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Taking the Horror out of Social Media Marketing by Chris Stafford

 

Social Media, unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you are hearing about it everywhere. What is it?  Wikipedia defines Social Media Marketing as “an engagement with online communities to generate exposure, opportunity and sales”  It is the new buzz word for marketing, PR, web presence, the list goes on.  Lately it seems that everyone from preteens to senior citizens knows about Twitter: the current hot property of Social Media.  From the Ashton Kutcher vs. CNN publicity stunt to “tweets” being the only coverage of the uprising in Iran, Twitter has seemingly burst on to the scene overnight. Before I go on, let me clarify that I am going to attempt to remain impartial on this topic throughout this article, until the very end.  I'm still in the process of developing my own opinion towards some of the items we'll discuss.  Some believe Social Media Marketing is the second coming, while others have dismissed it as a passing fad.  Regardless of how you feel, let’s explore some of the pros and cons, dos and don’ts of social media marketing as a tool to promote your event. 

 

So what can social media marketing do for you? What are the pros? 

 

• Social Media Marketing adds a personal touch to your message; it provides a way to share information in a more personal way. After all, most of the people you come into contact with on the various Social Media sites are instantly your “friend.” As such, they might be more likely to listen to what you have to say.

 

• Competition is limited in the beginning.  Typically your company will have the center of its selected stage. When you’re the first in your market to jump on the band wagon and jump on the latest and greatest, your message gets out and rides the wave with little competition.  Over time this changes. For example, do you know of a haunted event that doesn’t have a Myspace? Passé right?  SO two years ago? Hold on, things move quickly on the inter web thingy.

 

• The Law of Three. It is generally accepted that it takes three exposures to your message for a consumer to remember you, and eventually make a purchasing decision.  By utilizing a social media site, you may end up with your third exposure to a potential customer.  Someone sees an ad in print, hears an ad on the radio, gets a friend request from you online…bingo, new customer, maybe.

 

• Social networking allows you to gather customer information easily, and it turn reach out to your target audience. Virtually every profile has some form of demographic and geographic information on the user.  A quick glance at a profile can give you insight into your customers' minds, clue you in on what they are thinking, what their interests are, what motivates them, and where they live in relation to your event.  If you’re the type of marketer who wants to obsess over this kind of information, it’s readily available to you.

 

• Customer interaction is another benefit.  Once again it aids you in lending that personal touch, engaging them, making them feel like they play an important role in what you do, as well as feeling valued by you as a business owner.  It’s easy to answer questions and even put the answers out there on your profile for benefit to the general public. If someone asks a question, chances are there are others who may have the same question.

 

• Social Media can aid in Search Engine Optimization, this could be a topic itself.   Just touching on it briefly, your social media sites are another link to your website that the search engines will see.  They contain relevant text that refers to your website. These are both important components of successful search engine results.  Essentially your social media site becomes a micro site of your web site.

 

• There is no education required.  Most of these sites are very user friendly, and with minimal effort you can learn how to use them and start getting your message out quickly and easily.  You don’t need a marketing degree to figure out a way to reach your customer, they’re out there, and easy to find.

 

• Low cost is definitely a bonus. Almost every social media site is FREE, free to sign up for that is.  Keep in mind that your time is valuable, and in America I don’t think anyone has enough FREE time.  In addition, creating a profile is usually free, but in some cases if you really want to “advertise” it’s going to cost you not just in time, but money as well.

 

Alright now, here is the bad news, here are some cons to be aware of when utilizing Social Media as a marketing tool.

 

• Time, I touched on this in the list of pros.  It takes time to cultivate your social media network.  The days of sending 500 friend requests to your targeted demo are essentially over.  The websites are on to it and the users are on to it too. Now the only truly fail proof way to build your network is to do it one user at a time.  In addition, many of these sites can turn into time vacuums, before you know it you will have spent hours on a site.  While you may have sent friend requests to several potential customers, you have also wasted valuable time finding out what your brother’s wife’s sister did last weekend.  Be careful. Each of those minutes is a minute you won’t get back…ever.

