For Longboat Key’s Cannons Marina, social media should “start a conversation about what customers love,” says marketing director Lucile Miller. With the aim of “giving the marina a voice” and engaging customers, she’s come up with ideas like last year’s “Dogs on Boats” Facebook contest. Cannons received more than 20 pictures of customers’ dogs enjoying the boating lifestyle—you can still see the pictures on the Cannons Facebook page. The goal of the contest was simple: Make people smile—no purchases or sign-ups necessary.

Miller calls her strategy the “95/5 rule”; 95 percent of what she posts is conversational and five percent is about Cannons and its products. “We don’t want to sell everybody a boat,” she says. “We want to be friends.”