Resident Places Launches Facebook Coupon Reveal Tab for Apartments
For Immediate Release
Resident Places Launches Facebook Coupon Reveal Tab for Apartments
Philadelphia, PA January 9, 2013 – Resident Places has expanded its local coupon amenity program. We now offer participating communities a reveal tab for their community Facebook pages loaded with co-branded local coupons that can be printed and shared by their residents and prospects.
Resident Places (www.residentplaces.com) is pleased to announce the launching of our new Reveal Tab for Facebook that allows participating apartment communities to place hyper-local coupons on their Facebook page for their residents and prospects. The coupons are easily printed and shared directly for the social site of each individual community.
The Resident Places Coupon Reveal Tab will support the social activities of apartment communities by providing them with valued content that will generate more likes, more shares, referrals and recommendations, and increase visit frequency by their residents and prospects.
Resident Places President TJ Goulet stated, “We are very excited about the prospect of supporting our client’s endeavors to build a robust and active social network with their residents.” Goulet went on to say, “Coupons have both real and perceived value to residents and the cobranded printed coupon increases our client’s reach into their local neighborhoods. Resident Places is a win for residents, for local businesses and, most importantly, a win for the participating apartment communities.”
Coupons, deals and giveaways have the highest response rates and share rates on Facebook. An Exact Target Survey showed that the top two reasons Facebook users like a fan pages was to get discounts (40%) and freebies (36%). Wildfire Interactive reported that coupons had a 49% response rate and a 34% share rate among 10,000 Facebook campaigns surveyed.
Increasing Facebook “Likes” improves brand loyalty and referrals according to a survey by Syncapse.com. They surveyed 4,000 Facebook users for 20 top brands and found that Facebook Fans are 28% more likely to stick with a brand and 41% more likely to recommend a brand than non-fans.
About Resident Places
Resident Places is an amenity program for residential and mixed use properties that delivers property branded, hyper-local coupons. These neighborhood deals enhance current resident retention initiatives, while augmenting community outreach to local businesses. Every coupon printed through the property specific co-branded portal includes the name of the property and are shareable via social networks like Facebook and Twitter. The Resident Places call center handles all sales and service activities related to the coupons and target businesses that are in close proximity to each property ensuring that they represent the businesses most desired and used by residents.
Property Managers interested in offering Resident Places to their residents should contact Rob Remus at (484) 474-0590 or by email at rremus@residentplaces.com. Learn more at Property.residentplaces.com.
5 Ways to Increase Your Facebook Engagement | Social Media Examiner
5 Ways to Increase Your Facebook Engagement | Social Media Examiner.
Looking to increase your Facebook page engagement?
Wondering why some pages have very high engagement and others nearly none?
In this post I’ll share five tips you can put to work right away.
About Facebook Engagement
What is it that makes some Facebook fan pages wildly successful with constant high engagement rates where the fans and their friends eat up the content like there’s no tomorrow… while other pages sit there dormant with hardly any activity, yet they produce great content, too?
Making Facebook work for your business can often take a bit of trial and error… and time.
You need to have patience and be willing to invest your own time and/or invest in a team to help you. You might refer to my post Facebook 101 for Business: Your Complete Guide and scroll to the section on Recommended Six-step Approach to Building Your Facebook Page for a refresher.
Though Facebook has introduced a plethora of changes since I wrote that post, the six-step approach remains valid.
In order to create success on Facebook, you need to have a clear objective and great design, plus:
- Solid content strategy (what you’re going to post on your page)
- Promotion strategy (how you’re going to continually increase your fan base)
- Engagement strategy (how you’ll respond to fans and build community)
- Conversion strategy (how you’ll turn your fans into customers)
In this post, I’ll explore five factors that contribute to exceptional engagement and measurable results!
#1: Launch Creative Incentives
From time to time, keep your fans engaged with fun promotions. That mayinclude contests, offers, games, vouchers, codes and more.
Arby’s recently rolled out a clever campaign to celebrate its 48th anniversary. The company added a nifty retro-style coupon as a Milestone way back in the year 1964 (the year the company was founded) on its Facebook Timeline page.
Visitors to Arby’s Facebook page were encouraged to click on the beginning of its Timeline to get a coupon for a Classic Roast Beef sandwich at the 1960s price of $0.64.
Coupons could only be redeemed on July 23, the company’s anniversary date.
The post announcing that the coupon was coming got over 2,600 shares and the poston July 23 got over 3,000 shares. Both posts received thousands of likes and hundreds of comments.
