What you should know about Pinterest

Pinterest.com is the latest social media platform that has been getting a lot of press lately. In fact, as a website that refers people to other sites, it ranked only lower than Facebook, Stumbleupon, Google and Twitter (as of January 2012.) Pretty impressive. It also ranked higher than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined. See the story here, at blog.shareholic.com.

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest.com is a website that lets you pin things you like and share them with others. It’s like a virtual bulletin board, where you’d put images of things you like, re-pin things you like that others have pinned, etc.

This is an actual sample. Click to visit Pinterest and see what YOU find!

The things I see that sets it apart are:

• The images people pin are stunning—right out of Martha Stewart Living (I read somewhere that MSL online magazine gets a TON of traffic from Pinterest, as that’s where a lot of people find images of things they love…and then pin.)
• Therefore, no surprise it skews to the female demographic.
• Pinterest is very visual—beautifully visual, as you can tell from the image below (you could probably take some of these kinds of shots of your fun center!)

There are also "travel boards" people keep. Do you see where this could help you? Click image to read Pinterest's about page.

Like all social media platforms you can be a lurker (read, comment, and re-pin other’s content) or a participant (take your own photos and pin them to your board.) If you can take colourful shots, or delicious food pics you can almost smell through your monitor, then DEFINITELY plan to participate on Pinterest. Visit it and check it out to see if it’s something that would work for you.

Caveats about Pinterest.com

I’ve seen many “How to use Pinterest for your business” ebooks and articles, and I’m a little skeptical. First of all, I tried to join and received a very nice “you’re in the approval queue” email. So they are screening who applies. I’ve also read everywhere that self promotion is heavily discouraged, and business promotion is outright verboten.

Apparently, Pinterest is still in beta version, so possibly there will be a business version or section of it down the road. I would encourage you to participate as an individual who happens to own a B&B, and then post beautiful shots or luxurious linens, colourful bedside table arrangements…things of beauty you think others would re-pin. Of course, these shots would be posted on your B&B’s website, where people will link to once they click to re-pin your image!

What one guy thinks about who uses Pinterest.

Great strategy, however I can’t test it yet. Once I get approved (assuming I do!) I’ll try it out myself, and post findings back here on the blog.

Until then, happy viewing!

Why consumers “like” Facebook Pages

This is an interesting piece from an eMarketer Daily article.

Click the image to read the full eMarketer article

Our takeaway on this graph is that even though social media specialists will push using networks to be social and interactive, many consumers are expecting sales and promos from a business or brand page that they “like,” and why wouldn’t they? Your personality and “socialness” will come through when you reply to your fans’ comments, but your posts can be informational about fun center operations (hours, new staff, etc.) and offers (2 for 1 Tuesdays, or double-ticket Wednesdays).

The challenge for fun centers is to find a comfortable communication schedule. Don’t be shocked, but you should consider a schedule of 3-5 posts PER DAY. The reason is, the average Facebook user has 140 friends, not to mention at least 5 pages they like. That’s 145 bits of content filling their news feed constantly. How does your fun center get “seen”?

Making it easy

• Pick 3-5 times a day you’ll be able to post, and stick to this time schedule for at least a week
• Pick 3 topics to post about—for example an event that day, an upcoming special or promo, recognizing a guest
• Post a photo along with one of your posts
• Include a link to your website—for example, if you post a happy birthday message to a party you host that day, let your fans connect back to your birthday party register page
• Monitor the impressions for each of your posts—which times get the most impressions, which topics seem to get comments or shared with others. This will help you continuously improve your Facebook Page activity and future ROI

What has been your best success on Facebook?

Teens on Twitter

Click to read full article

 

It will be interesting to see how teen adoption of Twitter increases by 2013—if we’ll see the same growth rate from 2009.

Do teens at your fun centers use Twitter?

Online parents “most valuable social consumer”

A great infographic from Nielsen Wire last month shows the different ways parents are interacting with social media.

Click to link to full article, including stats on teens.

A fun center tries Groupon

A fun center recently tried Groupon to spur awareness with Groupon subscribers in two markets—Vancouver (about an hour’s drive west from the facility), and its local market of Abbotsford, B.C.

Castle Fun Park is just under 50 miles east of Vancouver. It has three themed miniature golf courses—one outside and two inside—go karts, indoor driving range and batting cages, shooting gallery, bowling alley, and an extensive game-playing area over two floors. It appeals mostly to the teen+ and family crowd, although it does hold its fair share of birthday parties for the younger age group.

