“If you want to push the limits of what Facebook can do, as far as your business, and you have a custom page and you want to get into it full force, you have to make sure that you invest the time into it long term to respond and engage with all your fans.”

Interview by Mike Sullivan

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Mike:
Hey everyone, I’m Mike Sullivan. This is MO.com, where we feature small business owners and entrepreneurs and bring you hints, tips, insights, and perspectives on what it takes to be successful.

Joining us today is Jim Belosic of Shortstack.com. Shortstack offers a really cool tool that helps you make custom Facebook pages for very affordable prices. In fact, there’s also a free version. I checked out the site. It looks really cool. Jim, thanks for joining us today. Can you tell us a little bit more about Shortstack? Give us some more details.

Jim:
Shortstack is basically a content management system for custom Facebook pages. It allows the user to take a Facebook page and almost turn it into a miniature website, without a whole lot of coding knowledge. We started out as application developers on the Facebook platform after some of our brands and agencies requested some special functionality. So we were used to building these applications, but it was very time intensive. It took a lot to actually create something interesting without knowing Ruby and JavaScript and Python and PERL, and all these crazy languages. So what we decided to do is build a content manager, so that we did all the coding, but then someone else could just worry about the functionality.

Mike:
Some of the other brands that have used Shortstack include VH1, Pampered Chef, Restaurant.com. What do you think appealed to them to use Shortstack as opposed to having their own IT department conjure up the pages they needed for Facebook?

Jim:
One of the reasons that agencies or brands usually come to Shortstack is because it’s easier to maintain the Facebook presence long term. A lot of people do have the capability of building a one-off application. Let’s say I’m VH1, and I wanted to build a contest. It’s fine to invest in that with your internal tech team and have them make this product, but where the real saving is, is long term. We always say that Facebook is something that needs to be fed and watered every day. So it’s the long-term upkeep and the long-term maintenance that can really run into some serious money. Shortstack allows you to off-load the tech team’s labor onto other staff members, meaning a community manager, or an account exec, or maybe even a lower skill level developer, where they can maintain things. They can change text. They can change photos. We like to think of Shortstack as WordPress for Facebook. If you can build it in WordPress, which is extremely easy, then you can do the same thing with Shortstack. So it’s really easy to maintain.

Mike:
Once a small business has a custom Facebook fan page or a custom Faceboook page, what should they do and what should they avoid doing?

Jim:
Well, when a business has a custom Facebook page, it’s great to just build the page. Then you have to remember that you need to drive traffic to it. It’s a similar experience to a website. One of the common mistakes that we see is someone will build a custom Facebook presence, but then they don’t get any traffic to it. There’s no engagement. So what we recommend is linking to it, buying ads to drive traffic to it, using status updates to link to your contest or your exclusive video. It’s a great way to offer fan exclusive coupons or deals or incentives. Building it is not enough. You have to treat it the same way that you would drive traffic to anything else.

Mike:
You mention contests. Is that a good way to draw attention?

Jim:
Yes, definitely. We’ve seen a lot of success with contests, promotions, sweepstakes, things like that, as well as what we call fan exclusive content or even fan gated content. There are a lot of different names for it. What it basically means is, with our platform, you can decide which content you’re going to show to everyone and which content you’re only going to show to fans or people who already like your page. It’s a great way to increase your fan count, by offering a free beer at happy hour coupon, or 10% off a purchase coupon code, in order to incentivize someone to become a fan. However, one of the pitfalls that people run into is you want to make sure that you’re attracting fans who are genuinely interested in your product. Make sure that whatever your incentive is you’re still building that long-term fan base, and not someone who’s just coming by for the free T-shirt and then they’re going to bail on you. It’s all about quality of fans and not really quantity.

Mike:
Where did the idea for the business originate?

Jim:
We started out in 2001 as a graphic design house. Back then, we were focused a lot on print design and web design. Then it started to evolve, where we were doing more and more web design in the early 2000s. Then we started doing more custom web applications. We started building e-commerce platforms and different, interesting things that you could do on the Web. Then eventually, around 2007, 2008, we started hearing more and more chatter from our clients saying, “Hey, what’s this Facebook thing? How can we take advantage of it? Is there anything we can do for business?” So, we started investigating how can we leverage this? How can a business owner gain exposure through Facebook?

