6 Secrets to growing fun center Facebook fans

It’s not a secret that you need to tell people about your Facebook Page, and what information they will get there. What seems to be a secret are the many different ways and places to get that message out.

Tips about your Facebook Page

You should have a corporate fun center Facebook Page that covers these topics:

• New job postings and new hires
• Changes in hours
• New attractions or games
• Behind the scenes look at your fun center
• Major business announcements, such as a second location, expanding your existing location
• Call outs to guest having birthday parties, corporate events or large family gatherings

You should develop a second Facebook Page for a niche group of fans. Here are some areas where you could create a special interest:

• Go-kart league
• Mini golf league
• Skee-ball league
• Best scores on your favorite arcade game

Click for the free ePlan for FEC operators

You should also make sure of the following:

• Your promotional materials (business cards, rack cards, brochure, website and other collateral) show the Facebook icon AND the http://www.Facebook.com/… URL (website address) in full
• Your Facebook Page(s) have well-written content
• Your Facebook content is scheduled regularly—at least one post per day, every day

The 6 secrets

These revolve around repetitive and consistent communication. Every time a guest interacts with a staff member, piece of collateral or hears an ad or sees a message about your fun center, they should be encouraged to follow you on Facebook.

1. Receipts and forms—Every piece of operational paper you produce should encourage the holders of those forms and receipts to “Follow us on Facebook for exclusive discounts and updates!”
2. Window decals—Post decals with your color logo and Facebook Page URL on all entrance and exit doors.
3. Twitter—Tweet every Facebook Page post.
4. POP—At your tills and food center tables make sure a “Follow us…” message is included on all tent cards.
5. Arcade game decals—Same as your window decals, put these on your arcade games, especially if you have a club or league focusing on the game.
6. Phone message—Your hold and off-hours messages should include a push to follow your fun center on Facebook.

Have you had success in growing your Facebook fans? Share your thoughts in the comments.

How to find out what others are saying online about your fun center

It used to be if a guest had a bad experience, they’d approach you or a staff member to rectify it. Perhaps a machine broke down, or perhaps a coupon deal had expired. Regardless of the cause or fault, the guest did not have the best experience.

For every 1 person who brought a problem to your attention to rectify it, 9 didn’t. Those 9 went home, possibly told family or anyone who asked how their visit to your fun center went. As time passed, the memory would fade until it wouldn’t even be a topic of conversation. Odds are very good you were completely unaware of those conversations, but that’s okay because likely those conversations only happened between a few people.

That was before social media.

Now, if your guest has a bad experience they can share it immediately with their online network, as a Facebook status update or a tweet on Twitter. Studies say that the average Facebook user has 130 friends. Suddenly, a broken machine at your fun center is being talked about to 130 people. If one of those people previously had a negative experience at your fun center, they will respond. Suddenly this negative experience is snowballing into a negative conversation online—and if you’re not involved in social media, you won’t know it’s happening until you see your guest visits decline.

You can see how getting involved in social media is no longer a “nice to have” in your marketing and communication plan, it’s essential.

Using Google Alerts

Google has a great way to bring mentions of your fun center to you automatically. It’s a free service called Google Alerts, and it’s fairly easy to set up.

1. Set up a new email address to have your alerts delivered to. This makes it easier to keep your monitoring separate from your regular email (eg. googlealerts@yourfuncenter.com)
2. Go to Google Alerts and follow the simple steps to set up your first alert.
3. Enter your first alert term in the tab at the top, usually your fun center name.
4. Select “Everything” for the different type of web interactions Google will search (eg. blogs, discussions, comments, etc.)
5. Select as it happens for now. You can specify weekly or other down the road.
6. Select all results to start with, and then best results once you see what is being found and delivered to you.
7. Enter your email address and you’ve set up your first alert!

Other searches you might consider adding is “(your fun center name) sucks” or “I hate (your fun center name) or other abbreviations or nicknames you’ve heard others use for your fun center. Also, to engage fans online, search for the names of your most popular attractions. You can find out what people love most about your Dance Dance Revolution arcade game (or hate about it!)

Monitor your account regularly. Reply with a “thanks” to positive comments, answer questions others have posed, or devise a reply for negative comments.

Let us know in the comments if you’ve had success setting up Google Alerts for your fun center.

