How to Maximize Your Facebook Presence

By now, many businesses have flocked to Facebook with the promise of raised awareness, increased brand loyalty and fresh sales leads. But are you doing all you can to maximize your company’s presence on Facebook?

First, it’s important to know what kind of users you are dealing with.  Here are some key behaviors to keep in mind as you develop your campaign:

• People are visiting fan pages looking for something in return—it could be coupons or discounts, exclusive information, entertainment to share with friends or maybe even recognition.
• The majority of a consumer's Facebook experience is the wall, which is also visible in their top news feed. The 95% of Facebook users view their news feed only, according to a recent study.
• With the new interface changes that took place this Fall, there is much more “passive sharing,” meaning a news feed is more cluttered with app updates from Netflix, Spotify and other sites connected to Facebook through an automatic update system. These changes are constant at Facebook so make sure to stay on top of what’s going on and maximize the technology or at the very least don't fall behind it.

It is often challenging to get attention when the Facebook universe is so vast and deep, but fret not. Social media is all about innovation and the best tips for success are discovered simply based on trial and error. So try these suggestions out and adjust as needed based on your target audience’s response.

1. Make “Like Us” buttons prominent and easy to find. One of the best ways to promote your Facebook presence is to simply add the small “f” icon on your website, but it shouldn’t stop there. Add the icon to your employee’s email signatures, to your e-newlsetter, or blog or any other digital communications.

2. Consider custom tabs. There’s more to a Facebook page than just the Wall. Consider working with a marketing agency that has experience in creating customized Facebook tabs. These become an extension of your website and can be used for product promotions and current offerings. Your designer can even arrange for these tabs to be the first landing page a user sees when they visit your page.

3. Engage and entertain. Social media definitely has a proven business value, but ultimately, users are looking for something fun and/or useful. Create content that makes them want to share with their friends or keeps them coming back for more. Quizzes, giveaways, exclusive videos and insights into the inner workings of the company are good ways to pique the interests of your fans and keep them engaged.

What are you looking to get out of your social media participation? Once you’ve determined the value Facebook or any other site has to your business, consider using an experienced marketing agency to do the heavy lifting—content research and development, posting and monitoring. Often the largest obstacle in the way of any kind of social media success is time.

Erin Higgins
Director of Marketing Services
ehiggins@cmasolutions.com

CMA Completes Extensive Website Projects

CMA recently completed website projects for several new clients including Pasquito Builders, Windsor Dermatology, Interior Image and Super Chic.



For the Hopewell, New Jersey based Pasquito Builders CMA helped to increase the company’s regional visibility and strengthen its new project development efforts through the creation of its new website: www.PasquitoBuilders.com. The website features a comprehensive services section, testimonial section, newsroom and gallery of recent projects.



For the 25 year old medical dermatology practice in East Windsor, New Jersey, Windsor Dermatology, CMA determined through its proprietary Marketecture™ process that one of the best ways to achieve greater regional visibility and an expanded patient base would be with a newly-designed website: www.WindsorDermatology.com. CMA expanded and streamlined the content, created and enhanced graphic design, and added Flash photos to the homepage. In addition, CMA provided a completely new brand campaign including logos, brochures, advertising, public relations and social media.



Serving New Jersey, the greater Philadelphia and metropolitan New York areas, Interior Image provides custom interior design/build solutions. CMA designed their website www.YourInteriorImage.com to include website copy with keywords to grab target audience attention and enhance search engine optimization (SEO), news and testimonials sections, a photo gallery with navigation as well as a featured projects section on the homepage.



Sailing from Barnegat Light Yacht Basin, Barnegat Light, New Jersey, the Super Chic is a 56 foot charter boat providing participants with a memorable fishing experience. CMA created a new website for Super Chic: www.SuperChicCharters.com, which features information on dates and fees for various trip opportunities, a monthly “When to Fish Chart,” allowing customers to view the best times during the season to book their trips, and trip details written by the ship’s captain.

Let CMA utilize our cutting edge digital communications to enhance the visibility of your business in the marketplace.

Erin Higgins
Director of Marketing Services
ehiggins@cmasolutions.com

Marketing Throwdown: Print vs. Digital Newsletters

Many business owners might agree with me that an external newsletter is an effective marketing tool for driving deeper brand recognition and awareness of a company’s expertise, verve for customer care and knowledge of industry trends.

However, if your company produces a printed newsletter, there may currently be an internal debate about switching to an electronic alternative. Digital communication is hands-down the timelier format for news, updates and announcements. It’s about access, speed and convenience. But it’s also about brevity—concise, cut-to-the-chase content—and the savings on printing and postage are obvious.

On the other hand, a printed newsletter provides opportunities for insight and depth—trend analysis, idea pieces and thought leader articles, which are great tools for building brand admiration and credibility. Your company’s e-newsletter hits your recipient’s in-box accompanied by a jumble of spam, other commercial email and inter-office exchanges—a volatile communications environment ruled by a trigger-happy Delete key. What’s more, due to the inherent immediacy of the medium, digital communications do not age well. A high-quality printed piece may sit on a person’s desk to be read or referred to over time, serving as a constant ambassador for your business.

