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How to Use Facebook Targeted Posts to Improve Your Facebook Engagement

September 25, 2012 / Andrea Vahl / No comments

Are you looking for creative ways to improve your Facebook engagement?

By narrowing the people who see your posts, you can actually get more engagement.

It sounds counterintuitive, but it works when done right.

What Are Facebook Targeted Posts?

As you may know, Facebook recently introduced a limited rollout of Enhanced Page Post Targeting.

At the time of this writing, pages with over 5,000 likes are more likely to have the option, but that isn’t always the case.

Previously you had some control over who sees your posts by clicking on the Public button beneath your post. You could target the location or language of who sees your posts both in their newsfeed and on your wall (now timeline).

This feature is now expanded with Enhanced Page Post Targeting.

The previous targeting allowed you to select a language or a location.

Not too many options in the previous targeting.

Now you can target your posts by a wider range of options including:

Gender: male or female
Relationship status: single, in a relationship, engaged or married
Educational status: in high school, in college, college grad
Interested in: men or women
Age: select a range between 13 and 65
Location: country, region or state, city
Language: Type in the language

So far, Facebook has not added precise interests or other types of targeting that are available in Facebook Ads.

Also, realize that not everyone enters this information in his or her profile, so you may miss some of your target market by narrowing the post reach.

But if you use these targeting options wisely, you can have a big impact on the interaction in your post.

If you have targeting available on your post, you’ll see the cross-hairs icon in your status area. To start narrowing your target, just click on it and then click Add Targeting as shown.

If you have enhanced targeting, you will see a cross-hairs icon.

You can then start adding your target audience.

One thing that is different about the Enhanced Targeted Posts versus the previous targeting is that the post will still show on your timeline to all users.

Previously the posts would be invisible to users who did not fit the targeting. That can be problematic for pages that use the targeting often.

Facebook’s solution is to hide the posts you don’t want to show on your timeline. Users will still see the post in their newsfeed, but if people visit your page, they will not see irrelevant content.

Now that you know how to use the targeting, the question that needs to be answered is why use the targeting?

With all the focus on getting as much engagement as you can on Facebook, does it make sense to narrow your potential audience? Yes it does—but not always, of course.

Here are some tips on how to make the most out of targeting.

#1: Speak to a Segment of Your Audience

If you want to advertise something such as a local event or if you use different languages for your global page, then targeting obviously makes sense. But now you can also ask specific questions to just one segment of your audience.

You can see as you narrow your target how many people are in that segment. You can narrow this number to as low as 20! Then you can mouse over the world icon after you post to see how the post was targeted when it was posted.

Watch the number of people who can see your post in their newsfeed.

You can refer back to the targeting by mousing over the world icon.

#2: Make Your Targeting Known

One thing that people love is to know that you are talking directly to them. The targeting of a post is not visible to others, so you’ll need to point out the fact that you are seeking their input specifically.

You may want to mention that you’re using the targeting option so that they know their opinion is wanted. The post will still be visible on your timeline, so if you really want to focus the post, click the pencil in the upper-right corner of the post to hide it.

Make sure your audience knows the post target to get more engagement.

Realize that just because the visibility has gone down, it doesn’t mean that the interaction will go down if you do it right. People enjoy the fact that it is a focused conversation and that will help you build community on your page.

You can still get a lot of engagement on a post with fewer views.

#3: Measure Your Results

Have fun and try different targeting tactics.

Have some fun.

Build a community.

Then measure what works for your audience. If you have a smaller page, you may find that you’re narrowing the target audience too much.

Watch your insights and sort by the Talking About This column to see your most engaging posts.

Measure your results in Insights.

Tip: If you want to see how many people in your audience fit a certain demographic profile, you can quickly see the number when you apply different targeting parameters.

You can easily see your demographics.

But massive engagement doesn’t always have to be the goal. By connecting with segments of your audience, you can show them that you’re listening and they, in turn, will love you for it.

Targeting can be a powerful tool, but you must remember to make it fun, too. Notice how the posts in these examples were asking fun questions. If you treat this as another push-marketing advertising channel, people will leave. Do it right, and your audience will become not only fans, but also friends.

What do you think? Have you tried the new enhanced page post targeting? What have your results been? Do you think this will be a good tool for your business? Let us know in the comments section below!

Category: andrea vahl, facebook, facebook engagement, facebook marketing, facebook strategy, facebook target, facebook targeted post, How To, targeted audience, targeted posts /

9 Facebook Marketing Tips to Improve Engagement

September 19, 2012 / Andrea Vahl / No comments

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. You can throw the old “don’t tell them what you had for lunch” advice right out the window with this tip.

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. Better yet, add a picture!

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. Pictures are very powerful on Facebook. They take up more space in the news feed and can get more engagement than a straight text post.

Home Depot uses pictures very well by engaging their fans with project ideas, posts featuring employees and a fun game to guess the product. Notice how their pictures include a link to help drive traffic where they want.

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. Not only that, they can help boost your likes, grow your email list and showcase a product or service that you offer. Not a bad marketing tool when you wrap that into one shiny package.

