Our world is increasingly consumed by digital media. SmartPhones, tablets and other devices with WiFi and 4G have made it possible for the modern consumer to be consistently immersed in information. As a business, how do you leverage yourself in a way that stands out from the crowd? How can you capture the attention of your target audience when you are competing with so many other companies with the same goal?

If you can’t beat them, join them! Many businesses have had great success from leveraging the community building capabilities of social media. When it comes to popularity, social media sure does understand the definition. According to industry statistics, over half of the population of the United States is using social media. Of that percentage of people, over 1 billion of them are on Facebook. Are you utilizing social media to your advantage?

As a business owner, if you already are, this is great news. However, simply having a presence on Facebook is no longer enough. Social media is all about engagement, and engagement can be hard to come by when your target audience is already so overwhelmed with information overload. This leads to business owners looking for new and creative ways to reach their audience, engage them, and keep them coming back for more.

Like This, Not That

When it comes to the leading social media network, Facebook, one of the most essential things a brand wants to do is generate a following. Once an individual “likes” your page, any updates you add to that page are visible in their news feed. This is great! It’s just like having “free” promotion!

But what happens when everyone else seems to be getting the likes, and you’re spending all of your time posting relevant content, only to receive no engagement? You take a different route!

Working with clients who use social media to leverage their connection to customers — both current and prospective — I have seen many trends come and go. One innovation that I do not foresee going anywhere, however, is the concept of a Facebook contest.

Who doesn’t like to win a free prize? We’ve seen brands grow from zero to 700 followers simply by hosting a contest on social media. Not only do you draw buzz around your brand, but you have the opportunity to form new relationships with prospective clients, competitors, current clients and social media users all around the web.

According to Social Media Examiner, 40% of Facebook users will “like” a business page if they become interested in offers, contests of discounts provided by the company through their social media channels. This is great news for businesses. If social media is all about engagement, and engagement can be fostered through a creative contest, it’s surely a no brainer when you ask the question “Do I run a contest?”

The next question, however, may not seem so easy. How do I run a successful Facebook contest for my brand?

Easy as 1, 2, 3

The idea of running a successful Facebook contest or promotion should not be something that you fear! With some innovation, creativity and attention to detail, you too can increase your following and excite your fans, today!

First, think about the specific goal of your promotion. Do you want to generate more likes, or are you looking for increased engagement? There is a difference between the two, and you will want to determine this immediately. This will dictate the type of contest you run. Second, ask yourself what you are willing to spend for the contest. Obviously, everyone loves to win a prize. Will you be giving away gift cards? Will you spend additional budget money on promotion outside of Facebook, and of course, what outside app are you using to run the contest?

Ah of course, you might now be wondering about the outside app, right? Facebook has specific terms and conditions about running a contest. One of the most important rules is this: you must use a third-party app to comply with any contest and promotional guidelines.

Here are some third-party apps I have seen clients use successfully and with ease:

1. Fanappz
2. Virtue
3. Offerpop
4. Wildfire

Keep in mind that although some of these apps require a fee, they make it virtually effortless to comply with the rules and guidelines and also to run a successful contest.

Finally, the third and final part of the contest: what will make it successful?

Don’t Go At It Alone

Use your leverage. The most successful campaigns are that way because they understand the value of partnering up. There are plenty of businesses out there in your target audience that have been successful. Use them to your advantage.

Consider partnering with a company or local charity for your contest. Often, other companies are willing to join in on your efforts and provide an incentive — they get free publicity and you get an awesome prize and the buzz of their followers.

Intrigue Your Audience

In order to generate a buzz, create engagement and get people excited about your contest you want to have a strategy.

• Make sure your prize is enticing
• Create a contest idea that is engaging ñ social media is about interaction, fun and entertainment. Photo contests are great. Who doesn’t love a cute baby or pet?
• Keep the rules simple
• Always have a plan
• Promote the contest extensively – you will want to do this before, during and even after! Utilize your resources. Have your employees promote the contest, use your other social networks, and, most importantly, let your customers know by word of mouth, too! This is really the most important piece of the puzzle in my opinion. It is just as important to promote the contest as it is to run it. It really won’t do you much good to give something away if no one is around to get excited about it!

