1500 Americans from the age of 15 participated in the survey. 40% responded that they “like” brands to receive special offers and discounts. 36% “like” brands to get free offers and giveaways. 30% responded that they “like” brands to get updates on upcoming sales and other news. This makes it pretty obvious that Facebook pages give business a unique opportunity to build engagement with an already loyal customer base.

How can you business gain from this?

Coupons and customer codes

Take your existing offer, code it and put it on your page for everyone that “likes” you page to take part of.

Loyalty, lists and highlights

When you have a steady base of people that “likes” you brand and page, the tricky part can be to keep them loyal and prevent them from “dislike” your page as soon as they’ve received your offer. In order to build this loyalty, use the strength of Facebook’s platform.

Facebook Insight

Tool available for all page administrators. Gives you an insight of the demographics of you target group, what they like, how they interact with you content and behave when visiting your page. Use this information to tailor discounts and time-sensitive offers.

Facebook updates

Can be compared to the email lists and ca be used to tailor messages to specific parts of your target group. Choose your receivers by geographic, age and demographic factors. Perfect to use for gender specific offers, cultural events or national holidays.

Make sure you re-new your offers on a weekly basis and that only those who “like” your page receives them. Don’t stick with routines. Change you offer once per week, then after two weeks and then after two days. This way you encourage you fans to come and visit your page on a regular basis.

Front you most valuable visitors

Show you appreciation by giving special offers to those who really interacts with your brand and share you offers with others.

This are only a few tips and tricks on how to avoid only being the brand that customers “like” and instead being the brand that customer are loyal to and consider to be a true friend. And in the end, isn’t that what really matters?

When checked in at the testing center users need to challange thier followers to “GYT” and then they can release the GYT badge. Those who dared to announce their visit to the STD testing center can win backstage tickets for MTV’s 10 on Top.

What do you think about this campaign? Would you announce something like this on Foursquare?

Read more about it on MTV’s It’s Your (Sex) Life site

Solis once said: “Perhaps the reinvention of the publishing model starts with journalists, where people become the ambassadors for content and the flagship brand they represent.” What do you think?

Jesper Åström

A swedish SEO guy who’s recently been made partner with the up-and-coming agency Honesty. Jesper’s posts are often very centered around Facebook, but delivers true value every time. Topics range from tweaks and hacks to Facebook pages to new features search optimization. Killer site!

Three posts you couldn’t live without:

PsyBlog

A blog focused on the psychological mechanisms of individuals and groups. What makes us tick? How come we trust certain people? Who would stop to help (or listen)? These are questions addressed by PsyBlog, as relevant for social media actors as for everyone.

Conversation agent

A daily blog that focus on the big picture of social media marketing combined with handy tips concerning various online tools. Always relevant, always rewarding, written by expert brand strategist Valeria Maltoni.

Three posts you couldn’t live without:

Karin’s task will mainly be to continue to develop Pronto’s offer and pursue further expansion.

-Pronto is in an exciting phase right now. A healthy and well respected agency which faces the next step in its development. They have a strong offer and a fantastic potential. The agency was founded seven years ago with its roots in word-of-mouth and today, most marketers have realized the power of creating engagement with their audience. This is where Pronto forefronts. That, combined with the people who works there makes this a dream come true for me.

-At Prime, I’ve had the privilege to be a part of a tremendous success the recent years, this experience is of course something that I will take with me to Pronto.

Gabriel Sundqvist founded Pronto in 2003 and now leaves the role as CEO:

-We have grown a lot and will now aim to expand even more and I dont think that it is an entrepreneur that we need to lead the company further on. I will be as involved in Pronto as I was before, but with what i do best – consulting.

Furthermore, Gabriel says:

-In Karin, we have found the combination of experience in leadership and growth combined with an experience in developing offers to customers and being an greatly desired entrepreneour. And never the least, a passionate person who with a Pronto spririt, says Gabriel Sundqvist.

Karin har been at Prime for the last five years, prior to this she was the advertising director at mobile company 3 and takes office at Pronto the 6th of september.

It’s important for the organization to understand that testing and experimentation are keys to success.  This comes naturally to an organization whose culture embraces being proactive and open.  The reason why all businesses need to have a social media strategy is because it prevents any misunderstandings and emphasizes why social media is relevant to your business’ overall goals.

#1: Determine Your Goals and Objectives

Determine who owns social media.  Whether it’s marketing, PR, or communications is irrelevant.  In a perfect social media world for businesses, social media instills a collaborative approach and breaks down silos.

#2: Research, Research, and Research Some More

Rather than jumping into the social media pool with both feet, do the equivalent of the “splash-water-on-self” maneuver so you know what to expect.  Step two of creating an effective social media strategy is research.