How to Market Your Horse Business uses contests very effectively by showcasing the contest in the Facebook cover photo all along the way.

Use the cover photo and app photos to help promote your contest.

#4: Have Fun

Even if you are a “serious” business, you can still have a funny-bone. Salesforce does a great job with their “SaaSy, VP of fun” character that makes regular appearances on their Facebook page.

Using humor on Facebook is a great way to get interaction. People are usually on Facebook to be social, and if you’re able to entertain and inform in your posts, you will get more shares, comments and likes.

SaaSy, the VP of fun, gets great interaction.

Not only does Salesforce create their own fun posts, but they also feature crowdsourced fun.

#5: Showcase a Cause

Many pages have causes that they support—either through their own foundations or by running events that benefit other causes.

Little Man Ice Cream does a great job of running events that also benefit causes. Their Hula Hoop Competition was an event that benefitted a local farm providing sustainable food. They featured the event on their cover photo and through photos on their page.

Little Man Ice Cream featured their event to benefit a local cause on their cover photo.

Working with causes is a great way to benefit your company and your community.

#6: Use Facebook’s Features

Use some of Facebook’s features such as apps, pinning posts and highlighting to help your page stay interesting.

Each week, Tumi features a different bag they sell by using an app to showcase the type of person who uses that bag in a “Case Study” (and I’m pretty sure the pun is intended).

They also use a contest app to give the bag away to one lucky entrant and they pin the contest post to the top of their page to further highlight the contest.

Use Facebook applications to keep your page fresh.

The orange flag in the upper-right means the post is pinned to the top of the Timeline and will be more visible.

#7: Consider Using Your Personal Profile

If you’re branding your business as YOU, such as a Realtor, author, or consultant, then you may want to consider using your Facebook personal profile to help your marketing.

Brent Humpherys, uses his personal profile to talk about his day-to-day activity as a Realtor while sprinkling in his life as a dad and husband.

When talking to Brent to find out how his Facebook use affects his business, he said that 80% of his business is directly affected by his presence on Facebook.

Share your personality while sharing news about your business.

Don’t be afraid to get personal if you are branding as you.

Brent shares his testimonials on his personal profile.

#8: Crowdsource Your Content

Medtronic Diabetes does a great job responding to customer issues in their posts. But they also like to feature their customers both in their cover photo and in pictures on their Facebook Timeline.

One thing that they do differently is that they have created an app on their Facebook page that will allow people to submit their story to be a candidate to be featured. This gives Medtronic a chance to review the stories and choose which ones to feature.

Medtronic uses an app to have people submit stories to share.

Then Medtronic will post the pictures and the story of the people who have submitted them.

Using crowdsourcing allows your page to be more of a community and connects people together.

#9: Love Your Fans

Campbell’s Soup uses photos and posts to show their fans how much they love them. Make sure you don’t take your community for granted. Show a little love! It also helps to be creative in the way you express it so that it adds some fun and gets shared.

Show your fans a little love!

Campbell’s also does a great job of responding to posts, both positive and negative. Having excellent customer service can help your brand stay strong.

Excellent customer service is another way to love your fans.

As mentioned, many of these pages use several of these strategies on Facebook—some were employing all of them. All of these pages have great engagement and have seen a lot of growth on Facebook over the last couple of months.

I hope these nine tips gave you some great ideas about new things to try and ways to stand out and will ultimately help your business grow.

What do you think? Have you tried these techniques? Or do you have one to add to this list? Let us know in the comments section below.

Category: andrea vahl, crowdsource, facebook, facebook app, facebook contest, facebook engagement, facebook marketing, facebook page, facebook strategy, How To /

4 Facebook Plugins to Drive More Traffic to Your Content

September 4, 2012 / Andrea Vahl / No comments

Do you want more of your content shared on Facebook?

Are you wondering how to make it easy for people to share your site or blog content on Facebook?

Which Facebook widgets are best?

Facebook recently introduced the Facebook Recommendations Bar—which is different from the Facebook Recommendations Box—and the Like Button and the Like Box.

But what are the differences and how do you decide what will work best for you? And then how do you install them?

Similar to the Like Button, when people like an article using the Recommendations Bar, a story is published back to their Timeline and friends' news feeds.

We’ll dive deep into those questions in this article (hint: your best solution may be a combination of the options).

#1: Recommendations Bar

First let’s talk about the newest plugin, the Recommendations Bar. This really is more of a popup box that is shown to readers of your blog post as they scroll down your post.

The Recommendations Bar is good for people who have blogs because it can help direct them to other blog posts that people liked on the site.

Here are some of the things you need to know about the Recommendations Bar:

Pops up inline with your blog post. You can choose what percentage of your article must be read before the box pops up.
You can choose to have the words Recommend or Like as the verbiage in the upper-left corner. That verbiage is then used in the Activity post.
When someone clicks Like or Recommend in the upper-left corner of the Recommendations Bar, that information is sent to the Activity area of readers’ Facebook Timelines and also appears in the Ticker for their friends to see.
Can be minimized by clicking the square in the upper-right corner of the popup box.
Only appears if the person reading your blog post is logged into their Facebook personal profile. If they are logged in as their page, it won’t appear at all. If the person is not logged into Facebook, the popup will appear but if they click Like, they will have to log into Facebook to complete the Like.
Shows how many people have liked the post, as well as whether a friend has liked the post, which is good social proof for your articles.

