I’ve been wanting to showcase some excellent Facebook Page marketing examples by large brands and this opportunity came to light whole browsing today. The Olive Garden is currently running a Facebook contest that blew me away, mainly because of the sheer brilliance of how they’re doing it. This example should be looked over hard by companies struggling to grow their Facebook Page, especially ones with a large marketing budget.
I have been nagging and annoying the hell out of our clients to get more socially involved. A lot of them don’t see it as a marketing method worth going after hard…and this drives me nuts. I’m very well aware of the coming change in search trends, and more and more people are sticking on Facebook. This means organic search traffic is not going to be the only player in town, and it certainly might even become the market companies focus on the most.
The Olive Garden has recently hit a milestone of 1,000,000 Facebook fans which is down right amazing for any company. We only have one here in the west coast of Canada, so it’s mostly Americans they’ve tapped into although they got my like! To celebrate the achievement, they have decided to run a contest that is going to send them quickly on their way to another few hundred thousand more followers.
If you’re a social media manager for a big brand, I’d take note of how many followers they grow by the end of the month. The Olive Garden hopefully will respond to my email request to interview their marketing team about Facebook and Twitter marketing. I also see they’re doing a great effort with Foursquare which is just fantastic. I wish them the best of luck, but by the looks of it they won’t be needing any of it!