Getting the most out of your fun center’s email marketing

If you’re collecting guest email addresses and have an email marketing process in place (and I’m really hoping you do!), Marketing Sherpa recently published research concerning how email deliverability issues have worsened or improved over the past 12 months.

What is your fun center's email deliverability rate?

You can read the full article here, but in our opinion, the two most important things a fun center can do is be attentive and be selective.

Being attentive means listening when people reply to your email, leave comments or make suggestions. That’s the obvious one. You also need to be attentive to which content is being read, and which content is being unopened.

Being selective means cleaning up your list when you have non-opening recipients. If you’re delivering an e-newsletter twice a month and four issues go unopened, delete that address. People who aren’t reading your email are not engaged—the goal is to engage your guests.

Here are some rules for getting the best results from your email strategy:

1. After receiving an email subscription, make sure you’ve set up a triggered email 24 hours later thanking the guest, and reminding them that they’ve subscribed to your e-newsletter.
2. Make sure whatever you promised to send is in your e-newsletter. If you promised news, include news. If you promised news, updates and announcements make sure your recipients are getting a good mix of all three.
3. Find a niche interest you can wrap your e-newsletter around. For example, if you have a race track, set up a racing league and email stats on a monthly basis. In that you can sprinkle other news and offers about different areas of your fun center.

Google Analytics for your website

Google Analytics is the best silent partner you’ll ever have. It tells you who visited your website, if they are new or returning visitors, which pages they entered on and which they left on…and a huge amount of other things for FREE. When has research or analytics ever been free?!

It’s possible your web hosting company has already installed the Google Analytics code on your website. If you’re doing it yourself (eg. using a http://www.squarespace.com site or http://www.wordpress.com blog) those come with some analytic tools built in. However, I’d recommend adding Google Analytics to your site. Because Google is still the most widely used search engine with arguably the most complex set of search algorithms, it makes sense to use a Google tool to measure traffic.

Just three of the options available to help you analyze your website traffic.

How do you use Google Analytics? In upcoming articles we’ll examine the “Goals,” “Campaigns” and “Custom Reporting” features.

Social media marketing = customer acquisition

eMarketer reports in recent research that worldwide, businesses are successfully using social media marketing to grow their  customer bases.

Click graphic to link to and read the full eMarketer.com artcile

The article states that “in 2011, 47% of businesses successfully used social networks for customer acquisition in 2011, a 7 percentage point increase over 2010.”

Nala

Nala Henkel is a social media partner to FEC Network Inc. and editor of the IAAO Blog.

Traditional media vs. social media

Social media is the online equivalent of word of mouth advertising, the most coveted form of advertising you can get. It is the new way to reach potential fun center guests, as opposed to the traditional way of advertising.

Advertising in the past was a simple formula: The more money you spent, the more people you reached. The biggest channels for reaching people were (and still are) TV and radio. Broadcasters knew this, and could therefore charge premium dollars for air time. They could substantiate those dollars by using complex methods to measure how many and what kind of viewers were seeing your ads. But does your fun center need to reach the masses in order to be successful? No. It’s like thinking you need to use a fire hose to clean one leaf stuck on a fence.

Who to reach

You need to reach 1) the people who are already your fun center’s guests, 2) friends and relatives of those people, and 3) more people just like both those categories of people.

People have gotten good at filtering out advertising messages.

Using traditional media to reach those people has a few problems. The people you want to speak to are being bombarded by all kinds of messaging, so they will likely tune out your ads along with everything else they aren’t interested in at that moment. Also, you want to only reach a portion of those people, not the masses. That’s where social media can be the most help.

Social media is a completely different way to communicate with the public. You’ll go where the people are congregating (social networks, blogs and other websites) and participate in those conversations (commenting, “liking,” forwarding or sharing, or tweeting) to share information when you think it’s relevant. Using social media effectively means you’ll

1. listen and learn about the people who visit your fun center, and others like them
2. join existing conversations about your fun center or fun center activities
3. start conversations about your fun center or fun center activities that will be heard and listened to by the people you want to reach

Social media is above all things SOCIAL! As a fun center operator or owner, that’s probably one of the things you do best, and was likely a huge driver in your passion for your business. And being social is what drives word of mouth. Is this stuff exciting or what?!

Does a fun center need to choose?