Here is a video tutorial on how to install and configure the Facebook Recommendations Bar using the Facebook WordPress plugin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHP9qGzXvn4

As mentioned in this video, use this post as a supplement to help you install the Facebook plugin.

The Recommendations Bar can pop up at the beginning of the article and have the word Recommend rather than Like.

Different information appears in my Recent Activity if someone likes or recommends the article from the Recommendations Bar.

The Recommendations Bar shows how many people like the article and whether a Facebook friend of the reader likes the article.

When people see that one of their Facebook friends has also read and liked the article, they may be more interested in reading the article. The ability to keep people on your website reading your content and getting to know you better will help you convert readers to customers.

#2: Recommendations Box

The Recommendations Box is the older Facebook plugin (with the confusingly similar name). It appears in the sidebar of your website.

Here are some of the things you need to know about the Recommendations Box:

Showcases popular articles on your website.
Doesn’t have a social side to it.
If you click on one of the articles, you are taken to the article but it doesn’t appear as a like or recommendation in Facebook. It is just a way to show popular articles with the number of people who have liked them.

The Recommendations Box is displayed on the sidebar of your website.

This plugin is a good choice if you want to have a list of popular articles in your sidebar with some social proof listed underneath the article.

But Facebook has done some initial experiments and found that the Recommendations Bar was getting three times more clicks than the posts in the Recommendations Box, according to a blog post from Facebook developer Jeffrey Spehar.

Add the Recommendations Box to have a list of popular articles, but using both the Recommendations Box and the Recommendations Bar may be overkill. Choose the one that fits better with the design you want—inline with the Recommendations Bar or on the sidebar with the Recommendations Box.

#3: Like Button

You may be familiar with the Like Button already. If you click the Like Button, you’re sending the activity back to your Facebook personal profile that you like the article you’re reading.

Here are some of the things you need to know about the Like Button:

You can choose the verbiage Like or Recommend for the button.
The action of Like or Recommend shows in the Activity area and the Ticker, similar to the way the Recommendations Bar works.
You can choose if you want to display the number of people who have liked the article or post and even if you want to show the profile pictures of people who have liked the post (this will only show the profile pictures of someone’s Facebook friends who like the post).
Shows up with an indication that the button is there if someone is logged in as their page.
It can also easily incorporate the Send Button, which allows people to easily email the article.

The Like Button can have the number of people who have liked the post and the Send button.

Indication that the Like Button is there, and you need to switch to your personal profile to use it.

Use the Like Button when you have a lineup of social sharing buttons. People will look for your social sharing buttons all in one place. But if you have your social sharing buttons with a different plugin, then you may not need it.

If you are using the Recommendation Bar, you may not want to rely on that alone to allow people to like your post, since it doesn’t show up when someone is logged in as their page.

#4: The Like Box

The Like Box is different from the Like Button in that it allows you to bring your Facebook page to your website versus sending activity about your website to your readers’ Facebook profiles. The Like Box resides on the sidebar of your website.

Here are some of the things you need to know about the Like Box:

Can be configured to show the profile photos of people who like your page, the last few posts from your page and other design elements such as width, height, and color scheme.
Shows an indication that it is there if someone is logged into Facebook as their page with a prompt to switch back to the user profile, similar to the Like Button.
When someone clicks Like, they will automatically like your page but not leave your website.
If you have a Like Box with the stream showing (the last few posts), someone can click on the stream to be taken to Facebook or even click on the links you have shared on your Facebook page.

The Like Box can be configured with faces and different styles and allows someone to like your Facebook page without leaving your website.

Add the URL of your page and configure the Facebook Like Box.

The Like Box is a very useful plugin to allow people to like your Facebook page right from your website. None of the other plugins accomplish this, so it is a good one to keep if you don’t want to have people navigate off of your website to go like your page. You can configure the Like Box so that it doesn’t have to take up too much space on your sidebar.

Installing the Plugins

Now let’s talk about the easiest way to install many of the available Facebook plugins onto your website.

If you’re using WordPress, adding a suite of Facebook plugins is easy with the Facebook Plugin for WordPress. All you need to do is download a zip file, install the plugin and configure your own app on Facebook (which is completely outlined for you by Facebook).

Then you just choose which Facebook app you want to add.

These plugins are shown in the Facebook Plugin area of the sidebar: Social Publisher, the Like Button, the Subscribe Button, the Send Button, Facebook Comments and the Recommendations Bar.

Take a look at this post which shows you exactly how to install each of these options.

Then you’ll find the Facebook Like Box, Recommendations Box and even the Like Button and Send Button (another way to install them) in the widgets area of Facebook. Drag the widget over to your sidebar and configure it.

The Like Box and Recommendations Box are in the Widget area of your WordPress site.

If you have a non-WordPress website, then you’ll have to use the Facebook Developers site to get the code for each of these Facebook plugins.

