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I felt compelled to provide some clean marketing strategies that all creators can adopt to increase traffic through facebook. Though the same can be adopted to all social platforms, facebook is my primary of choice for most of my Neat Tricks 101.

 

I will be posting 10 methods on how this can be achieved in detail, then hopefully that will give you a head start to gaining traffic. Why ten when it's called Neat Tricks 101?

 

For the remainder 91 free tricks, you will have to join my social network to obtain them. However, the ten basic ones will be good enough to generate traffic for you, should you decide to opt-out of the sign-up option. 

 

I call Trick1 - Raising Awareness.

1. Before you consider having people sign-up to your sight, you want to develop a culture where people see a need for your content.

2. Sending invites to your friends and contacts is not a guarantee that your social network is going to be popular neither is the idea of having thousands of people signing up to your site.

3. The ultimate target for all creators is to increase traffic but most importantly, having member engagement.

4. The Raising Awareness Trick will guarantee that any members who sign-up from third party sites won't return to enjoy their already formalised social experience, but get attracted and stimulated to your arisen social experience.

 

How Then Do you acheive This?

1. The first thing you want to do is ask yourself what your site is all about.

2. If you have identified the answer to this question here comes the trick part, you need to know: So what?; How is that relevant to your target audience?

3. The solution to point two would mean you have identified what makes your social network tick. At this stage, you probably would have identified Buzz words for your site.

 

Hypothetical Construct:

1. I am going to carry out the former advise and execute as my marketing strategy for illustration purposes.

2. What makes my site tick is that The Advent Reformation is all about the second coming of Christ. The aim and objective behind the social experience is to increase the social awareness of the end time message.

3. Secular opinion contrary to my Christian views has a fixation on a looming gloom and a conceptualised perception of 2012.

4. Most Christians, already, feel it's becoming increasingly impossible to share the good news of christ openly without being scorened or being considered backwards. 

5. My Buzz words become: "Beyond Impossible", "AdventSocial", and my network name "The Advent Reformation". You can also associate your company name if it is different from your network name - for your Buzz words.

 

Marketing Strategy In Action:

1. Create an "event" on FB.

2. In this instance the  Event I have created I called it "End of the World Party - 21/12/2012" - Here is a screen shot:

3. Make the words amateurish and avoid looking too professional - I chose to create Buzz words connected to the end of the world, based on what is already commonly known to all users - whether religious or nonreligious.

4. The next step was to create small video snippets that would advertise my url. Here are the examples:

 

 

5. All snippets are posted in stages and on different dates/intervals/times as you deem fit.

6. Send a link of each video, as and when you post it via The Event Broadcast option. You will notice that people who are attending, people who might attend and people who have not yet replied, are automatically placed into your generic mailing list.

7. When you send out generic messages, besides the subject, don't assign anything to the body of the message other than the one link to a video you would have just posted to the facebook event. Avoid youtube videos as they will send traffic to youtube instead of facebook. You want to ensure that people join the event.

8. You have created an awareness of your url to your Ning Network. People might not comment on your videos, but if they are interesting (the videos) they will get passed around and that's what you really want. 

9. One point I overlooked, you will notice that the end date of this particular event is in two years. This gives me well enough time to pick the steam, as I spread the word on a likely party (The world is not going to end). People love the social outgoing. So "party" was definitely a Buzz word for my marketing strategy.

 

And there we have it, you have raised awareness of your social network. If your videos are really good, you might get people signing up to your site. The price? Time and effort.

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  • I am glad you found the article useful. 

     

    Creating a facebook group/page/profile takes more effort and is cumbersome to attract people to sign-up to. The Event feature is simple, straight to the point, and based on one page. The whole idea is that of making the most of every facebook feature to your advantage.

  • On the contrary.

     

    The first thing you need to remember is that the Event feature has 4 main options. These are:

    1. People attending

    2. People who may attend

    3. People who have not respondend

    4. People who are not interested.

     

    What you are doing with the event is identify your target audience. That's part of Marketing. Let me explain it this way:

    1. People attending - These are the people who are interested in your concept and are probably sharing the videos you post to the event feature to their friends. These people will actually help you with your promotion, and on spreading the word about your product.

