We all want to see our ministry or business Facebook pages see success and many times that means that we have to do some special strategic giveaways or promotions to get an increase in Likes or interaction with our fans.
Walmart took this approach recently to giveaway something amazing in return for likes. They had just recently released all of their local Walmart Facebook pages and were wanting to get some quick likes to roll out their local Walmart deals through Facebook.
The giveaway to encourage people to like it?
Energy Sheets partnered with Walmart in a contest that would send Pitbull to the local store location that received the most new Facebook Likes by July 15.
Of course, that is how it was suppose to go. Unfortunately, the website Something Awful saw a different opportunity. Through this Walmart campaign, they have started their own campaign: #ExilePitball. The idea is that they found the most remote Walmart in the U.S. which happens to be on Kodiak Island, near the Alaskan coast.
At the time of this post being written, the Kodiak Island Walmart Facebook page has 69,000+ Likes and by far the most on this page. As a sign recognition from Pitbull, he reached out to the founder of Something Awful, David Thorpe, to invite him to join his trip if he ends up going to Kodiak Island.
In this amazing Facebook campaign that has gone awry, we can take some very valid point from it for when we do Facebook contests or promotions:
- There will be unforeseen risks. Walmart’s Facebook and social media managers did an amazing job with this campaign and probably went over and beyond creating this contest. The coding works wonderfully, they secured an amazing prize for the winning city, and the pages are detailed. But they would never have been able to foresee an incident like this.
- The power is TRULY in the peoples hands. When we do contests, we need to give up all expectations and control and simply allow what the contest is suppose to do. If we want to have a poll to get the opinion of your audience, be okay when they pick your least desirable option or do not give them that option to begin with.
- Follow through well. Pitbull has been publicly very respectful to both David, Kodiak Island, and Walmart through out this whole process. If he follows through with his promise, he will come out great in this situation, along with Walmart. No matter how crazy your contest may get, finish well.
- In spite of these events, plan well. You possibly will get blindsided, just like Walmart. But that is not a good enough excuse to give up or not plan a great strategy. Do the work to get the results that you are looking for, be flexible when something goes awry, and learn from your experiences.
Do you have any Facebook marketing blunder stories to share?
[HT Mashable]
b says
Did it really backfire? I wouldn’t be commenting on your post about it if it had! 🙂 I do like the idea of having to be flexible because you never know what will happen. I read a book recently called Action Trumps Everything. In it he talks about “creaction” where he argues with the future now so unpredictable (not that you ever could predict it exactly but…..) that the best thing you can do is get started because it’s rarely going to end how you imagined.
love the blog.
Gabe says
It reminds me of when NASA wanted to name a room on the International Space Station and left the naming up to an internet poll. When “Colbert” won the poll, NASA decided to name the room “Tranquility,” which was the 8th most popular name in the poll. They did, however, name a treadmill “Colbert.”
This teaches us 2 social media rules:
1. Don’t leave it in the people’s hands unless you’re okay with what the people might do with it.
2. Never ever allow write-in votes. NASA is lucky the internet embraced “Colbert” as the name. It could have been much much MUCH worse.
James Doc says
There was that bad PR that McDonald’s paid for with their promoted tweet #McDStories: http://socialmediatoday.com/bradfriedman/436608/mcdonald-s-promoted-twitter-campaign-mcfailed