 

• Social Media can backfire on you. If someone has a negative experience with your event, there’s the forum for them to tell everyone about it.  If you’re going to use a social media site, you’re going to have to take the good with the bad.  Some will post what a great time they had, and some will of course let everyone know if they had a bad time, unfortunately it’s usually the latter.  Most people who are happy with an experience won’t take the time to tell anyone; the converse is that most unhappy people will.  Now that I think about this, maybe this is really a pro…can you say customer feedback?

 

• Viral can be bad.  Virtually everyone has a cell phone that is either a camera or video camera.  Let’s say they visit your haunt on a busy Saturday night late in the season, drive by and take a picture of the massive line, a couple buttons later and bam, there’s the news on the web, for other customers to see with the caption – lines too long, we bailed!

 

• Brand building has mixed results on social media sites, marketers are concerned because depending on the user, a message about a brand can have several different meanings, and this makes it more difficult to get across one central idea about your product or event.  You can also end up reaching the “wrong” crowd if you’re not careful.

 

• Limited Reach.  As powerful as these sites are, when you really consider using them, they still have limited reach.  How many people can you reach with 1 print ad, 1 radio ad, 1 billboard, 1 television commercial, probably (although not necessarily as targeted) many more than you will reach on Facebook, Myspace or Twitter, combined.

 

• The digital landscape changes rapidly, Myspace is yesterday’s Facebook, Facebook is yesterday’s Twitter, what’s next, I’m not sure, but I’ll tell you one thing for certain, it’s coming, and it won’t be long.  Even the technology that enables you to utilize these sites changes, remember the heyday of the Myspace friend adding bots?  I'll touch on later, as a “don't”.

 

So, we’ve looked at some of the pros and cons, let’s move on to some dos and don’ts.

 

• Do, above all use common sense, think about who you’re asking to be your “friend”, or to take it even further who you approve to be your “friend”. Think about whether or not people want to hear what you are saying, as many times as you are saying it.

 

• Be yourself, be honest, and project your personality.  I believe you’ll find that your social media efforts will be received much better if the recipient feels that you are a real person.  If you have a profile for your event, possibly go further and utilize one of your characters as the subject of your profile. That way when you put a message out, it’s not “XYZ haunted house is offering 2 for 1 tickets this Tuesday!” Instead it becomes, “(insert character name here) invites you down to XYZ haunted house for 2 for 1 Tuesday, grab a friend and pay me a visit!”

 

• Make sure that the message that you are trying to promote throughout your social media sites, is the same message that you are trying to promote through traditional media sources.  Continuity is important.  See the Rule of Three comment above, your social media marketing efforts provide more exposure and reinforcement for your message.  Don’t confuse your patrons.

 

• Use your logo or icon for your Avatar, don’t make people try to guess who or what you are, imagery is important in marketing.  Anyone else tired of whatever the heck that brown box with the circles on it is?  If you don’t care enough to put a picture or logo there, why should I care what you are saying? Let alone the fact that it’s well…another exposure for your logo. They may not read what you have to say, but another image of your logo is burned into the memory banks.

 

• Post pictures and video on your profile (especially on Youtube, duh), engage people, show them a little bit about you, and if you want to take it a step further, put your watermark logo on every photo or video you post, see the last point.

 

• Connect with your demographic, don’t just keep cramming a marketing message down their throats.  Engage them, talk about things that interest them. A new movie release, a new video game release, the rivalry behind this week’s football game, “people don’t care how much you know till they know how much you care”, may sound cheesy, but it’s true.  Participate and get involved.

 

• Utilize “legal” web tools to distribute your message over all of your social media sites.  For example, post once to Twitter about what you are doing, and have it automatically update your Facebook and Myspace status.

 

• Define your goals, don’t just throw information out there, think about the result that you are trying to get. Think about where you want to be with your social media campaign, before you start it.

 

• Be original, if you post content that people haven’t heard before and that is useful, your messages are more likely to be read.  If you’ve heard about something already, chances are, so have all social network friends.

 

Now some of the Don’ts.

 

• Don’t, have too many profiles. One on each network is enough; you don’t need a profile page, a fan page, a group page on one network.  In fact, taking Facebook for example, having a regular profile page for your attraction is against Facebook's terms of service, if they find out you’re doing it, your profile will be deleted and whatever time you’ve spent on building your social network will go down the drain.

 

• Exaggerate. If you do, people will know it’s a “sales pitch” and tune you out, this goes hand in hand with one of the Dos, be original, be honest, and use common sense.