Deciding What’s Right for You

Now that we’ve covered all the bases on the different plugins and you see the differences, you need to decide what’s right for you.

How much social interaction do you want? Do you want someone to be able to like your Facebook page easily or is that not as important as sharing your post with their friends? Maybe you already have social share buttons on your blog and you don’t want to add anything new.

A combination of these options may be best. At Social Media Examiner, we have a Like Box and the Like Button. Perhaps you want to experiment with the traffic generation of the Recommendations Bar to try to keep people on your site.

What do you think? We’d like to hear from you. What are your thoughts about all of the options? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

Category: andrea vahl, facebook, facebook app, facebook plugin, facebook widget, like box, Like button, Plugin, recommendations bar, recommendations box, Tools, Widget, wordpress plugin /

8 Tips for Using Facebook Scheduled Posts

August 14, 2012 / Andrea Vahl / No comments

Are you crunched for time?

Could you use a little Facebook automation in your life? Well, help is here.

Facebook allows you to schedule your page posts.

Many people cheered this feature because Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm and other quirks make using third-party tools like HootSuite or SocialOomph for scheduling your posts less desirable than posting manually.

Let’s dig a little deeper and find out some of the nuances of using Facebook scheduled posts.

First, we will give you the steps to schedule your posts and edit them.

#1: How to Schedule Your Posts

Scheduling is easy—just follow these steps:

Write your post as you normally would. You can attach photos, add links, add YouTube videos, add tags to other pages and events or just include regular text.
Type your post as you would normally.

In the lower-left corner of your post, click on the clock symbol as shown in the screenshot above. You can now add the year, month, day and time you want the post to go out.
Add the date and time you want your post go out.

Notice that you can also backdate your posts to supplement your Timeline if you wish (more on that later).

You can schedule your post up to 6 months in the future (more months are shown, but if you select more than 6 months out, Facebook won’t accept it). You can schedule the minutes at 00-, 10-, 20-, 30-, 40- or 50-minute marks of the hour. So if you need a post to go out specifically at 2:15 pm, you cannot set it.

You can also add language and location targeting in your scheduled posts, just like you can in your regular posts. Just click on the Public icon and make the necessary adjustments.

Once you have everything set, just click the blue Schedule button. Voilà! Now just remember to circle back to your posts later after the scheduled time to watch for follow-up comments!

#2: How to Find and Edit Your Scheduled Posts

To see what you have scheduled and make any changes, just go to your activity log by accessing the admin panel at the top of your page (if you don’t see the admin panel, click the red admin panel button in the upper-right corner), then click Edit Page, and Activity Log. You then see all of your scheduled posts.

Use the activity log to find your scheduled posts.

View your scheduled posts.

If you need to edit your scheduled post, the only thing you can change from here is the time, unfortunately. To edit the text, you must cancel the post and redo your scheduling. To cancel or change the time, mouse over the upper-right corner of the post in the activity log.

You can only change the time or cancel the post and start over.

#3: You Can’t Schedule Everything

You can schedule links, photos, status updates and videos (although I found scheduling a video to be a bit buggy). You can also schedule a YouTube video link, which will attach as it normally does in your posts.

You can schedule a photo.

You can’t schedule some of the other types of posts as you can normally do from the publisher, such as photo albums, posting of events, questions, offers and milestones.

#4: You Can Backdate Your Posts

You can schedule things in the past. I’m not sure why you would want to use the backdating feature other than to fill out your Timeline a bit. But if you have a significant event that you want to post about in the past, I recommend a milestone post instead.

The interesting thing about backdating is that the post does go out into people’s news feed immediately and then is shown at the appropriate place on your Timeline.

The backdated post goes out immediately into the news feed with a note about when it was added into the Timeline.

#5: Scheduled Posts Won’t be Automatically Tweeted

If you have linked your Twitter account to your Facebook page by setting up www.Facebook.com/Twitter so that everything you post on Facebook gets tweeted (yes, we know that it’s not always a great idea but sometimes it isn’t terrible), be aware that your scheduled posts won’t go out to Twitter.

So if you rely on your Facebook page to supplement your tweets and you move to more scheduled posts, you will have to schedule your tweets with a different tool.

#6: Scheduling Posts Can Bring about More Engagement

What can you expect when you schedule posts? It depends on your baseline right now with your Facebook page—how often you are posting, how engaged your audience is, what you are posting and other factors.

One thing that scheduling can do for you is allow you to post more regularly and increase your posting without spending all day on your Facebook page.

Randi Thompson of How to Market Your Horse Business (and an active member of our Social Networking Clubs) tried an experiment where she upped the number of posts by using scheduled posts on two of her pages.

On her How to Market Your Horse Business page, she went from posting 3 times a day to posting every 3 hours and 5 times a day. Then she had another page, Horse and Rider Awareness, where she was not posting regularly at all. She tried scheduling 3 quality posts per day. Here are her results over a 5-day period.

Using Scheduled posts to increase post frequency helped increase engagement.

Now of course this is not a comprehensive study. And this could be done without scheduling posts. But the point is that scheduled posts can make things easier for you so you can batch your work, know that things are being posted at the times you want and you can get on with other parts of your business. I encourage you to try some experiments with scheduled posts on your page and see how things work for you.

