A huge part of why we travel is the chance to have unique experiences and make special memories. In the Pocono Mountains, these can range from an epic mountain biking adventure with college roommates, to a family camping trip complete with toasted marshmallows and ghost stories, to a luxurious spa retreat with girlfriends. Whatever your reason to escape, one thing’s for sure: Life’s Greater in the Pocono Mountains.

Masterminds’ challenge was to give visitors and potential visitors a fun way to show the world what makes their lives greater – and a chance to get creative in the process.

Enter the Greater Maker, a social game designed to let Facebook fans create their own “Life’s Greater” experience, and then share it for all to see.
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When talking about Facebook objectives we often stress the importance of increasing the engagement level of your fans. It’s an important indicator of a healthy Facebook page. But exactly how can engagement levels be measured and tracked? There’s a simple formula for that! And you should use it to establish benchmarks and track improvement.

Simply go to your page, and look at the numbers on the left, under your “About” section. Take the number of people “talking about this” and divide it by the number of “Likes” your page has, and voila! You have your engagement score.

According to Social Media Examiner, healthy Facebook pages have engagement levels between one and five percent. As you can see in the chart below, several destination brands are surpassing that average, while others could use some work.

It’s very important to keep track of your engagement – and not just your number of likes. A brand may have hundreds of thousands of fans, but if those fans aren’t interacting with your content, you are less likely to show up in their feeds (this is based on the Facebook algorithm of EdgeRank, which we’ll discuss in another blog post).

There are several ways your fans can interact with your page to increase your “talking about this” number, thereby boosting your engagement levels:

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In retrospect the solution should have seemed obvious, but as we all know sometimes the most obvious solutions are overlooked. The Pocono Mountains Visitors Bureau and its stakeholders were both facing the same situation: significantly decreased advertising budgets, expensive media markets and increased competition. Sound familiar?

How could their modest budgets be used in a way that truly made an impact? The solution, said David West, VP, Sales and Marketing of the Pocono Mountains Visitors Bureau, was to invite their stakeholders to buy into a fully integrated advertising campaign developed by Masterminds. After all, both the Visitors Bureau and the stakeholders had the same goals – maintain top of mind awareness for the Pocono Mountains as a getaway destination, and drive business to the variety of hotels and attractions in the area.
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Our Social Media Boot Camp at this year’s Global Gaming Expo (G2E) was a huge hit. We had a lot of fun sharing our latest insights with over 80 casino marketers in this hands-on workshop, and we hope everyone got as much out of it as we did.

Due to popular demand, we decided to share these slides with the rest of you folks who may not have been able to attend the conference in Vegas.

Click below to see all the slides from our five different seminars. If you have any questions (especially about staying within Facebook’s ever-changing guidelines), feel free to drop us a line in the comments section. We’re always here to help.
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Nearly every casino in the country recognizes the importance of social media and is dedicating more and more resources (both human and financial) to its success. However, few devote the time to create a true strategic plan that outlines their objectives, goals and strategies, and even fewer know how to measure the ROI.

That’s why we’re hosting a very special Social Media Boot Camp at the Global Gaming Expo (G2E) in Las Vegas, specifically meant to keep casino marketers ahead of the digital curve. We’ll provide actionable ways for you to improve your social media efforts – right now.
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This piece was written by Nicole Wolf for Global Gaming Business Magazine. Original article here.

What is social media really worth to the marketing of your casino?

David Ogilvy. Leo Burnett. Bill Bernbach. These are just a few of the ad industry legends who never interned at Masterminds. (Although we once had an intern named Rusty Bogusky). Regardless, they all had to start somewhere, just like you. So why not start at the beach? It’s fall. The crowds have split. The water’s still warm. The Pokemon are easier to catch. It’s the perfect time to kickoff your advertising career by interning at Masterminds, the award-winning full service ad agency down by the Jersey Shore.

We aren’t looking for obnoxious sexy 20-somethings with orange glowing skin and spiked up hair who want their MTV. Well, maybe we are. But we are also looking for a few bright young go-getters for our fantastic Fall 2011 internship. Three (3) selected applicants – an account management intern, social media/copywriting intern and a design/studio intern – will have the opportunity to not only immerse themselves in their own specialty, but they will also have a chance to collaborate with other departments and maybe have some ice cream.

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