FB for BUSINESS (How to Convince Your Skeptical Boss That Facebook Marketing Works) Is your business on Facebook? Do you need to convince your boss—or a client—that Facebook is a worthy marketing investment? In this article I’ll show you 7 things you can do to convince decision-makers of the value Facebook. #1: Assess Your Goals Before you can convince anyone that they need to be on Facebook, you’ll need to understand what they want to accomplish. Remember that not every business needs to be on Facebook. If you are in a B2B that sells concrete to two or three huge companies, LinkedIn might be a better fit. Not all businesses need to be on Facebook. Ask the following questions before you start planning a campaign to help you assess expectations and set goals. What are your expectations? For starters, explain that ROI for social media can be measured by getting better customer feedback, increasing word-of-mouth marketing and gaining a better understanding of customers’ wants and needs. You need to understand social media ROI and know your company’s expectations. inShare982
SME: Facebook Strategy Are you looking for creative ways to use visual storytelling in your social media marketing? Do you have a great story to tell, but you’re not sure how to share it? Every company has a story to tell. It could be anything from brand history to internal innovation to fun customer feedback. In this article I’ll show you five imaginative ways brands are using pictures to tell compelling stories that generate engagement on Facebook. Why Tell a Visual Story? A picture is worth a thousand words. Posting images can help increase engagement and shares on Facebook. Are you using pictures to your advantage? #1: Use Clever Photo Collections The American Express Facebook page strives to give a strong visual representation of the brand.
FB ENGAGEMENT (9 Facebook Marketing Tips to Improve Engagement) Need some Facebook marketing inspiration? Here are nine Facebook pages using some great techniques for more engagement. Keep reading for some awesome tips from businesses of all sizes. #1: Get Personal Smart Passive Income with Pat Flynn does a great job with a variety of posts but also adds some of his personal life. Your community wants to get to know you and wants to be able to relate to you and your company. You can tell them what you had for lunch. Personal cover photo with his podcast setup and a picture of his son. #2: Use Pictures No doubt you’ve heard the visual marketing drumbeat, and it’s all true. Home Depot uses pictures very well by engaging their fans with project ideas, posts featuring employees and a fun game to guess the product. Home Depot gets engagement with their fans by making them guess the product. Home Depot features their employees. #3: Run a Contest Facebook Contests are a great way to bring some fun to your Facebook page. #4: Have Fun #5: Showcase a Cause
FB AD ANALYTICS (How to Track Your Facebook Ad Conversions) Do you know how to measure your return on investment (ROI) on Facebook ads? Do you know how to tell if your Facebook ad is accomplishing your objective? In this article, I’ll cover what Facebook conversion tracking and offsite pixels are, why they matter and how to start tracking the conversions of your Facebook ads today. Facebook Ad ROI? You’ve probably heard the refrain that you can’t measure ROI on Facebook. Let me be clear—measuring the ROI of all of your Facebook efforts is dangerous. And you absolutely can measure the ROI of your Facebook advertising efforts, particularly when you’re looking to drive an action that can be assigned a value. Return on investment is when you consider profits in relation to capital invested. What Is Conversion Tracking? Facebook allows you to track the conversions that happened as a result of your Facebook ad. This is a big deal because without it, you’re left guessing. When you ran your ad, your conversions went up 20%. What Is an Offsite Pixel?
FB VERIFIED (Facebook Verified Pages and Profiles: This Week in Social Media) Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news . To help you stay up to date with social media , here are some of the news items that caught our attention. What’s New This Week? Facebook Launches Verified Pages and Profiles : The new verified Pages are “to help people find the authentic accounts of celebrities and other high-profile people and businesses on Facebook.” "Verified Pages have a small, blue check mark beside their name on timelines, in search results and elsewhere on Facebook." Quora Launches Full-Text Mobile Search : Both the iPhone and Android for Quora apps will now “offer the same full-text, keyword-based search capability that you can use on the computer.” Full-text search is now available on the Quora mobile apps. Discussion From Our Networking Clubs : Thousands of social media marketers and small business owners are asking questions and helping others in our free Networking Clubs. Here are some useful tools worth noting: What do you think?
