How Cruise Compare got 50000 Facebook fans in 50 days

July 29, 2011 by admin
Filed under Latest Lingerie News

How Cruise Compare website to get 50,000 fans in 50 days

Social media is quite possibly the best marketing tool on earth. Setting up your account is not only easy but it is also cost free, this is perfect if your business is in the start-up stages.

Utilise every opportunity that comes your way and remember word of mouth is the key to getting your brand out there. Social outlets like Facebook and Twitter have proved themselves as invaluable tools in recent years, the options available increase constantly along with added app features that can also allow you to engage in many different areas from one easy to manage page.
Here we have compiled an easy to follow yet detailed guide on how to use these features in a professional setting whilst still engaging with your public and customers on a more intimate level.

Step 1 – Tools

Facebook

Wikipedia: Facebook is a social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves.

Facts:

• More than 250 million active users

• More than 120 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day

• More than two-thirds of Facebook users are outside of college

• The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older

• About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States

CruiseCompare.co.uk uses Facebook to connect fans to our products and brand. When we do a media campaign we use our main Facebook presence to increase its audience base.

Twitter

Wikipedia: Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications.

Facts:

• 72.5% of the 44 million Twitter users joined during the first five months of 2009

• 93.6% of users have less than 100 followers, while 92.4% follow less than 100 people

• More than 50% of all updates are published using tools, mobile and Web-based, other than Twitter.com. TweetDeck is the most popular non-Twitter.com tool with 19.7% market share.

• There are more women on Twitter (53%) than men (47%)

• Twitter age demographic (% of total) Ages: 25-34 – 20%, 35-49 – 42%, 55+ – 17%

For your business, you can use it to quickly share information with people interested in your company, gather real-time market intelligence and feedback, and build relationships with customers, partners and other people who care about your company. As an individual user, you can use Twitter to tell a company, or anyone else, that you’ve had a great, or disappointing, experience with their business, offer product ideas, and learn about great offers.

YouTube

Wikipedia: YouTube is a video sharing website on which users can upload and share videos.
Facts:

• YouTube will serve 75 billion video streams to 375 million unique visitors

• Every minute, ten hours of video is uploaded to YouTube.

• User base is broad in age range, 18-55, evenly divided between males and females spanning all geographies.

• Fifty-one percent of users go to YouTube weekly or more often

We created a CruiseCompare.co.uk account to host videos we were making for many purposes such as a how to guide on how to navigate and use the CruiseCompare.co.uk website. This provides greater visibility to assets we were already creating.

Step 2 – Engagement

When using the social hubs it is imperative that you engage with your follows or “fans”. Remember they are your target audience and anything you are trying to push to them is what will ultimately increase your brand and product awareness. Make sure you know what you are talking about, there is nothing more frustrating than someone who is trying to engage people yet they in turn have no knowledge of what it is they are trying to say or in fact do.

Don’t be afraid of getting your point across but on a level where you’re followers can get involved. The general public thrive on having the option to comment on something that they feel passionately about or have a genuine keen interest in. Opening up your social outlets to allow users to interact is like stumbling upon a gold mine. Outlets like Twitter where your comments can be re-tweeted by your followers are priceless, they allow word of mouth to firmly take over and essentially market your brand for you.

One area where many companies have failed by experiencing what I politely refer to as “social media suicide” is through disabling the option to allow their users to post their own individual comments or concerns. Be sure to make your page open and honest. People want to engage in topics you supply them with but they also like to have their own say and post their own comments on which their fellow users can interact with them. This essentially creates friendships amongst your users and trust in your brand making them more inclined to support your business.

There are also quirky features you can add to news pieces and other sections on your website, the most common of these is a “like” button. This is an incredibly easy to use feature and is just as easy to add to the admin section of particular pieces on your site. You can find more information on this by viewing http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like/

Once created and added to your admin section it will resemble the below image and allow viewers to “like” the particular piece. It also recognises each user’s personal friends and will show them their own friends who in turn have also “liked” the piece.