 

• Post something that you’re not sure you want to live for eternity on the World Wide Web.  Think about what you post, it’s going to be out there forever and possibly in more places than you originally intended for it to be.

 

• Confuse people with multiple posters, like I said above, use a unique personality to promote your social media sites, the more engaging and the more successful you will be.  If you simply give everyone in your organization access to your social media sites, your friends and followers will probably begin to think of you as schizophrenic and I don’t know about you, but I don’t need to follow anyone like that.  Note to self, don’t follow Pat Bowlen or the Denver Broncos.

 

• Spam; only send what you think your friends or followers will actually be interested in.  It’s OK to post things that help people relate on a personal level, but don’t send out a posting on your daughter’s girl scout cookie sale, I like Tagalongs as much as the next guy, but I’ll wait to be accosted in front of the grocery store, thank you.

 

• Connect with non qualified friends.  I know, I know, there are plenty of beautiful single ladies that are dieing to be my friend, legitimately.  But for you, these are porn bots, don’t add them to increase your network size.  People in your demo are experienced social media users, they’ve “grown up” with Myspace, if your friend list is loaded with bot profiles, they’re not going to take you seriously.  Look at your friend requests, it’s not that difficult to find out who’s legit.  On Twitter, if someone wants to follow you, no matter how qualified they look, if they are following 5,000 people, but only 3 are following them, they are a bot, if you follow them back, they will eventually begin offering you things you’re not interested in.

 

• Be offensive, if you’re target demo is 12-34, keep in mind there are people 12-18 in your network.  Think about what you are saying, you may want to be edgy, but do it without foul or off color language.  The last thing you need to deal with is an irate parent who’s been checking out there kid’s profiles, and above all, it’s not professional, see the common sense point above.

 

• Repeatedly ask the same people to be your friend.  If they’ve said no once, take them off your list.  If you don’t, and they report you for spamming, you could find your profile deleted one day, and once again, all your hard work, gone.

 

• Be negative, voice your opinion, people may be interested in your point of view, but you’re trying to encourage people to follow you on the web, and a bad attitude isn’t going to help you.

 

• Use automated adder programs.  OK, this is an area where some will say that it’s not a bad idea if you know what you are doing.  Yes, it may be easier to automate the process, and to track who you have requested, however, automated programs to add friends or send requests violate virtually every social networks terms of service.  It’s not worth it if you’re in it for the long haul.  The social media companies look for profiles with a large number of requests, if they find that you’re using an adder, your profile will be deleted.  This can also be viewed as spamming, and will likely increase spam reports, which will also increase your risk of having your profile deleted.

 

• Abandon your traditional marketing efforts, social media marketing at this time, is not a replacement for your traditional marketing, but a supplement and reinforcement.

 

So, we’ve addressed the pros and cons and dos and don’ts, where do you go from here.  As with any well laid marketing plan, you need to define your goals, create a strategy, and then determine what your gauge of success will be.

 

In crafting your plan, decide what you want.  Is it to build awareness of your website and/or brand?  Find staff members?  Provide information to your patrons?  Drive ticket sales?  Don’t just jump into the social marketing arena without first determining why you are doing it.  The correct answer here is not “well everyone is doing it”  As I have said above, some feel social media marketing is a great way to accomplish some of the things I have mentioned above, however, some believe it is a fad, and to a certain degree these people have been proven right, somewhat.  Myspace burst on to the scene as the first behemoth of the social networking sites, but over the last year Myspace usage has actually declined.  Facebook usage is still on the incline, but has slowed.  Facebook is no longer experiencing the kind of explosive growth it had in the past year, ant that Twitter has currently.

 

Once you have determined your goal, decide who and how you will implement it, remember, it’s a time consuming process, and probably not something that you will have time to deal with if you are a large attraction, in a large market.  There may be someone within your organization that may be willing to take this on.  Here’s a hint, they probably are younger than you, enjoy getting in costume at your event to scare people, and most likely already spend a good portion of their spare time on these sites anyway.  There are also companies that will manage your social media sites for you, charging you for their services which will likely fluctuate depending on how connected you want them to be.  These services could range from just accepting friend and follow requests, to posting new relevant content, to crafting an interactive social media marketing campaign.  Be prepared to pay for a service like this, but keep in mind, these services are typically more useful for marketers who are trying to build a brand over time, as opposed to promoting an event.

