Earlier this week we posted an overview of some of the many ways that companies and organizations are using holiday- and seasonal-themes to engage their fans on Facebook. Today, we're profiling Target's strategic Facebook efforts in-depth.

The social media team at Target does a creative job leveraging holidays and contests as part of their web marketing strategy. Target's recent incorporation of Halloween into its social media plans is inspiring. Their efforts will give you actionable ideas on what works when it comes to building and strengthening new, existing, and potential customer relationships using social media. Here's a detailed look at Target's Halloween marketing campaign on Facebook.

Target

Target made the upcoming holiday prominent on their Facebook page in multiple ways, including on-topic status posts, a custom cover photo, and a holiday-themed interactive contest.

Holiday-inspired Cover Photo

Target uses playful photography to showcase their Halloween costumes and other products prominently in their Facebook cover photo. Their custom tab graphics also use Halloween-inspired graphics. All of the artwork and photographs compliment branding and marketing efforts done in Target stores, print ads and circulars, and even on television commercials and web spots.

Promotional contests

In addition to customizing their cover photo, Target is engaging their Facebook fan base through an interactive Halloween promotion called "Trick or Treat." The promotion gives customers a chance to win a $20 GiftCard or the grand prize of $250 GiftCard.


Users are given two chances to win in the promotion. The first entry is "free," and the price of a second entry is where Target leverages the power of their fans' Facebook networks. Users can only earn a second entry by agreeing to help Target promote this contest. Specifically, the entry is earned by allowing Target to post about the contest to your timeline.

Knowing that not everyone would want their friends to know they've entered the contest, Target has made this notification optional. Giving users the power to decide what they share makes this a thoughtfully executed marketing technique. Because the application doesn't force users to post a notice of participation to their timelines, Target keeps users trust because they're not forcing them to do anything they don't want to do in terms of viral promotion. The contest entry ends with a playful and encouraging nudge to come back and try again tomorrow.




All in all, this is a fun and likely effective social media marketing promotion for a combination reasons:

1. It is plays on a fun holiday theme that already might be on the minds of their fans.
2. It offers their fans an incentive to visit their page.
3. It is easy for their fans to participate.
4. It encourages their fans to promote Target and their contest to their friends.
5. It reminds their fans to come back to their Facebook page and try again.

More and more companies are leveraging custom tabs to engage with their Facebook fans. Incorporating holidays—through seasonally-appropriate themed contests and artwork—is a creative social media marketing strategy for reaching customers on Facebook. Here is an illustrated overview of a few recent noteworthy ways that we've seen companies spice up their Facebook pages and engage with fans:

LinkedIn can be a powerful social marketing tool when used strategically.

Unlike other popular social media websites, LinkedIn is geared toward professionals and creating networking opportunities, such as business connections, jobs searches and recruitment, and networking.

A blogging process should be documented and pre-planned to ensure blogging success. This is especially true for small businesses who may not have a marketing consultant handling their blogging or a full-time staff person managing this task.

What is blogging success? Success from blogging might include increased search engine rank, increased leads/visitors from blog posts, and/or increased authority on a subject in your industry. Read more about why we think why blogging is important for small businesses.

Why should the blogging strategy be documented? A marketing plan for blogging without documentation is really only a good intention. Without clear direction and specifics, there is no set guidelines and goals, not to mention documentation for contributors about best practices and how entries should be written to match your small business's brand.

Let's simplify. You need to write it down.

It may sound daunting, but documenting your blogging strategy is well worth the effort. Without your strategy set-down in writing, blogging on a regular basis may get pushed back because of other client deadlines or business priorities.

Here are some questions to get you thinking about what to include in your blogging strategy document:

• How often will posts be published? (e.g. once/week, once/day, all weekdays, once/month) The more often you can publish relevant and useful content, the better, but be sure to set realistic goals.
• Who will author the blog posts? Are different team members responsible for different topics? Who posts on which days? What's your schedule?
• What steps does the approval process include? Do topics need to be approved or just draft posts? Who gives approval? Who actually publishes?
• What is your checklist for each post? See our checklist as an example.
• What follow-up will be done on your small business's social media channels to promote blog posts? Can you integrate this distribution via HootSuite or another program or do you plan to customize promotion of your blog posts on social media channels? Who is responsible for this curation?

Planned blogging: A case study

TBH Creative's team has been working with a company to ramp up their blogging activities as part of their online marketing strategy. The company writes their blog posts internally. They have a team of four, and each member is responsible to write once/week/month. For the first half of 2012, they met for one hour and pre-planned topics. All topics were written and published according to the plan and schedule. As a result, the company's search engine ranks for several keywords increased with their competition; they also received high results for blog posts as landing page with long reporting of time spent.

During quarter three, they lost track of planning and did not meet to pre-plan topics and set a schedule. As a result, other tasks gained priority and only two posts were published the first month, none for the next two months, four the following. They had good intentions. They had topics and events to talk about in blog posts. They simply did not have a schedule in place or a few ideas generated ahead of time. According to their website analytic data during this period, new visitors numbers fell as did their search engine rank for several targeted keywords.

During quarter four, TBH Creative will be assisting the company to formalize their blog planning to get their marketing plan delivering success stories again. A little bit of planning can go a long way.

Note: The above mentioned client has seen great success from their blogging. Blog posts continue to rank in the top ten landing pages each quarter and their search engine ranking for related keywords used in blog posts are all page one without other SEO measures or paid advertising in place.

Tip: Offer your staff incentives for the most popular blog post each period. This encourages creativity in the content as well as sticking to a schedule.

Smart businesses are making mobile a crucial part of their web marketing strategy.

According to a recent Pew Research Center study, the year 2015 is when mobile will overtake desktop. This means businesses and organizations have about three years (or less depending on their industry and audience) to get their mobile strategy together—or, get left behind by their competition.

We have recently been writing about business blogging. We provided blogging guidelines and an explanation for why blogging is important in our past posts. Today, we're sharing our checklist for bloggers to get you started. Share a copy with each team member as a resource to review or use it while copy editing to refine posts.

TBH Creative's Blogging Checklist

Note: Use the list as a starting point. Tweak and adjust these rules as best to fit for your business blogging purposes.

❏   The post's title contains at least one keyword or phrase.
❏   The post's title is interesting and something I would click in search results.
❏   The post's body copy includes four or more paragraphs; minimum of 250 words.
❏   All links work.
❏   The post includes at least three links.
❏   All outbound links open in a new window.
❏   Subtitles are formatted using a headline tag.
❏   The post incorporates at least one image/graphic/logo.
❏   Images align and wrap properly with text.
❏   Images include a caption or credit where necessary.
❏   Extra spaces are removed.
❏   Post body copy has been proofread, fact-checked, and copy edited.
❏   Nothing offensive or negative towards others is included in the body copy or graphics.
❏   The blog body copy focuses on one topic and includes one or two primary keywords/phrases.
❏   The blog body copy includes a Call to Action (CTA) with link to related services or contact info.
❏   The CTA uses appropriate markup tags.
❏   All unnecessary code accidentally copied from Word is removed.
❏   The blog post looks good in preview mode.
❏   The blog body copy is written so that I would want to read my post.
❏   The blog body copy is written so that I would want to comment on my post.
❏   The blog post is my own and doesn't include content copied from another source.

2012 was a summer for firsts. Ebooks outsold hardcovers for the first time, and TBH Creative took on its first official ebook project in August when we helped a California-based client publish a special collection of fifty ebooks.

As tablets and e-reader devices continue to grow in popularity, most ebook formats offer a convenient and portable content distribution option.