You can also use tools like www.sproutsocial.com to monitor activity on your page, organise your social network pages into one area and discover new customers who you can target in order to make them aware of what it is you do. Below is an example of how it works

Step 3 – Advertise

Although your social media pages are great for the basics and can allow many functions to operate cost free it is certainly worth investing in advertising options.
Facebook advertising is one of the best forms of marketing on a social media platform. The costs are generally on a per day basis and are incredibly easy to activate and deactivate as you wish. There are no set up charges, you pay a flat fee depending on the level of advertising you choose.
Taking hold of this could see your fan base grown considerably and quite literally overnight. Remember Facebook has more than 250 million active users worldwide and advertising will open your business door to every one of them.

CruiseCompare.co.uk set up an advertising account for its own Facebook business page Cruise Compare FaceBook Page and within 12 hours of active advertising the base had grown by a further 3,000 people.

With the right pitch and top notch content it is incredibly easy to navigate your way to social networking royalty.

You can also use “social media plugins” on your own website to advertise your Facebook page and again this is a completely free tool. Generating a code that is compatible with your site is easy and there is a step by step instruction guide within your Facebook page. Once generated and added into admin it will appear on your site like the image below. To view an already placed plug in visit our own site www.cruisecompare.co.uk where you will see it’s placement on the home page

Using this function is a great way to make visitors to your website aware of your social media page in the same way your Facebook page makes user’s aware of your site and business. The perfect cross marketing tool and once added it updates the number of “fans” automatically. You can also incorporate this so it appears throughout high traffic pages on your website.

Step 4 – Ask for feedback

When operating a social media page people get involved regularly and are always happy and eager in most cases to share their opinions. Be sure to not only advertise your brand but to also engage your online community and ask them what they think, if they feel there are changes you could make to your business or product that would make it more appealing or user friendly.
Maybe they would like to see additional features or different and more varied content.

They may even have smaller comments to make along the lines of “we would like to see a better profile image”. This may sound like an incredibly small and non-important comment but for people who have yet to engage with your network this is the first thing they will see regarding your business and what it is you do so who better to advise you than your general and loyal public.

Your fan base is your outlet, the people within it are there because they are interested in your brand, don’t shun your community as you may well find it is that community alone who via word of mouth and suggestion are increasing your company profile.

Step 5 – Promotions/Competitions

Everyone loves a competition or prize giveaway so incorporate that into your community page and watch your network blossom.
A well planned and executed promotion will create a huge talking point amongst your users. You will also in most cases find that they are so drawn in by this they will make sure everyone they know also knows about you.

Soon your promotion will appear on blogs, forums, other associated sites and more. This is marketing at its very best and again where you see just how powerful your social networking site can be. If previously you did not embrace the worth of this tool you now will be in awe of its power.
Try to offer regular small prize give competitions, these can take many forms including image contests, best quotes, simple quizzes and more. Once running successful mini rounds then progress to the next level where you can offer something that more or less everyone would love to win. By doing this you engage your current loyal fans but you also begin to appeal to those who have previously not engaged with your business.

People will flock to you, they will research your company and what it is you do, spend time getting familiar with your brand and ultimately using the services or product you offer to them.
There are also options to add video competitions and you can do this very easily. Maybe you would create instructions via your own small video of which you can upload to your YouTube account on what the specific competition entails. Here at CruiseCompare.co.uk we done something similar but as a “how to” video. Our video detailed what our site was about and how it worked. It was easy to follow and offered step by step instructions. Although not advertising a competition it certainly can give you an idea of how this could be incorporated for many different things and shows how something like this can be more beneficial than a bullet point text piece.

You can view the video here: Cruise Compare YouTube channel

You can also use the benefits of apps for competitions, one which we find perfect is www.wildfireapp.com this feature allows you to make designing your competition as easy or as advanced as you wish. It is easy to use and offers various options like photo contests, quiz, sweepstakes and more. This is great for drawing people in and allows you to control your competition with ease.

Step 6 – Blogs

Blogging and social media more or less go hand in hand. If you have a company blog be sure to update it regularly with fresh and interesting content. There are an estimated 112 million blog sites with as many as 120,000 new ones appearing daily. If you do not yet have this then adding it to your website or even creating a personal one is definitely something worth investing time in.
You can push your separate blog site via your social networking sites and maybe even create a name for yourself as a creative writer. Having a separate blog allows you to not be held down by a maximum number of words or any other restrictions that can sometimes come with social media tools. Use your blog to write interesting stories, product reviews and more.

By creating a base away from your fan page you are essentially driving business towards your brand website. Many people will go to your site in order to read the blog but if you have a well presented website you may also find people will stay around longer and investigate further any other options or products your business offers.

