Don’t Let Your Competition Pull Your Social Media Plug (2 of 3)

The Informant: How your competition is driving your fans away from your sites.

Are you loosing Facebook Fans but your competition’s Fan page is growing by leaps and bounds?  It could be due to a marketing tactic called the “Informant”.  Even though I think this is a great strategy, it can really hurt your fan base in a few ways when a competitor is enforcing this tactic on you.  The strategy works and I am here to give the basic run down.

All fan pages are created by Individual Friend profiles and the only way word travels extremely fast in the realm of social media is the posting of “Likes” and “Comments”.  Once this happens, the friends of that fan page see their post and their like, notice your Fan page and might just check it out from there.   Great way to really spread the word about your location, but what if your competition was not only the posting Fan, but was the one commenting and driving traffic away from your Fan page.

Here is the trick, separate from your current friend page, create a new friend profile.  You can also have your marketing manager create a separate friend profile page just for their promotions.  Most promoters for bars and clubs have two separate Facebook profiles, one for personal and one for business.  This would be the best, so utilize their profile for this strategy if possible.

Once created, “Like” every single one of your competitors fan pages.  This will also help you keep track on what is happening and shaking with their events, deals, specials and guest services.   Now friend every single one of the fans on each of the competition’s sites.  Make sure you list in your friend message, “Noticed you are friend of “BLAH BLAH” bar, thought I would connect to make more friends!”  Not everyone will friend you back, but you will be surprised on how many will accept the kind gesture.

So the ground work has been set, you have become a fan of your competitions pages and you have sent friend requests to everyone on their lists.   Now what!?  This next step is what is called, “Getting in the trenches.”  Start interacting with all those new friends, on your page, your competitors fan page and any where to start building a presence.  Once you have built a foundation, you need to start using the following techniques in two different areas.  Here are the examples:

Example Posting on your “FAKE” profile page:

“Great night out last night…first headed out to @COMPETITIONSBAR and then ended the night at @YOURBAR , place was packed…..great night out!”

Example Posting on Competitive Bar Fan Page:

COMPETITION BAR Posting : Head on out tonight for our $1 beer special!  It’s Wednesday Specials night.

• Fan Comment 1: Sounds good!
• Fan Comment 2: Love Wed $1 beer night
• YOUR COMMENT: Will be there!!!  Might just have to hit @YOURBAR before but will be there!

These are great tactics!  When typing a posting in Facebook and mentioning either a friend or fan page, start with “@” and then type the name of the friend or fan page.  Example: @MyClubCrawler.  As you type the “@” and then the name of the fan page, it will bring up a selection for current pages and friends, select the correct page in which you intend to reference.  Once you post the comment, Facebook creates an automatic hyper link in your posting to the mentioned fan page and will also post your comment on both your fan page and your competition’s fan page.

Make sure to balance your postings on their sites.  You don’t want to over do it and give yourself away as a promoter for your establishment.  The idea is to drive awareness of your business location on your competition’s site, without drawing attention.  Majority of them just get excited about “comments” and “likes” to even look into your actual intensions.

The idea here is engagement and exposure.  Not only are you attacking the competition’s Facebook fan page, but you are trying to build conversation with other fans.  Once they comment and post, your comment will then display to all their fans.   This gains exposure of your location and fan page.

There are so many creative ways to gain fans to your pages, including advertisement on websites, in-house promotional material and more.  However, you should be aware of other scheming tactics , like the Informant, that are being used in the market.

If you would like to learn more on how to grow your business’s fan page, you can always contact us direct at info@crawlerpromotions.com.  We handle Facebook profile and twitter development and consultation.

Good luck fan hunting and make sure to watch out for others, as they might just be playing the informant game on you!

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