31 Aug 10 4 ways your Facebook fans/friends can now be treated like a real database. (World first!)

So for a very very long time, we’ve been asked repeatedly.

What’s the best way of using our Facebook existence to market and promote?

Most of the online world is full of tips, tricks, articles, case studies, tweets, posts and uhhh….”experts” trying to solicit a certain kind of approach to your social media campaigns.

Although we buy into some of these strategies, a substantial amount of these tactics are fluff perpetuated by self proclaimed “social media gurus.” From time to time, we ourselves may give some hints n tips in our newsletter and blog here on how to do certain things, but we never claim there is a magic formula to this stuff and never believe we should put all our proverbial eggs in one basket in terms of purely focusing all our marketing efforts on just social media.

The problem is, that short of posting content on walls, and throwing up a flyer or video, most people don’t really know how to accurately leverage their Facebook friends/fans in a targeted or behavioural kind of way. Sure they have been instructed on the etiquette on how to be retweeted, gain more followers, have conversations with people, solve problems, provide a friendly voice to the brand and so on. But there has been no “app/program/environment” which can support this.

But behold, a first in online social media marketing has arrived in MyGuestlist and we’ve packed it all under the new “Social” tab that you may have seen in your accounts.

It contains the following:

1) Social database

2) Send Campaigns

3) Multiple cross platform status updates

4) Custom Facebook app (this is an older feature, revamped to support more customisation)

Social Database

The concept here is simple.

You can connect as many Facebook profiles as you wish from people who are associated or affiliated with your business, venue or brand. There is no limit to how many profiles you can connect, however each person must give permission to use their profile for this particular feature. We recommend aiming for staff or partners who have a demographic of friends which is on par with whatever your brand stands for. So this means that if you’re selling tickets to an outdoor summer festival, you probably wouldn’t want to connect your gran’s profile up since she would hardly fit the bill. Or would she?

So, once we have this set up, what we can now do, is filter through either one person’s friends, or all the friends in total.

I could search for all females who have a birthday within the next 30 days and who are between the ages of 18-21 because for whatever reason, this is the criteria that is suitable to me.

The algorithm has found 51 of my friends’ friends that fit my criteria. I can now select those who I am interest in and write something direct to all their walls.

You can include mail merge hash tags to include a person’s first name in there so writing “Hey #patronName#, how are things? What are your plans for your birthday?” is a great way to create a conversation that can continue on in the comments of that post.

If you feel like it needs that extra touch of personalisation, you can always use this feature as a means of generating that list for you so that you can then go off and contact these people on your own.

How awesome is that?

And to add to all this, the available info we can play around with for the moment are name, age, DOB and gender.

Quite soon, you will also be able to filter by likes, interests, occupation, hobbies etc.

All very legal, and very very powerful.

Send Campaigns

Another interesting first with this feature.

A huge problem up to now has been that many brands and businesses have multiple existences on Facebook.

Groups, pages, profiles, more groups, separate interstate groups, separate promoter pages/groups and the list goes

For anyone that can relate to that above line, it really is a nightmare!

So, we decided that we would once and for all solve that problem. We now present to you, multiple posts across pages/groups/profiles at the one time.

What this means, is that once we connect all our Facebook profiles up for the first time, we have an option to select from a bunch of text boxes (see below) which groups, pages and profiles will receive our post all at the same time. The benefit with this, is that in one hit, you update all our Facebook existences at the same time.

If you get clever, what you can also do (as some of our users already have) is find a similar like minded product/service/company and get in touch to be able to cross promote via their group/page. Once you join their group and ask the administrators for their permission, you can now target thousands of people you never had access to for the first time! Very very exciting!

Before you ask, yes, there are precautions put in place so that you don’t become a widespread spammer. Both Facebook and MyGuestlist, will restrict how you use this particular tool to begin with and will only allow you to post to a larger number of groups/pages/profiles once you increase your reputation.

Suffice to say, if you are sensible and clean in what you post and don’t hijack groups/pages you shouldn’t be, you will not have a problem.

This feature and the “Social Database” has already been the cause of a few locally produced viral videos as it exposes your content to thousands of people all at once.

It’s up to you though, to create a video sticky enough to be shareable. But that’s another topic altogether.

Multiple Status updates

Many times, brands are spread out across the country or world. Sometimes, it can be hard to co-ordinate one message to all ambassadors/promoters/marketers/sales team at the same time.

You now have the option of being able to update unlimited multiple Facebook and Twitter statuses all at the same time, and with one click.

Cheers!

Custom Facebook Application

This is a rather old feature of ours. In the beginning, it was used as a means of capturing data from your page or profile but has now evolved to be able to support additional customisation.

