Have you thought about running promotions to increase your fanbase on Facebook. Facebook promotions are hugely popular right now and they are a great way to acquire new fans. We outline some of the most popular techniques below.

1. Pull a name out of the hat. (Sweepstakes)

Sweepstakes is a random draw in which anybody can easily sign up and have an equal chance of winning. Typically, a user can enter the contest by providing basic information - often just an email address. The winner will then be chosen at a nearby date.

Many promotional apps are available (the most popular being Wildfire) that require a visitor to Like your Page in order to enter the contest.

To increase familiarity with your Page you can allow for people to re-enter the contest on a daily basis. For the visitor, this would increase their chances. But for your Page, it drives potential interaction because they are regularly coming back to you. 

Pros

• Requires very little from the visitor 
• Successful across many industries
• People have offline familiarity
• Can obtain useful information for marketing purposes

Cons

• Unreliable targeting - anybody can enter the contest to win 
• People can often enter multiple times using different email addresses
• Incentivised Likes are often of low value

2. Cutest baby contest. (Contests)

A contest whereby a winner is chosen through a public or private vote. The audience must provide the best content whether that be the funniest caption to an image, a great drawing or the cutest baby. This type of content presents a challenge to your audience and if they believe they can win, they will enter it. 

There does not always have to be a prize at the end as often personal gratification and public recognition is a reasonable reward. However, a reward model does encourage people to enter.

To get people to return to your Page you should regularly post entertaining entries and encourage commentary. Ask for people’s opinions and thoughts - this will create conversation and sharing.

Pros

• Creates conversation
• Very entertaining
• Makes your audience feel part of something 
• Gives personality to your brand

Cons

• Requires a minimum number of fans to spark participation
• A risk if there is no conversations or interest 

3. 50% off when you Like our Page! (Coupons)

Often, commercial companies will give fans exclusive offers on social media channels. 36.9% of Facebook users and 43.5% of Twitter users said they connect with brands using social media to stay in the loop on special offers.

This giveaway approach gives a monetary reason for a person to Like your brand and they will usually continue to watch your feed in order to discover new deals.

However, paying for a potential customer’s attention is not nearly as valuable as obtaining it organically. This is because people just want the deal and have no emotional attachment to your brand. 

Pros

• Often creates conversation with close friends as they want to share the deal
• Can work in virtually any industry

Cons

• Low barrier to entry - anybody can enter just for the deal so may not be your target audience
• Can enter multiple email addresses
• Usually very little engagement once the deal is redeemed

General Tips 

Grab attention, quickly

Make sure people can understand exactly what the promotion is and how they can participate almost instantly. People are busy and you usually only have a few seconds to grab attention. Facebook is designed to give people content immediately and in an easy to digest way. This inherently makes Facebook users less attentive to posts.

Ensure that the return is worth the entry

 You will inevitably want to gain something more than just a Like out of the promotion - an email address, survey completion, higher engagement. If the return doesn’t reward the effort in participating then people will be less likely to take part. Also, make sure that the return is relevant - if its a giveaway then make sure the prize fits your audience.

At least get an email address

Although you want to gain more more fans, these promotional tactics are a great way to acquire contact information. Of course, you have the ability to market via a persons Facebook feed but an email address allows you market via another powerful medium. Attempt to get more information out of the person so that you can segment them - but ensure the return on promotion is worth the entry (see above). Remember, to comply with Facebook Promotion Guidelines, you cannot use Facebook to notify ‘winners’. This means you cannot announce winners via a message, chat or Timeline post - almost rendering an email address as vital. 

Optimise for mobile

Mobile traffic to Facebook is huge, like really huge. A whopping 195.2 million people access the Facebook on the native iOS app alone. 

Keep it simple

If you ask for too much then less people will enter. Try to obtain just simple bits of information - think “do we really need to know this?” Sometimes just an email address and Like is enough. 

