Creative inspiration often comes from watching what other industries do, and adapting their practices to fit your own circumstances. It’s with that outlook that I regularly review “top 10” or “top 100” lists, including Social Media Examiner’s recent Top 10 Small Business Facebook Pages.
Selected from 1,400 nominations, the winning companies were judged on their Facebook landing pages, engagement, reader involvement and creative use of promotions, among other things. Social Media Examiner’s blog post shows sample pages from all ten winners and specifies exactly what the judges liked. My personal favorites were these:
• Intrepid Travel, an Australian adventure travel company, has a “Meet Others” tab which allows people interested in specific trips to connect with each other. Seems like an easy concept to adapt to the gardening world!
• Arizona Pro DJs, a teen entertainment company, does a great job of posting photos and music and asking for feedback. Their posts follow a consistent formula, with a very specific call to action. For instance: Who is excited for all of the football in the next few days? Arizona State Sun Devils vs Missouri, Arizona Wildcats football vs Oklahoma State, and Arizona Cardinals vs Washington! COMMENT and tell us what your favorite football team is!
• Dog Training Ireland contains so much information, so well organized and presented, that there’s no need to ever visit their website.
• New Jersey Family, a regional magazine, uses Facebook’s “Questions” feature to do periodic polls. Compiled on a separate “Questions” tab, it’s a novel way to promote engagement and find out a little more about their audience.
• Brasserie Sixty6, a restaurant, incorporates customer reviews on a separate Facebook tab. They also do a good job of asking for email addresses, and offering an incentive for joining their mailing list.
Have a look at all the Top 10 winners and see if you find any good techniques that, with the proper modifications, might apply to your business.