Arby’s Facebook fan page post.
This was a wonderful opportunity for Arby’s fans to play a ‘treasure hunt’ game of sorts, and clearly yielded significant engagement.
Jo Ann Herold, VP of communications and public relations at Arby’s Restaurant Group, said,
“One of our goals for this promotion was to increase engagement and entice sharing, so we wanted everyone to explore our Timeline and have access to the coupon.”
The promotion was also featured on Instagram and Twitter, both directing people to Arby’s Facebook page.
Simple campaign, yes? What can you take away from this idea?
It’s perfectly within Facebook’s Terms of Use to do a giveaway on your fan page. The rule of thumb is does everyone get one? If the answer is yes, you’re good to go—that’s a giveaway. If the answer is no because you’re drawing select winners, then that’s a promotion where you must adhere to Facebook’s Promotions guidelines and use an app to administer the contest/sweepstakes. More on that here.
#2: Post Highly Shareable Content
You might be familiar with the expression “Facebook candy.” This is the type ofcontent that Facebook users get very excited about and immediately want to share with all of their friends.
Your own Facebook news feed is likely peppered with such candy!
This is almost always an image, which tends to get a higher EdgeRank (more news feed visibility). And often, the images contain inspirational or motivational quotes along with an eye-catching photo.
Popular fan page post by MorningCoach.com.
My friend JB Glossinger does a great job of posting consistent shareable content. The interesting thing is JB frequently shares what I call “OPC”—other people’s content.
And, JB’s team engages well with his community (see below).
JB has a daily podcast and has grown his subscribers considerably through his highly engaging Facebook page.
For more on this topic, see this post: 7 Ways to Craft Your Facebook Posts for Maximum Shares.
I’ve compiled a Facebook Interest List, Facebook Candy to Inspire, featuring 83 fun sources of content to share. (Let me know in the comments below if you have any fan pages to suggest for this list!)
Could your content use a bit of a boost? How many images do you post vs. links? The latter does tend to get much more visibility!
#3: Build a Tight Community
Some Facebook pages just seem to have a knack for building a real community—onewhere visitors and fans often engage with one another and there is much peer support.
Plus, you can feel the page owners’ presence. They don’t just use their Facebook page as a one-way broadcast channel.
Bridal Hotspot page owner Sylvana Spiby stated on this post that she can’t remember the last time her engagement rate (ER) was lower than 100%.
Now that’s saying something! Given that the average ER for most brands and businesses is a mere 2%!
Bridal Hotspot fan page owner Sylvana Spiby’s comment about her ER.
To calculate your own engagement—or that of any fan page—here’s the formula:
(PTAT / Likes)*100, where PTAT is “people talking about this.”
This is the most common and quick way to calculate ER.
The screenshot below shows an example of an ER over 100%. This is Modern Parent‘s fan page:
Modern Parent fan page, an example of ER over 100% (135.5%).
However, there’s also per-post engagement rate which is:
(Likes + Comments + Shares on a given day) / # of wall posts made by page on a given day / Total fans on a given day)*100
On Bridal Hotspot’s fan page, Sylvana responds to ALL posts by others, always has a warm and personal style and often uses people’s first names. Plus, something else that stood out for me: she encourages others to share their own content… even if he/she could potentially be a competitor!
Bridal Hotspot fan page question requesting permission to share.
Here’s an example of a fan posting on Bridal Hotspot’s page. Notice their engagement.
Do you have an active community on Facebook? Are you or someone on your team consistently responding to fans’ posts and comments?
#4: Have a Quirky Brand
Have you seen the Dollar Shave Club‘s comic marketing video featuring CEO Michael Dubin’s dry humor? It’s exceptionally well done and currently has well over 5.5 Million views on YouTube!
The Dollar Shave Club is an innovative concept where members pay a small monthly fee to receive razors by mail. That’s it—super-simple and highly successful!
The company culture is clearly fun, quirky and creative, and this spills over onto the company’s Facebook page, too. Although DSC doesn’t post that often on its fan page, the fans post regularly… and they frequently get a personal response by DSC admins.
Example fan post and engagement by Dollar Shave Club on its fan page.
The company involves fans with giveaways such as flasks, t-shirts and “handsome-ass bottlekeys!” Fans can participate via Twitter and DSC’s blog, too.
Along with a hilarious marketing video and quirky brand, this company clearly filled a niche that people didn’t know they needed, and as such the company has built a cult-like following.
