Corporate Sponsored Videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcOiw-PnilY

This video was produced by the St. Louis Athletica corporate sponsors in order to create awareness and excitement for their women's soccer team.  With soccer not being a very popular sport in America, women's soccer especially, I can see why the St. Louis Athletica may have felt the need to produce this video.  The video also focuses on gold medalist goal keeper Hope Solo.

As for the video working, I'm not so sure.  Women's soccer is a tough sport to get a lot of people's attention towards.  I do not think this video has accomplished its goal considering it is almost three years old and has only a little over 300 views.

http://www.youtube.com/user/adidasbasketball?v=fG0QtdHw1Og

During the playoffs last year, the injury prone season for Derrick Rose came to a tough ending as he tore his ACL and could not return.  Adidas, Rose's sneaker sponsor, has teamed up with the former MVP and have created a series of video's known as "the return".  I think this has been a brilliant idea for Adidas from a marketing perspective.  Why wouldn't they follow their highest paid basketball star around during his amazingly fast return from surgery done to his knee and document his success?  I do think producing this video will only help Adidas.  In theory, the more fans Derrick Rose has, the more fans Adidas has as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DnKOc6FISU

This hilarious video sponsored by Pepsi MAX features the NBA's reigning rookie of the year disguised as an old man playing a pick up game against some local players.  As for me, I thought the video was so entertaining that I would go out and buy a Pepsi MAX just because.  However, this might not be the case for everyone who views the video.  Most people who I show this video to never even realize it's a Pepsi MAX commercial at all.  The only places you even vaguely see Pepsi MAX is on the bottles of the spectators watching the game.  Despite all 15 million views and counting, I do not think that these views are necessarily turning into dollars for Pepsi MAX.

3 NH Facebook buisness pages

New Hampshire Lottery:

With over 11,000 likes and close to 200 people talking about it, I can assume that New Hampshire Lottery has been doing a good job keeping up with their Facebook business page.  Looking through their timeline, I noticed that they post daily and try to insight some humor.  For instance, one of the first pictures I saw was a dog dressed up as a cheer leader and the post read, "Who has their Halloween costume all picked out?  Any good ones?"  That's just funny.  It's also fun way for them to engage with subscribers without just always talking about the lottery.  They also shared a story about an elderly couple who won the lottery.

There is nothing that really stands out to me that I do not like about this page.  What impressed me the most though was in their description (the first thing I read) it states, "We take pride in being the first and one of the most successful lotteries in the country with over $1.5 billion going towards education."

New Hampshire Fisher Cats:

The New Hampshire Fisher Cats Facebook page does a good job a spreading out posts so they do not fill up timelines and possibly annoy subscribers.  I also like how they routinely have competitions to keep fans engaged.  There probably isn't a better way to keep people interested than to offer them prizes.

I was impressed with how much they are trying to keep the fans involved and encouraging engagement.  One thing I don't like is that there was hardly anything about baseball or the team itself.  I know that minor league teams focus more on keeping a family friendly enviroment, but I would be interested in players getting traded or even moving up to the majors.

Southern New Hampshire University:

Last but not least, the SNHU Facebook page has over 7,000 likes.  My opinion, they should have more.  Considering all the commercials that are on television across the nation and being Fast Company's #1 most innovative school, I would think that they would have more of a following on Facebook.  I think they should at least mention to viewers at home to visit their Facebook page, it would only help.

One thing I like though is the variety of different things posted.  I read an article of a friend of mine on the soccer team that interested me and I wouldn't have seen anywhere else.  I do think they should post more often though.  With the school being as big as it is now, SNHU should be posting daily at least.

How to get more users to "like" your Facebook page

In order to promote a business's Facebook page, one must first create a goal for their page.  They could wish to improve sales, web trafficking, customer feedback, or just getting more users to "like" their page.  In order to get people to "like" a companies Facebook page at first, a company must first take advantage of any established presence they already have, even if it's only an email account or any other advertisement they have been using and direct their target audience towards their Facebook page.  They must also take advantage of Facebook's free tools, such as asking survey question.  It is also essential that the company keeps their page relevant and attracts people's attention with promotions that could include cool prizes.  Another tactic is to invest in cheap Facebook advertisements in an attempt to grab more users' attention. 

Once the company has engaged a good amount of users to "like" their page, they must do what they can to maintain these users.  One way a company can do this is with interesting status updates.  Some status updates that grab people's attention are "Click Like if you agree", "This is a MUST read/watch", "Any suggestions", or everyone's favorite "Get $ off!"  In order for a company to make sure that their posts are being seen by the correct target audiences, they must do a little experimenting with posting at different times in order to see which time they are getting the most engagement out of their target audience.  Another form of customer engagement that seems to work greatly with Facebook users are contests.  By creating contests, a company will attract more attention and if successful, could bring even more Facebook users along the next time around.

Sometimes however, gaining "likes" on Facebook does not always translate into a ROI.  The users following a companies page aren't always necessarily "fans" of your page.  According to Mashable.com, the company Grey Poupon is considering to be the most exclusive page on Facebook.  They are considering to have users go through a test to see if they would be a fit for their social media community.  If a Facebook user does not take the test, Grey Poupon will delete them as a fan.  For more information about Grey Poupon go to http://mashable.com/2012/09/13/grey-poupon-facebook-marketing-campaign/