What’s Your Feedback on These Social Media Priorities?

Thanks in advance for your input!

How to Mine Facebook and Twitter User Data (for Free)

When teams invest in a Facebook app, it’s usually for one main reason – to gain user data.

Several sports teams have hundreds of thousands of Facebook fans (some have millions), which is a fantastic marketing channel. However, demographic and contact info are hidden. In an effort to try to capture some fan data, teams often provide games (and activities) for fans to play – once they have registered.

The costs for such Facebook apps can be high – real high in some cases. Yes, these games are dynamic and help differentiate a Facebook Page, but if the goal is user data – Here’s a (simple) way to get it for free…

4 Steps

1. Set up an entry page on your website – many teams use FormStack to build/capture info. You don’t want to ask for too much info on these entry forms, but at least capture an email address in addition to names.
2. Ask your fans a question via your social platform – it could be a trivia question, or an opinion… whatever you like. When you post your question, make sure you can track the clicks from your link to measure how many people tried to answer.
3. Award fans for their participation – give them tickets, signed merchandise, chance to attend a practice… something that they will value in exchange for your ask. Be sure to promote the winners.
4. Track your stats. Compare your question clicks with how many fans answered. Adjust if necessary and repeat. Scrub your email list against your current to determine how many new ones you have. Keep a list of social fan emails, segment how you market to them moving forward.

I’m not saying that Facebook investment is a bad idea. Just remember, it is a 3rd party – the user data resides with Facebook. If getting that data is your main goal – start with this.

It’s not a secret, but are you doing it?

My Interview on SportsNetworker.com

Click here to see my 90 second interview featured on Sportsnetworker.com.

Thanks to @trevorturnbull and The Sponsorship Report

Social Populations and Digital Asset Strategies

It had to happen sooner or later.

We’re starting to see the growth begin to slow down for Facebook. Mind you, it’s still growing – but not at the double-digit increases we were getting used to seeing. Suffice to say, everyone’s heard of Facebook pretty much by now. And those who do not have a profile simply choose not to.

Time may convert those users over, and I’m certain that the platform will continue to grow. But I want to locate the topic of this post on fan populations of sports teams on Facebook.

When will we see these begin to top out and level off? A few things need to be considered:

Is Your Sports Brand Maximizing its Reach?

Is your team still gaining fans that are already on Facebook? Is your team new or in a new market? Have you only recently put a focus on driving social media marketing? These are all factors that contribute to how your social populations are growing.

How Do Your Social Stats Compare to Your Web Stats?

Do you have more fans on your Facebook page or on your website? Is either one properly monetized to take advantage of that? Do you like what you see or want to change it?

What is Your Digital Asset Mix and Strategy?

What is at the core of your digital assets? Where are your driving people from or to? Where are they going now? How can you influence or change their behaviour? What is your content management strategy to use each of these platforms to your advantage? Do you have internal resources to handle these priorities?

These are all important question to ask and plan around. It’s no small task – and this space is fraught with change and adaptation. This is a big part of what I do and every project is different.

New Facebook Pages: Photo Strategies

Facebook will force the upgrade to all pages on March 10 – so if you haven’t taken the preview, or chosen to upgrade yet… it’s time.

As the new pages format has been around for a while now, I’ve got some tips and tricks to share:

Photos

Photo placement is now very strategic – just below the Page name/title. FB randomly changes the order of the photos – which I think is frustrating as this is not consistent with the photo order for Profiles. With a profile, you can use a banner approach – split an image across 5 photos; however, Pages will not allow you to anchor photos in the same way… except one…

• You can anchor a photo on the far left side by tagging it. Simply select the photo you want to anchor the left side, and tag it as the name of the page. After that – FB will randomly change the order of the other photos except the far left one. There are apps that claim to provide banners for pages, but they do not work – even if you sign into FB as your Page. Frustrating, let’s hope this changes soon.

In living with the left anchor limitation, there are still options – this is about being creative, so lets work with what we’ve got!

• Consider a “collage” approach… you can add 5 photo “elements” that can enhance your page and brand as long as you keep them as 96 x 85 pixels squares.
• Are there 3 to 5 individual messages that support your brand? Each box can have a similar design look and feel – just as long as order is not important.
• Be  sure to keep the images consistent with your profile pic, website and twitter background – Digital consistency is key. This is an opportunity to make FB look more like “you” and differentiate from other teams and pages.

Be ready to stay on top of this in your daily community management process – should someone tag you (i.e. the name of your Page) in a photo, it could end up here… but this is unlikely for sports teams to have happen. Regardless, keep an eye out for what is in the photo section daily and remember – ANY photos you upload will go here… you can X out what you don’t want to appear, so be ready to do this if/when you upload any photos to FB that you do not want as part of your photo branding strategy.