Posts Tagged branding
Top 5 Tips For New Facebook Pages
Posted by Paul Holmes in blogging, business, internet, social media on March 22, 2010
1. Make your page title as generic as possible.
If you are setting up a page to promote your company brand, this may not be an option. But generic pages are far more likely to gain fans than brand pages.
Think about it this way – if you have a website about “Travel to Asia”, do you think Facebook users will be more likely to become a fan of “Travel to Asia” or “TravelToAsia.com”?
As much as it pains you, there are far more people who are fans of “Travel to Asia” than there are fans of your website.
In my experience, people are far more likely to share their photos, videos and comments on more generic sounding pages, and more likely to randomly recommend it to their friends.
All this builds a larger community – a community, remember, that you can promote your website and services on.
2. Set up your page properly.
Put an image on your page. Design your page nicely. Through the magic of RSS, import your blog into your Facebook page.
Change the settings so that fan comments appear to everyone, enable comments, videos, photos, and discussion forums!
3. Name your page.
It’s much easier to share your Facebook fan page if you can give a short, concise, and branded URL for it, rather than some ridiculously long address.
Which looks better to you?
If I had $1 for every time I saw a Facebook fan page with over 1,000 fans, but no vanity URL, I’d be rich! It used to be 1,000 fans were what were needed to name a page, then it went down to 100, and now it’s a mere 25 fans! Do you have 25 friends who can fan your page?
Promote your page on Facebook, Twitter and your blog.
Facebook is here to stay. It’s not going away. Get over any concerns you have about losing traffic to it, and take advantage of the community-building tools it has!
Facebook has a little widget you can add to your website to promote your page, it’s called the “fan box”. Click on “Edit Page”, then “Promote with a fan box” (middle column, third section). Here’s what it looks like:
Of course you can link to your Facebook page in a bunch of ways – with a nice Facebook icon, a text link, or with the Meebo Bar.
Advertise your page.
You can advertise your website on Facebook (and I do suggest any serious business considers this). But did you also know you can advertise your page?
My favourite form of advertising on Facebook are fan page ads to “friends of your fans”. If you have 100 fans on your page, there are probably thousands of “friends of your fans”.
Suppose “John Smith” is a fan of your page, “Acme Widgets”. John’s friends will see an ad pop up occasionally showing your “Acme Widgets” page, and saying “John Smith is a fan of Acme Widgets. Become a Fan?” One click, and they’ve signed up!
The old marketing question in this case has gone from “Do I trust Acme Widgets?” to “Do I trust my friend’s positive opinion of Acme Widgets?”
But why would I pay Facebook to advertise Facebook?
First of all, you need to get over the old rules of web marketing – you are not advertising Facebook, you are advertising your brand on Facebook.
There is another big reason: comfort.
The fact is that Facebook users are far more comfortable with Facebook then all those other scary websites in the world! Once a fan becomes comfortable with your fan page, they’ll become far more comfortable with visiting your website.
Domain Names, Branding and BC Political Parties
Posted by Paul Holmes in internet on May 6, 2009
Who does the online marketing for political parties?
I have been in the domain name business for 9 years, and marketing for even longer than that. There are “smart” domain names for business, and I usually talk about that (a lot). Not just what should we call our name (before the dot), but also what top-level domain (TLD) is most suitable (after the dot).
Generally speaking, for a Canadian business appealing to Canadians, .CA is the best choice. For a business marketing primarily to the United States, .COM is the best. For the latter category, if both .CA and .COM are available, try to get both (but use the .CA as your brand).
For Canadian politics, here are my thoughts:
- I would suggest that .CA should be the brand of choice.
- If it’s unavailable, .ORG is a potential alternative.
- .COM is just DEAD WRONG. (Although .NET is perhaps a tiny bit worse.)
- For candidates with simple to spell names, the domain name FIRSTLAST.CA is ideal.
- For candidates with a difficult to spell last name, an exception might be using the first name with a descriptor, such as GOSTEVE.CA or STEVE2009.CA.
- For a party, the party name is the ideal prefix, i.e. BCLIBERAL.CA or BCNDP.CA. Plural sounds funny, and abbreviations should be avoided (unless that IS the de facto name, as in the case of the NDP).
- Never, ever use a dash.
So, what have the parties in the upcoming May 12th BC election come up with? Let’s review:
- The BC NDP – BCNDP.CA – it’s an abbreviation, but since everyone knows the party brand as NDP, this is acceptable. Hands down, the best domain name in the campaign.
- The BC Liberal Party – BCLIBERALS.COM – plural (wrong) and .COM (dead wrong). Next election, they should change this.
- The BC Green Party – GREENPARTY.BC.CA – the province code in the name is a bit passé now, but at least it’s the right province. My formula comes up with BCGREEN.CA, which isn’t a great deal better, so it passes. Considering the “National” Green Party is “greenparty.ca” (the root of their domain), this adds some coordinated marketing value to their version of the name, so I wouldn’t bother changing it for next election.
- The BC Conservative Party – CONSERVATIVESBC.COM – the name is backwards, plural and .COM (wrong, wrong and wrong). Next election, they should change this.
I reviewed the other 18 parties that had a website, and found only 1 that was as smart with their domain branding as the NDP – and that was The Sex Party – THESEXPARTY.CA – mind you, that domain name may convey something completely different than what one might otherwise presume. Touché. Otherwise, for next election, I’d throw the entire lot away and start again (assuming there is any budget for that).
There is truly some awful stuff: yppofbc.com, reformbc.net, www.vote-ed.com.
My personal favourite for it’s incredible awfulness, however is the party that used a Geocities.com page for their website. Consider how unprofessional not even having you domain name is, then add to that the fact that Geocities just announced they are shutting down. Hilarious. Better to have no website, in my opinion!
“The Globe and Mail Test”
Posted by Paul Holmes in internet, personal, politics, social media on February 12, 2009
In politics I have developed messaging plans, formulated targetted advertising, conducted web campaigns, been responsible for media relations, and managed local campaigns of all kinds. In my business I consult with companies on their branding and advertising strategies regularly.
There is one rule which should be common sense in this day and age. It states:
“If you’d be embarassed to see what you’ve said on the front cover of the newspaper the next morning, THEN DON’T SAY IT.”
In Canada, we affectionately call this “The Globe and Mail Test.” For years, I’ve been telling clients the same thing applies (even more so) to e-mail.
Now that social media is exploding, we must also (quickly) extend this same rule to the new medium. In fact, this medium could prove to be most embarassing of all. You can save a draft of your e-mail and delete it later. But when you fire off an angry (or stupid sounding) “twitty tweet” to somebody publicly, it’s immediately part of your personal public record.
Now don’t get me wrong. I think these new tools are fantastic, and the opportunities to use them effectively are numerous. Just use them wisely!
For an example of how not to use social media, click on this link.
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