Social Media Marketing Tools You Can Use: Interview with Ben Pickering, CEO at Strutta

I had the chance to sit down with Ben Pickering, CEO of Strutta to discuss Facebook Marketing Best Practices and Strutta!

SM: So what exactly is Strutta?
BP: Strutta is software that helps marketers create, build and launch promotions on Facebook. Our tools are self-service and allow brands to build and engage their audience through social media, identify top influencers and measure campaign effectiveness.

SM: That sounds impressive! Does your platform work with ExactTarget?
BP: We have partnered with ExactTarget and SocialPages to make it easy for customers to develop fully-branded contests and promotions that tie together cross-channel marketing efforts.

SM: Can you share an example campaign?
BP: I can share two! Maggiano's Restaurant ran a three week long sweepstakes that generated nearly 80,000 entries and they used targeted email marketing to drive a significant amount of this. Contour Cameras in Australia ran a surf photo competition that brought in more than 1,000 great photos that in turn generated more than 100,000 views. They also saw an impressive 35% increase in traffic to their promotion due to social sharing.

SM: We have a lot of small business and mid-market customers; do you have a solution for them?
BP: Companies of any size can tap in to the power of social media contests to build their brand on Facebook. One of the things we're doing at Strutta is making it possible for smaller businesses to create campaigns on par with an expensive custom-built project but at a fraction of the cost.

SM: How would you recommend ExactTarget customers start out with Facebook marketing?
BP: I generally suggest marketers begin with a more simple sweepstakes or coupon offer to build a fan base before moving in to something like a user submitted photo contest. User generated contests are a terrific way to drive fan engagement and increase reach through sharing and voting mechanisms, but you want to have a fan base in place to start the momentum.

SM: Are you seeing any new trends in Facebook marketing in general?
BP: A lot has been said about the change to Timeline and implications for tabs on pages. We still find that engaging applications on tabs are an essential part of Facebook marketing but you must get more creative with how you drive traffic to these apps since you can no longer set a default tab for your page. There is a lot more weight being put into getting content in the Newsfeed, so having apps that generate actions that can be turned into Sponsored Stories is one trend.

SM: Thank you for your time today.
BP: See you at Connections!