That doesn’t mean that traditional media is a bad choice—not at all. As a fun center owner, you have to ask yourself if it’s always the BEST choice, and something that will get those people talking about you.

What are your traditional media success stories (or learning opportunities)? I’d love to hear about them in the comments below.

Nala

Nala Henkel is a social media partner to FEC Network Inc., and editor of the IAAO Blog.

QR codes—so delicious you can eat them!

You’ve probably heard of QR codes. If not, I’m sure you must have seen them. A QR code looks something like this:

Scan the code and see where it takes you!

QR code means quick response code. It was created in Japan in 1994 and has made its way to North America in the last year or so. It’s a 2-dimensional code that delivers information to you high speed, similar to how retail bar codes deliver product, price and stocking information as soon as the cashier scans it.

In fact, you can think of it like a consumer bar code—you scan it with your smart phone, and it takes you to a website, starts a phone call or delivers a vcard. A retailer in my town uses it in their flyer on the vitamin page. You scan it and it opens your phone’s browser and gives you specific information about the vitamin’s benefits, properties and usage.

Here’s a good article with some different ideas on how these could be used. My favorite from the article includes t-shirts when you’re participating in a local event. You could even imprint one on a water bottle you giveaway at your fun center. If you send post cards as direct mail pieces, you could have a fun picture on the front, and a QR code on the back that takes readers to a relevant page on your website about what’s happening at your facility.

Here’s an example of a fun use from a different article also found on http://www.FastCompany.com:

Click on a cupcake to read the full article.

I’ve typically seen these codes used in print materials—retail product flyers, movie ads in newspapers and on a poster mounted on a delivery truck in the city—but I just tried scanning the one above right from my monitor, and that works too!

How do you make a code?

It’s actually amazingly simple, as I found a site and made the code at the beginning of this article in less than 30 seconds.

1. Go to http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ (where I went) or find another free QR code generator.
2. Choose the kind of content you want your code to deliver.
3. Choose the size you want your code to appear as (probably the larger the easier it will be for scanners to scan—I chose large for the above code.)
4. Click “Generate” and then copy the resulting URL and use on a website page (copy it in your HTML code) or take a screen capture and save it to your desktop to use in your page layout.

How do you “read” the code?

This is easy and free also!

1. On your smart phone, access your app store and search for a QR code reader. I’ve had the most luck with i-nigma.
2. After the app installs, select it, hold it over the code and tap the “scan code” button.
3. Within seconds, the results should load.

Pretty fun! This technology is likely more readily used in bigger cities, but I’ve seen it here and there in my town (80,000 people) so maybe it’s making its way to smaller communities. If you find that many of your guests are on Facebook, tweet from their phones and generally find it important that you offer wi-fi, this could be another fun way to engage with that group.

Have fun, and let me know where my code above takes you!

Nala

Nala Henkel is a social media partner to FEC Network Inc., and editor of the IAAO Blog.

No excuses—make your fun center video!

An article on Social Media Examiner included this quote (as well as some excellent video advice):

Forrester Research reported that “A website with a video is 53 times more likely to come up on the first page result on Google than the exact same page without video.”

If you have a camera and a computer, you can shoot a video. Even phones can shoot and upload videos to Facebook these days, so if your guests can do it, you need to get into the game too.

The thought of making a video may seem overwhelming, but it can be very simple. As with anything you want to turn out well, you only need to plan it. I’ve created a few simple videos for a local non profit with a mid-range Sony camera and software that came standard with my computer, so I know you can do it too. Here are the steps to help you make your fun center video.

Figure out your “story”

You’re going to make one video, you will love it, and you’ll want to make more—I know it! Spend a little time thinking about what theme you want for these, so they have some cohesion. For example, a get-to-know-us style video series could simply feature panning shots of a fun center gaming area, rewards counter, eating area, outdoor area and entrance. Put some nice royalty-free music underneath, a title slide as an intro and closing and you’re done! Depending on how many different gaming areas you have, there are several video ideas ready to roll.

You could get informative and create a how-to video on planning a birthday party. Or do a short weekly video introducing staff members and what their role is. Or you could do a series of guest interviews. There are endless ideas, limited only by your time.