Build it and they will come

You may have just created the world’s greatest ever promotion but don’t presume that people will just enter. If nobody knows about it then it will not be a success. Use your digital channels (Twitter, Facebook (of course), website, email etc.) to try and gather attention and stimulate sharing. If you can, try and get influential bloggers and tweeters in your sector to help in the promotion. This will require coordination pre-launch of the promotion. 

When developed and implemented correctly, promotions on Facebook can be an incredibly powerful tool to not only acquire new Fans but drive awareness and engagement. 

We would love to hear about any promotions you have created in that past or will do in the future. Share your experiences in the comments. 

Online sales up 44% at John Lewis

• John Lewis reported this week that its sales in the five weeks to the end of December rose by 13%, while online sales rose by a massive 44%.
• In fact online sales now account for a quarter of the retailer’s total sales and reached more than £800m for the year in December.

Boxing Day the busiest ever for ecommerce

• Stats from Experian Hitwise show that Christmas 2012 was the busiest ever for online retailers in the UK, with consumers making 84m visits to retail websites on Christmas Eve and 107m visits on Christmas Day.
• This is an increase of 86% and 71% respectively compared to 2011.
• However Boxing Day eclipsed the previous two days to become the busiest day ever for online retail. UK consumers spent 14m hours online and made 113m visits to online retail sites, an increase of 17% from 2011.
• Experian’s stats show that early discounting was one of the key reasons for the increase in visits online, with one in every 125 searches conducted in the UK including the word ‘sale’ or ‘sales’.

Mobile sales and conversions up at Affiliate Window

• Affiliate Window’s mobile and m-commerce figures from December show that 14.72% of all sales were through mobile devices (including tablets), up from 12.3% in November.
• Overall 19% of traffic came through mobile, up from 16.29% in November, with smartphones accounting for 11.11%.
• Mobile traffic converted at 4.37% - up from 3.89% in November.

Digital entertainment sales exceed £1bn in 2012

• Digital sales of music, video and games exceeded £1bn for the first time in 2012, according to theEntertainment Retailers Association (ERA). 
• With a final year-end tally of £1.033bn, digital sales of music, video and games grew by 11.4% over 2011 to account for a quarter of the combined entertainment market.

• Disc sales of CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray and videogames still account for just over three quarters of the entertainment market, despite falling by 17.6% compared with 2011.

75% of the world’s heads of state use Twitter

• In the old days the best way to get in contact with MPs was to write them a letter, but now it seems that Twitter might be the most effective communication tool.
• A new survey from the Digital Policy Council (DPC) shows that 75% of the world’s heads of state have a presence on Twitter.
• The study evaluated 164 countries and found that 123 of them have a head of state that is on Twitter, compared to just 69 countries in 2011.

Next also had a successful Christmas

• Next has announced that its sales from 1 November to 24 December increased by 3.9% year-on-year, largely driven by an 11.2% surge in online sales.
• The retailer expects profit before tax of at least £611m for the full year ending January 2013, a year-on-year increase of 7.1%.

Record week for app downloads

• New data from Flurry shows that smartphone owners downloaded a record 1.76bn apps between Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
• In comparison, the same week in 2011 saw 1.2bn apps downloaded, meaning the increase was around 65% year-on-year.
• Flurry also estimated that there were 50m iOS and Android devices activated over the last week of 2012.

Facebook is the most popular Wikipedia page

• Wikipedia has announced the most viewed pages of the year, with the most popular page proving to be Facebook (32.6m views).
• Wiki came second with 29.6m views, followed by Deaths in 2012 (25.4m), One Direction (22.3m) and The Avengers (22.2m).

China poised for ecommerce boom

• Ecommerce sales in China are due to more than triple during the coming three years, according to Analysys International. 
• It has predicted that B2C online transactions will be worth RMB785bn in 2013, compared to RMB470bn in 2012 and RMB240bn in 2011.
• The amount spent online is predicted to increase to RMB1.2tr in 2014 and RMB1.6tr in 2015. 

