fan is all about understanding the Brand/Fan
relationship. In a robust relationship both the Brand and the Fan are learning
new things about one another, interacting on a consistent basis and feeling
good about promoting each other. The promise of the Social Revolution is to
continue to directly enhance this Fan and Brand relationship, resulting in
loyalty.

As the Brand, you need to play nice to achieve customer
loyalty:  know what your Fan wants. Fans
want to believe they are “in the know” and like discovering new things about
you; they like to interact when, where and how they want; they want to feel
special and wanted. Unfortunately, the vast majority of brands aren’t doing this.
And so they wonder, “Where is my return on marketing dollars? What’s this
Social Revolution you talk of? All I
want to do is drive traffic and convert that traffic into a sale; I can’t just
sit here and schmooze.”

These brands just don’t get it! This one-way broadcast to a
whomever, wherever, internet-surfing, potential customer is all they know.  Understandably, these types of social media
campaigns deliver less than a 1% conversation rate. That response is the
response of a dying Brand. They will be run over by a competitive Brand that understands
the Social Revolution.

Let’s look at the details of a brand that does it right, and
those who are lagging.  I’m a die-hard
New Englander.  You may think I’m biased,
but the New England Patriots know how to hook a Fan. They follow Moontoast’s Return on Fan™
methodology.

• Fans discover new things about Brand:  The Patriots site posts new videos on the
  players and insights from the coaches. (Except Belichick, but he’s a story for
  another blog post) Their Facebook page announces contests, shows
  videos, and more.
• Fans interact with Brand when, where and how
  they want to: Fans come to the site or get updates through social channels
  because they feel they are controlling when they receive new information and interaction.
• Fans feel good about keeping constant
  communication with Brand:  Fans come back
  because the  Patriots reward  with special offers, contests, and giveaways.
   Have you seen the Gronking photo
  contest???
• Fans feel they are part of Brand family and have
  the power to show their appreciations:  They
  can put up endorsements on the Patriot Way and share on their social
  properties.

Bob Kraft has mastered creating a culture of family and
extended relationships between the football team and the extended fan base.

And then there are those brands that continue to flog a
dying horse.  Of course, I won’t mention
any names, but there are some academic institutions that sadly come to mind
when thinking of examples of dysfunctional Brand/Fan relationships.  They remain mired in one-way communication.

• The Brand nags the Fan: Multiple weekly emails
  on how you should give money now, the message being: if you were loyal, you
  would give.
• The Brand boasts, then asks for more loyalty: A
  “personal” letter from Head of School states how lucky your child is to attend this
  institution and then, oh by the way, we’re hiking tuition 10%. Hmm, is that
  interaction?
• The Brand tells the Fan what they want and when
  they want it:  An institution’s football
  team is lagging, so this year they offer to everybody 2 for 1 tickets, instead
  of targeting those loyal season ticket holders with a special thanks for
  supporting the team, and offering them one game free of charge

Brands, it is time to realize that the Social Revolution is
here; and to get a game plan, you need to understand your fan base. The fans
feel the power shift and are beginning to use it to reward and, if not punish,
forget. Rewarded will be the Brand that embraces the Return on Fan
Relationship. 

Over the last few months, the feedback from brands on how effective Facebook is for them, and what the ideal Facebook marketing strategy is, has been all over the map. It’s becoming more obvious that Facebook is a utility with unparalleled potential, but rife with challenges and in need of best practices and effective enterprise products to serve brands effectively. For example, there was the shocking pre-Facebook IPO revelation that GM would pull their $10M budget for Facebook Ads, claiming that they don’t work. Then shortly after GM’s news, Ford spoke out (via Twitter) saying that Facebook Ads work well when combined with engaging content and innovation.

How could these two auto industry leaders (both in Detroit) have such different experiences on Facebook? The difference is in the approach, and the understanding of what fans want from brands in Facebook. And we may see this having a surprising effect on the bottom line of brands as Facebook continues to mature and take away market share from more traditional online marketing budgets. Brands have to figure out how to be successful in Facebook, and that starts with understanding why fans Like brands in the first place.

A study published in Forbes in the beginning of the year showed how serious of a problem this lack of understanding is for marketers trying to make Facebook work. The study, conducted by the CMO Council and Lithium, showed that CMOs for brands who were leveraging Facebook, believed that fans wanted:

• Agreeable content
• To be heard
• To track news on the brand

By strong contrast, the fans that were interviewed in the same study, said that the reason that they Liked a brand on Facebook was for:

• Games, Contests and Promotions
• To learn about new products
• To show that I’m a fan

This difference is huge. CMOs could be going for the good stuff on Facebook, and instead they are opting for fluffy content. Think about the data that can be gathered in games, contests and promotions. Think about the value of the feedback on new products from early adopter fans. And frankly, think about what that fan can do for your brands by showing others that they are indeed a fan of yours.

The opportunity for brands on Facebook is for Social Activation, not simply publishing content and holding conversations. Understanding why fans Like brands will go a long way to helping brands to use Facebook effectively, deliver real value to their fans, and grow their customer database at the same time.

Is expression really the problem? What about innovation? Bill breaks it down for us.