And again, make sure you circle back to these posts to follow up on comments!

#7: Scheduled Posts are not Identified or “Punished” in Facebook

When you post from a different scheduling tool such as HootSuite or BufferApp, people can see that you’re posting through a different tool. But Facebook’s scheduled posts are seamless.

The posting tool appears under the post.

Using a different tool to post to Facebook is not all bad. Sometimes it’s much better to save yourself a little time and get the post out with the tool you’re using rather than not post at all.

But Facebook has been known to show posts using third-party tools a little less in the news feed or collapse them. As of this writing, I believe third-party tools are faring well in Facebook. But we all know how Facebook changes.

#8: Scheduled Posts May be Coming to Personal Profiles

The option does appear to schedule a Facebook post on personal profiles, which may be a good thing for people who are using their personal profiles to talk about business. But as of this writing, I could not schedule anything into the future, only for today or in the past.

Not everyone will see big changes by scheduling posts. You still have to deliver engaging Facebook content. But what scheduled posts can do is free up some of your time by allowing you to batch your social media posts into blocks and give you more time to focus on your business.

What are your thoughts? Have you been using scheduled posts? What results have you seen? Tell us in the comments section below!

Category: andrea vahl, backdate post, facebook, facebook page, facebook scheduled post, facebook update, How To, Marketing, schedule post /

12 Tips When Using Facebook Promoted Posts

July 2, 2012 / Andrea Vahl / No comments

Are you thinking of using Facebook Promoted Posts?

The feature officially rolled out in late May.

Many people are wondering where this new advertising option fits into their marketing mix or if it even fits at all.

What are Promoted Posts?

Facebook has enabled you to pay for an individual post to be seen in more of your fans’ news feeds. You have probably noticed the new metric Facebook has on the bottom of every post showing how many people it reached.

Each post shows your percentage of people reached and the exact number.

Why are the Posts not Already Being Seen by Your Community?

Facebook has been trying to educate people that nothing has changed recently, just the information is new.

Facebook posts were always only seen by a portion of your audience due to the fact that people may not be on Facebook at the time of your post or they may have a lot of friends and pages, which results in too much activity for all of it to show in their news feed.

EdgeRank is Facebook’s news feed algorithm for determining what is shown to people based on weight, affinity and time. Promoted Posts are a way to push posts more prominently into people’s news feeds.

Facebook has a great Help section where you can learn more about Promoted Posts.

Here are 12 things you should know about Promoted Posts:

#1: Facebook Promoted Posts are only available to pages with more than 400 Likes. And not all countries have Promoted Posts yet—they are still rolling out.

#2: You can only run a Promoted Post on posts that are newer than 3 days old and the post will be pushed into the news feeds of fans for 3 days following the start of the campaign.

To start the campaign, just click the Promote button on the lower right side of the post.

Click the Promote button and set your budget from the drop-down menu.

#3: Once a Promoted Post is running, you can stop the promotion by clicking on the Promote button again and then click the wheel to edit. Note you can also change your budget from here.

Stop the promotion or change the budget during the campaign.

#4: Your post will show a Sponsored tag underneath the post.

The post will indicate that it is sponsored.

#5: You can see the performance of the Promoted Post while it is running and after the campaign.

Click the Promotion button (or Promotion Complete) to see the activity data.

Click the People Reached link to see a breakdown of the people who saw the post.

#6: You’ll also be able to see more statistics in your Ads Reports area. Go to Facebook Campaigns and click Reports on the right sidebar. Select Advertising Performance as the Report Type, Summarize and Filter by Campaign, select Promoted Posts, Summarize By the dates you want to see, and then select Generate Report.

Configure the Ads Report for Promoted Posts.

You’ll then see a more detailed report to show you exactly how much each click cost and how many actions were taken. You can then get a better picture of how the Promoted Posts stack up next to the other types of Facebook Ads you may be running.

Analyze your statistics in the Ads Reports area.

#7: Rename each of your Promoted Post campaigns to be more meaningful by clicking on the campaign name. Go to Facebook Campaigns and click the pencil icon next to the campaign name. Then you will be able to rename it to something more meaningful such as “Promoted Offer June 7″ as an example.

Click the pencil icon to rename your ad.

#8: Use Facebook Promoted Posts to increase engagement. One of the main reasons I see Promoted Posts as a good option in your marketing mix is to give your engagement a boost and to reconnect with fans who haven’t seen your posts in a while.

Clicks, comments and shares can get your posts back into the news feeds of dormant fans.

But if you are typically getting 30% to 40% reach naturally with each post, then I don’t see many reasons to use Promoted Posts. You’re already doing a good job getting into your fans’ news feeds. But if your reach is below 10%, you need to try something new to make your page more effective.

#9: Choose the right type of post to promote. I tested a “salesy” post and a more “fun” post and the fun Promoted Post got over twice as many clicks for two-thirds the cost. Not surprising that a fun post is going to get more engagement. If you need to increase your engagement, push something fun into the news feed.

#10: Promote your Facebook Offers. Free stuff and discounts are always a big hit on Facebook. Take advantage of two new features of Facebook by promoting your Facebook Offer. While you are at it, pin it to the top of your news feed.