Amazon has record breaking holiday season

• Amazon has revealed that sales during the holiday period from third-party merchants in its marketplace were up by 40% year-on-year in 2012 compared to 2011.
• The ecommerce giant also reported that 2012 was its biggest holiday season ever with over 26.5m items ordered worldwide on its peak day, which is a record-breaking 306 items per second. 
• Also on its peak day, Amazon’s worldwide fulfilment network shipped over 15.6m items across all product categories.

Courtesy of http://econsultancy.com/

Keeping up-to-date with social media trends is difficult enough without worrying about future trends! Fortunately, the guys at TwinEngine have this covered for us all. Twitter is expected to position itself as the global newsroom and we are still waiting for Facebook to enter the world of search. 

This infographic explores different social media marketing trends and how they will take flight in 2013. 

Do you agree with these predictions? Do you have any of your own? Let us know in the comments below. 

Source: TwinEngine.

A goal for many marketers is to decrease the bounce rate on their website. Bounce rate is one the most important and popular web metrics but sometimes a high bounce rate does not always give an accurate representation of behaviour. 

Bounce rate is the percentage of people that enter your site and leave immediately, without viewing any other page. The reason it is so important is that it is one of the few simple metrics that measures behaviour. If a visitor leaves immediately it is likely that they didn’t like what they saw.

Blogs can really disrupt your analytics data. They are pretty unique when it comes to metrics and require a completely different set of rules and goals. One of the main reasons for this is that your readers will often come to your blog, read one post and then leave. Think about how many times you see a link on Twitter, go through to the site, read the article and then exit. 

If you have a high reader base then you are likely to witness high bounce rates. This is not always such a bad thing. However, it is very important to differentiate between existing visitors and new visitors. Existing visitors will often read just one blog post and then leave because they have already read everything else so why read again? New visitors have not read anything. You will want them to navigate throughout your blog and consume as much great, valuable content as possible in order to attract them into returning. 

Take a look at your traffic sources and see which sites give you bouncing visitors. Is there an unrelated referrer that sends a reasonable number of traffic that bounce? If so, this link(s) will be inflating your bounce rate. This is a common occurrence but many do not think to delve deep into traffic source analysis. If you find the link, try to contact the webmaster and ask for the link to be removed. You can also exclude the traffic source from being included in your results so that you get a ‘truer’ analysis. Be careful to not just omit poor performing traffic sources though - this must only be used if you are getting links from spam sites etc. 

Are some keywords artificially inflating your bounce rate? Have you created some content that is attracting non-targeted keywords? 

Content that is targeting long-tail keywords often attract completely unrelated traffic. This is the nature of long-tail, its unpredictable. It is important to always look at your referring keywords so that you can gain an insight into how people are discovering you. If you are receiving high bounces from related keywords then it may be that your existing content is not valuable to your audience. In this case you would need to go back and analyse your existing content and match it up to your referring keywords. High bouncing keywords are also a great opportunity to come up with content ideas.

Google recently released a tool to disavow links to your site. If your school has been notified about ‘unnatural links’ then this tool is essential to recover from your penalty. If your website has been hit by the recent Penguin update then this tool should be explored in detail. 

When we perform SEO research for schools we often find very suspicious looking links. Many are from spam websites and these types of links will damage your SEO efforts. Google are getting better and better at detecting these spam links and even if the link is 10 years old, you may still be penalised for this. Fortunately, this tool offers a potential solution. 

Finding spammy links

First of all you should be aware of all the links pointing to your site. If you don’t then you need to find out. 

You then need to list out all of the sites and discover which sites are of low quality or appear to be spammy. It will be very obvious which links are spam and which are not.

Note: not all spam is as obvious as the above image.

