The Facebook Viral Promotion for Hardware stores, Lumber Yards, and Home Centers

A Viral promotion a way to expand your followers.. The goal of the promotion is to encourages your followers to recommend your page to their friends for a free gift.  Here are the steps to conduct this promotion.
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1. You want to make your wall look informative and appealing to newcomers.  
Review your current wall first few pages.  Make sure the post are informative and active.  You might want to find a few videos to post. Write a blog to post.  Find some good content.  What does your profile picture look like? Is all your company information complete?  Make sure you have at least 50-100 followers before you do this promotion. Look at your wall as a newcomer will see it.

2.  Create a landing page for your promotion.
The landing page should have a picture of your company, your main logo, and a call to action to press the "Like" button.

3. You need a great gift to give out that people will like and will motivate them to share your company page with their friends.

Here is  a product I found that would targets people who are smart phone savvy upscale home improvement customers.  Since It's a Mac App they are less price sensitive, quality over price.



The handy man app..

  It’s a home improvement planner designed to assist you in renovating your home by providing the information you need to complete a new project. Need to find out how much paint, flooring or trim you need? Enter in your room measurements and let Handy Man do the math.

http://wowzersoftware.com/Wowzer_Software/Home.html

Runs on the I touch, I pad, I phone and It cost: $2.95 each

4. Define the terms of the promotion:
Example: Fifty customers who share your facebook page with all their friends gets the app for free.  A drawing will be held on X date at the store. you can only win one app.  1 entry for each share a user makes to your page

5.  Plan your post for the promotion.

Link:
http://wowzersoftware.com/Wowzer_Software/Home.html

Text to go with the link:
Have you ever been working on a project only to realize you forgot something you needed for a project and you have to return back to the store to buy what you missed?  Well here is a neat app that solves that problem and I’m going to give 50 away in a drawing. All you have to do is suggesting your friends should "like" our page. Entering is easy. Just go to our www.facebook.com/yourpagename  page, click the blue "suggest to friends" link below my profile picture, highlight your friends and click the blue "send invitations" button. Don't forget to post the number of friends you suggested on our wall because that's how many entries you get in the contest.  Then On X date we are going to Draw 50 Winners in the store.

6. Managing the promotion:

1)    After each person post on you site.  Thank them as a comment to the post w a comment like:
-Your gona love this app.
-Good luck hope you win.
-Be sure to tell all your friends to enter the contest as well.
(Others will see your comments and enter the contest as well.)
2)    Build a list of each person’s name and the number of entries in a spreed sheet.
3)    Be sure to re mention the promotion every week leading up the final drawing.
4)    On the day of the contest.  Send a facebook message telling them their ticket numbers.  Basically you are allocating numbers based on the number of friends they forwarded.

Example:

Name         Number of Friends Shared      Start #                       End#

Missy H               125                                1                           125
John Morgan       325                                126                       451
Fred Fisher         225                                452                      676
ect...

7. To select the winner use a random number generator at random.org .
If someone wins twice re run the random number generator until you have 50 winners.  Post the winners online and send out a personal message to each one.  To send the gift you will need to get their email and go to the itunes.com and send a gift tome.  Be sure to enter their email into your email marketing system.

8. Post the winning ticket numbers on your facebook page.

Follow us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/househasson


House-Hasson' Social Media Group is focused on social media,.email, and local search marketing of hardware stores,  home centers, and lumber yards.

6 Mistakes Stores Make When Marketing with Facebook

1. Posting too many updates. A business page should update no more than twice per day
2. Not varying the content enough. Your status updates aren’t limited to links back to your company’s website, Good things to post:
1. Contest promotion: Ask a question that each reply gets a free coupon.
2. Expert Advice: Tip of the week.  Link to a site that has fresh content relavent to your business.
3. Viral Promotion:  Ask your fans to share a promotion with their freinds and post the number of people they shared it with.  They get a entry into the contest for each person they share the contest with.  Make sure you give something big and popular away.
4. Share your DIY Project: Ask your fans to share their DIY project with you for a free coupon.
5. Question of the day: Trivia question of the day.  First person to answer with the correct answer gets a coupon.
6. Super Fan Promotion:  The fan that post the most post in a week gets a free hat, tee shirt, or $20 gift card.
7. Post the winners: Always post the winners on your page of the winners of your promotion.
8. Funny Video: Post a funny video found on the Internet.  Try to make it related to your business.
9. Local News: Post about happenings around town.  Take pictures of the event and post them.  Enhances your local involvement.
10. New Products: Take a picture of new products and post them.  Bring your camera to the House Hasson Market and take a Picture of New items you are bringing back to your store.
3. Excessive self-promotion. Out of 10 posts, no more than two should have anything to do with your company (including products, sales and coupon codes). Marketing with Facebook does not mean that you only have to post updates related to your company. Although you want to stay in front of potential customers, joining in on conversations is a much better way to do it than sending out an unending barrage of self-serving status updates. Again, it makes you look like a spammer.
4. Having an unkempt page. Pay attention to the general aesthetics of your page – see things from a potential customer’s perspective: do you look like a legit business, or a spammer who doesn’t know enough about Facebook to keep the page clean? If you accidentally send out an update with a bad link, delete the post. If somebody said something negative, immediately get the comment off of the page. Also, make sure that the photos are clear and there aren’t extra links in the content. Keep the page professional, or risk a negative impact on your web PR campaign.
5. Not double-checking spelling and grammar: No matter what content you post, if your spelling is awful and you’re using “they’re” instead of “their,” people are going to notice. If you know your spelling is sub par, type things into Word first and copy and paste it into Facebook.
6. Creating the wrong facebook page: Setting up your company page as a personal "freind" page and not a business "fan" page.

Follow us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/househasson


House-Hasson' Social Media Group is focused on Social Media and Local Search marketing of Hardware Stores,  Home Centers and Lumber Yards.

Sources: NRHA, Facebook, Content Factory, Twitter