In Panama City Beach, we have this wonderful outdoor mall called Pier Park. This is no ordinary mall. Pier Park was a dream come true to Panama City Beach. For years our area drew hundreds of thousands for our sparkling white sand beaches and emerald green waters, but on days when the sun didn’t come out, the tourists had nothing else to do. There was no shopping.
This all changed when Pier Park was developed. There was so much pent-up demand for a quality shopping mall on Panama City Beach that when it finally came, it created a cult following. More on that later.
For years, Miracle Strip Amusement Park entertained many of the tourists (and locals) that enjoyed sunny days and crystal clear water in Panama City Beach. During the condo craze, though, some developers swooped in, offered top dollar for some prime amusement park real estate right across from the beach, then sat on it until the market tanked. Many locals and loyal tourists alike still resent the fact that condo craze left this previous memory maker a barren wasteland.
These two stories came together early 2009 when local entrepreneurs purchased the original carousel that was collecting dust in a storage building in the late Miracle Strip Amusement Park. This fittingly named it the Miracle Strip Carousel in Pier Park. Less than a year later, they had the opportunity to acquire three other rides (two from the original Miracle Strip and one a replica of a MS ride) and create a mini-amusement park at Pier Park. Riding the buzz wave, it has been immensely successful and their social media marketing practices have gained a significant following.
But, the question has come up, “what do I say to keep our followers engaged?” Good question, here’s the answer:
1.) Everyone loves a giveaway.
When you have something to giveaway, there’s no better way to keep them engaged. For Miracle Strip at Pier Park, I see a few options for doing giveaways.
- You can give away individual tickets to the rides.
- You can give away packs of 10 tickets to the rides.
- You can give away season passes.
- You can give away birthday packages (i.e. host their birthday party there, includes tickets, soft drinks, goody-bags, etc.)
- You can give away free t-shirts (assuming you have a design to sell) or other swag.
So, how do you do the giveaway? Well, my favorite way to do these are to post a status update with a “comment to win” message, but since that’s against Facebook’s terms of service, my second favorite way is to do it using email signups. All you have to do is create a free MailChimp account, create a new list, create a sign up form for that list, embed the signup form code in an FBML tab on your fan page and call it giveaway signup, and post a status update with instructions. Added bonus: you’re collecting email addresses!
How often do you do a giveaway? I would say no more often than one a week, but I may space it out a little more than that. It all depends on how many fans you have, how much they typically interact and how often you can interact with them. For all of these, the higher the number the more often you can do giveaways.
2.) Facebook Fan of the Week.
Each week (or every other week) have a “fan of the week.” Post an update on your Facebook fan page that reads something like this:
“Facebook Fan of the Week: This week, be the 7th person to come to the front ticket booth and tell us your a Facebook Fan and get 4 free tickets to ride that day. Good luck!”
When the 7th person comes, celebrate their win by taking a picture of them, getting their name and posting it to your Facebook page. Tell them to tag themselves, bring in a printed page that shows they tagged themselves on your Facebook page and they’ll get two more free tickets next time they come in.
By asking them to tag themselves, all their friends will see when they are tagged (and where they are tagged) and this could open you up to exposure to all their friends. This is a great way to grow your fan base. Be sure you have the ability for fans to tag photos of themselves turned on in your Facebook fan page settings. By default, this is turned off.
3.) Tell a story, everyone loves a good story.
One of the funnest things you could do is create a whole series of stories that come from the various ride’s horses, baskets, planes, etc., as if they could recount that week’s experiences. Just take a picture (with your iPhone or mobile) of the horse and craft a short message about some its experiences that week. A few examples of stories that could be told are:
“This week I had tons of great riders, but one stuck out more than the others because of her dedication to riding me and no other. Little Suzie knew what she wanted, she’s always ridden me as long as I’ve been in Pier Park.”
“I had a rough week, first Johnny was upset because I wasn’t free on his turn, then this huge grown up rode me – I thought he was going to break my back! Then this group of teenagers got on and one of them had a chain wallet that kept scratching my butt, but not in a good way – it hurt!”
“The weather this week has been great. Blue skies, warm air, the sweetest kids, and boy we’ve been busy.”
I’m not much of a story teller, but you get the idea. If you have that revolutionary tool called the iPhone, you could actually do all of these on the fly.
4.) Post photos of your guests on your Facebook page.
Another way to drive huge amounts of traffic to your Facebook page is to take pictures of your guests (with their permission, of course) and post them to your Facebook page. You can have a new album for each week or for each ride. Have cards printed and ready with your Facebook url so they’ll remember to go check out the pictures later when you get them uploaded.
This does two things:
- Gives you great content for your Facebook fan page.
- Drives enormous amounts of traffic to your fan page.
You can even do the same thing suggested above where you incentivize them to tag themselves in photos of themselves on your page. And, if you’re good enough, and if you have the aptitude, you may just end up selling prints to your customers and generating some additional income.
5.) Name everything.
If you’re still looking for great content, one thing you can do that may carry you a long way is to name everything. Name all the horses, name all the baskets, all the planes, and carriages. Every week (or every month) pick something to name, take a picture of it and post it as a status update. This is what you say:
“Name the horse! This beautiful horse will have a name THIS WEEK. Post your name suggestions in the comments section. Whichever name is picked, the author will receive a season pass to Miracle Strip at Pier Park. We’ll pick a name at the end of the week.”
When you pick a winning name, make a big deal out of it. Invite the person that wrote the winning name out for a naming ceremony where you paint the name on, take pictures and award the tickets. Again, ask them to tag the photo of themselves for the extra incentive. This will be a great way to generate buzz, encourage interactivity, grow your fan base and ultimately grow your business.
With any of the ideas above that involve giving stuff away, the more you give away in each giveaway, the more important it will seem to people. For example, if you give away a season pass, vs. 4 free tickets, the “event” for the giveaway will have a higher perceived importance.
Conclusions
Facebook is one of the most celebrated forms of marketing right now because it is so easy to share information. With an average logged-in time per day per user floating at around 60 minutes, people spend a lot of time drifting between Facebook pages and profiles. If you want to capture some of that traffic and convert it to money in your pocket, you have to give them meaningful and entertaining reasons to spend time in your little corner of Facebook. Some of the ideas above are just that. These are my ideas, what are yours? Tell us in the comments section below.
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