Stakeholder Engagement is an important process for any operational and redevelopment shopping centre. It’s the plan we put together to provide a roadmap for the way in which we will communicate with stakeholders in order to understand their key issues and spread our key messages.
Throughout the process we take into consideration the community dynamics, describe our approach and talk about the communication tools and techniques which will deliver the plan successfully. Today’s blog post talks about how Shopping Centre Marketing Managers and their teams can leverage Linkedin to assist in the success of their Stakeholder Engagement Plan.
We’re going to look at three different features of the social networking site which you can use:
1. Groups
2. Company Linkedin Pages
3. Connecting and Status Updates
Marketing Managers, Centre Managers, Leasing Executives and Development Managers will all gain insight into a community simply by joining local groups, including chamber of commerce and other business networking groups. This is an opportunity to connect with local businesses who could potentially be impacted by redevelopment. Group members might provide valuable information and connect you to future prospects for leasing, or you might even connect with other local businesses who are interested in cross promotional opportunities at your operational centre. Local not-for-profit community groups might also be active on Linkedin and the shopping centre can participate in relevant discussions or provide opportunities to fundraise in Centre.
To locate a group in your community try searching a suburb, under Groups in the search bar.
Mother’s Day is just around the corner, which means your fan’s Facebook newsfeed is about to be bombarded by every retailer and shopping centre trying to sell their wares. So how can you remind your fans about Mother’s Day and encourage them to shop with you over this key retail period, without looking desperate? I’ve got three ideas to get the ball rolling for your Facebook page and they all involve tugging on your Facebook fan’s heart strings.
1. Share a quote and image
I don’t mean any quote or image just for the sake of a few likes or shares, you want to remind people about an emotional connection between your business and their Mum. For example, if I owned a Garden Shop I might remind my fans about a time when they were taught how to garden with their Mum or their shared interest in gardening. This type of update is simple to create and has the following objectives in mind:
Over the last few weeks I’ve been watching some great ideas unfold on 4 shopping centre Facebook pages, today I’d like to share these with you. I hope they spark some imagination in your social media and online marketing too. Here we go…
Stockland Shellharbour are running a competition called ‘Win What they’re Wearing!’
Currently undergoing redevelopment, the Centre’s new increased Fashion offer is the focus for this competition. The Centre is asking customers to experience the new Fashion offer by visiting their display of 5 mannequins, showcasing 5 different stores each week for 4 weeks. Customers scan the QR Code on the outfit of their choice (using their smart phone) and enter the competition for their chance to win. The prize is awarded as a $250 Stockland Gift Card, allowing customers to shop for their favourite outfit.
What’s great about this competition:
Two of the most popular apps on my iPhone include the Facebook and Facebook Pages App, mainly because of my field of work. However, I believe that any small business owner, retailer or shopping centre marketing manager who looks after a Facebook page will find these apps useful, so today I’m going to share some of my favourite features!
*Please note this blog post is based on the Apple iPhone Applications.
What is the Facebook app? It’s the iPhone application that you can use to access everything associated with your personal Facebook account.
Create a Group If you are part of any Facebook groups you will find this feature handy if you want to set up your own group for a specific interest. You can create a group in seconds from your iPhone, select your friends as members and start posting status updates. Unfortunately you can’t create documents yet but it’s still very easy to get the ball rolling and fast!
Terms and Policies I love this one! If you click on this option you will find all of Facebook’s policies in one place. Quite often when I am seeing clients they will ask me about a campaign that they would like to run on their Facebook page so I will quickly refer to sections from the Promotions or Pages terms of service. It’s the perfect way to make sure you are always complying with the most up to date policies from Facebook.
Report a Problem You can now report a problem from your mobile too which great. This includes sending feedback to Facebook about the application and reporting issues with particular pages of Facebook which you visit on the Facebook app. There is even a section which will tell you how to report abuse, spam or violations against Facebook Policy.
What is the Facebook Pages Manager App? It’s Facebook’s answer to managing your Facebook business page on the run from the convenience of your mobile device.