 

Last, gauge your success.  How many qualified follower or friends were you able to entice to connect with you and listen to your message?  How many staff members were you able to find?  How many comments were posted on users pages with links to your information?  How many inbound links to your website were created on the web?  And, above all, in my opinion, the ultimate gauge, how many tickets did you sell?  What revenue was created as a direct result of your social media efforts?

 

In closing, here’s my two cents on social media marketing (I may live to eat these words as I put it out there in print in perpetuity)  Social media marketing is another arrow in your quiver, but as of the writing of this article, it is nowhere near as effective as traditional marketing methods.  Think about this, if you start now, using the golden boy site of the moment, Twitter, and you actively promote your Twitter account, come October, how many followers will you have, a few hundred?  In comparison, how many people can you reach with one print ad? one radio ad? one billboard? one television commercial?  The answer is a whole lot more.  Traditional media still “kills” social media in reach.

 

Traditional media marketing is still very “push” oriented, and still the best way to get your message out, social media as I have said, is a way to reinforce it.  Myspace probably allowed the best “push” opportunity of the social sites, with Myspace it was very easy to identify your target demo, and send them your message.  Facebook is definitely less "push" than Myspace, you can still add friends, but most likely people who know people who are your friends will add you.   Twitter is even less "push".  You can go out and follow people who you believe will be interested in your event, and then hope they follow you back, but most that follow you will choose to do so on their own.

 

Once again, things move and change fast, Myspace seems to have become a bit old news, in favor of Facebook, and now Twitter.  Here's the problem I see so far with the latest greatest "Twitter"

 

I've been on Twitter a short period of time, I'm not following that many people.  Already it's hard to keep up, easy to miss things, I'd say if you have over 20 or so people you're following, you will frequently miss some of their "tweets".  As it grows I see this as having a Myspace bulletin syndrome.  When Myspace bulletins were first being used, they were a great way to get word out, now there are so many, including spam, that I think they are largely ignored.  Unfortunately I can see this happening with Twitter, quickly.  In fact, a recent Nielsen report says that 60% of Twitters users discontinue their use within a month of signing up.

 

This may sound negative, but it seems like these things have a short life cycle, using Myspace as an example.  Myspace was king, along comes something better, Facebook, along comes something better, Twitter.  Stop for a second, and consider their reach, if you start now, as I said maybe by October you'll have several hundred "followers" on Twitter, now granted they may be very interested in what you're doing, but it's still only several hundred, and if they're that interested in you, chances are they are coming to your event anyway.

 

However, there may be a giant upside for Twitter on the horizon, some feel that Twitter if they play their cards right, could change the landscape of “search” on the web.  Twitter content is “real time”, and if you’ve visited the site recently, you’ll see that you can search Tweets in real time…watch out Google, things could get interesting here (there’s a whole article here, a different topic, at a later date).

 

Regardless, I think you should have all of them, as they are all relevant to our demo, and they're a “free” exposure, remember the rule of 3?

 

So, my take, have a Myspace, have a Facebook, have a Twitter, have whatever comes next.  Link to them from your web page, and of course link to your web page from them, and let them be viral, what they are intended to be, because as I said, they are free exposures.

 

My data to back this up is this.  As we do polling at our locations, I can remember maybe a few times, when people claimed Myspace was the way they heard about the haunt (and we have 7700 friends on our profile), I hear newspaper, radio, TV, and of course the web.  But maybe a handful of times, Myspace.  Don't get me wrong, if you get even a single ticket sale because of it, and it didn't cost you anything, then it's great, money (or lack thereof) well spent!

 

So now it's Twitter, the big rage of social media, the latest "it" thing, what's next...whatever it is definitely use it...till the next "it" thing comes along.

 

I realize that most of what I have written, as with most that is written about internet related subjects, is debatable, I’m not claiming to be an expert on this subject matter, but I hope I’ve at least helped give you some insight and valuable information that you can utilize to help make your business more successful.

 

Chris Stafford is the co-owner of The Asylum and 13^th Floor Haunted Houses in Denver, Colorado.  He can be reached on the web at www.getscared.com or via email at Stafford@usa.net