• Strong hero and product imagery
• Statement of welcome to engage the user (see Sears)
• Description of who you are and what you do
• Call to Action to become a Fan, click other tabs, and click through to our retail pages

This type of messaging might be foreign to small businesses that subscribe to old school marketing and PR (see David Meerman Scott’s bestseller, The New Rules of Marketing and PR.

I’ve reviewed and analyzed several Facebook sites and offer the following.

Sears

• Their default landing page compels visitors to “Become a Fan.” This is especially important if your brand isn’t familiar to most visitors
• “Shop your way to Rewards” tab—promote subscription to emails and offers you might run exclusively on Facebook and Twitter
• Theme Song Quiz—a fun activity as simple as a photo contest would be engaging and allow your company to collect User Generated Content (UGC)

All these tabs/pages are available even to visitors who aren’t fans. This is important because it gives the advertiser the opportunity to present their message even to those who are hesitant to commit to being a Fan. It’s also good because a strong image like this beats the clutter and confusion of the typical Facebook wall page.

Dunkin Donuts

• The Maurice tab is a funky little Flash activity. That may be out of scope for most small business, but it is a great tool that engages the user.
• The Discussions tab is great for generating a dialog between Fans. The big question is how to get the conversation started. Post some compelling questions on your wall and encourage every Fan comment to create more interaction.

Kohl’s

• They have tabs with very nice imagery and–and this is important–links to more specific additional Facebook company pages. The good news is with a little knowledge of FBML–Facebook Markup Language–you can create custom pages that do all sorts of things.
• The Kohl’sCelebStyle tab is a highly interactive page with a video, other social options and a poll.
• The Scholarship page has public service feature. I advocate promoting the charities/missions your company supports. It’s not bragging, it’s informing your customers that some of the revenue from their purchases is applied to a good cause. Also on this page, are sharing buttons so readers can put the charitable message on Facebook and Twitter pages.
• Events is an integral part of Facebook. Post sales and offers a month or more ahead of time to build excitement; an amazing way to build buzz and put people in the frame of mind to plan their purchases. Reward those who RSVP by giving them something extra, our require they Confirm in order to get the deal. Notice that the event has a link to the retail site, relevant photos and comments,

Macy’s

• Their default landing page is way cool, with big and beautiful product photos, lots of links to the retail site, a Share link, Fan links, download iPhone app (I downloaded it) and comments call to action. Huge!
• Their GiveBack tab does the charity thing better than Kohl’s. It’s like a links page for their chosen charities. Easy for your company to do.
• They do the Events thing, too.

Summary:

You’ve most likely seen modest and steady growth of your Facebook community resulting from your website links, email blasts, Twitter, blogging and the Facebook viral effect. I predict your Fan count will increase even more rapidly if you do some of what these and other companies are doing. You probably have most of the resources you need to make this happen: budget, imagery, editorial, and creative thinkers like YOU.

You might find these posts helpful:

• Three Levels of Social Media Communication
• In-Bound and Interactive Marketing

1. Talk to your customers in an authentic voice to be believable
2. Allow your customers to talk to you to show you are listening
3. Enable your customers to talk to each-other and create a vibrant community

Today’s best marketing practices require businesses to minimize old-school outbound tactics like static web pages, direct mail, email blasts and replace them with communication based on the use of an authentic voice. Today’s consumer is conditioned to ignore most of these (and so are the search engines). If you’re going to talk effectively to your customers, you must do it in a more conversational voice using a blog, podcast or video by telling relevant stories and offering genuine testimonies and reviews. Get away from the agency-generated copy as your only way of describing yourself. Loosen up and reveal the real you that your customers really want to get to know and believe.

Allowing your customers to talk to you is the second level of updating your marketing presence. It is easily done by allowing comments on your blog, encouraging customer feedback everywhere possible, and showing that you’re listening by responding to every piece of relevant input. Increase the use of customer comments in all your marketing materials, and respond publicly to positive and negative comments. Businesses that ignore their customers position themselves in turn to be ignored by their customers.

The third level of communication is by far the best—enabling and encouraging your customers to talk to each-other. Unpaid and unsolicited advocates are a marketer’s dream, not just because they cost next to nothing to acquire, but the words of adoring fans are a lot more effective than you tooting your own horn. Set up and nurture any platform you have at your disposal, be it a Twitter account, a Facebook page, a discussion forum, or through blog comments. Prime the pump by asking for comments, respond to comments with appreciation and encouragement, and let it discussion flourish. Then pay attention to what they’re saying and react to the valuable input and ideas they provide.

The best example I’ve seen of customers talking to customers and taking over on a specific platform is Dunkin’ Donuts Facebook page. Scroll down the page and notice the ratio of DD’s comments vs Fan comments. That marketing campaign appears to be on auto pilot. Good job DD!

Aside: I often hear people say “I bet that camera takes good pictures.” I tell them that my camera takes both good and bad pictures, depending on the subject matter and how well I apply my craft.

I’m not recommending investing a lot of money in equipment, crew and studio time. All it takes is a little knowledge, and a bit of equipment to raise the bar to a reasonable level of professionalism. Here’s what you need:

• A little time: Plan it out, find the right location, and shoot until you get it right.
• Decent lighting: Make sure the light on the subject is brighter than the background. Try to stay away from overhead lighting. Instead, use a floor or table lamp located on the left or right of the camera. If you can afford it, the Lowel Ego lighting system is both economical and effective.
• Direct audio: On camera microphones are really good at recording ambient sound, but horrible at recording a person speaking more than a an arm’s length away. If your camera doesn’t have an input for an external mic, position the camera and the subject no more than a couple of feet apart, and try to minimize background noise. If your camera does have an external microphone input, pick up a lapel mic and mic extension cable. Sony’s ECM-CS10 is a nice one for web work.
• Steady camera: Use a tripod. Table top models are easily portable and sufficient as long as you have something to place it on. My favorite is the Joby Gorillapod because it can be wrapped around just about anything.
• Edit: Clean it up, add fade-in, fade-out, and quick white flash dissolves to cover edits.

What do I use for quick web videos? I carry these with me everywhere I go:

• Kodak Zi8 camera
• Gorillapod SLR-Zoom with Ballhead
• Sony ECM-DS70P

If you want advice or have anything to add, comment on this blog or send me an email message.

It’s wasn’t too long ago that I considered the best description of what we do as Internet marketing. In the past year I became aware of the term in-bound marketing. Traditional marketing consists of tactics related to reaching out to an audience, e.g. direct mail, advertising and email blasts. In-bound marketing, on the other hand, describes how your customers find you; mostly through search engines, social networks and word-of-mouth.

Most recently, I read about another perspective on marketing known asinteractive marketing, which describes what’s going on when customers and prospects interacting with your brand by:

• commenting on your blog
• participating in your forum
• watching a video on YouTube
• becoming a Fan on Facebook
• following you on Twitter
• taking a survey
• filling out a questionnaire
• voting in a poll
• posting an article or a product to digg or delicious
• and so much more

Whichever words or phrases we use to describe it, the mission of Davis Interactive is to help you:

• expose your website and content to the search engines
• provide as large a footprint on the universe of the Internet as possible
• leverage your existing content
• create new content
• create community among employees, vendors, customers, friends, etc.
• enable authentic company/customer interaction
• deliver great user experiences
• promote viral sharing,

If you have questions, comments, suggestions, or observations about this, please feel free to leave a comment to this blog entry, email on our contact page, or on Twitter or Facebook. If you’d prefer to leave a voicemail message, call our Google Voice line at 314-485-9633.