When you are using Facebook as a part of your social media marketing strategy, it is important to know how to turn a fan into a super fan. These “super fans” are known as brand advocates. Brand advocates can make a world of difference in your social networking efforts.

First, let’s look at what makes a fan a brand advocate:

Writes reviews about your business/ product

Writes testimonials

Discusses your brand online and off

Actively tries to promote your business/ products

Brand advocates are like regular fans, just of a higher caliber. While it’s important to build up your fan numbers, it is even more important to boost the number of brand advocates in your marketing arsenal.

Here are a few ways that you can turn your average face book fan into a brand-advocating super fan!

Encourage your fans any way you can.

Find various points of contact with your fans and customers- email, blog, website, customer service- and create new strategies for reaching out and communicating with them. Encourage them to be cheerleaders for your brand.

Give them the tools to make referrals.

Your fans and customers want to be able to do more for your business, so give them the means to take more action. Online, they can upload their email contact lists or post onto social media sites. Offline, they can hand out referral cards or brochures. Start an SMS message campaign that can be forwarded to friends, family and associates. These are all ways that can encourage and empower your fans to be advocates for your brand.

Show your appreciation.

When you see that your brand advocates are working hard to promote your business and products, say thanks! Show them how much you appreciate the things they do. Keep them updated on progress that’s being made. Reward them for their hard work. When your advocates know that you are taking what they do seriously and that their efforts are making a difference, they will be encouraged to do more and to bring in others to help.

Keep track of your advocates.

Use analytics to keep track of and manage the people who are working hard to push your brand. You will be able to see and measure the impact that is being made by your volunteer brand advocates. This will help you know exactly what is working and what can be improved.

When you have loyal fans and customers out there acting as advocates on your behalf, you will see greater results from your social media marketing. You will forge stronger relationships with people who genuinely care about your business and products.

Are you nurturing your fan relationships in order to gain more brand advocates? What do you do to encourage your fans to do more? Share with us!

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Pinterest is definitely on its way up on the social media scene. Marketers are starting to see the value in the photo-sharing style of this new social network. Like other social media sites, Pinterest has many helpful tools and apps that can help enhance your experience with the site.

Here are a few of the different apps and tools that are available right now for you to get the most out of your use of Pinterest:

PinReach

This tool (once called PinClout) is very similar to Facebook Insights. It helps users track their success on the network as well as monitor current trends. Signup is simple- just enter your username for Pinterest and choose a username for PinReach, enter your email and a password. You will be sent a confirmation email. Once you confirm your account, you will be able to look at your PinReach score and how it changes over time.

This will give you a better idea of how to boost engagement with users and increase your influence.

PinPuff

PinPuff is another service that is available for users to measure reach, influence and viral aspects on Pinterest. They will be given a Pinfluence score and see a monetary value of their pins.

WiseStamp

The email app-makers have brought us a new Pinterest App, which allows you to add a “Follow Me on Pinterest” button to the end of your emails. That means every email you send will now encourage others to become an active follower of your Pinterest pinboards.

Pinerly

When this site launches, users will be able to gain access to free analytics and metrics on their pin campaigns. This gives companies a convenient way to manage each campaign with scheduling and controls for following and unfollowing.

Pin a Quote

Some web pages have no images to pin, just a great quote or other piece of text that you want to highlight. With Pin a Quote, you can easily share that text on one of your pinboards.

Snapito!

Sometimes a full-page screenshot is what you want to have on your pinboards. Snapito! is an easy and quick way to do just that. You can choose to pin only a part of or the full screen shot of the site to your page.

Check Your Pins

You can easily see how many people are pinning your website by typing into your browser: http://pinterest.com/source/YourWebsite. Then Ta-DA! You will get to see any and all pins that users have pinned from your website.

It’s still in the early days and many new Pinterest tools and apps are still in testing mode. It won’t be long, though, before there are even more tools available to help improve and enhance the way you use Pinterest for marketing as well as personal use.

What tools have you been using for your Pinterest marketing? What would you like to see in the future? Share with us!

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