Scheduling Posts Lots of social media experts don’t like scheduling posts but I am a huge believer in scheduling provided you make time to respond to those scheduled posts. I love having the ability to schedule content when I find it because often you might forget about it later on, plus it really annoys me when I see several posts from the same business all in a matter of minutes one after the other. From the iPhone app you can schedule a text only status update if you think of something while you are out and about. I usually schedule this and make a diary note to check Facebook shortly after the post is scheduled to appear.
Deleting scheduled posts This is one of the best features on the Pages App by far! If you are scheduling posts, then you need to be able to delete them at a moments notice and thank goodness this app allows you to do it. This is perfect when situations change quickly. Here’s how you do it:
Responding to messages If you have messages enabled on your page then having the ability to receive the message on your mobile and respond straight away means you are keeping on top of fan requests and providing great customer service if that fan also happens to be a client. I really like the convenience of this feature.
Insights Granted the Insights that you have access to on your mobile phone are no where near as in depth as those available on your computer, but having the ability to quickly see total likes, People Talking about this and weekly reach will still give you an idea of how your page is performing.
Now it’s over to you: What are your favourite features on the Facebook app and the Facebook Pages Manager App? Are there more features that you would like to see introduced?
Author: Celina Johnson
What’s the first thing you normally do when you start searching for a business or a particular type of business?
Do you ‘Google it?’ Of course you do!
What happens when you Google a particular business and their website doesn’t come up on the first page? What do you look for next?
I use Facebook pages (yes they show up in Google search results), Google Places/Google + and free online directories as a good source of information. I very rarely pick up a phone book or visit the directory’s website to search for a business. Is it just me?
It never ceases to amaze me that many small businesses, retailers and even smaller sub-regional sized shopping centres don’t take advantage of these sites where they can list their business for free and over time their listing will be indexed by Google. I think it’s really important that if you decide (for whatever reason, maybe budget constraints) not to have a website that you at least rank in Google, even if it is only with a free online listing. People still need to be able to contact you or find out something about your business. If you are not sure where to begin, here’s some tips to get you started!
1. Register your business with Google Places or Create a Google + Page, you can do this by visiting www.google.com/placesforbusiness 
2. Register your business with free online listings like Hot Frog, Start Local, Yelp and dlook. Some of these companies also offer other ways to market your business.
3. Create a Facebook page and start posting regular content. Make sure you claim your Facebook URL too, this will help Google find your page more easily.
Even if you have a website already all of these things will help Google locate your site and improve your SEO.
1. Add your key words throughout your copy
2. Update your website with new content regularly but before you start a blog you should consider how much time you have to devote to creating regular content and what you will talk about
3. If you operate the back end of your website, consider SEO plugins. If you use WordPress you will be familiar with these plug ins or you can ask your website designer to help you out
4. Make sure that your website can be found by search engines, this is part of the set up process with your web designer but always make sure you ask the question
Now it’s over to you: If you have already taken these steps, I’d be interested to hear how long it took before you started seeing some results. I’m already seeing results for my own website and my clients just by taking a few of these easy steps. If you don’t have time to set up your Facebook page or Google+ page we provide this service for our clients regularly so feel free to contact us.
Author: Celina Johnson
Each fortnight when I write a blog post, the information that I provide to you is usually aimed at assisting you with social media marketing for your business but I’m often asked to help people with their personal profiles too. Today I thought I’d share one of the most common questions I’m asked by friends and family, “How can I limit the status updates that I post so that they are only seen by a select group of Facebook Friends?” The answer is: By creating and using your Facebook Friends Lists. Friends Lists are not only handy for privacy reasons but they are also useful if you want to quickly find out what a group of your friends (or family) have been up to.
Some Friend Lists are automatically created by Facebook, these include:
- Close Friends
- Acquaintances,
- Family
- Restricted
- Work
You can add friends to a Friends List in a couple of ways:
First locate your Friends List by click on the menu item down the left hand side that says ‘Friends’
Next click on the Friends List you would like to update, it should look similar to this (this example is my work):
If people work at the same place as you and they have this listed in their personal profile, chances are, Facebook might ask you if you would like to add them to the list. You can also use the ‘+Add coworkers to this list’ option on the right hand side where the arrow is pointing. Lastly, you have the option to click on your friends list and hover over the button that says ‘Friends,’ a drop down list will appear and you can tick the relevant ‘Friend list’.