Success Stories

Don’t believe it can be done? Creating a contest that has gained traction on social media and generated results is something I have seen in many brands.

• Partee Insurance: Every Wednesday, this California insurance agency runs a game of Hangman from their agency Facebook page. The staff promotes and shares the contest throughout the day and the best part? The winner gets a stuffed cow! Why a stuffed cow you ask? Cee Cee the Cow is the mascot of Partee Insurance. Not only has this business increased their following to well over 800 likes, but they engage their customers on a weekly basis! The consistency of the contest is imperative to its success, and with the prize being a brand related item, it only furthers the awareness they are generating!

• The Weimer Group: This Pennsylvania insurance agency takes the local partnership recommendation for success and runs with it! What are the rules? Like and share their business page to enter. Simple, isn’t it? Together with local businesses, the agency gives away prizes, weekly. By encouraging individuals to share the rules, images and contest promotion as an entry, they are creating a viral buzz- increasing their following, promoting to new individuals, and raising their brand awareness. With over 600 likes on their business page, it’s clear they are doing something right!

Looking for something a bit more global? Check out Dunkin Donuts.

This is a brand that has taken to social media contests and made them incredibly successful. Whether on their regional, local or national level, Dunkin Donuts uses images, hashtags and shares to generate a buzz. In their most recent campaign, the company is encouraging coffee lovers everywhere to post the ways their iced coffees put a spring in their step on Vine and tag the post with the hashtag #IceDD. Winners earn cash or free coffee.

Take a look at what they’re doing:

• Cross-promotion across multiple social networking platforms
• Offering a cash prize
• Offering a brand related prize
• Utilizing hashtags to promote brand recognition
• Encouraging users to create unique content that is shared all over the web — “free” brand promotion.

Get Started Today

So tell me, what are you waiting for? Get together with your team and think of a creative idea and run with it! What’s the worst that can happen? You’ll gain some followers, perhaps a few new local business partners and friends, and hey… perhaps some new customers, too!

John Boudreau, COO and Co-Founder of Astonish, has been in the insurance marketing and technology business for nearly 10 years. Clients of the Astonish digital marketing system often have outstanding results as described in this Astonish results review. 

Did you know that there are more than 100 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices? Or that people who use Facebook on their mobile devices are more than twice as active on Facebook than non-mobile users? How about this — there are more than 200 mobile operators in 60 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products.

Those are just some of the facts I learned from an infographic published by Flowtown. We’ve included the infographic below so that you can read and digest all the fascinating data. Enjoy!

Flowtown – Social Media Marketing Application

Are you interested in learning how to run Facebook mobile ads? If so, you’ve come to the right place. But before we get started, let’s kick things off with some facts and figures.

According to Forbes, Facebook mobile ad revenues skyrocketed to $305 million in the fourth quarter of last year. That accounted for 23% of all Facebook ad sales. And, as proof that the big boys see mobile as the future of marketing, Walmart bought 50 million mobile ads from Facebook last Thanksgiving, rivaling the reach of TV campaigns.

That data alone should be enough to convince you that you should give Facebook mobile ads a try. But if it’s not, here are some additional facts that should get you going:

• Data from SocialCode shows that ads that appear in Facebook’s mobile News Feed get more clicks (0.79%) than ads that appear in desktop News Feeds (0.327%).
• A separate study by TBG Digital recorded an even higher click-through rate for mobile than the study from SocialCode showed — 1.14% vs. 0.79%.
• The number of Likes each 1,000 mobile impressions generated was also higher on mobile, averaging 0.62% compared to 0.219% on desktop feed.
• And, according to Mashable, Facebook was able to generate 2.5 times as much revenue from mobile ads than desktop feed ads for the same number of impressions.

How to Run a Mobile Ad Campaign on Facebook. After stumbling around with a variety of different mobile ad formats, Facebook learned that integrating ads directly into a user’s flow of activities works better than banners and pop-up ads.

