Well? Why ARE Superbowl ads so popular? Why is it the one day a year when people don't get up to go to the bathroom when the commercials come on? Because they're funny! And entertaining! And they don't take themselves seriously! Yes, companies spend lots of money on these particular commercials so they are definitely hoping to make some serious revenue off of them; but they also know that to be one of the best commercials of the day they have to make you laugh, be creative, think outside the box.
So what does this have to do with social media? Take your Facebook fan page for instance. If all you post are updates about what event is coming up or that they should visit you... your fans aren't going to respond very much. I take for example (and I apologize if you are the person running this, but if you are take this as constructive criticism!) the Facebook page of Connecticut Landmarks. They are such a cool organization with a bunch of amazing houses to talk about, but to me their posts are pretty boring and feels a bit like a sales pitch. Buy this, sign up for this, visit us... OK, we get it. I would love to see fun facts about their houses and the people that lived there and stories and quotes from visitors and staff and some contests. I've love to be able to make some sort of connection with the person behind their page.
Now on the flip side of that, there are some pages that use Facebook to its fullest potential. One of my favorites is the page of MASS MoCa. They do an amazing job of engaging their fans and having fun with it! They let their interns post as well as staff and they create a picture for fans of what it's like to be at the museum; to visit, to work and to intern. They do great trivia days where they get at least over 100 interactions (likes, comments, etc) and they pull in content that isn't necessarily directly related to the museum. One intern posted a link to a blog about cake wrecks. She was able to link it back to the museum by talking about food as art, and therefore got to show this super cool website about strange and funny cakes. I spend about 20 minutes browsing the pictures and every time I see it I'll remember that I saw it first on the MASS MoCa fan page.
And as for me, I just posted a story about how Conan O'Brien took out a Craiglist ad for his TV show on The Mark Twain House & Museum wall. Why you ask? Well you'd be right that other than the fact that Conan and Sam both told jokes, they don't have a lot in common. EXCEPT that I wrote a blog post a couple months ago asking if Mark Twain would have sold his family on Craigslist. So I linked the two.
So the moral of the story: HAVE FUN! Use your Facebook page to promote your organization, but also be aware that pages shouldn't be used solely for marketing purposes. Social media is supposed to be social! Give your fans a reason to interact and engage with you! Tell them your name, tell them a funny story that happened on a tour or at a staff meeting, paint a picture of what your organization is really like, don't be formal, don't take yourself too seriously and enjoy yourself! This is supposed to be fun!
Share with us! What are some of your favorite fan pages on Facebook? Any pages you're a fan of that you think could use some extra oomph? Let us know!
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Someone just brought up the great point of politicians and elected officials and how their pages are generally very "formulaic and boring". They are completely right! I just browsed through a handful of pages that belong to elected officials and they are pretty standardized. I understand that elected officials want to be well, official about keeping their fans and the public updated. But what this ends up meaning is that for someone like Comptroller Nancy Wyman, all of the posts end up starting out with "Comptroller Wyman will be doing this today" or "Comptroller Wyman speaks at this function today". Now, generally I believe that elected officials should exude a feeling of approachability, of personability... but when all of their posts start out with "Comptroller Wyman" not only do I know that she isn't actually the one running the page (not that she should be, I'm sure she's very busy) but it makes me feel like maybe she doesn't even know it exists or ever looks at it. Why should I engage with the intern behind the computer or share my thoughts with "Comptroller Wyman" when I feel pretty sure they'll never get to her.
ReplyDeleteIn my browsing the only page I came across where a post jumped out at me was Senator Chris Dodd's. Most of the page you can tell that someone else is posting to it. "Senator Dodd signs on to this bill", "Senator Dodd going to speak about this" BUT they also use quotes from him as their posts. And then there was the post that was in first person. Whether or not he actually wrote it I couldn't tell you, but because it was the only one it seemed as though he personally typed that and posted it on his wall. It made it personal.
So my advice, if you're an elected official or politician, there is a way to be official on your page without being boring. And there is a way to be personal without having to sit in front of the computer all day. Be creative, post something yourself every once in a while and sign the post with your name. And like the moral of this post, have fun!