Use Promoted Posts to promote Offers and special deals.

#11: Use Promoted Posts to get into the mobile news feed. Regular Facebook Ads and Sponsored Stories appear on the right sidebar of Facebook. These are not visible in the mobile app, but with Promoted Posts you are now able to reach mobile users.

#12: Make sure you split-test. I would recommend split-testing your results between a Sponsored Page Post Ad sent out to only your fans and a Promoted Post to see which one gets better results for you. They have the same idea and goal, but may get very different responses from your fans.

Ultimately Facebook’s Promoted Posts are another tool to connect with your fans. I think they can be worthwhile to give your engagement a boost or to promote something fun like an offer. But there may be better ways to spend $20.

What do you think? Have you tried Facebook’s Promoted Posts? What results have you seen? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

Category: Advertising, andrea vahl, Engagement, facebook, facebook advertising, Facebook promoted posts, How To, mobile news feed, news feed, promote button, promoted post, promoted post campaign /

4 Unique Ways to Use Facebook for Your Business

June 5, 2012 / Andrea Vahl / No comments

Are you wondering how to best use Facebook for your business?

Should you open your personal profile with a Facebook Subscribe button? Would a Facebook Group work well for your business?

The simple truth is that Facebook Pages are not being seen as often in the news feed.

Facebook reported that on average, brands reach about 16% of their fans in a typical week through posts. This news has many people wondering if Pages are still a worthwhile endeavor.

Find out how to choose the best marketing strategy that fits your business by answering these simple questions.

#1: Have multiple employees?

If so, I still recommend having a Facebook Page despite the visibility issues. Let’s face it; every marketing channel has visibility issues. You will never reach 100% of your customers all of the time. Facebook Pages have advantages for your business that Groups and the Subscribe button don’t.

First, Facebook Pages are branded. You are using your company name and logo to increase your brand awareness, and your Facebook Page can showcase your brand personality as people read through your Timeline. Find out more about creative ways businesses are using Timelines.

You can also participate on Facebook as your brand by commenting on other Pages as your Page to increase visibility.

Use a Facebook Page for great branding and added apps.

Second, you can advertise a Facebook Page. Even with GM’s announcement that they will not be using Facebook Ads, they are still effective for other brands and companies. Test to make sure Facebook Ads are working for you and follow these tips on how to use Facebook Ads.

Advertise your Page to get the Like, but the text can also provide an offer.

Third, you can run contests and have special apps that give your Page some bells and whistles. Facebook Offers and check-in deals are also perks that many companies can use in their Facebook marketing strategy that are only available through Pages.

Use Offers to provide a unique way for people to get discounts and offers from you.

#2: Want to brand yourself?

If you are the face of your company or you want to brand your name, you may also want to consider opening up the Subscribe button on your personal profile. Some people will want to connect with you personally rather than on a Facebook Page with a logo. Find out more about the Subscribe button.

If you are the face of the company, people will want to connect to you personally.

You don’t have to worry about your privacy because you can easily control who sees your posts.

Use your public posts to talk about your business and things that you would like to publicly share.

#3: Are you self-employed?

If you’re a solopreneur or branding your business with your name, deciding your Facebook strategy could be a little more challenging. Because posts from personal profiles are showing up better in the news feed, people who have their Subscribe button open on their personal profile are seeing more new subscribers than fans.

So does that mean you should ditch the Page altogether? Not necessarily. Take a look at some of the advantages of having a Page listed in point #1. If you would like to run a contest or an ad, or have special apps or coupons, then you will need a Page.

There is also the consideration of promoting your business on your personal profile. Facebook terms state that you aren’t supposed to “use your personal profile for commercial gain” as shown under their Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, but this statement is not exactly crystal-clear.

To be on the safe side, if you are using your personal profile for business postings, I would talk more in terms of what you are doing in your business rather than telling people outright to purchase your products or services. A soft-sell approach usually works better anyway.

#4: Manage groups of people?

Groups are perfect for businesses that are “naturally” groups:

Networking groups
Groups of coaching clients
Social groups
School groups
Niche-focused groups

We have a great post on how to take advantage of Secret Groups for your business.

I don’t believe that Groups work well to promote an entire company or brand unless your business is only about bringing together a network of people in some way.

There are a few reasons Groups will irritate your potential clients if you use them as your main vehicle for marketing on Facebook. Here are the main irritants:

You may be adding people to the Group who don’t want to be added. Anyone can add other people to a Group once they are in it. And that can irritate people who don’t want to be part of that Group.
Many people don’t know how to turn off the notifications in a Group and they may get irritated and opt to stop getting all the updates. If you do run a Group, make sure people know where the settings can be changed.

Make sure the Group members know that they can change their notifications.

If your business is about networking or bringing people together into natural groups, then Facebook Groups can be a great addition to your marketing mix. You can use Groups to communicate, schedule events, share documents and more.

Use the Events and Document-sharing features of the Group to enhance the experience.

A local group of business owners can be a great way to stay connected and promote your business news. You may want to set up promotional rules of the Group so that group members know how often and what to post.