To access the tool you need to sign into your Webmasters account. The tool is not actually available through the main navigation - you need to access the disavow tool directly. This is what you should see:

Go to your text editor (Notepad, Text Edit etc.) and write out your disavow file. Below is an example:

There are 3 things to make a note of:

1. Comments are written using a #
2. To block a URL write it out in full on each line
3. To block a whole domain/subdomain use “domain:" 

Be careful with blocking a whole domain as it will block every link on that site and there may be a good link on that site. 

Head back to Webmasters and click 'Disavow Links’. 

You will be asked to choose a file so go ahead and select your text file and upload it. There are no naming conventions - it can be called anything. 

Once you have chosen file click 'Submit’ and then 'Done’. That’s it!

You have now sent off a request to Google and it will only be a matter of time before you see the results. 

Will this tool be useful for you? Have you had issues with spam in the past? Let us know. 

Community management is something that schools and businesses are beginning to really embrace. If your social media efforts begin to really take off you will quickly realise that your audience have become an online community. Even if you have not embraced social media you will have many existing communities in the offline world. 

There are a number of ways of managing and engaging with your social media communities. Here are a few of our favourite tips. 

This is a simple way to effectively engage with your community but many ignore questions from their audience. There may be an issue with time restraints but always try to answer as many questions as possible. If your Facebook Timeline allows for posts or comments then it is essential to answer any questions. A Timeline becomes awkward to look at when there is a lot of unanswered posts/comments. It shows a lack of enthusiasm. 

If your community is sharing stories and experiences about you then you must embrace this. When a person is sharing positive experiences with their peers online then they are investing their time and social capital to advocate for your school. It is essential that you communicate back in these situations. Do not be afraid to communicate back about negative experiences either. In many cases you can turn negativity into a positive outcome for not only the individual but for your wider community.

A goal for many marketers is to reach a certain number of followers on Twitter or fans on Facebook. The number of fans and followers is often seen as a reflection on social success. A higher number does suggest increased visibility but different metrics are more valuable when managing your community. A great metric to use on social media is amplification. 

Twitter - # of retweets per post

Facebook - # of shares per post

Google+ - # of shares per post

YouTube - # of social sharing clicks 

Blog - # of social sharing clicks 

Social sharing clicks are the numbers on your social share buttons - see the example on the right. You can get your own buttons from AddThis. 

This metric is much more valuable to you and your community. 

Content curation is a very useful way to engage your community and it is also a great starting point for marketers who are dipping their toes into social media. However, reliance on content curation (sharing other people’s content) can be risky as you are not sharing your own personality and thoughts. It is important to provide your community with original content. A really simple and basic way to create content is to conduct interviews or review books, films etc. You can even have your students participate in this. Even basic content can be very valuable to your community if it is original. 

Frequent is a very subjective word. How frequent is frequent exactly? For this you need to use your marketing intuition. You will have to trial and review different frequencies and discover the best combinations. 

It is imperative that you do not let any of your social channels dry up. You do not want any of your profiles to look like a ghost town. If you do not think you have enough time or content to frequently engage right now then take some time out to build a social strategy and create a quarterly plan that you can stick to. 

How have you found managing your communities? What tips do you have? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Almost all school websites have downloadable files such as policies, transport timetables, latest results etc. Unfortunately most school’s have no idea how often these are downloaded and viewed. Wouldn’t you love to know how often people download your prospectus? Where those people came from (Google, Twitter, Emails, Direct)? This is all valuable information.

Google Analytics is a tool that marketers cannot live without but did you know that it can track downloads too? Cue Events.

Google has a bit of code called trackEvent and when this is called it is tracked as an event. Pretty simple. It requires a minimum of two pieces of information: category and action (e.g. PDFs and Download). You can also add an optional label to give a better description (e.g. Policies). 

This will create a link to your 'Policies’ PDF and track every time it is clicked by a visitor.

Your school website has an overall purpose - to convert a visitor. A conversion can be spending 5 minutes on your site, viewing 10 pages, arranging a visit, downloading the prospectus and more. Some are easy to track but downloading a prospectus is much harder to measure and many school’s are not aware of how to do this. 