• Develop a list of social media sites where you can potentially engage with people.  The list will most likely start off with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and a few select blogs and forums.
• Check out each of the social media sites on your list and do additional research to determine relevancy by searching for your brand name, your competitors, and your target keywords.  Listen to what’s out there, identify, and understand your target audience.

#3: Create a Digital Rolodex of Contacts and Content

When social media is done correctly, relationships will build naturally.  Begin making connections by following the conversation.  You can do this by subscribing to blogs in your industry and by making a list of influencers who are relevant to your business.

#4: Join the Conversation to Develop Relationships

Now it’s time to start making use of all the research you’ve done.  You can start joining the conversation by posting comments on blogs and forums, answering questions on Yahoo! and LinkedIn, joining groups related to your industry and joining Twitter chats.

#5: Strengthen Relationships

It’s easy to hide behind your avatar or profile picture, but face-to-face is incredibly powerful.  I think more people are now realizing how underrated the in-person interaction really is because of how far social media has come, allowing so many people to “hide.”

#6: Measure Results

You have goals and objectives, right?  That means you should be able to measure  your success.

Remember, what you measure will tie into the goals and objectives of your social media strategy.

#7: Analyze, Adapt, and Improve

Your social media strategy doesn’t end with measurement; it goes beyond that.  You need to analyze your social media campaigns, adapt any new findings into your current processes, and improve your efforts.

Conclusion

Social media strategies will vary for each business and for each industry.  However, one thing is clear: social media needs to have “all hands on deck” in order to be successfully integrated into your company’s goals and objectives.

In general, I view social media as a strategy, not a tactic. I consider the social media platforms like blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc., as tactics that tie into the social media strategy.  In other words, outline your social media strategy and support your strategy with tactics.  Without a carefully thought-out plan, you’ll eventually be overwhelmed with social media and even worse, get burnt out by it.  Use this guide as a stepping-stone to your social media success.  Cheers!

What are your thoughts about strategy versus tactics? Do you have any tips from your own experience developing a social media plan?  Please share your thoughts in the comments box below.

Big thanks to socialmediaexaminer.com.

In the middle of 2007 Facebook was born, the social network that was about to change our way to communicate with each other online as well as offline. Today the network is growing by 27 million unique visitors per month and more than 500 million users visit the site every month. More than 70% of all Facebook users engage in game applications.

Even if Facebook today is the dominating social network online, it only makes up to 30% of all unique visitors of social networks world wide. The other 70% of social networking traffic consists of new actors that just realized the benefits and possibilities within social gaming.

Smaller network seem to benefit of size. Users of more than one network tend to split his time between Facebook and other smaller networks. When Facebook is the big mall for everyday purchase, the smaller networks take the role of the local pub: a close knit community where knowledge and experience is open shared between users.

Implementing successful social games is not easy. New technology, new skills and an ongoing commitment are required to succeed. There are three fundamental parts of the strategy: the platform, the content and the distribution. If one of these parts is weak or missing, the investment will fail.

A mistake many new actors make is to copy the strategies from today’s Facebook applications not thinking about the benefit Facebook have in it’s size and massive success. Facebook can afford decisions that aren’t always the most successful ones for game applications and platforms.

Instead new actors should look at what Facebok did in it’s early days to make applications a fundamental part of the experience or use today’s smaller networks as examples. My Yearbook and Fubar are great examples of how social gaming can transmit engagement and monetize the potential of social games.

Read more at Mashable.com

“Despite the almost unlimited nature of what you can do on the web, 40 percent of U.S. online time is spent on just three activities – social networking, playing games and emailing leaving a whole lot of other sectors fighting for a declining share of the online pie,” said Nielsen analyst Dave Martin.

• Online games passed email in terms of how much time spent on each activity and is now the second most time spending activity among U.S. users taking 10% of theirs total internet time.

• One of the most used services appeared to be film and TV streaming that passed the 10 billion mark in June 2010.  The average American Internet user streamed for 3 hours and 15 minutes during June.

Emailing remains on top among mobile Internet activities

Social networking on mobile devices has doubled but email activities still dominates the time spent by mobile surfers. 41,6% of the total time spent on the mobile net is spent on email services.  The second most time spending mobile activity is surfing on portals (11,6%). Social networks getting closer in terms of time spending, taking 10,5% of the total amount of time spent on the mobile Internet.

“Although we see similar characteristics amongst pc and mobile Internet use, the way their activity is allocated is still pretty contrasting, added Martin. While convergence will continue, the unique characteristics of computers and mobiles, both in their features and when and where they are used mean that mobile Internet behavior mirroring its PC counterpart is still some way off.”

Read the full story on Nielsen’s Blog