An e-newsletter has true functional advantages over print. The digital ability to instantly link to your company’s website, as well as related information sites or articles of interest can enrich the reader’s experience and regard for your company and its communications.

What’s important to ask yourself is, why not both? A monthly or bi-monthly e-newsletter covering news, promotional programs or new products and services can dovetail effectively with a quarterly printed publication focused on trend analysis and think pieces which position your company as an industry expert by mining and sharing your company’s knowledge and know-how.

Whether it be print or electronic, give CMA a call and we can develop communications that elevate your company’s brand, products and services and position your business as an authority figure throughout your targeted market, ultimately helping to create new opportunities.

Jeffrey Barnhart
President and CEO
jbarnhart@cmasolutions.com

CMA Partners with HomeFront to Support Local Families in Need

CMA recently practiced what we preached in the previous blog post "Doing good is good for business" and helped make Thanksgiving a little more special for families in need while we were at it.

The CMA staff donated 10 baskets of non-perishable food to HomeFront as part of our Thanksgiving food drive. HomeFront, a non-profit organization located in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, provides emergency shelter and support services to help local homeless families get back on their feet. Each year, the organization strives to meet its goal of providing Thanksgiving meals to over 1,800 homeless families in the area.

For over a month, CMA employees collected and donated canned goods and other non-perishable items for the drive. This is CMA’s fourth year participating in HomeFront’s Thanksgiving food drive having provided 37 baskets to the organization to date.

Pictured above are CMA PR Manager, Kaitlin Friedmann (left) and Client Services Manager, Erin Higgins (right) at the HomeFront drop-off site on Friday afternoon.

Social Networking: Becoming one of “them”

Like many PR professionals, I have made a conscious effort in recent years to get on board with social networking. How else can I effectively manage a client’s social media campaign without being one of “them,” the increasing community that communicates largely via 140-character sentences?

I started out on MySpace a couple years ago, but gravitated more toward Facebook and LinkedIn after realizing their more professional, grown-up format. Twitter has the potential to reach a wide audience, as we saw with recent news events as the Presidential Inauguration and the struggle of young Iranian protestors, but requires a lot of up-keep and the right message to gain followers.

Along with these core sites, I participate in other social media by blogging and frequenting several news and political blogs, PR professional blogs and message boards, along with the all-important entertainment scoop sites, providing an occasional comment when I feel I just can’t keep my opinion to myself.

What I have found is that, for the most part, regarding Facebook and Twitter, I pay real attention to a core 20% of my “friends.” For example, a few of my friends are in event planning and public relations. They have, by far, the most interesting “status updates” and “Tweets” because they constantly recommend and mention the best restaurants, hotels and other useful services they come in contact with. I have learned about great New York hot spots, which resorts have the most comfortable beds and websites where I can check out videos of tourist attractions before I visit.

Our clients, current and potential, can gain from this perspective. Many companies want to jump on the social media marketing bandwagon, and I don’t blame them. It’s all anyone is talking about if they are not talking about the downturned economy. But so far, there are specific niches that can use social media as an effective way to raise awareness and drive sales.

It seems obvious, but most of the time, market research may be in order before social media marketing is implemented—the question “is your audience online?” must have a definite answer.

A well-known social media expert said at a seminar I attended recently that the press release will be dead within three years. While that remains to be seen, it’s certainly clear that one-way marketing needs to make room for emerging two-way, user-generated content that has a strong voice and purpose.

Kaitlin Friedmann
Public Relations Manager
kfriedmann@cmasolutions.com

A Time and A Place for Wild and Crazy PR

A Time and A Place for Wild and Crazy PR

Everyone knows PR is all about awareness. Publicity stunts and in-your-face strategies are effective for the right time, place and client and creating news is often essential to spreading an important message. So if all of that is indeed true, you might ask, who exactly are they right for?

If a client comes to CMA and asks us to stage a publicity stunt, our strategists analyze the situation first to see if this sometimes costly awareness tool is worth risking the company or organization’s credibility. After all, the best publicity stunts are those that have a clever, clear message and a detailed plan to avoid backfire.

In fact, one of my favorite recent publicity stunts was the event to cap off Snickers’ “Bar Hunger” campaign, mostly because of its simplicity in expressing its message. Movie star David Arquette lived two days in a Plexiglas box atop the Madison Square Garden marquee to raise awareness for hunger in America. By literally putting himself on display, Arquette and the publicity team provided the media with a unique story that included a good message—without embarrassing the organization or the celebrity.

But the truth is, effective PR is not really about wild and crazy ideas. It’s about giving the media something to work with that might be valuable to their community. In the case of the Snickers campaign, the extremity of the stunt matched the urgency of the message. Everyone walking by could be a potential donor so widespread voyeurism and shock-value proved effective.

However, more specific audiences need more than a stunt to sell them on your products and services, especially if you sell business-to-business. Perhaps holding an event at a well-attended trade show is the key to launching a new product to your target audience. Hire a respected speaker that is appropriate for your industry and provide educational value for your audience. Often this type of awareness helps a company maintain and build credibility without being viewed as a rampant risk-taker and the media takes notice just the same.

Kaitlin Friedmann
Public Relations Manager
kfriedmann@cmasolutions.com