You can add more Friends Lists by click on the Friends menu item on the left hand side. In the middle of your page you will see an option on the right hand side that says ‘+Create list,’ click this and start adding friends by name:
Once you have all of this set up, it’s simply a matter of making sure you post your status update to the correct ‘Friends List.’ You can do this my visiting the ‘Friends’ Menu item and clicking on the list you would like to share something with and simply post in the status update area. Alternatively you can make a post in the status update bar on your home screen and select the list by clicking on tab that says ‘Friends’ next to ‘post’
If you are like me and you use your Facebook account not only personally but professionally for your business, getting locked out of Facebook can be one of your worst nightmares! This week Facebook put me to the test but thankfully after about 30 minutes I was back online.
I thought in today’s blog post I should share this experience with you, just in case it ever happens to you PLUS there are a few things you can do regularly to keep your Facebook account safe.
I log into Facebook for the morning check my accounts, respond to inquiries, comments and make a few status updates. I finish making a status update for an important client and the next thing I know, Facebook is telling me that my session has timed out and I need to log back in. I proceed to log back in (after checking the URL, it looks legit) because it happens sometimes, then before I know it, a message pops up telling me that my account is temporarily locked….. Ekkk!!!!! When I read the message I panic and think “Maybe I shouldn’t have tried to log back in, maybe I’ve been hacked.” I am dubious about clicking on the ‘continue’ button at the bottom of the message.
So, what do you do when you receive this type of message from Facebook? First things first, go to the source and make sure the message is legit before you continue. Here’s what I did:
1.I visited www.facebook.com and clicked on the help section. I must admit most of the times I use Facebook Help it is actually very helpful!
2. First of all, I wanted to check about logging in so I chose the option ‘Getting Help to Log in’ and there’s a section for ‘Bugs and Known Issues.’ Thank goodness the issue I experienced was a known issue, so I felt much better about going back to Facebook and clicking on the link to fix it.
3. I clicked on the link and it told me to download the a McAfee program, run it and try logging in again. Presto, I’m back! I also ran a scan via my computer’s internet security too.
If you look after Facebook pages for your business or work and you do this via your personal profile there are a few things you should be doing to maintain the security of your account and your pages. Here’s my top 10 tips for keeping them safe:
I haven’t gone all mushy on you don’t worry, but Valentine’s Day is getting close so I thought I’d show you how you can get some love from your website over to your Facebook page. You see, if you’re trying to grow your Facebook fan base, one of the easiest things you can do is add the Facebook Like Box to your website. Let me tell you why you’ll want to do this and how you can get the ball rolling.
The Facebook Like Box looks similar to this (in various sizes):
There are plenty of ways to convert visitors from your website into Facebook fans, however the Like Box has a few advantages which I really like, these include:
1. Social Proof
By installing the Like box on your website you can demonstrate social proof. You can see in the above image the actual faces of the people who like my Facebook page and you can see the number of fans that have pressed like. Both of these attributes help people determine if they are going to press the like button.
2. Improve Visit Duration
By adding the Like Box Facebook plugin to your website, visitors will be able to press ‘Like’ without leaving the web page that they are currently viewing, this is of course if they are already logged into Facebook. This means that visitors are more likely to stay on your website for a longer period of time and therefore are more likely to find a product or service of interest.
3. Personalisation
Each time a new user visits your website the faces that appear in the Like Box will be personalised based on the Facebook user logged into their account. For example when I’m logged into Facebook, the faces that I see in the Like Box on my website are mostly the faces of people who are my friends. The plugin does this because we instinctively recognise faces quickly.
I’m not a website developer and I don’t write code but I can easily copy and paste code into my website if I need to. WARNING: If you don’t have access to the back end of your website (or you are not confident in editing the back end of your website) I highly recommend you speak with your website designer and ask them to install this code for you.
If you are keen to give it a go this is all your need to do:
1. Visit this URL https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like-box/ and you will see this plugin tool on your screen:
Each time you change something on the left it will update the preview on the right.