Even though he doesn’t shave often, Sir Richard Branson was so impressed he felt compelled to blog about this fun company! See also this writeup on Inc.com. (I first discovered the DSC in an article in the July 2012 Inc. Magazine.)
How can you add humor and maybe a wee bit more quirkiness to your brandand Facebook engagement? People LOVE to be entertained!
And, when you mix entertainment and education, you get edutainment. Social Media Examiner’s own community manager, Andrea Vahl, has an alter ego as a fun social media edutatiner, Grandma Mary.
#5: Be a Beloved Personality
Last, but by no means least, is the inimitable George Takei. He’s really in a league of his own on Facebook!
George is a widely recognized actor, starring in some 40+ feature films and hundreds of television shows. But, he is probably best known for his portrayal of Mr. Sulu in the acclaimed television and film series, Star Trek.
On Facebook, George seems to have an incredible knack for posting extremely viral content—his fans just can’t wait to share the next nugget of wit.
At any given time, George frequently has an engagement rate GREATER than 100%. At the time of writing this post, per the screenshot below, the ER is 135%. (Remember, the average is just 2%.)
George Takei’s popular Facebook page with high engagement rate.
Almost all of George’s posts are fun and quirky Facebook candy. Notice that the majority of his posts are photos and he typically posts a very short (humorous) narrative, both factors in getting higher news feed visibility and engagement rates.
What we can learn from George and the way he’s built his Facebook community is that he is extremely consistent. He posts around 3-5 times per day, every day. And, in terms of driving his fans to action, George does get the word out about the upcoming musical Allegiance, in which he stars (and was inspired by his family’s experience).
Nonetheless, aside from being a celeb, you can definitely take away from factor #5 how it’s important to give your fans plenty of excellent content on a regular basis that they just love.
What Do Facebook Users Expect from Brands?
Facebook users have both positive and negative expectations when “liking” a brand
Companies are often on the hunt for more “likes” for their Facebook pages, hoping to get more brand advocates and social media fans. However only 42% of US Facebook users think marketers should interpret a “like” in that way.
This data comes from a June 2011 study from ExactTarget, “Subscribers, Fans and Followers: The Meaning of Like,” which found that 25% of US Facebook users disagree that marketers should interpret “like” to mean they are a fan or advocate of the company.
Facebook users themselves have some preconceived notions about what to expect when they “like” a company on the site, and among those who do not become brand fans, many are negative. More than half of users expect to be bombarded with messages or ads (54%), while 45% do not want to give companies access to profile information and 31% do not want to push content from a company into friends’ newsfeeds. These possibilities have prevented users from making brand connections on the social networking giant.
On the flip side, many US Facebook users also have certain expectations of perks they should get after following a company’s Facebook page.
The ExactTarget study found that 58% of US Facebook users expect to gain access to exclusive content, events or sales after “liking” a company, while 58% also expect to receive discounts or promotions. Additionally 47% expect to see updates about the company, person or organization they “liked” in their newsfeed, which bodes well for brands as they work to have their content always show up for their followers.
Additionally, younger consumers, ExactTarget found, have fewer expectations and generally “like” brands as a form of expression, not to get certain perks. Meanwhile, older consumers want something of value for “liking” a brand. By listening to what their target fanbase wants out of the Facebook relationship, marketers can get more interaction on their page and encourage more people to “like” rather than avoid brands on Facebook.
TJ Goulet has been a leader in sales and marketing for almost 20 years. His background includes both entrepreneurial endeavors and nationally recognized achievement with a Fortune 500 Company. He entered the local search and coupon industry in 2005, when he launched his first directory and coupon portal. TJ's expertise is in utilizing current technologies and marketing platforms to increase sales productivity across a broad range of products and services.
The Summit Apartments Launch Resident Places
The Summit Apartments in the Roxborough area of Philadelphia launched the Resident Places program for their residents over Memorial Day weekend. The Summit was one of the first properties to join Resident Places and launched with over a dozen hyper local coupons available to their residents with more to come. Check out their reward site for their residents.
The announcement to the residents included social postings on Facebook and Twitter,as well as a full page ad in their June 2012 Newsletter and adding a “Local Coupons” link to every page of their property site. Future resident communications will include addition of Resident Places to their closed circuit TV system in the club house, continued inclusion in their monthly newsletter, an email blast to all residents, weekly sharing of coupons and local deals on their Facebook and Twitter pages and inclusion of a flier and printing local coupons in their Welcome Kits.