Even though these native ads may be somewhat controversial, most users don’t object to the system. Below is an example of what I’m talking about. On the left is the native ad for a mobile app and on the right is the landing page encouraging the person who clicked on the Facebook ad to download the mobile app:

According to an article on MIT Technology Review, executives at Facebook knew that the native ad format was a risky venture. But, as you can see from the fact and figures mentioned above, the ads really work.

What’s more, the ads have exploded the myth that mobile ads are too small to make an impact. Facebook’s mobile ads take up a larger part of the screen than ads aimed at desktop users, which is one reason they get so many clicks.

What’s more, tests by Facebook found that the insertion of ads reduced comments, likes and other interaction with newsfeed updates by only 2%, which was considered a small decline considering the revenue possibilities.

How to Get Your Ads into Mobile News Feeds. My good acquaintance Amy Porterfield has written a terrific post on Entrepreneur outlining the steps involved in running a Facebook mobile ad. It’s worth taking a look at her article.

In a nutshell, here are the steps she outlined in the post:

• Everything Starts with Power Editor: As of this writing, in order to run Facebook mobile ads, you’ll have to use Power Editor, which is a Chrome only plugin designed to help people with the more advanced aspects of Facebook
• Page Post Ads: When set-up with Power Editor, these ads appear directly in the news feed and can include photos, offers and more. Using this system, you can reach users via mobile, desktop or both.
• Promoted Posts: These look like the page post ads in the newsfeed, and you can buy them through the promote button in the status update box on your page or use the Power Editor.
• Sponsored Stories: These ads show up in the news feed under the heading “Pages You May Like.” They’re used to promote activity to your fans’ friends with the intention of attracting like-minded people.
• Mobile App Install Ads: These ads display in the mobile news feed. Use Mobile App Install Ads if your objective is to drive installs of your company’s mobile app. They click directly to your app download page in the iOS iTunes app store or Google Play store.

Action Steps for You. If you’re interested in running a mobile ad campaign on Facebook, here’s what you should do.

1. Develop a promotion. Country Outfitter developed a promotion encouraging people to Like and share information about five pairs of boots. Once users Liked their favorite pair, they could register to win them.
2. Create a mobile landing page. There’s no point in creating a mobile ad unless you have a mobile landing page to greet people. Don’t send people to a regular landing page. Instead, think mobile first and direct them to a mobile optimized page.
3. Run a Page Post, a Promoted Post or a Sponsored Story. Once you’ve done steps 1 and 2, it’s time to choose which kind of ad you’d like to run. There’s no such thing as one-size-fits-all, so pick which kind of ad best suits your needs.
4. Test Your Way to Success. Once you’ve run one campaign, keep that campaign as your “control.” From there, you can A/B split test a second campaign. If the second campaign gets better results than the first campaign, then the second campaign becomes your control. Your goal is to always try to top the results of your control. By doing so, you’ll be in a constant state of optimization, which leads to better and better results.

The Bottom Line on Facebook Mobile Ads. The truth is that most businesses are still a little intimidated by mobile. But you can use that to your advantage — if your competitor is still sitting on the sidelines, then that’s an opportunity to jump in and get a head start. By the time they’ve figured out how to get started, you’ll have already acquired some of their best customers. And isn’t that the idea?

Jamie Turner is the CEO of social media and mobile marketing firm 60 Second Communications and is the Founder of the 60 Second Marketer.  He is the co-author of “How to Make Money with Social Media” and “Go Mobile” and is a popular marketing speaker at events, trade shows and corporations around the globe.

Custom Facebook tabs can help you deliver a better social media experience to your fans. Basically, these tabs are nothing but your regular Facebook apps, which over time, have evolved.

You don’t have to be intimidated by the new changes in FB’s layout either; for most part, they do not make the task of creating custom tabs challenging. We’ll show you how to go about it, in step-by-step format, so you can try it as you read on, or bookmark this page to try out tab creation at a later time.

#1: Log in and authorize. Go to https://developers.facebook.com/apps and log in with your current Facebook details. As a first-timer, you will be asked to authorize the developer tools, something you can do in a matter of few seconds. To do this, you will need to type your mobile phone number, upon which you will receive a code. Use this code for authorization, and you’re all set to move on!