2. The first thing you need to do is visit your Facebook page and copy the web address from the browser like this:
3. Choose the desired width and height
4. You can choose to show faces or not to show faces. I like to keep the faces there so people can recognise their friends, this can act as an endorsement
5. You can choose a dark or light like box, this is what the dark version looks like:
6. You can show the stream or take the stream away. The stream is simply the content from the status updates that you make. It’s up to you if you would like to show this and it might depend on how much real estate you would like the plugin to take up on your website. This is how it will look if you choose to take the stream off:
7. To remove the text that says ‘Find us on Facebook,’ simply untick ‘Show header’
8. Now all you need to do is press the button that says ‘Get Code’
9. Finally copy and paste the code into the section of your website where you would like it to appear or provide the code to your website designer and they can add it for you.
Last week saw an update to the Facebook Page Guidelines to include more restrictions on cover photo images. You might be wondering ‘What Guidelines? … Facebook has Guidelines?’ Put simply, YES!
You might have posting guidelines on your Facebook page, asking people to be respectful etc, similarly, Facebook has several guidelines or terms of service on how you can and more importantly, can not use their social networking site.
In this blog post I’m going to cover some important information on how you can ensure that you are abiding by Facebook’s guidelines with regards to Cover Photo Images.
Cover photo images are the larger images measuring 851 pixels x 315 pixels on our Facebook Timelines, this is an example of my cover photo image:
You can take a look at the Facebook Page Guidelines for a detailed overview of what is expected, but here’s the specifics of what this blog post will discuss, Cover Photo Images section III) Page Features, B) Cover:
# 1 Covers May Not Include Images with More Than 20% Text
This is a relatively simple rule to follow if you always aim to keep your text to a minimum in cover images. To give you an idea of how 20% can be represented and how you can make sure that your text is 20%, take a look at this blog post about cover images by one of my friends at Bright Spark Media.
#2 Covers May Not Include Price or Purchase Information, such as ’40% off’ or ‘Download it on socialmusic.com’
Let’s be clear, if it was me, I WOULD NOT include any of the following terms in any of my Facebook Cover Images:
Business owners and shopping centre marketing managers want to know how they can capitalise on their existing store traffic quickly and easily. The first thing I tell them is to look at their shop windows. Think about it, each day you have plenty of people walking past your shop front both existing and prospective customers. You already use your shop windows to encourage customers to spend money so take some time out and think about how you can use them to encourage people to pick up their mobile phones and press like!
Here’s some ideas to get your brain ticking over for 2013!
This one is easy – anyone can do up a sign right? The catch is, you need to make your sign interesting enough to cut through the clutter. Sure you can put a sign up that says ‘Like us on Facebook’ (with your Facebook URL) but your sign will stand out more if you use images and text to grab your ideal customers attention. The size of your sign might also be a consideration and the place that you decide to position it on your store front.
If you have room for a display in your shop window this is the perfect place to convert passersby into Facebook fans. A Fashion store might use real life models as mannequins and dress them up in T-shirts printed with their Facebook vanity URL, as people walk by they could hold up signs encouraging them to press like. A jewellery store might use signs next to watches, rings and bracelets to encourage people to like their favourite items on their Facebook page. If you are running a competition you could use your window to encourage people to visit your Facebook page to enter. The possibilities are endless.
If you are limited for space and you need to keep the message short and sweet, try QR Codes. QR codes or Quick Response codes as they are sometimes called, enable you to create a bar code which when scanned with a Smart Phone app (like i-nigma) take you to a website. When you arrive at the website you can take a number of actions. In the instance of the Likify QR Code Application you can use this app to direct people to like your Facebook page or follow you on Twitter. QR Codes are perfect for encouraging passersby to take out their mobile phone for immediate action, before they walk away and forget about it.
Whatever you decide to do in store make sure it’s fun and social, after all you want to give them another reason to press like and stay connected.
Now it’s over to you: What signage are you using to convert your existing customer traffic into Facebook fans? Have you tried QR Codes? Did you find them successful? Have you tried creating a store display to get your customers to pick up their phones and take instant action? If you do try any of these suggestions or I have inspired you to try something different, please drop me a line in the comments section below or post your photos to my Facebook page.
Author: Celina Johnson