By creating an Event, you can easily add this as a 'Goal’. A 'Goal’ in Analytics is another term for conversion. If you want people to download your prospectus, you should set this up as a 'Goal’ so that you can obtain essential information. 

To do this go to 'Goals’, type the name, put active and select 'Event’. 

The type of information Analytics offer include:

• What pages did visitors view before downloading?
• Where did they come from? (Twitter, Google, Facebook, Adverts, Direct etc.)
• How long were they on the site?
• How many visits did it take before they converted?
• What percentage of visitors download the prospectus?

Why is this information so essential?

If your school is investing in online then it is important that you measure your results and tailor your strategies to fit actual behaviour. If you are investing a lot of time and money into online advertising and yet social media is driving the majority of conversions then you need to know this. If not, you will continue to invest in the wrong channels. 

There is much more that can be tracked through Google Analytics using this technique. A simple rule of thumb is to think of anything that can be clicked. If it can be clicked, then we can measure it.

• Email adresses
• Links
• Form submit buttons
• Videos (play, stop etc.)

Do you already track events? Will you begin to? Let us know in the comments.

Mobile is out-growing Desktop. Does you school have mobile marketing strategy - and at the very least a mobile school website? There are more mobile phones in the UK than people. Wow - that is quite a quite a fact! Here are some great Mobile Stats from @GPMD. 

1. The number of smartphone searchers doubles every two months
2. eBay sells something via a mobile phone every two seconds 
3. In 2010, Google became a ‘mobile-first’ company (this means they develop their sites and tools on mobiles first) 
4. Smartphone sales overtook PC sales last year (two years earlier than expected) 
5. In three years time, tablet sales will be bigger than PC sales 
6. Smartphone sales will continue to grow – will be 3 times the sales of pc’s 
7. 52% of UK mobile phone users have a smartphone 
8. 28% of internet usage is from a mobile phone 
9. 19% of search queries in the travel industry are from mobiles (was 11% in 2011) 
10. 16% of search queries in retail are from mobiles (was 10% in 2011) 
11. 19% of search queries in the entertainment industry are from mobiles (was 10% in 2011) 
12. 20% of all YouTube views are from a mobile device 
13. Mothers day 2012 – 50% of all online sales came from mobile devices 
14. 28% of people in the UK have purchased something using their phone 
15. eBay forecasts $8 billion in mobile sales this year (one sale per second) 
16. Average of 4 Ferraris sold on a mobile phone every month 
17. 49% of all Paddy Power bets made from mobile devices 
18. 40 different NFC compatible handsets available at the moment 
19. Orange have sold 500,000 NFC-compatible phones in France & the UK 
20. 40% of mobile searches have local intent 
21. 12% of UK population have a tablet 
22. Tablet sales growing 378% year on year 
23. 38% of UK tablet owners spend more time on their tablet than watching TV 
24. 23% increase in search queries from tablets after Christmas day (due to them being given as presents) 
25. 11% increase in mobile searches after Christmas day 
26. 53% of people in the UK are ‘dual screening’ (using phone whilst watching TV for example) 
27. Total of $241 billion in mobile transactions in 2011 
28. There are regular mobile transactions with value over $5,000 
29. Whatsapp is made up of just 20 people 86% of all adults own at least one mobile phone 
30. Most 3g data used by a single user in February 2012 was 573GB 
31. Total international travelling data used for the same month was 350GB

If you would like Interactive Schools to turn your current school website into a mobile friendly version - please contact us.

Your Twitter profile picture is a great opportunity to create visual recognition to your brand. It is the image that will appear to the left of all your tweets. It is therefore important that you choose the best possible image. Many schools choose their logos and this is usually a great tactic as long as you realise just how small your image is going to be. The school logo tactic becomes problematic when there is a lot of detail to fit into such a small space.

