La Cocina de San Antón (San Antón’s Kitchen) is a space dedicated to gastronomy located on the fourth floor of the Mercado de San Antón (San Antón Market) in Madrid. Their Facebook page has over 11,000 fans and one of their main strategies is to launch plenty of promotions that encourage their community to grow. The first competition that they created with Cool Tabs was just over a year ago, in April 2013.Since then, they have run 10 promotions with which they have managed to entertain their fans, engage them and gradually gain more followers.

One of their most successful promotions was launched around the time of the saint’s day of the saint after which the eatery is named, San Antón. It was a photo competition in which they asked people to submit photos of their pets. The winners were the three photos that received the most votes, and prizes were given to both the pets and their owners. Not forgetting the culinary side, the prizes included the choice of the prestigious “5 Jotas” Iberian cured ham or loin, plus dinner, a pet photoshoot and a copy of the #manifiestopetlover manifesto from Animalvitae, who also collaborated with the campaign. So, it was a prize directly related to the fan page, which is one of Cool Tabs’ recommendations regarding prizes. 

Cool Tabs’ services help us a lot because we run a competition practically every month and we would go crazy if we had to set up each of those tabs. Half of our fans are there thanks to you.

Irene Pérez-Chirinos, Community Manager at Noho Comunicación

We spoke with Irene Pérez-Chirinos, Community Manager at Noho Comunicación, the person that manages the Facebook page for La Cocina de San Antón, to ask her about some of the strategies that they have used so that we may use them for other fan pages. This is what she told us:

Irene, what do you think has been the key to your success on Facebook?

I would say that there are two keys. The first is that we run lots of competitions that encourage the community to grow and they all use a voting system to help draw in our fans’ friends. Also, we usually use flyers to promote our competitions offline and attract even more traffic. The second key is how close we are to our customers. We try to reply to everyone as soon as possible and treat the page’s followers as if they were one big family. Whether it is good or bad, all feedback is welcome.

What would you highlight about your campaigns on La Cocina de San Antón’s Facebook page?

I think the stand-out feature of our campaigns is that we always try to go that little bit further. We try not to ask typical questions and we are always thinking of new things to motivate fans to participate (e.g. sharing a Spotify playlist, a competition for recipes that include oranges, etc.).

Have you spread news about your campaigns in any other way?

Apart from our networks and the flyers that I mentioned, to promote the day of San Antón, for example, the guys at Animalvitae (who collaborated with us for the competition and have over 40,000 fans) also spread the word about the competition among their fans.

How do you think our services help you?

Cool Tabs‘ services help us a lot because we run a competition practically every month and we would go crazy if we had to set up each of those tabs. Half of our fans are there thanks to you.

And finally, what would you highlight about Cool Tabs?

I would highlight how easy it is to use. It’s all very well explained and if there are any questions about anything, the support team are amazingly swift to respond. Your willingness to help is clear and you make everything very easy, even when asked stupid questions… some of which I have asked myself! (laughing)

Read about some of Cool Tabs’ other success stories and pick up ideas for your campaigns >>