Announcement

**drfrightner** · 02-04-2012, 10:56 PM

We added our facebook page to the main page of the forums so you can always see what the top post is... we have almost 7000 members now and getting about 200 new members a day. FEEL FREE TO promote your latest haunted update on our facebook page.

Larry

**themagicofjustinarrigo** · 02-10-2012, 07:00 PM

Facebook for haunts!

I apologize in advance for the long message, but I am going to try to include some useful information that can help you out. Aside from a part time haunter in Salem MA, I also work for one of the biggest car dealership rings in New England, we currently have 50 stores, and we acquire a few more every year. We are always keeping on top of the newest and best ways to advertise and increase our business and our name in the community. We are using facebook now almost more than anything else. It has become a huge part of our business, and there are a few reasons why. I run several of our stores facbook pages. There are a lot of ways that you can use facebook for advertising. More for your haunt facebook pages, rather than for hauntworld itself, here are a few things you can do, but first some facebook statistics.

As of last year there are over 500,000,000 facebook users. That is about 1 in every 13 people on earth. Half of them are logged on at least once a day. About 28% of those do so before even getting out of bed. 48% of users are between 18 and 34. The average user has about 130 friends. Over 700 Billion minutes are spent on facebook per month. Over 200 million access their facebook on their mobile devices. 48% of young people say they now get all of their news from facebook. In just 20 minutes on facebook over 1 million links are shared, 2 million friend requests are accepted, and almost 3 million messages are sent. And the biggie 57% of people said they talk to people more on facebook than they do in person. So what is the point. Facebook is taking over the world, and if you are not using it as a major advertising source, you are missing out.

The whole point of your business facebook page is to get as many people as you can to like your page, it is a domino effect, because as people like it, their friends and family will see that they liked it, and now they will go to the page and hopefully like it themselves, and then on and on. When someone likes your page, they will now start to see your posts on their own pages, and coming soon to facebook this month, on everyone�s timeline. This is free advertising. You can say whatever you want, and all these people will see it everyday. Even if they don�t read what you post every time, you want them to constantly see your icon and name, so you are always fresh in there mind, maybe even more so in the off season. The key is to try to make it personal. Don�t always talk about just your business and what you are doing, you want it to feel personal. Talk about more than just your haunt. Talk about things going on in your local community, talk about charities that you may donate to, talk about local sports teams, talk about the weather, upcoming movies or albums, or whatever holiday is coming up. You want people to think there is actually a person with feelings sitting behind the computer writing the posts, not just generic message being populated by a website somewhere. You want your name to start being a common thing for them to see, so essentially, when the time comes to go to a haunted house, you are their go to choice. Even is someone has never even visited your haunted house, but they are your friend on facebook, they can be a benefit to you. If one of their friends says "we want to go to a haunted house this weekend, do you know of any good ones around?" If they see your posts all the time, they will start to feel a connection with you, and when they are asked they will refer them to you.

Here are some things you can do for your haunt facebook page.

-Add a QR code to everything, your advertising pieces, to your outdoor signs, cue line scansions, tickets, anywhere that people will see them. If you don�t know a QR code is the little boxes that you see everywhere now with a bunch of little black lines and dots inside. When people are looking at your flyer, or standing in line waiting to get in, they will see the QR codes and then scan them with their smart phones. This will bring them right to your facebook page. Now once they are one your page, they can like it, which will now start getting you more people to view your page and your comments and pictures that you post.

-You can also create check-in deals, so when people are physically at your haunt, they can check in on their mobile device through facebook, and when they do this they will get access to a special deal for checking in at your haunt. It can be anything from a ticket discount, free soda, free glow necklace, free photo with a monster, anything that you want to offer.

-You can also do some really great target advertising through facebook. You can buy ads space and choose who is going to see it, right down to the last detail (sex, age group, interests, music, movies, distance from your location, you can make it very specific). You can spend as little or as much as you would like depending on who you want to see the adds. You can also have multiple ads targeted to different groups of people running at the same time. This is good because you can have college student discount coupon and target it only to people who are currently in school within a certain distance from your location. And at the same time you can have another add for a military discount, and have it targeted to only people who are or have been in the military within a certain distance of your location. Any specific group of people that you want to target, you can. This is really great advertising, because the only people who will see your adds are the people you want to see them, and you can design the add to appeal to that specific group. Unlike traditional TV or radio or newspaper ads, where you only have one shot and you want it to appeal to as many group types as possible. Target advertising is the way to go, and if done right will pay for itself many times over.

-Another great idea is to have your roaming characters, security personnel, venders, basically anyone who has the opportunity to interact with your guests, have them encourage your guests to take photos with your monsters, or in front of your signs or the haunts themselves if possible, and then to post their photos to their facebook pages. This is what happens if they do. They take a photo on their phone, click share this photo on facebook, they are now given the opportunity to add the location where the photo was taken, they select your haunt, then they are asked to tag whoever is in the photo, so they tag themselves and their friends, and then they can make a comment about where they are or what they are doing, they post it. What happens next is pretty crazy, because within seconds, once this photo is uploaded, it is going to be visible to not only their friends on there walls and timelines, but it is going to show up on your wall. So within seconds this 1 picture can now reach literally thousands of people. At that point these people will now have the opportunity to visit your page, because you are attached to the photo, so they just click on your haunt name under the picture and they come right to you. A few years ago people could only dream of this kind of advertising, now it is free and so easy to do it is crazy. The key is not to stop here, now you want to go on to the page and start commenting on all of the photos that you are tagged in or located in, and comment back to them. Thank them for not only visiting your haunt, but thank them for sharing the fun with all of their friends and family, and if you are smart, you can invite them back to your haunt on another night at a discounted rate for them if they bring another group of friends or family to enjoy the fun. Imagine how this is going to make them feel, not only are they going to be blown away that you even care enough to look at their photo online, but they will be more blown away that you personally commented back to them and gave them a special offer if they want to come back again!