Right from within the tab that sits on your page, you can have any of the following:

• A welcome page branded with your themes, colours, logos, fonts
• A guestlist/function enquiries page. Data of patron is captured and all guestlists are synced to the iPad app.
• Sign up/ Become a member / VIP page. Data is captured once again.
• Flyers, posters, videos all linked to your site or elsewhere
• Ability to sell tickets right from within the app
• Run viral competitions where your recipients are asked to nominate their friends for certain things,  in order to win prizes

This app however, is the only part of MyGuestlist that isn’t self serviced. Because of the heavy customisation and modification that can happen, you must submit an application request to us from within MyGuestlist to have this up and running for your profiles and pages.

Final thoughts

As Facebook keeps expanding and introducing new concepts (Facebook places anyone?), MyGuestlist will remain active to wrap around any of these new trends in a way which benefits users.

Rather than waiting to see if certain things “take off”, our innovation and culture is to provide users with the ability to leverage as much as they can from these features and decide on their own, whether something is working, or just a fad.

Stay tuned! This is not the end of our adventures with world firsts in Facebook integration and database marketing.

25 Aug 10 Display pics of people in your database

Hi guys

We’re testing out a little feature that may appear on some accounts where any function enquiry, guestlist, contact form, gallery etc, will not just automatically save the information of the patron in your database, but also present to you within the email their Facebook display pic.

This is useful for a number of reasons:

1) Decreases the chances of fake enquiries

2) You get to see the people filling in your enquiries and as a result can validate a little bit more accurately whether they are of valid age or not.

3) Provides you with a link to their Facebook profile should you want to befriend them or suggest they become fans of your page

Here’s a sample one in our inbox of Damian, one of our founders. Check it out and let us know what you think:

23 Aug 10 3 examples of awesome viral videos

We’ve talked before about how the spread of viral videos can be very effective for brand and event exposure.

It’s no secret that the more eyeballs a video gets, the greater the hits on your site and the greater the exposure of your offering. However, there are 2 key ingredients for what makes a video “take off” or not.

1) The content, structure and nature of the video itself.

2) The path it travels to get on to people’s screens.

Although MyGuestlist has some awesome features that allow you to push this content to your normal and social databases, we wanted to show you some examples of good, engaging videos that will make you want to share it with friends.

Number 1: The Tostidos Video

We’ve talked about this one before.

She’s a beauty and a real eye catcher. Although it doesn’t have any interaction with the viewer, the very fact that it is a fresh animation concept literally bursting out of the ordinary boundaries is big enough on its own to warrant a “wow” factor.

Have a look and see what you think. Cool hey?

Now imagine what you could do with that for your own brand.

Number 2: The Hero thank you movie

This is a great example of something you can do to thank your patrons/customers after they have had a certain interaction with you. Or it can also be used as a way to nominate one person from your database for something.

Package the video up within a competition with a prize. If all of the recipients place their most creative entries, you will have success in both the size of your database, as well as the exposure of your product/service/event.

We think it’s cool!

Give it a trial run and see what you think.

Number 3: The Movie with friends

Another fantastic one for running competitions!

Similar to the previous except with the ability to include more than one friend within the video.

Try it out with some of your own Facebook friends, and check it out. It’s an awesome way to incorporate something similar for your next launch or release and we’ve already seen some amazing results for brands which create their own flavours of these types of videos.

These are the kind of videos we encourage you get your video crews, animators and designers to assist you with when it comes to attempting to create a video that reaches the eyeballs of thousands of people.

Most important aspects being:

- Must be interesting, funny, scary or invoke some sort of deeper emotive or cognitive feeling in order to retain the interest of the viewer.

- Must be easily shareable.

- Viewer must want to share the video. Having videos like the ones above where people can interact with them and utilise their own social circles to make them even more interesting, create the viral point for people to want to share.

Fore more info on some the key aspects (including actual figures as well) of the viral effect of videos, check out one of our older articles here. It’s an excellent insight on how to achieve the viral formula!

We’d love to know other interesting videos that you may have seen around the web that are great examples of viral videos.

Let us know if you have spotted any cool ones in the comments below.

09 Aug 10 Using foursquare to measure patron loyalty

For anybody that doesn’t yet know about it, please go and visit Foursquare.

Ok, now that you’re back, let’s chat for a little.

There are many many articles that talk about why Foursquare is the perfect service for hospitality venues.  We won’t say anything more other than it is a perfect way to engross your patrons in a virtual check-in competition whilst rewarding their attendance (and frequency of it) with certain giveaways.

It is important to include your foursquare giveaways in your social, email or sms campaigns. Doing so, will allow your subscribers and VIP patrons to have an even deeper connection with their favourite venue and actually be rewarded for it in the long run.