#2: Start creating your app. Once you’re done with #1 above, you will be able to see a ‘Create New App’ button on the right hand side of the page. Click on this – a dialog box asking for ‘App Name’ and ‘App Namespace’ will appear on screen.

The App Name is just a readable name while the App Namespace is like a unique identity for your app. In the screen shot below, you can see that we have named the app as ‘New Tab’ and added ‘newwtab’ as the app namespace.

#3: App information and image. The next step is to fill in the basic information, such as contact email, your website’s URL, the tab name you prefer (‘Godot’ or ‘New Tab’). Keep the Sandbox Mode disabled.

You will also be adding the URL of the web page that will be pulled into the tab page in the Inline frame/iframe, as well as its secure page tab location (without this, your page content won’t be visible to users opting for secure browsing).

Upload a suitable graphic in the ‘Page Tab Image’ box. Make sure it is 111×74 pixels in size.

#4 Upload to your Facebook page

To upload your custom app to your Facebook page, you have to paste a URL given below into your browser, in a modified form. That is, replace ‘APP’ with your app id and ‘URL’ with your site url. To get this information, you can look at the app’s summary tab.

Upon finishing this, a dialog box will pop up, asking you to choose the Facebook pages on which you want your newly-created custom tab to appear. You will then be able to see your new tab on the chosen FB page(s).

Are FB custom tabs a good change? With Timeline came custom page tabs, allowing you to add 111×74 pixel images for greater clarity as opposed to the previous single-line text and favicon. In fact, this is one of the benefits that Facebook’s Timeline has brought with it – the extra space to work with your custom tabs.

The greater width means that you can now explore more design options. This in turn can help you identify a design that complements your custom tab. Under the cover image of your FB Timeline, you can feature three tabs with names and images. This gives you an opportunity to focus on anything you are trying to sell/promote, such as events, specials, new product, contests, etc.

Using Facebook tabs to market your brand. Now that you’ve understood how to go about creating custom tabs on Facebook, here’s a look at how you can use them to market your brand effectively.

One idea you can explore is accommodating all your Facebook contests under your newly created custom tabs on top of the timeline.

Bring out announcements prominently by using a striking image and putting the spotlight on your contests. You can just swap out the tab images with each passing contest. This apart, you can use the custom apps for different calls to action such as (a) liking your Facebook page (do this without going against FB’s policies) (b) participating in a promotion or making a purchase (c) visiting your website and (d) experiencing your brand.

To get results from your custom tabs, you can try a few tactics. First, decide which tab you want to drive most traffic to – this will be your most important tab, one that has the potential to deliver the best results.

Once you have zeroed in on this, link directly to the app as much as you can.

This means linking to it from your website, blog and other social media networks on which you have a presence. A good option is to shorten the url using Bit.ly instead of using the full, lengthy one. Bit.ly will also give you the click statistics, telling you where fans are trickling in from.

Add an attractive call to action, but with care! Even as you link directly to your custom app, many people will land on your Facebook page. Display your custom app on top of your FB page. Make sure that the thumbnail you use for it is eye-catching and click-worthy.

It is also important that you name the thumbnail appropriately; for instance, if you’re giving away a discount or a free gift, add a catchy call-to-action like ‘grab your free gift now’ or ‘huge discount for limited time.’ However, keep in mind Facebook’s rules when adding a call-to-action for your Timeline cover. For instance, you cannot invite people to ‘like’ your page in exchange for a free gift.

You can also consider creating posts that link to your custom tab, every few weeks. This will encourage new users to see what your offer is all about and prompt your present fans to act on it. Solicit your fan’s opinions on your offers and keep the conversation going with questions, feedback and other requests. If you do not have the in-house resource for creating blog and social media posts, you can hire a writer for a top-notch output.

There are many Facebook custom app creation tutorials online. If you want, you can also look for an app that helps you simplify the process of creating custom Facebook tabs. It also helps to look at a few custom tabs from leading brands, for inspiration and ideas!

About the author. Jessica Davis is a Content Strategy Specialist with Godot Media. She has years of experience in working closely with online businesses, helping them refine their marketing strategy through optimum use of content. She works closely with other blog writers at Godot Media. 

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