My local sandwich deli has now decided to go all "social media". They have a big sign on the counter saying "please like us on facebook" and when you buy a sandwich the staff ask you if you are on facebook.
Something about the whole approach just feels wrong in a way I can't quite put my finger on. It just feels like them asking me to do what is basically a meaningless mechanical chore.
I've been wracking my brains to think of how I would try and exploit social networking if I was running that business but so far I have come up empty.
Auto generate a coupon / QR code for everyone who likes you
Then if any of their friends uses that coupon code (by flashing their iPhone at the till) then that original person gets ten points on their loyalty card
I think frankly that a social graph is best employed using graphing friendly rewards - mostly that is the social dopamine thing in our brains, but affiliates also work
To start, exclusive coupons for their Facebook fans, posted every so often.
Afterward, perhaps a create-a-andwich contest. The winner is voted on by the community and the sandwich is available for a limited time. Successful sandwiches are added to the permanent menu.
Engagement for a sandwich place can be light. Just simple things that either directly benefit fans or don't require much from them.
I've been wracking my brains to think of how I would try and exploit social networking if I was running that business but so far I have come up empty.
IME, social networks are awesome for raising publicity if you can get your real fans to tell their friends about you, if whatever you do is something that will be genuinely interesting to those with common interests (which of course friends tend to have). It's a networking effect, a real-time version of good old word-of-mouth advertising, which has always been by far the best kind to have.
Weaker personal actions such as likes, follows, mailing list subscriptions and all that jazz might have some benefit, but I don't believe it's anything like as much. I'm thinking this is because these are personal expressions of interest, but in reality they probably have little if any networking power.
I lack faith that any sort of paid Facebook advertising will even have a positive RoI, based on a few small-scale experiments that I personally know about and on media reporting of larger organisations not doing any better. I suspect a lot of people treat these ads much as they would treat junk mail: just another form of spam to be auto-ignored, and probably subject to banner blindness by now.
Admittedly, I'm not a huge Facebook user, so maybe this is ignorance on my part, but...
If you're already in the store buying a sandwich, why are they even promoting the Facebook account? When I buy a car, the salesman doesn't ask me to go watch their commercial on TV afterwards.
Does the number of "likes" factor into how often their ads get served?
By liking them, you're advertising them. Your "like" factors into your friends getting an update saying "jlarocco likes the Super Sandwich Stall", and thinking "huh, I should go and try that place".
It's somewhat meaningless now, admittedly: I might not speak for everyone, but I've basically tuned out anyone "liking" anything on Facebook as white noise.
> They have a big sign on the counter saying "please like us on facebook" and when you buy a sandwich the staff ask you if you are on facebook.
Personally, I dislike this sort of approach. If I need to like something to get something in return (sometimes a coupon or a download), I usually un-like the thing immediately thereafter and try to scrub all traces of it from my wall.
Yes, this is going against the spirit of the exchange, but it's my FB account (in as much as I can say it is), not yours.
I have seen a gas station with no less than 9 big flags in front of it, saying that you get $X off when you check in at Facebook. I guess it might work because you read the name of a friend in the same sentence as the business. It might work even better with sandwiches, because that's something you can actually recommend. (Gas is all the same.)
My local sandwich deli has now decided to go all "social media". They have a big sign on the counter saying "please like us on facebook" and when you buy a sandwich the staff ask you if you are on facebook.
Something about the whole approach just feels wrong in a way I can't quite put my finger on. It just feels like them asking me to do what is basically a meaningless mechanical chore.
I've been wracking my brains to think of how I would try and exploit social networking if I was running that business but so far I have come up empty.