We avoided deep Facebook marketing topics during our official Holiday 2011 Run-Up. We hate Facebook entirely, but every time we try to do the research, analyze the data, and publish our findings, Facebook changes their interface again and voids all our work! It's rather frustrating.
Let's take a step back from our own work and look at what other experts are saying about using Facebook during the Holiday Season. We'd like to share some thoughts from Crystal Vilkaitis; she's the director of social medial for SnapRetail and she works with independent retailers teaching them how to use social media.
Crystal suggests to use Facebook for photo sharing on Facebook. As we already know, photos and videos attract a lot of attention in Facebook, and she agrees. In a recent blog post Crystal suggested a few strategies for Facebook photo sharing, and she said to make the photos fun, interactive even. Instead of just repeating her ideas we'll do our normal thing and give you direct actionable ideas for your own jewelry store.
How can we take advantage of Facebook photo sharing for the holiday season?
You could empty an entire tray of rings into a pile, take a photo, and post it to your FB Wall. Ask your Likes to guess how many rings are in the pile by leaving a comment on the photo. The person closest to the answer wins a free jar of jewelry cleaner, or a $50 gift card off a purchase of $350 or more.
Every person who comments will create exposure of that photo and of your FB page to their friends. Their friend, seeing an unusual photo of a pile of gold stuff, might be interested to go check it out.
Photo posts on Facebook shouldn't be limited to single items. Previously we've said that you should take photos of newly arrived jewelry items and share them on FB. However, that's getting boring, and everyone is doing it, so let's switch it up!
How many rings could you comfortably arrange in a single photo? How would you do it? You could lay a few down on their side, but that's probably boring. What about taking one of those finger ring displays and stacking a few on there? That might be interesting looking.
Here's one we like, and it adds a human element. Use your own hand, or one of your employees (Did you know there are professional hand models for hire?) and put as many rings as possible on every finger. This ads a human element and would be rather interesting.
You could show the rings in similar style groups, or gemstone color groupings, or all rings of the same price. In fact, you could show rings of the same price and include a caption in the photo saying "your choice $1240." Of course you could leave out the price and instead ask "Which would you wear?"
Crystal also had the suggestion to hide a Santa figurine in one of your store displays, take a picture and post it to your FB Wall. The first person to find Santa and tag themselves as Santa within the photo wins a prize. Her details were a little vague so here's how we thought through it for you. Put a small figuring of Santa in your window display or in-store display, then take a wide angle photo of the entire display. Since this is a contest you can make it difficult or easy. You can take a really wide angle photo which would make the Santa really small and tough to find, or you can take a closer photo for an easier hide-and-seek. Your Facebook Likes would have to look at the photo and tag Santa as themselves. In the wide angle photo there would be a lot of guessing, and in the closer photo you might only have 1 person engage you.
You could even make it an ongoing game through the season to position Santa around the store and take photos a few times a week.
Crystal calls this the "Where's Waldo: Christmas Edition."
Each winner should be awarded something that would generate foot traffic. The jewelry cleaner, money off a larger purchase, free jewelry cleaning, free watch battery... anything that gets them into the store.
And finally, just as we've suggested adding a holiday theme to your website, you should upload photos of your holiday decorated store. In fact you should post before and after photos, as well as the decorating process. Then manage those top 5 wall photos to show the inside and outside of your holiday decorated store.
By the way, this entire photo process is real simple with your Android or iPhone. You can set up the Facebook smartphone application to post to your business page; once you do that it's easy to take and upload photos.
Here's the original source for Crystal Vilkaitis' blog:
http://www.furnituretoday.com/blog/What_Works_Online/42467-Holiday_Marketing_Using_Social_Media.php