Castle Fun Park has only tried Groupon once, but Brandon Bahris, Director of Operations, had some interesting insight into using the social coupon service.

Q) What made you decide to use Groupon vs. other social deal providers such as LivingSocial or Daily Deal?

A) The market share that Groupon commands vastly outreaches the competition.

Q) Is there a minimum buy for the offer?

A) The minimum, or tipping point, is part of their setup and is merchant-determined (for some businesses I understand the strategy, but for us it was a trivial detail: We set for 25 and sold 3200).

Q) Did you get paid right away?

A) We received our first cheque a month after the offer ended and are slated to receive two more cheques equally spaced apart.

Q) How long did it take to negotiate the deal with Groupon?

A) Groupon had been contacting us from the onset of their integration into the Fraser Valley. We declined their requests for several months until the timing on our side was appropriate. When we agreed to work with Groupon the timeline from discussion through to launch was about a week.

Q) Did you request a target audience you wanted to reach with Groupon, or does the deal automatically go out to everyone registered for Groupon in the Fraser Valley (i.e. your business’s geographic region)?

A) As with all business transactions, the more you sell or are anticipated to sell, the more leverage you can wield. We did request a target audience (Vancouver) outside of the default region you are assigned to, based on physical location, and this was granted based on sales expectations.

Q) How did the deal—a $50 value gameplay card for $25—perform?

A) We sold just below 3,200 deals between the Abbotsford and Vancouver offers which ran in parallel. It was quite accurate to our forecast but far greater than what Groupon expected. For us it was very much a success from a marketing perspective, as our brand was showcased to over 300,000 Vancouver Groupon subscribers, and over 60,000 Abbotsford (local) subscribers.

Q) Did Groupon provide you with any reporting, or buyers’ email addresses?

A) Some reporting is provided, but not of course, emails for privacy issues.

Q) Has Groupon, as a promotional tool, replaced any of your fun center’s other marketing or advertising?

A) No

Q) How is Groupon compensated?

A) Groupon takes more than the 25% most people think—the credit/ debit processing fees are also subtracted, further reducing the merchant’s payment by about 2%. Most participants are aware that it is generally a break- even or marginal loss campaign initially. For most businesses they accept the reality that Groupon is not for growing immediate sales, but rather is the cost of advertising to market that may be out of reach. How much that’s worth is up to the business. For us the overhead is very minimal and therefore ours is the perfect business to utilize Groupon

Q) Will you use Groupon again?

A) As our sales volume is heavily influenced by the school season, it would not be advantageous to run this style of campaign during the prime school vacation periods. Oversaturation and product devaluation need to be strongly factored in as well.  We certainly may team up with Groupon during the off season again (with a different offer), but not for while.

Q) What advice do you have for other fun centers considering using Groupon?

A) Ask them many questions and become well-versed in all possible scenarios concerning Groupon redemption—and get a few scanning devices ready prior to launch!

What is StumbleUpon and should your fun center use it?

StumbleUpon is a web service that lets its almost 15 million members rate your content and recommend it to other Stumblers, as well as show the user similar content to what they’re viewing. It’s a social network that connects users to eachother through shared common interests—which results in visits to sites their StumbleFriends like.

Users join StumbleUpon for free and select a wide variety of personal interests. Whenever they find content they’re interested in they can click the StumbleUpon icon to add it to their interests. Other StumbleUpon users can see that content when they log in, and click to read or follow it.

The StumbleUpon icon is usually near the other social buttons like Twitter and Facebook.

A user can also choose a thumbs up or down, although this ranks the content against their listed interests. This rating allows StumbleUpon to “learn” which type of content to recommend, based on altering the user’s interests after each thumbs up or down.

A recent review of the most-viewed content of StumbleUpon includes street art, simple games, funny photos or humorous lists. For the most part the popular content are entertainment pieces that have gone viral.

Is it for you?

The value in belonging to StumbleUpon is its membership and having your website visitors share your content with their StumbleUpon followers. In light of the subject matter of the most popular content, it may not make sense to offer it, particularly if your web content is not updated on a regular basis. Our experience has been that StumbleUpon is most often found on blogs, where content is created regularly, and users recommend the articles (which contain those funny photos, humorous lists, etc.)

If you use StumbleUpon, what has your experience been?

How are other marketers integrating social media?

Social media is not a stand-alone—it should be integrated with your full marketing communications plan. Marketing Sherpa recently asked over 3,000 marketers to what extent they were integrating social media:

Click for the full article. Note: Marketing Sherpa may limit access after a period of time.

