Social Network Sites...

[Raycliff Manor]

Has anyone put a lot of time and effort into utilizing Facebook for marketing your haunted attraction? If so, have you also used Myspace and have you found one to be better than the other? We've had great success with Myspace, but with all the buzz about Facebook having taken over in popularity, I'm wondering what other haunt owners think about it. Any thoughts, feedback or suggestions? Thanks for your input!

Kel

P.S. I meant to put this under Professional Forum.

[soultrkr]

If you don't have a face book profile setup I would suggest setting one up. Face book has exceed the amount of active users over myspace a good while ago and there is no reason not to use both since both are free and another way to reach your customers with information and updates on your haunt. My two cents if it's free and can make more people aware or allow for customer feedback why not utilize it.

[hauntman666]

Yes i agree with soultrkr that if you dont have a facebook I would suggest getting one. Most people that are in high school and college are on facebook. That is usually your key market that you want to hit. I know personally I have just personal accounts on both of them, but might check my myspace once every 2-3 weeks while I usually check my facebook once a day. I think it is a much bigger one to use I know twitter has been getting real big, but have not used that myself personally. So that may be another one to check out. Like soultrkr said theyre all free and they all reach people, so you might as well utilize them.

[Raycliff Manor]

I actually have an account on both as follows:

www.myspace.com/raycliffmanor

www.facebook.com/RaycliffManor

However, I haven't found that I can narrow a target audience as easily on Facebook, such as sending friend requests to a specific geographic demographic. Perhaps I just need to figure out how to do this on Facebook. I do know that I can browse specific demographics on Myspace and then send Friend Requests to only those who fit our target audience. At any rate, I'm really interested in hearing from individuals who have used Facebook or both Facebook and Myspace to market their attraction and obtaining their feedback on doing so. Anyone?

Thanks for your replies!

Kel

P.S. In case anyone is interested, here are a few more accounts that you can send me a Friend Request through if you want...

www.Myspace.com/PimpMyJobSearch

www.Myspace.com/JoplinHaunts

www.Myspace.com/HeroWaltDisney

www.Myspace.com/HauntBook

www.Myspace.com/kel_allen - This is my personal Myspace page

www.facebook.com/KellyofRaycliff

[mikeq91]

I think that Facebook is the more effective site at this point, but it never hurts to have both. However, with Facebook, be careful about making your attraction a person rather than a business. This year we made a page for one of our icon characters, however we eventually got kicked off because Facebook only allows real people to have pages like that.

We ended up using Facebook ads in addition to having a business page. We found this to be very effective, as you only pay for click-throughs, can target your specific demographic, and you can choose exactly how much you spend on it. You also can get free advertising to some extent, because your ad still pops up when people don't click on it and therefore you don't pay for it. For those of you unfamiliar with them, check them out on Facebook, it explains the whole system.

[Spookyfinder]

I would also suggest advertising your SN sites on your tickets! On our tickets, in the upper right corner, it said something like; "Look us up on:" and had the logos of the sites we're on. I'll post a pic of it if you'd like.

Our Facebook page EXPLODED with fans... once people knew we were on FB, they'd put up their pics from SCREAMPARK and tag us in it, we've got some really cool tags!

It's also very easy to update via phone/txt message... we did some updates right during operation... makes it more fun and 'real' I guess.

I say, do FB and Myspace... twitter doesn't seem to have the pull for haunts that we need for it to be worth while. -Tyler