Sweet Social Media
Yes, I like Milano Cookies. Orange, raspberry, mint … bring them on. I like them with milk. I like them with tea. I like them out of the bag. I like them artfully arranged on a platter with strawberries and whipped cream. I also like them on Facebook.
I found out that Pepperidge Farm has a Milano Cookies Facebook page when I made a post that mentioned Milanos, and for a week, the right side of my page was cluttered with ads for Pepperidge Farm products and a prompt to "like" the Milano Cookies page. So I did. Then posts from the page started popping up on my wall two or three times a day: "What type of Milanos will you be enjoying after dinner tonight?" "Who do you like sharing your Milanos with?"
In what I must now assume was a fit of deadline-induced procrastination, I responded to one of the threads. Not long after, I got an alert that said I was mentioned in a comment on the Milano page. I clicked through, and yup, the "page" had responded to my comment, mentioning me by name (thus prompting the alert) and talking specifically about what I had said. I just thought that was cool, and I found myself getting involved in conversations about cookies at least once a day, sometimes more. I tried to egg the people behind the page into talking about their social-media strategy, but they stayed in character and brought it all back to the cookies.
A few weeks ago, I got a message from the page saying that it had sent me a private message. There's an "Other Messages" area on Facebook that holds messages from pages rather than from people, and it's something I never knew existed so I never checked it. The comment on my page from the Milano Cookies page alerted me to the message, and I went and checked it out. It said that Pepperidge Farm wanted to reward me for being such a "sweet part of the online conversation about Milanos" by sending me a gift.
My first thought was "scam," especially since I was used to dealing with the page named Pepperidge Farm Milano Cookies, and this message was from a page simply called Milano Cookies. So I posted to the wall of the legitimate page and said I thought someone was digging for personal information using its name. But the folks running the page assured me it was legit. So I provided my address, and a few days later, a box with three bags of Milano Melts cookies arrived in my mailbox. Sweet!
How's that for social-media engagement? I honestly don't know how nonprofits could go so far as to send their friends and followers gifts for joining in the online conversation, but there is definitely a lesson here about the power of taking the time to talk to the people who take the time to talk to you. So many corporate pages encourage people to "like" them, but then drop the ball by making posts but ignoring comments people make in response. You can bet I've told everyone I know about the Milanos experience and encouraged each of them to "like" the page and engage. Now I'm telling you. I can't guarantee you'll get any cookies in the mail, but you will indeed get one sweet lesson in the art of doing social-media right.