Blogging is a personal dictation; try not to have numerous people within your business adding to it. Regular readers will form a bond with the writer and in time when commenting or mentioning the blog will refer to your “blogger” as an individual. This creates a level of trust and again this is vital when pushing a new business.

The CruiseCompare.co.uk blog is a prime example of how people like to read and interact via comments and the “like” button tool. View the blog here: Cruise Compare Blog

Step 7 – Updating and diversifying content

The sheer ease with which you can use social media tools makes them perfect for adding quick and sometimes on the go updates.

Users crave fresh content, breaking news stories and quirky status updates they can dive into and fully get involved with. Connect your social hubs with your smart phone so even if out of the office for the day you can still interact and post fresh information. Maybe even add a quirky out and about photograph or two, people love this sort of communication as it creates a more human feel for your brand.

Try to update your pages daily, don’t leave too long in between updates or people will get bored and you run the risk of them clicking the dreaded “unlike” button. If you know how easy the social media site is to use then so do they and the public will be unforgiving if you fail to keep their interest.
Updates as mentioned can take many forms and that is another quality of tools like Facebook. You can add status updates, photo albums, notes, links to your own website or even add a video from YouTube you feel your community would like to see. Always add fresh posts with the background thought “what would our community like to see”, remove some of your own personal judgements.
For e.g. You may not be fond of a particular cruise ship but may well find two thirds of your community are, try not to make your information and interactive posts too personally individual and avoid leaving certain things out because they don’t necessarily appeal to yourself. Remember you are trying to engage thousands of people, not just one.

Step 8 – Create a voice

Social media is just that, social. People want to engage with your services and product via sites like Facebook in a more relaxed manner. This ultimately means they want to access your page and content without its operating team sounding like a truck load of corporate robots. You need to give you page a voice, a voice that is trusted and can be listened too but that is embraced by your users on a more friendly level.

Engage with users and enjoy the topics, respond to questions or comments as if you were already friends. Yes you are pushing a business and business requires a certain level of formality but, try and avoid the formal routes if you can and leave that for the content on your website and other outlets.

Your social media community has gathered to explore your brand on a less formal level, they have joined your page to interact and experience the fun side of what you do. Creating a space where users feel intimidated by the formal jargon will effectively push traffic away from your business.

Step 9 – Add Value

Your engaged community wants to feel like they are getting something in return for their loyalty and listening to what you have to say so make them want to come back for more.
This can be achieved on various different levels from simple things like sharing tips and hints to offering them individual chances to experience some of the things you cover on your page.
For e.g. here at CruiseCompare.co.uk we often share information with our community on when is best to book a cruise holiday or what particular cruise lines are offering discounts or incentives. With this you are giving them what they see as invaluable information that could make their cruise holiday more enjoyable, simply because of the offer they could potentially receive or added extras they can get that previously they were not aware of.

To go a step further we can sometimes offer one of our members the chance to embark on a ship visit on our behalf. This is something that very few get to do outside of the cruise travel trade simply because it is reserved for agents etc. Allowing a user to become part of your team in this way shows others the possibilities that can be available in return for their continued input. It creates a lasting connection with selected individuals that you can call upon knowing they would thrive on the opportunity offered.

Step 10 – Making Mistakes

It is inevitable that somewhere along the line you are bound to make a small mistake, maybe you have posted information that you miss-judged or have added a function to the page that doesn’t work too well. Whatever your mistake is your loyal fans will be much more forgiving of your small slip up if you acknowledge it rather than try and avoid it.

Although this is a subject that is usually avoided or over stepped mistakes do happen and we feel it is important to add this as a topic matter so you can avoid losing the trust from your online community.

If a mistake is made apologise and rectify it quickly. If handled correctly it will be forgotten about within minutes however, if ignored or hidden it will ultimately last a life time and be something that always comes up in conversation when your business is mentioned.

Quick Check guide

Now we have covered how to get 50,000 fans in 50 days you should be firmly on your way to social media heaven.
If ever in doubt ask yourself the following questions to make sure you have covered everything and change anything you are not.

1: Am I offering something for everybody?

2: Does my page thoroughly express what my business is all about?

3: Is our page operating to its best potential?

4: Would I be happy with the content if I was an outside viewer?

5: What can I do to potentially make it better?

6: Would I come back for more?

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