When they released Facebook platform, that’s when things really took off. We had a lot of capability, where we could do some really interesting things that integrated deeply with Facebook. After that took off, we realized that we were doing the same applications over and over again in-house for our clients. So, internally, we built a content management system, just so that we could speed our own development. Then, over time, what happened is that content management system started to become more and more polished. All of a sudden, a light bulb went off and we said, “Wait a second. Maybe our users can just use this thing themselves, and they won’t need to go through us. We’ll just make a self-service platform out of it.” So that’s how Shortstack was born. It’s got a positive response so far, so we’re really happy with it.

Mike:
You mentioned this evolved out of your graphic design firm. Can you talk a little bit about what it took to actually launch this portion of the business? The effort, the funding, things like that?

Jim:
Being a small agency, we’ve always been really in touch with our finances. We live and die by our clients. So, for us, I think we had an advantage that we already had a business going, and we had a lot of talented people on staff. So we had the advantage of starting out with a viable business, and then making that business more viable by adding these additional services to it. We did end up bringing in one full-time developer, at the beginning, to focus solely on this project. I was super nervous about it, because I could barely afford it. We’ve been bootstrapped. But it’s been great, because we know that everything we do has to be profitable. It has to be successful to our users. If it’s not, then we’re not going to gain users, and we’re not going to make payroll. So, we’re really motivated to make this thing awesome.

Mike:
What’s been the most effective means you’ve found to promote your own business so far?

Jim:
I would say two things. One is we have a free plan. The free plan has been really cool, because it allows us to put our logo down at the bottom of the tab. For not a whole lot of server costs, we’re able to expose our brands to a lot of different people who are obviously on Facebook platform. They’re looking at a custom page, and they might be interested in building one themselves. So that’s been a really effective vehicle for us. It’s definitely not a money maker, because we have a lot of free users. They’re great guys. Some of them upgrade and some of them don’t. Still, we treat it as advertising, so it works well for us.

Probably the second best has been Facebook ads. Facebook ads allow us to really laser target our audience. We can target people who are interested just in social media or they’re interested just in Photoshop, or something like that. So, I can say, “If you’re familiar with Photoshop, you can probably build a custom Facebook tab.” Our return on those ads is very high, because we can talk directly to those people. I’m not wasting it on a bunch of people who aren’t interested. I’m very focused on not wasting my ad dollars, because we don’t have very many.

Mike:
We’ve mentioned give-aways and contests a couple of times. Do you have any advice on how to promote those contests?

Jim:
Yes. There are a couple of ways that are really effective. The first way is, with our particular system, if someone enters your sweepstakes or your promotion, they fill out a form. Maybe you want to collect their email address and their name. Let’s say it’s to win a free T-shirt. You’re going to collect their T-shirt size. They’re going to enter the data in the form and then they click submit. Now, with our system, when you click submit, you can have other actions that follow that. Meaning, if I fill out the form and click submit, maybe then a share prompt will show up. I have the opportunity to post on my Facebook wall, “Hey guys, look I just entered this contest to win a free T-shirt. Click here to do the same.”

We find that that’s actually the best way of promoting your competition because it’s going to people with similar interests. It’s that word of mouth. It’s me telling my personal friends, not a company telling my friends.

A couple of other things is incentive. The bigger the prize, the better the prize, the more likelihood it has of going viral. However, we want to make sure that people understand, maybe you don’t want to go viral to everyone. You want to go viral to people who are just in your industry or your product. If you’re selling kitchen knives, you maybe don’t want to talk to children. So, make sure that your incentive is, at the end of the day, directed towards your target market.

Beyond that, Facebook ads are a really cheap way of driving traffic to your particular contest. We find that ads that talk about a contest convert a lot higher, or their click-through ratio is a lot higher than just standard ads that aren’t really offering anything.

Mike:
Any closing words on things to be aware of when bringing your business to Facebook?

Jim:
If you want to push the limits of what Facebook can do, as far as your business, and you have a custom page and you want to get into it full force, you have to make sure that you invest the time into it long term to respond and engage with all your fans. One of the biggest mistakes that I see is when people build this beautiful Facebook community, and then they forget about it after six weeks. You look at the wall after six weeks, and there are all of these people saying, “Hey, where are you guys?” Or, “I sent you an email. How come you haven’t responded?” So, it’s definitely not necessarily a monetary investment, but it’s a time investment with either yourself or your staff. For us, it becomes habit because our team is constantly on our Facebook wall. We’re constantly monitoring Twitter. We’re constantly checking email, because once you dive into social, you’ve got to dive into it with both feet.