Red Robin has almost 100,000 Facebook fans and utilizes their opinions to learn about their business. Red Robin’s customer satisfaction vendor Empathica, distributed an online survey for a chance to win cash prizes. Those who took the survey were asked to recommend the survey to their Facebook profile page. 1,500 recommended the Red Robin survey, which the company estimates to be 225,000 positive impressions.

Andrew Datars, VP-product management at Empathica said, “We are trying to find those brand advocates and make it easy and rewarding to be promoters, to get out and advocate for the brand.”

Just don’t assume the only people on your Facebook page are your fans. Having the proper Facebook page up give legitimacy to curious potential customers who have heard about your brand. Ruby’s Facebook page get 1/3 the number of page views as the company’s main website.  Ruby’s is not alone, according to Vitrue’s.com restaurants make up 7% of brands in social media.

The Vitrue 25 Top Social Restaurants

1. Starbucks
2. Subway
3. McDonald’s
4. KFC
5. Krystal
6. Burger King
7. Wendy’s
8. Taco Bell
9. Dunkin’ Donuts
10. Chipotle
11. IHOP
12. Chili’s
13. Jack In The Box
14. Pizza Hut
15. Dairy Queen
16. Olive Garden
17. Chick-fil-A
18. Denny’s
19. Pinkberry
20. Boston Market
21. Dominos
22. White Castle
23. Applebee’s
24. In-N-Out Burger
25. Arby’s

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JD Rucker is a car blogger who has almost 100,000 followers on Twitter.

When asked about his social media strategy, Rucker said, “I see car dealers on Twitter every day. Many of them contact me and ask, ‘How did you get 37,000 people to follow you? I only have 14 followers and half of them are employees.’ Getting noticed on social networks takes activity and creativity.”

Activity is key to building trust with potential customers, especially when it comes to such an important purchase like a car.

93% of consumers do research online before buying a car.

Since General Motors declared bankruptcy, it has had to overcome many challenges and uses Facebook as a tool to help build relationships. GM is promoting their new 2011 Buick Regal by launching a web campaign called “Moment of Truth,” which has generated almost 17,000 fans.

67% of consumers say that recommendations and information from people online influences their purchasing decisions.

GM is encouraging fans to share opinions and stories through its “All-New Regal” tab on the Buick Facebook page. The campaign includes all reviews and consumer opinions—positive or negative.

Activity builds your credibility and creativity sets you apart from your competition. Static FBML and standardized tabs will make your page unique to your brand.

56% of consumers feel a stronger connection with a brand if they are able to interact with the company through social media.

On the “All-New Regal” tab, fans can also view and download photos from the gallery, upload their own “Seen on the Street” photos, participate in a Buick opinion poll and find out Buick event information.

33% of consumers visit blogs, communities or social networks to research products before buying.

GM uses their Facebook page to connect with other social media platforms. They expand their reach by integrating the other mediums into their Facebook page and by directing fans to their nearly 200 links that promote Youtube videos, news articles and other branded content.

45% of consumers say they pass along information they find on social media websites compared to only 36% who pass along information they received from company or news sites.

A Facebook page is a second website or point of entry for your brand but with the added bonus of an online community. To run a successful Facebook campaign just remember activity and creativity!—DANNI WYSOCKI

Realated links:

http://www.autodealerpeople.com/profiles/blogs/should-car-dealers-be-on

http://blog.easyautosales.com/car-dealers-engage-car-buyers-online/

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Whole Foods launched a Facebook campaign that collected more than 325,000 fans by expanding its “Green Mission” to Facebook and created the “This is my year to…” application. The grocery chain utilized the application as a platform to involve fans in their charitable efforts. In January 2010, Whole Foods kicked off the New Year by getting fans to pledge new lifestyle healthy goals. The application allowed users to update statuses displaying their pledge to “Know Where My Food Comes From,” “Choose Organic” or “Share My Plate.” Facebook users could vote for a corresponding non-profit organization that correlated with their pledge. The campaign and Facebook application lasted the month of January, and the top three charities decided by voters, won $10,000 from Whole Foods.

Facebook serves as a platform for grocery stores to  raise brand awareness, promote new products and attempt to drive traffic back to their websites. The site continues to evolve, with developers creating new Facebook apps to allow fans to do their grocery shopping on the social media website.

BigCommerce announced a new Facebook app called SocialShop. Grocery stores can use SocialShop (at a monthly fee) to add a “shop” link to their Facebook fan page and load their BigCommerce store’s URL for fans to upload. Then Facebook fans can browse the company’s products and share them with friends. The transaction itself happens on company’s eCommerce website.—DANNI WYSOCKI

Related links:

http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/24/bigcommerce-turns-to-facebook-to-socialize-online-storefronts/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29

http://blog.wholefoodsmarket.com/2009/12/this-is-my-year-to%E2%80%A6do-good-on-facebook/

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A couple of years ago, the answer would have been “it depends.”

When Facebook first introduced fan Pages back in 2007, they left much to be desired in terms of functionality and giving organizations the ability to truly engage with Facebook users. (For example, in the very early stages of Facebook Pages, administrators could not send “blast” style messages to fans in-boxes, a feature available in Facebook groups). Pages seemed to serve the role of a promotional platform, rather than an engagement tool.

Profile, Group or Page? The Definitions
In the past year or so, the developers at Facebook have made strides in adapting the functionality of profiles, groups and pages to serve user needs:

Profiles continue to be best for individuals who are looking to personally connect with others.
Groups are ideal for bottom-up social networks around common interests (fan clubs, volunteers, etc.)
Pages have now evolved into a powerful tool for organizations and companies who want to connect with supporters, but who also have very specific marketing goals that require further insight on users.

Facebook Insights: Learn More About Your Fans
The key tool that makes Facebook fan pages so valuable to companies doing social media marketing is Facebook Insights, which provides page administrators with information on user demographics and activity on Facebook. If you’re a marketing data geek, this is juicy stuff: the average age, gender, and location of your users. Additional information includes page views, photo views, and “interactions” such as comments and “likes.”

If the ROI question is big in your company, and you are looking to glean hard numbers from Facebook’s ability to connect with users, there is no better tool to use than Facebook Insights. And if you’re a marketer that regularly reports progress on your Facebook traffic and interaction to your company (and if not, you should!) Facebook makes this report-ready data available in a downloadable .csv or a Microsoft Excel (.xml) file. In my experience I’ve found this data extremely useful in reporting company progress with social media marketing efforts to higher-ups, through weekly updates on Facebook activity and fan counts.

Facebook developers continue to evolve and improve the effectiveness of Facebook Insights, and I am confident that as more organizations use this tool to aid in their social media marketing goals, we’ll see more improvements in the future. Recently, Facebook Insights added pageview information by individual post – a godsend for anyone with a content-rich Facebook page and want to assess the popularity and impact of posts by content, something administrators could only speculate about before.

Don’t Forget Goals!
A final word about reporting and Facebook Insights. As with all web metrics, Facebook Insights are only as valuable as the marketing goals and objectives you apply them to, so I urge you to really look at your overall marketing goals and strategy and see how these juicy stats can lend insight. If you haven’t established measurable goals for your social media marketing efforts, there’s no better time to start!

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