Be a leader and start your own local group of business networkers.

You can also use Groups as an added bonus for your coaching business. Give your clients an inner circle where they can connect and ask questions and network together.

Use a Group to give an added bonus to answer ongoing questions if customers purchase a product.

Hopefully by answering these four questions, you can make the right choices on where you should be participating on Facebook to get the most out of your marketing strategy. And possibly these suggestions have sparked some new and fresh ideas to take your marketing to a new level!

How about you? Where have you found the most success on Facebook lately? Groups, Pages or your personal Profile? Tell us in the comments section below!

Category: andrea vahl, brand awareness, facebook, facebook for business, Facebook Groups, facebook marketing, facebook page, facebook profile, facebook strategy, facebook subscribe, How To, subscribe button /

6 Tips to Improve Your Facebook Advertising Results

May 22, 2012 / Andrea Vahl / No comments

Would you like Facebook ads to be a regular part of your marketing strategy?

Wondering what you can do to tweak your ad strategy to get better results?

This article will give you six tips to help improve your return on your Facebook ad investment.

#1: Do Your Research

Watch other Facebook ads and take a look at their techniques.

You won’t be able to see a list of all of the ads that are out there right now, but you can watch the ones that are being served to your demographic. You can see all of the current ads that would target your profile by going to Facebook’s Adboard.

Look at just the Sponsored Stories by clicking on the blue Sponsored stories link.

Check out the Adboard to see what other ads could be served to your profile.

You won’t be able to gauge whether these ads are working, but note the ones that would encourage you to click.

#2: Use Your Image Well

You don’t have much space to grab someone’s attention on Facebook ads. You have a 25-character headline, 90 characters in the body and a small 110 x 80 pixel picture (in reality it displays as a 100 x 65 pixel photo). The best chance you have to grab someone’s attention is with the photo.

If you are using Sponsored Stories, the ad defaults to your profile picture or the post picture if you choose to promote a specific post. But if you promote your Facebook page or an external website, you can select the image you want to use.

Make the image work harder for you by adding text.

Add text to an image to give a call to action or special offer.

#3: Craft Your Sponsored Story Post

If you choose to run a Sponsored Story post, craft your posts on your page to fit the ad space. Sponsored Stories can be cheaper to run than a traditional ad (see tip #4) but you will lose the larger picture and it will default to your current page profile picture.

Make your status updates fewer than 90 characters if you are going to use them as a Sponsored Story.

If you have a link in your post, make sure it’s going to your own site—ideally where someone can sign up for something (i.e., a free report, webinar, targeted opt-in page). You don’t want to pay to send traffic to someone else’s website!

If you include a YouTube link in your post, people will be able to watch the video easily from the ad.

#4: Split Test Your Efforts

Split test all of your advertising! When you design your campaign, you can split test the variables between your ads so that you get the cheapest clicks and find out which ads are performing the best.

Here is a short list of things you may want to split test:

Body of your ad
Photo in your ad
Headline of your ad (only for external URL)
Bidding model (CPM vs. CPC—more on this in a bit)
Sponsored Story vs. regular ad

Split testing the body, photo and title of your ad is fairly straightforward. Make sure you are only changing one thing at a time so you don’t confuse the results.

Note: In the new Facebook ads layout, you can no longer change the title of your ad for your Facebook page with the workaround of advertising it as an external URL.

If you advertise your Facebook page, you cannot change the headline.

I would also split test the bidding model between CPC (cost per click) and CPM (cost per mille, or cost per 1000 impressions).

The new Facebook ad layout gives you the choice of an objective for your ad. The objective you choose will determine your bidding model—CPC if your objective is to get clicks or CPM if your objective is to have viewers Like your page.

The objective determines if you will pay for clicks or pay for impressions.

This is designed to make things simpler for those who don’t want to figure out which model is better. But I suggest you split test these two methods because the cost to acquire a Like can change.

#5: Watch Your Results

As with everything, it’s the return on your investment that matters. Watch how much it costs you to achieve your objective and make sure you have realistic expectations.

The ads that perform the best on Facebook typically are either promoting a Facebook page or advertising something free. Advertising something free that requires an email opt-in can be a great strategy. You can then start connecting with those people via email and social media.

Set your expectations correctly. A typical click-through rate on Facebook is 0.04-0.05%. You may see better results if you pick an ad model that works well for you and do your testing.

Local businesses can benefit from Sponsored Like Stories because many people have a lot of local friends on Facebook, as shown in this example from Vernon Area Public Library.

Vernon Area Public Library only spent $0.44/per Like to acquire 158 new connections.

Analyze your results so you can make adjustments. In this example, I split test the CPC bidding model and the CPM bidding model, keeping all other variables the same. Even in this limited example, you can see that the CPC model cost me $1.39 per Like (connections) vs. $6.50 per Like in the CPM model. I would suggest a longer testing period, but you should be able to see a favorite after 10-20 clicks.

Even though this is a small sample size, you can see that CPC is outperforming CPM.

#6: Get on the List for Facebook Offers

Facebook Offers are starting to roll out to smaller businesses. Facebook Offers appear in the news feed and have great potential for going viral. You can find out more about how this works at Facebook Offers.

