A social media presence is a must. But simply creating accounts for your store on these sites doesn’t cut it anymore. Each week, we’ll explore a new way your store can enhance their online presence in our Social Media Series to make sure you’re taking full advantage of these interactive outlets.
Earlier in our series, we showed you how to create a custom Welcome Tab to make a favorable first impression on your social media visitors. But, in order to benefit from a Welcome Tab, you have to find and direct potential fans to your page. So, how do you continually drive traffic and increase your fan count in the first place?
One simple, yet effective, strategy is to integrate a contest to your Facebook Page, encouraging current fans to help you recruit new social media members. University of Maryland – Baltimore County (UMBC) Bookstore successfully accomplished this task with their most recent online promotion.
“Students are so connected to social media that it’s becoming the only way to reach them,” said Bob Somers, Director of UMBC Bookstore. “They skim through their emails, and some don’t even respond to texts, so we wanted to find a way to communicate with all of them in the environment they're using most.”
Offering a 5lb. Hershey’s bar as a reward, the store asked their current fans to form teams, using status updates and instructions on their Welcome Tab to spread the word. Conducted similar to a referral program, the store directed each group to sign up by starting a new topic within the Discussion Tab and listing their unique team name.
Then, teams promoted the page to their friends, directing them to “Like” it on Facebook, as well as write their team name within the corresponding discussion post. Whichever group generated the most new fans for the page within the designated time period was rewarded with the chocolatey treat.
This approach allowed the UMBC Bookstore to successfully track how many new “Likes” each team brought to their page, increasing their fan count as well as user engagement. UMBC Bookstore announced the winner and posted their picture with the hefty chunk of chocolate on their Facebook page.
Throughout the promotion, students were excited about the opportunity to win such a unique prize, and eager to participate. However, the store doesn’t limit themselves to just one type of contest, often providing unique sales, discounts, and events to keep students interested in their page's content.
“Social media has had a huge impact on our store, and we’re still just in the infancy of it,” Somers explained. “Students are surprised to see that the bookstore even has these accounts, so it’s been very well received. This strategy is by far the most effective way we’ve found to reach students, so we plan to keep expanding our efforts.”
Austin Kidwell, store employee, agrees that the store’s participation in social media has successfully enhanced customer perception. “There’s a lot of positive interaction between the store and students now. We’re no longer just a place they go once or twice a year to buy books; students are now able to see the store’s involvement on campus and interact with us on a more personal level."