     2. People who may attend - These are undecided potential sign-ups, who are looking/waiting to see what you come up with as a convincer. What you need to do is keep sending the videos that sell your concept, and see if the number is increasing or decreasing, for people who may attend.

    3. People who have not responded - These people you may say are a victim of spam, but if you really look at how the event feature is designed and how it is supposed to be used, you are exactly maximising it's potential. As far as facebook is concerned, it is not spamming. The invited guests have the option to chose not to attend if the event is not their cup of tea.

    4. People who are not interested. - Now this is the only group you need to be very careful with. If someone chooses not to attend, the only thing you need to be doing is deleting them and blocking them as and when they choose to opt out.

     

    In conclusion, any form of marketing can be viewed as spamming. What makes it quality, is when it's not considered annoying. The event feature enables you to do this with little or no experience of marketing. And lastly, it's an option - you don't have to adopt this suggestion for your network.

     

    NB: I am not sure you will find anyone who will give you such advise freely. I am just trying to help NCs create something for themselves.

     

    • NING has some excellent videos on how to promote your site...without underhanded spamming.

       

       

      • @Afterhours

         

        Thanx for the feedback. It's very useful.

  • thanks for sharing. whatever works for you. i personally don't choose to send people the annoying numerous events & videos that they send me on facebook. usually if people send me to many, then i remove them from my friends' list. if groups send me too many promotion messages, then i leave the group. if receiving pushy, imposing, aggressive messages annoy me, then i wouldn't want to do that to potential members of my social networks. but if that is working for you, then that's great. i choose to build a rapport with my facebook connections, then the members come from that. class & finesse is definitely the route for me. overwhelming your facebook friends with numerous videos & event messages may or may not put a bad taste in their mouths. i can only speak for myself from my point of view. also, if you send out event invitations all the time, then when you actually have a big event that you would like people to support, they may not even read it, because they have become so immune to receiving 50 million messages from you. that's why they have the groups & pages to attract people with similar interests. but just to send everybody invitations all the time & repeat messages & videos is kind of manipulative. you're right; this is a trick. do you think that people really wanna be tricked into joining your network?  it seems like you're using the people on your list to market to them for them to join your network.  i think that people will want to feel that they can trust you as opposed to being tricked by you. i just my 2 cents, since ning suggested that we check out your article that was added to the creators digest.

    i hope that you get whatever it is that you're looking for.

    peace, love, & light

  • Interesting tips, but none of your picture representing end of the world, the'r just naturally beautiful picture of magnetar and other solar system.

     

    You provide link to your site but I dont think any normal person will signup to a site and dont know whats its about..

  • Mark Oakes, I have to agree with you...it do seems spammy. The best way to market your network is to find a way for your potenial members to find you easily.

    Collins network seems to be Armageddon cult, why do anyone need to sign up before they even read your about us page.

     

    How it should work is that they look around, maybe visit your site a few times and then the person become a member if they wish.

     

    Some people will visit your site more often than most of your member, they will even share your site more than most of your member. Not everyone interested in putting their info on the internet, they just want to read, hang around them go away. Which is fine with me.

  • This trick is entitled raising awareness. And all the videos have forum engagements. I am not sure if the tip has been understood from the comments at all. All the same, thank you for the feedback.

     

    Good luck.

  • Total spam - get real!

  • @All against

     

    One man's spam is another's vantage. Again, thanks for the feedback.

     

    What you call spamming has proved positive for my target audience. The strategy is moving swiftly to step two. Of which I will no longer post the consequential steps where there is no need for them, from the comments.

     

    Just as a point of clarity - There is a fine line between perceptual conjecture and a substantiated argument. What you presented is perceptual conjecture, which is coming across as the consensus populous. Nevertheless, fact will prove otherwise. Fact takes no regard of opinion, and is the substantiated argument I presented.

     

    Lets end by agreeing to disagree. I stand by my strategy.

     

    Faithfully and Respectfully

     

    Collins.

This reply was deleted.
 

Some interesting articles related to community management, digital marketing etc. could be found in our digest. Don't hesitate to leave a feedback so we would know that we should continue :-)

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