Things to remember:

• Ensure the image fits into the square box. When a profile picture is cropped or distorted it looks very unprofessional and cheap. You want your school to show it cares about the details - show it with your profile picture.
• Any copy in the image must be readable. If your logo contains words that cannot be read then there is no need for it to be included. 
• Consider using a headshot. Many businesses use their CEO or Social Media Manager’s face as their picture. People connect with faces and we understand this schools and their Heads are hesitant to move forward with this technique. Businesses understand the need people have for a human connection with brands so why can’t schools? It is an option. 

Your bio tells the story of your school all in 160 characters. Three things to include in this space:

• Describe your school
• Explain what makes you different
• Show some personality

Tip: Make sure you include your location and your website address. 

Schools follow a wide range of accounts on Twitter - current parents, prospects, pupils, education specialists, competitors, local news, celebrities and many more. 

Not many people are aware of the capabilities that Twitter lists can provide. Schools can organise who they follow into precise lists that help organise the plethora of content into actionable communications. 

When you have your lists created you can quickly check what current parents are tweeting or if you are looking for latest news you can check up on education specialists. 

When you are struggling to find content to share, lists can be a saviour! If you have a list that is dedicated to shareable content then you can create your own curation portal. Once you need inspiration you can simply go to your curation list and find some tweetable content. 

Twitter allows you to customise your background. This enables you to completely brand your Twitter page and also provide extra information about your school. It allows you to create an impression on people who have no previous experience with your school. 

Hubspot have put together a great list of 17 examples of Twitter brand pages. You should use this list for inspiration.

You must follow your audience. There are so many Twitter users that do not believe they should be following people - they feel it may take authority/prestigiousness away from them. The reason social media has exploded for consumers and businesses is because of the way it has regenerated the ability to converse, collaborate and share. 

It is not necessary for you to follow every follower but it is important to follow those who you are or may converse with.

Not only does it help build relationships but it also helps manage conversations. 

Note: RGS High Wycombe make a very good point in the comments about following pupils. 

Have you ever heard of Instagram? The free iOS (and now Android) app was recently acquired by Facebook for $1 billion. Photos are simple but yet tell you a visual story that your followers, in their time conscious world, consume in seconds. 

Instead of just tweeting “We’re on a school trip” or “We have a famous visitor today” you should add a picture of your trip or the visitor at the school. 

Just as you review any plan you must also review your Twitter plan. If you have a publishing schedule or you just have guidelines you must look back and analyse your content. What worked and what didn’t. 

Tweeting for 50 when starting out and tweeting for 5000 engaged followers require different tactics and content strategies. 

Have you implemented any of these for your Twitter account? Have you got more ideas to add? Share your thoughts in the comments.

The formation of Facebook is what investors like to call a ’disruptive event’ in that it has dramatically changed the way we behave. Facebook has opened up a world of possibilities to development officers in schools. No longer are we restricted by geography, time or networks. We can connect to pretty much anybody on this planet.

Discover Old and New

In the advent of social networks we now have an unprecedented ability to discover people. Whether we are searching for new people or lost contacts, we can identify these people relatively easy with a quick search. Alumnae details (address, email, telephone etc.) often change but they stay updated and consistent in Facebook.  

Influence and Build Your Audience

Facebook is built for sharing. The viral nature of social networks means that influence is inevitable. We find that a quarter of the impressions (the number of times any Facebook user has seen content associated with your Page) that schools receive through Facebook are viral. This is content generated outside your Page about you by real people. We are highly influenced by our peers and if you are not involved in providing shareable content then you a reliant upon 3rd parties. This is a risky strategy if you are not there to look in on conversations and control negative comments.

Connectivity

We are all aware that Facebook has over 900 million active users but many are surprised that just over half of these users actively access the service via a mobile device. This shows the level of connectivity that people have. They are constantly accessible and connected to you. When alumnae are on the go they will be casually checking their feed and if you are not there then they will lose interest. People don’t have much time to worry about remembering what your page address is.

Does your school engage on Facebook? Is Facebook working for you? Lets discuss in the comments!