Tag us, and win?

Up until now, Facebook's predominate force has been with its domestic users, socially networking with each other in a twenty-first century manner that used to belong to crowded public bars, announcing to one and all that they ate beans for breakfast while tagging photographs of their best friends on drunken Saturday nights for all to see their sorry state.

I love Facebook because, like so many publicans, my day is pretty much spent confined within the walls of my building and I've often said it's an excellent way for me to share with the friends and family that I don't get to see very often the varying disasters that befall me on a regular basis.

Last Thursday, for example, I announced that I'd brushed my teeth, and then rinsed my mouth with Radox Bubble Bath... (I really must have a word with my wife about alphabetising our bathroom shelves so I can reach the Listerine easier.)

And then there's the ability to post endless photographs from my mobile phone, usually of things my children have got up to, but on Saturday I posted one of our garden table, having come down in the morning all bleary-eyed to notice the glass, that for the past ten years has faithfully been sat in the table frame ready to receive my morning brew and the daily newspaper, was in a billion shattered pieces over the grass.

Fan pages​

But while we, as individuals, have been able to post status updates and tag each other mercilessly in photographs, businesses have slowly been redeveloping their marketing strategies through Facebook "fan pages".

Just about every pub now has its own Facebook page, and we're all familiar with posting our own photographs of the business, announcing our plans for the coming week, sharing links to the company blog or, indeed, asking the question: would you like us to show Eurovision in the bar, or provide you with a spoon with which to gouge your eyes out?

Social networking services like Facebook have provided us with a relatively easy and incredibly inexpensive method of targeting our advertising to a receptive audience, but it has very much been a one way street, with us doing most of the work.

Yes, fans of our page (or products in some cases) can leave messages on the wall, interact with discussions or even post their photographs of their own experiences with the pub, but it requires them to visit the page and physically upload an image to the fan page, as well as the one they want to post on their own wall, and this means it's cumbersome and not a process they necessarily want to undertake all the time...until now.

Tag me​

In the past week, a small and almost unnoticed upgrade took place on your business fan page that now allows Facebook users to tag any business or brand that has a fan page in their photograph, in just the same way that they can tag a friend.

With businesses or brands, however, they don't have to be a follower — simply click on a pint glass, for example, and start typing in the name of the beer associated with it and, as long as the owner has a Facebook page, the user will get the option to tag that product in their own photograph.

Once the brand/product/business/establishment (delete as necessary) has been 'tagged' in the user's photograph, it'll appear in the business's photographs section of their fan page (though not, it would appear, directly on the main wall).

Such a move ups the ante in social media marketing as it is the next step in involving your customers in your online marketing strategies — namely, getting them to do the work for you.

If a customer tags your pub in one of their photographs it's effectively getting them to put your business's name in front of all their friends, increasing your exposure and, therefore, increasing the chances of new customers developing an interest in your establishment.

Naturally, your customers have to voluntarily tag your business in their photographs, so how about incentivising them to do so?

Perhaps a photo competition, in which the best image that your business or brand is tagged in wins a prize. It's a relatively cheap and easy way to increase your exposure, and your online marketing strategy.

I've got a few days off this week — it'll be all my wife can do to stop me snapping photographs of pubs and beer brands and tagging them in my photos on Facebook...!

One Good Deed​

I love it when I hear of pubs getting a mention for doing what seems like such a simple thing, so when I was reading the London Cyclist website last week it was nice to read the story of the Wissett Plough in Suffolk.

Run, for the past four years, by Nick and Debbie Sumner they've done the simplest thing of joining the Suffolk Bike Aid scheme and offering a free puncture repair kit to any stranded cyclist who happens to be in the vicinity.

It might not seem a big thing and several have said to me "pfft, but will it really generate them any business?" and I've had to answer "probably not, on the day, but is that really the point?"

I know for a fact that if they'd helped me out while stranded, I'd remember them the next time I was looking for a place to eat.

Mark Daniels is the licensee at the Tharp Arms in Chippenham, Cambridgeshire​