What do I give away?

This part depends on you and ranges from a Free giveaway, to a points based system for certain other goodies.

Needless to say, the incentive must be something that is on par with what your venue / business / brand is known for, so that it doesn’t seem generic enough to be able to get anywhere else.

Perhaps a signature cocktail? Or one of your tasty new dishes? Or maybe a new product altogether?

Experiment, modify, split A/B test and do everything you need, in order to determine what is the right incentive for your business or company.

Expect to see a fair bit more on location based features and products and we will be right on top of it all, assisting in integrating it with your promotions and marketing.

Needless to say, we will be incorporating many more location based features in the near future with integration into both Facebook, your MyGuestlist account and the MyGuestlist iPad app

03 May 10 Video outside the box. Literally!

A number of months ago, there was a great video ad that popped up on the net showing just how creative you can be with online video and how you present it to your audience.

Since we regularly tell all our users to have more of a presence in the world of online video, this is a great one to give you some ideas on what you can do for our own venue, event or brand.

We’re not going to embed it within this blog post for a reason. You just have to check it out and trust us that you will be impressed.

Oh also, please ensure you aren’t going to attempt to watch it on a machine that is from the dinosaur age or on that browser. You may find some minor (read heaps) of inconvenience.

23 Apr 10 Open rate for SMS > 98%. Wow!

Yes yes, you read that correctly. The open rate for SMS messages is over 98% (Frost & Sullivan).

Of course this is because most people have their phones with them at all times and it makes ignoring a text message a little more difficult. And yes, as of late, there are a large number of people who don’t really believe in the SMS medium as a means of digital/direct marketing. Some common phrases of rebuttal are:

1) People hate spam and don’t want to be spammed
2) People just delete the message when they receive it
3) Everybody else sends out SMS and it doesn’t work
4) Everybody else sends out SMS and we don’t want to be just like everybody else

Now, there is a very small grain of truth behind a couple of those up there, but most of it is based on misconception or misuse of the medium. Here are the remedies to all the above and some things you never even may have realised:

1) You are assuming that the very campaign you are putting together, is spam. That is wrong in more ways than anybody could imagine and is your first problem. Instead of pushing out generic, boring, dull messages about your night or event, how about involve your members and patrons and reward their contribution. This could come in the form of competitions, trivia, quizzes, guess-this-to-win-that, reply-this-to-receive-that, happy birthday message with a reward etc. The list is enormous on how you can send out a “social SMS campaign” rather than a standard run of the mill boring one.

2) There is a little bit of truth with this for some people but here is the kicker that everybody forgets. When the recipient receives the message and reads it, they very well may click on delete or not really pay too much attention to it. They perhaps even already have plans for that weekend, and will most certainly not be attending  your special night. But what you must not forget, is that your brand and everything you have to offer, is now a part of their world and circulates their train of thought. So that when a particular saturday night does come along where the recipient doesn’t have plans, your invitation has now subliminally become a viable choice for them.

This isn’t too unlike car advertising. When Audi, BMW or Mercedes throw up expensive ads on TV and city billboards for their cars, they do it knowing very well that you may not be in the car market that very moment. You may not even be in the car market for another few months or a year. But they do it knowing that the day you are, their brand has entered your world, your thoughts and your way of thinking, so that their investment is now ready to be paid off.

So do people delete SMS messages sent to them? Sure.

Does this mean that your messages are meaningless? Absolutely not. After all, there is over an 98% open rate.

3) This is mostly a combination of 1) and 2). If you want SMS to work, first determine a way of measuring them by getting replies back, signs ups to a particular landing page site, calls for tickets etc. Don’t just send a stale generic message, cross your fingers and hope for the best. That is not the way to go about it.

4) This is sort of like the generic “Happy New Year” messages that pop up on your phone while you try to see the blurry phone screen in front of you and keep your balance straight as you trip over the steps and fall into the pool at the new years eve party.

It’s simple. You do not have to send out thousands of generic messages if you don’t want to. Therefore you don’t need to be just like everybody else. Here are some ideas:

• Wish somebody a happy birthday
• Thank somebody for coming
• Let somebody know that they have a choice between two different kinds of free drinks to receive on entry
• Give somebody a password for priority entry making them feel special about it all
• Give a code that is redeemable for something

The list can go on and on.

The SMS medium is not dead, nor will it be if it is used in conjunction with both a solid database of opt-in subscribers as well as a good, social and involving broadcast.

If you fail to meet either one of those, please don’t blame the SMS medium, but rather think about whether you can either make your message more creative or whether you can clean up your database.

Either way, we can help you with both!