Many companies won’t integrate social media tactics such as offering promotions via Facebook or Twitter because they want to measure the specific results—they want to hold social media accountable, and not muddy the metrics on their other advertising. As always, there should be a strategy behind why a company adopts the use of Twitter, Facebook or other platforms, but the main purpose of social media is guest engagement. You wouldn’t launch a website and then not promote it, would you?

Fun center social media marketing—come and get it!

People of all ages have adopted these platforms in varying degrees, and it would be missing the boat not to explore and strategize on how to be present there, but with thoughtful planning on allocating resources to maintain that participation. And to create a following on your social media platforms, you need to cross-promote. You can do this easily by promoting your social media platforms

• on your receipts
• on door signage
• on telephone hold messaging
• on your business cards and other stationery
• on POP signage

Does your fun center cross-promote your social media plaforms?

Points about online content and sharing

Many bloggers and social media managers for large retail companies will get the most out of this article about how to get their online content shared by their readers. I think, for fun centers, the biggest goal is getting the attention of their guests first and passing on certain content second. But this article from Social Media Examiner has some interesting insights, such as this graph from the 2011 Edelman Trust Barometer:

The article references brands quite a bit, but I would replace that in your mind with “my fun center.” I think the most important content you should focus on is being interesting and relevant.

What has been your focus when creating online content such as Facebook Page posts?

How to rank #3 online in the toughest market ever—Orlando, Florida

Here’s a story…

A family is heading to Orlando, Florida for a holiday. Even though they know there’s lots of choices, either the mom or dad hop online and search Google for “things to do in Orlando, Florida.) Here’s is what they see:

These folks are saavy, so they know those top three results in the peach color are paid placements. Mom or dad scans to the next one, which is a TripAdvisor result. They are likely to click through to this, because not only did it rank first after paid placements, TripAdvisor will give them user reviews.

The most important fact of social media

The key to understanding social media is that it is SOCIALLY DRIVEN. That means regular people posting, sharing and commenting. Finding out what complete strangers think about a product or service is the most valuable thing to your company. People will believe the comments of strangers more often than they will companies for one simple fact—strangers have nothing to gain from their opinion, while companies have everything to gain. Therefore, the perception is that strangers are honest, and sometimes brutally so.

How iFly in Orlando beat a Disney property (and 148 others) on TripAdvisor

#1 result on TripAdvisor was Discovery Cove, with 920 reviews and an average score of 4.5/5.

#2 result was Typhoon Lagoon (Disney property), with 223 reviews with an average score of 4.5/5.

iFly had only 61 reviews on TripAdvisor. They had a good satisfaction rating, which contributes to the overall scoring, so yes you need to deliver a great guest experience. But think about it. Could you get 61 guests to rate your fun center over the course of a year? Of course you can—all you have to do is ask.

Getting reviews

At every touchpoint, ask your guests to rank you on TripAdvisor. They same way you promote your Facebook Page or Twitter feed, add a line about visiting TripAdvisor to “tell us about your visit!” You can’t game the system, so don’t promise anything. If TripAdvisor finds out, they will penalize you. However, whenever you receive a positive review thank them warmly. Engage with them and add them to your VIP list. If you didn’t have one before, you do know! That way you can reward them “offline.”

How to get going

1. Set up your fun center on TripAdvisor. If guests go to review you and you don’t show up, they may not complete their review.
2. Add your TripAdvisor review request to all touchpoints—small tentcards at all tills and food service tables, bottom of receipts, your website, email signature and your telephone hold message.
3. Respond to every email notification you receive from a review.
4. Use positive reviews to build a VIP list of email addresses in-house. Reward VIPs with free passes or (once you have over 50 VIPs, a VIP night!)
5. Use negative reviews to improve your business and/or service. Make it your personal goal to learn from these guests—and if you rectify a situation, make sure you tell them about it publicly on TripAdvisor.

Have you had success on TripAdvisor?

How to get a $70k+ social media manager for $148.95

Nowhere but with IAAO will you find a detailed, step-by-step guide specifically for fun centers on setting up a complete social media program.

An August, 2011 survey on www.payscale.com notes social media managers can expect a yearly salary of $26–71k depending on experience. That’s well beyond what a fun center can afford, especially when your most important concern is operating the fun center and serving up the best possible guest experience that will ensure return visits.

However, social media can’t be ignored. That’s why we commissioned the Social Media Action Plan written specifically with fun centers in mind.