FB MOBILE (Facebook Reveals Most Users Are Mobile: This Week in Social Media) Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up to date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention. What’s New This Week? Facebook Reveals 78% Of US Users Are Mobile: TechCrunch reports “a new level of transparency from Facebook will help the world see whether its mobile growth is entirely propped up by international users that don’t earn the company as much money.” Facebook mobile users continue to grow. Yelp Introduces the Ability to Write and Publish Reviews on Mobile: “Yelpers can now contribute their useful, funny and cool reviews directly from their Yelp mobile application (available today on iOS and coming soon to Android).” "Any photos that a Yelper has taken of the business they are reviewing will now appear in-line with their mobile reviews." Google+ Adds SoundCloud Embeds: SoundCloud works “together with Google to make it easier than ever to reach your audience by sharing sounds to Google+.” Don’t miss this:
FB CONTESTS [How to Ensure Your Facebook Contests Attract Genuine Fans] Are you thinking of running a contest on Facebook? Have you run a contest and had little success with retaining fans past the award date? One goal of a successful Facebook contest should be to recruit fans who are genuinely interested in you, while avoiding the cheaters and faux fans who are only interested in material gain. In this article you’ll discover five tips to help ensure that your contests attract genuine fans. #1: Award Appropriate Prizes Don’t offer attractive prizes that have nothing to do with your brand. Everyone wants an iPad—not just your potential customers. An appropriate award deflects the prize-hunters who hide your posts or unlike your Page as soon as the prizes have been awarded. Offer a prize that interests your current or future customers. Lord & Taylor, an online fashion retailer for women, is awarding fashion accessories from its website. When you choose the right prize, you safeguard against attracting opportunists and cheaters. #2: Choose Your Winners Wisely
FB APP CHAT [Facebook App Chat Heads: This Week in Social Media] Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up to date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention. What’s New This Week? Facebook Updates iPhone App With Chat Heads and Stickers: “Now you can keep chatting even when you’re doing other stuff on Facebook, like checking your news feed. Tap Chat Heads to reply, drag them around or flick them down to close.” The Facebook iPhone app's new Chat Heads make it easy to follow chat conversations on the go. LinkedIn Unveils a New Mobile Experience: The new LinkedIn phone app provides a completely revamped experience “with the general professional and everyday use case in mind.” Discussion From Our Networking Clubs: Thousands of social media marketers and small business owners are asking questions and helping others in our free Networking Clubs. Twitter Releases a Music App: The Twitter #music app is “a new service that will change the way people find music, based on Twitter.
FB ADS [Facebook Reduces Ad Options: This Week in Social Media] Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up to date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention. What’s New This Week? Facebook Streamlines Ad Offering: Facebook says they plan to “streamline the number of ad units from 27 to fewer than half of that” while mapping all of their ads to “the business objectives marketers care about—be it in-store sales, online conversions, app installs, etc.” Facebook will eliminate redundant ads. LinkedIn Lets You Enrich Your Updates: After recently giving you the ability to add rich media to your profile, LinkedIn now also lets you “directly upload images, documents and presentations to the updates you share from the LinkedIn Homepage.” LinkedIn's new feature allows you to "add a richer and more visual component to your professional discussions." SlideShare's richer RSS feeds allow for larger image thumbnails to be shared. Sponsored posts are now also found on the Tumblr web dashboard.
COMMUNITY MANAGER [9 Ways to Become a Better Facebook Community Manager] Would you like to have a thriving Facebook community? Are you looking for tips to improve your community? In this article I’ll share 9 tips to improve your Facebook community. #1: Know Your Voice Branding is important on social media. Your company should have a “voice” that matches your brand and your company philosophy. Are you more serious or do you add a little bit of snark in your posts? If you are a one-person operation, these decisions may be easy. The voice of the company is important in how comments and community feedback are handled, as well as the day-to-day posting. ModCloth has an offbeat, humorous voice that engages their audience. #2: Have Access to Visuals Visual marketing is becoming a vital part of Facebook and all social platforms. Even if your business isn’t visual, make a plan for how you will add images to your posts. I like using tools like Snagit, iPiccy or PicMonkey to create or modify images to make them interesting. Orange County Animal Services uses creative images.
FB CONTESTS (How to Choose the Right Type of Facebook Contest) Are you thinking of launching a Facebook contest or giveaway? Is your goal focused on recruiting new fans? Collecting qualified emails? Engaging your existing fan base? How can you be sure the type of contest you choose fits your Page and your goals? Choosing the right type of contest to run on Facebook can be a challenge. To help you decide what will work best for your goals, here are six types of contests you can run on Facebook. #1: Sweepstakes Campaigns A sweepstakes is a great vehicle for collecting email addresses from existing or new fans. Participants enter and a winner is chosen by a random draw on a specified date. A sweepstakes campaign shows your participating friends and provides various sharing features. Sweepstakes are the contest of choice if you want to maximize the number of participants without spending a lot of time on the effort. The pros: Sweepstakes are easy for the Page admin to set up and easy for participants to use. The cons: The user experience is a non-event.
FB ADS (Facebook Advertising) Do you use social media to generate inbound leads for your business? Are you unsure about where and how to focus your efforts to meet your lead generation goals? According to HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing Annual Report, social media produces almost double the marketing leads of trade shows, telemarketing, direct mail or PPC.