Our Social Media Strategies are MSLK-Tested, Client-Approved


At MSLK, we’re constantly working to improve our own social media presence while helping you improve yours. We’re big fans of practicing what we preach, and social media is no exception. We want to make sure that whenever we recommend something, that we have thoroughly researched it, tried it out ourselves and have seen results. Read more to learn about the ways we’ve applied the social media strategies that we’ve been talking about and how they’ve affected our own social media stats.

SWEEPSTAKES & CONTESTS
Last year we wrote about the benefits of running a Facebook contest as well as our own success with Facebook contests. They’re a great way to give your Facebook page a jolt of activity. Our “Cheers! Gift Tag Giveaway” not only increased our fan activity by about 400% for the month of December, but because people were required to like the page in order to enter, we saw our biggest spike in “likes” that we’ve ever had (a 3% increase in our entire fanbase in one day)! In addition to that we saw a 13.2% increase in our overall fan base.

SOCIAL MEDIA CALENDAR
Contests and sweepstakes are are a great way to kickstart things, but you have to have a plan to keep that momentum up. Very recently, we wrote about the importance of always having a social media calendar and taking short steps with a long view. Of course, we wouldn’t have stressed the importance of it if we hadn’t already tried it out ourselves. MSLK has its own calendar and posting guidelines for what we put on our Facebook page and when. We also make sure that when we post something on Facebook, that we ask a question to encourage fan interaction! Since implementing this plan, we’ve seen a steady 400% increase in our fan activity! We’ve also seen a very steady increase in the frequency of our likes.

FAN GATES
Last month, we talked about how fan gates have become a recent trend in Facebook fan pages. A fan gate is a way of providing exclusive content to fans of your Facebook page. This is a great way to provide a clear call to action and entice people to like your page and increase your fan base. We tried it out for ourselves and are seeing more regular likes on our Facebook page. Our landing page has also gained 1/10th of the amount of views of our Facebook wall in a very short amount of time.

SOCIAL PLUGINS
On top of all of these great things one can do on their Facebook page, we have also talked about the importance of social plug-ins on external sites, like on a blog or e-commerce website. This year we launched a brand new version of our blog that includes just that. Now people can like or tweet about our blog posts with great ease, and we can see how many people are interacting with our blog and sharing it with others. Our like box encourages people to visit our Facebook page or even like it directly from our blog. At least 10% of our likes in 2011 have been through our like box.

Check out these stats taken from our Facebook insights, tracking our fan activity. Each chart contains markers that allows you to see how a specific social media strategy has affected our stats.

Now you know that when we recommend something, it’s not just because we feel like it. We actually take the time to make sure that the things we do are effective. Try them out and see what kind of positive effect they have on your social media plan. If you’re looking for more great advice on how to make social media an effective part of your marketing campaign, check out our latest webinar here!