When Fuzzy Bunnies And Baby Hamsters Drive Them Wild
There are a lot of businesses out there that have Facebook pages. But let’s be honest, a lot of them are duds. Either the person managing the page has no time to update it, or there are a ton of updates, but no responses from fans.
It can be maddening to update a Facebook fan page and see no comments or interaction. After all, the reason why Facebook is so exciting is the fact that it can give you a direct line to communicate with your customers. If there’s no interaction, then posting all those updates can feel like a lot of wasted time.
Historical Secrets
One local business that doesn’t have that problem is Old Sturbridge Village, the nonprofit living history museum. I became a fan about a year ago and have been steadily impressed (and in envy of) the amount of commenting and interaction on OSV’s fan page.
On any given day there are posts from OSV staff as well as photos posted by visitors to the museum. The success of the page has taken the marketing folks at OSV somewhat by surprise.
“We didn’t launch our fan page,” explained Deb Friedman, director of public programs at OSV. “It was launched by some of our fans… but we started helping them after we realized how active it was.”
And active is the operative word. Last year the page had about 600 fans, according to Ann Lindblad, director of marketing and communications at the museum. But over the last 12 months, activity has gone “straight up” and the page’s fan count is at more than 5,000.
That’s a fairly respectable number of fans in the museum world. The Boston Children’s Museum has 2,800 fans while the Worcester Art Museum has 2,400.
So, what’s the secret to OSV’s success? Well, it’s a combination of things.
First off, OSV has a lot of great material to work with. A quick scroll through its page and you’ll see a variety of handsomely shot images from around the museum grounds. And as anyone who’s spent time on Facebook can attest, social networkers love pictures. And what they love most is pictures of babies, and even more than that, they love baby animals. It turns out OSV has baby animal pictures in spades. On May 18, OSV posted a picture of two baby oxen (yes it’s a cute as it sounds) and received 17 cooing comments and 45 “likes.”
But Lindblad said it isn’t just cute baby farm animals that get the Facebook fans going. In fact, she said the most popular post on OSV’s fan page had no images it all. It was simply news that OSV had finished last year in the black.
“It’s gratifying to see that our fans really care about the future and the health of museum,” Lindblad said.
And therein lies OSV’s true advantage. It has a very engaged customer base who have all sorts of nostalgic feelings about the place. In fact, I still have a wooden mallet that I made at OSV when I went there in the third grade. I would hazard to guess that it’s that desire to connect with warm fuzzy childhood memories that makes the Old Sturbridge Village fan page such a hit. It also doesn’t hurt on the demographics side, either. OSV’s fans are about 80 percent female, according to Lindblad, which is in line with actual visitation to the museum.
So, what can the average business learn from the success of the OSV fan page? Well, pictures are important. And so are human faces. Even if you’re a business-to-business manufacturer, you should think about posting photos of people instead of just widgets. Take a spin on the shop floor or through your office, and use some of those photos on your page. Or when you’re at a trade show, take photos of visitors to your booth.
Planning ahead also seems to be key. Lindblad puts real thought into crafting her posts. While they are short, the more thought that goes into them, the more likely they are to be well received.
And finally, be realistic. Not every business lends itself to social networking. And not every business has the manpower to spare to keep a page updated. If Facebook isn’t working for your business, maybe it’s time to shift your focus to something else.
Or, when all else fails, find a picture of a cute kitten and throw that on your wall.
Got news for our Digital Diva column? E-mail Christina H. Davis at cdavis@wbjournal.com.
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