Plan your shots

You’re fired up about one of the above ideas, so it’s time to be efficient. Close your eyes and plan how you want your video to look. Do you want to walk up to your fun center from the point of view of the guest or fade in to the shot at the main location? Do you want to have your camera on a tripod or approach the shot from a high-up or down-low angle? If you’re not sure, walk through each shot with your camera and see how it looks. Take some video and watch it back on the camera. Not perfect? Delete it and try a different angle. Once you know what you want, make a list of all the shots you need including how to get them. For example: “Walk up and into entrance, pan the entire floor, pause on the area of focus. Shot 2 will start in the specific gaming area.”

Stage your settings

Make sure everything is tidy and inviting. Make sure nothing is visible in the shot that shouldn’t be—food or other dirt on the carpet, visible cables or safety hazards or a full garbage can nearby. Now for an important questions—should there be people in your picture.

Models in your video

There are two schools of thought here—show the facility without guests and let viewers see the games and entertainment clearly and imagine being there, or show guests playing and enjoying the games and obviously having fun. Neither are wrong, but one is less complicated than the other.

It makes sense that shooting your footage before or after hours, without guests, is the easiest to arrange. If you want to show guests, though, there are a few things you can easily do.

• Use staff members
• Use personal friends
• Use loyal return guests or a family

Whichever way you go, you should thank your models with a pass or other simple remuneration. Also have them sign release forms giving you full rights for broadcast and Internet usage. The small remuneration should make them comfortable signing a press release, but what will also ease this process is following these steps:

1. Ask the person/family to participate in your video, and explain what you’d like them to do.
2. Explain that you are approaching them first because you feel they would best highlight your fun center—flatter, but with honest flattery!
3. Explain how and where you’ll use the footage.
4. Describe how you’ll remunerate them.
5. Schedule a time to shoot that works best for them first, you and the center second.
6. Give them the model release to read over, and explain you’ll need them to sign it and bring it with them to the shoot.

Here is a sample of a simple videographer model release that can customize for  your own uses, but there are more samples you can find online.

Put your video together

Plug your camera in to your computer and capture your clips. This should happen automatically, but if not your movie program (Movie Maker for PC or iMovie for Mac) will let you select “Import” and load your clips. Add a starting and ending title, and a fun transition to bridge the gap between the title and the first clip. (For detailed info on using your program, select the “Help” drop-down menu once you’ve started the program.)

Music

You can find all kinds of music for free at http://mp34u.fm. You’re looking for a track that reflects the feeling of your fun center’s personality. Select a track and download it. Your movie program will let you select music from your music library and import it into your project.

Uploading your video

Choose “Export” or “Share” to convert your movie from your program’s native format to an .mp4 or .mov version (depending on file size.) I use a higher resolution which creates an .mp4 video.

A few tips

• Watch other fun center videos on YouTube to get an idea for the style you think would be a good fit for you and your facility.
• Upload your video to your YouTube channel. YouTube is a huge search engine, and a great place to store and share your video. Afterward, grab the embed code from underneath your video to use on your website or blog.

• If you’re planning to capture live audio on your camera, make sure your subjects are close enough so the built-in mic picks the voices up clearly. Test this first in the actual environment before your shoot date!
• Keep your videos to 2 minutes or under if possible.
• There are great tutorial videos on YouTube for Movie Maker and iMovie, the standard programs that come with most computers.

Let us know when your fun center’s video is live! We’d love to post them here and favorite them on our YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/amusementoperators

Nala

Nala Henkel is a social media partner to FEC Network Inc. and editor of the IAAO Blog.

Algorithms = math = huh?

As an arts student, numbers aren’t my strength. Science in general can mystify me. Once, many years ago, I listened to the Stephen Hawking book “A Brief Moment in Time” during my regular 45-minute-each-way commute. I kept a grasp on each listening session for about 10 minutes, then the concepts evaporated like a mist.

Yet I am strangely drawn to reading articles that talk about Google’s algorithms. Learning the science behind search I find very intriguing. But this article will work for anyone. It explains how users—actual people!—are helping Google improve its search results. The article ends with “Historically, Google always looked to its Pagerank technology which scored sites based on how many other high quality sites were linking to them.  And while Pagerank will continue to play a major roll in Google’s search engine results algorithm, Google will be innovating and improving its core product and the users will help Google to do this.”

Do you have a search strategy for your fun center’s website?

Nala

Nala Henkel is a social media partner with FEC Network Inc. and editor of the IAAO Blog.