TJ Goulet has been a leader in sales and marketing for almost 20 years. His background includes both entrepreneurial endeavors and nationally recognized achievement with a Fortune 500 Company. He entered the local search and coupon industry in 2005, when he launched his first directory and coupon portal. TJ's expertise is in utilizing current technologies and marketing platforms to increase sales productivity across a broad range of products and services.
5 Ways to Market Your Brand With Location-Based Networks
Between the rise in location-based social networks, like Foursquare, and the mobile market’s meteoric growth, a new marketing avenue has opened up. Location-based marketing is a nascent frontier, and marketers are clamoring to take advantage of it.
Already, about 30% of smartphone owners access social networks via their mobile browser, and that figure will continue to grow, according to an infographic by Microsoft Tag. So, if your marketing plans include location-based networks, below are five ways to get started.
1. Push Notification Integration
One of the big reasons people don’t use location-based apps like Foursquare or SCVNGR is simply because they forget. Integrating push notifications into a location-based app is a great and simple fix.
Marketers often use these notifications to highlight activity, specials, announcements, and to further promote the app as well as the business. Allowing users to alter these notifications is an important way to give your audience some power. That ensures your messaging makes it to their phone without being a burden.
2. Loyalty Programs
Giving rewards to loyal customers for continuing to check in via a location-based networks is a great option. Arby’s marketing team did this on Foursquare by offering special reserved seating to their Foursquare mayors at 30 restaurants and 50% off on purchases. Ideas like these drive competition and increase use, which leads to greater exposure for the business being marketed on these networks.
3. Geofencing
Geofencing has been around for some time, but it’s increasingly becoming incorporated in more location-based networks. For those who aren’t familiar, geofencing is a virtual boundary set around a location, like a store. One way marketers are using geofencing on location-based networks is by sending messages to users who’ve opted in to a particular service.
Lets use Starbucks as an example. If a person crosses a Starbucks geofence, they will receive a message from their location-based app highlighting an offer, coupon, or just a reminder to stop by. This is similar to the idea of a push notification, except it’s only triggered by a person who comes into a geofence around a specific location. This messaging is more relevant to a user and more effective for a company.
4. Mixed Media
Apps like GetGlue and Foursquare both give you the ability to check in and incorporate other media. For instance, GetGlue allows a user to check in and share a favorite book, song or TV show. Optimize your content and forge partnerships with companies like GetGlue as a way to extend your reach among users that are more likely to view your content if recommended by their friends.
5. Better Content
As the king of the location-based space, Foursquare helps set the tone for innovation in this industry. Recently at South by Southwest, Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley spoke about the future of location-based apps and how the company’s focus is shifting from checking in to other features that their audience uses more and that will help the company become more mainstream.
For instance, Foursquare’s “explore” feature is fairly new and allows a user to discover food, nightlife, shops, and more based on broad categories. It aggregates suggestions based on your checkin history as well as information available on the network about a location. This is why any content you add to Foursquare and similar sites should be optimized.
via 5 Ways to Market Your Brand With Location-Based Networks.
TJ Goulet has been a leader in sales and marketing for almost 20 years. His background includes both entrepreneurial endeavors and nationally recognized achievement with a Fortune 500 Company. He entered the local search and coupon industry in 2005, when he launched his first directory and coupon portal. TJ's expertise is in utilizing current technologies and marketing platforms to increase sales productivity across a broad range of products and services.
Snapshot: Social Media Marketing Industry Report
Snapshot: Social Media Marketing Industry Report
An infographic published by VA Simple Services titled 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report: Key Findings, lists down a rundown of important facts. For starters, it says that spending more time on social media platforms helps brands understand the medium and, therefore, can easily provide insights which are essential in planning social media campaigns, and ensuring they are effectively targeting accomplishing their objectives.
And with the social Web’s real-time capabilities and varied features, it should not be much of a surprise that the brand’s business exposure online is the biggest benefit businesses are reaping from their social media uses. Here, Facebook tops the list of most used social media sites, unsurprisingly followed by Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs and YouTube.
TJ Goulet has been a leader in sales and marketing for almost 20 years. His background includes both entrepreneurial endeavors and nationally recognized achievement with a Fortune 500 Company. He entered the local search and coupon industry in 2005, when he launched his first directory and coupon portal. TJ's expertise is in utilizing current technologies and marketing platforms to increase sales productivity across a broad range of products and services.
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