-Like as many other local business's as you can. Things like the local fire and police station facebook pages, local restaurants and bars, local stores, schools, anyone who has a facebook page that is local to you, just go to their page and like them. Because when you like them, they will get a little notification saying that you just liked them, and if they are smart, hopefully they will like you page back in return. This is just another opportunity to get not only them to like you, but now you will be visible on their page to their friends, and now they will start seeing your posts and they end up liking you, and so on and so fourth.

Just be as personal as possible, people like it when other people pay attention to them. They feel good when they are acknowledged. The same applies if someone makes a negative comment on your page on someone else�s page about you. The best way to go about dealing with is not to delete it and block the user from posting again, but to address the issue personally with them, respond to their post and publically apologize for not meeting their expectations and address the issue in a professional manor, even if they are being unreasonable. When someone complains about something on facebook, they don�t expect that the people they are complaining about will ever address the issue. They are expecting you to delete the comment, ignore them and write them off. So when you take a completely different road than what they expect, they will be blown away that you care enough to respond to their complaint, and publically apologize. If you want, I would recommend sending them a private message from your personal facebook page, tell them that you are the manager or owner of the haunt, again personally apologize to them and invite them back in free of charge to give you another chance. Now this is going to cause them to do one of 3 things, the first is to keep bashing you, because sometimes people are just unreasonable and mean, and are just trying to get attention and they don�t care who gets caught up in it. if this happens you should not worry about your reputation, because chances are that everyone else who is reading the posts from this person can realize that they are unreasonable and they will write them off anyway. More than likely though they will be thrilled that you responded, they will then proceed to delete their negative post and maybe even write a good one, because they are so impressed at how you handled the issue (Never ask them to remove the post though, because that will open up a whole different can of worms, they will think that you are just being nice so that you get them to take down the post, you want to not only make them feel like you are genuine, you want to really be genuine, people will not care about you or your business, until they know how much you care about them). The third possibility is that they just ignore you and nothing else comes from it, and that is ok to, because people know that opinions are opinions, and everyone is going to have a negative review every now and then, but it is how you handle it that separates you from the rest.

I could go on and on about this all night, but I will stop for now. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to ask. I would be happy to give you much info as I can to help your haunt maximize its opportunity on facebook, because it really is the way of the future. At least for now until the next biggest thing comes along. But facebook isn�t going anywhere soon, so it is important that you learn how to use it to its max! It also dosnt take much time of effort to control your pages, one of two people can run it, and only spend about an hour a day combined!

Have a great weekend everyone!
Justin Arrigo

**Raycliff Manor** · 02-11-2012, 12:18 PM

Great post Justin! Anyone who hasn't had the time to read this full post by Justin, definitely save it for when you have the time. There is great information and insights being shared here! Also be sure to spend some time investigating at least some of the following:

Google Analytics
Surveys - check out surveymonkey.com
Email Marketing Campaigns - Constant Contact or GetResponse are a couple

Definitely follow the HauntWorld Facebook page and learn from someone who has been leading the way in marketing haunted attractions for years now!

Happy Haunting!

Kel

**drfrightner** · 02-14-2012, 07:17 AM

Yeah great job ... I'll have to find the time to read it all. Holy Cow...

There are many things people should learn about it all I certainly am still learning for sure. I'm just getting started so all the help you can offer the better. In fact I wish I had someone to take it over for me. All of this is a lot of work.

Hauntworld facebook is up to like 7300 members, just 5 months ago we had 300 or something.

Larry

**JamBam** · 02-14-2012, 09:21 AM

well worth the read...

Thanks for the input. Awesome info.

**MorgueofDoom** · 02-14-2012, 11:18 AM

Justin that is really helpful information that I had know idea of how to use. I'm passing this on to my team. Thank you for the information. Greatly appreciated.

**Skeered** · 02-14-2012, 02:02 PM

Good stuff. Just printed it out so I don't lose it.

**themagicofjustinarrigo** · 02-14-2012, 03:05 PM

Glad everyone is finding this useful. Since it is a relatively new way to advertise, dont be afraid to try all kinds of things! This is basically all free advertising, so if you try something and it doesnt work, no problem, nothing lost, just think of a new idea and try that one. Once you find something that works, go with that. The more I am thinking about this the more ideas that are coming to my head. I am thinking this may be a good topic for an upcoming HW article, since basically everyone who runs a haunt could benefit from this kind of info, no matter how big or small your attraction is, or where you are located! Might have to get to work on that?
Justin

**Gore Galore** · 02-14-2012, 06:03 PM

Justin,

I recommend my customer's ask their patrons to tag them in photos on facebook every time we sell a Queue-line costume.

It really is easy and its free!
Very good information.

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