Offers will be free to create, but are still in the beta stage as of this writing. You can sign up to be on the list to enable Offers on your page.

Back to You

I hope this gives you some great tips to take your Facebook marketing efforts to the next level.

What do you think? Are you advertising on Facebook? What has been working well for you? We’d love to hear about it in the comments section below.

Category: adboard, andrea vahl, facebook, facebook ad, facebook ads, facebook advertising, facebook campaign, facebook marketing, facebook offer, How To, sponsored story /

5 Ways Businesses Are Using Facebook Timelines

April 17, 2012 / Andrea Vahl / No comments

Are you wondering how businesses are creatively using Facebook’s Timeline features?

Business timelines are blooming all over Facebook.

You may have read our recent post about all of the changes.

Take a look at these examples of how businesses are creatively using Timeline.

#1: Adding Interesting Milestones

Interesting Milestones may work better if your company has some history. Coca-Cola, founded in 1886, has the benefit of a long and interesting history, so they can show their products from 1916 and how they have since evolved.

But you still may be able to get creative with product releases and things that you have accomplished.

Founded in 1886, Coca-Cola encourages people to review their Timeline for brand evolution information.

The New York Times, founded in 1851, gives you a walkthrough history with their Milestone posts.

Interesting older articles give you a real sense of history.

Be sure to spread out the posting of your Milestones as those posts will go out to all of your fans. Don’t post ten in a row or you may irritate your community with “over-posting.”

#2: Incorporating the Profile Picture Into Your Cover Photo

The profile picture is a good place for your company logo, but since the profile picture overlaps the cover photo, you will need to leave some blank space in the lower-left corner of your cover photo. So why not blend the two pictures?

Tim Ware posted about creative personal profile cover photos, including a Photoshop template to incorporate the profile picture into the cover photo. We are now seeing how brands are getting creative with profile pictures and cover photos in these examples.

Ford Mustang gets creative with the profile picture and also demonstrates the speed.

Captain Morgan gets creative with the logo and the bottle.

See some other creative Timeline cover photos from Ching Ya.

#3: Telling a Story With Photos

Photos have gotten larger in Timelines and you can use the Highlight feature to show even more of the album. The Kia Soul page has highlighted their concept car album to display more pictures.

Kia Soul has highlighted an album in their Timeline.

Also when you add photos to an album, you will have a post on your Timeline. Then you can share the album to again showcase the story in a different way. People love seeing photos (think Pinterest) and using them extensively on your Timeline can be a good way to tell your story.

The Aquascape Foundation got good mileage out of photos of their recent trip to Uganda by having them post in different ways to their Timeline.

The Aquascape Foundation uploaded photos and shares the album.

#4: Branding With Apps

Apps are much more visible on the new Timeline. The Facebook Photos app will always be in the first row, in the first position, and will always display the most recent photo. The next three apps in the row will be most visible, so put your best apps in the first row.

If your apps are interesting, you may have people click the down arrow on the right side to see what else you have available. Notice how these pages have really branded their apps and added a call to action within both the app’s name and custom graphic.

SoLatina's apps help build their brand and contain a simple call to action.

More In Media's apps are contributing to the eyeglasses logo.

As a reminder, the app custom graphics are 111 pixels by 74 pixels and can be changed by clicking the down arrow on the right side to show all apps, then mousing over the app and clicking the pencil icon to activate the dropdown menu as shown. Click Edit Settings to change the title of the custom tab or add custom graphics.

Click Edit Settings on the app icon dropdown menu.

Here’s some good information if you’re wondering where to get apps to add to your page.

Adding apps to your Timeline works just the same as adding apps to the older-style Facebook pages.

#5: Using the About Section to Give a Call to Action

While you can’t have a call to action (such as “Click Like” or “Buy Now”) or your website address in the cover photo of your Timeline, you can have that information in your About section. The About section is hot property, so use it well.

You can have a call to action and website information in your About section.

There are many pages that don’t have anything in their About section at all, which could be due to confusion about where to edit this information. To edit your About section, click the About link, then mouse over the upper-right corner near your About section until you see the Edit button with the pencil. Click the Edit button and you see the older-style dashboard page as shown.

Fill in your About section because this is the most visible part of your Info tab on your Timeline.

You can have your website address and a call to action in your About section, but you only have approximately 160 characters to work with before it is cut off, depending on how the words flow. In fact, your previous About section may have been longer but is now cut off mid-sentence. Make sure you correct that in the new Timeline view.

If your page is also a Place or Local Business, your address and phone number will be the default About section. There is no way to change this unless you want to change the category of your page. If check-ins are part of your strategy, then keep the local business classification.

Place or Local Business pages cannot change their About section.

Don’t just focus on your About section that appears on your main Timeline page—make sure you are looking at what your About section looks like when you click the About link. Use that space creatively to link to special places on your website and tell people more about what you do and whom you serve.

Hopefully these 5 tips will give you some good ideas on how to use your Timeline more creatively.

What do you think? Have you seen any pages using Timelines in new and creative ways? Tell us in the comments box below!

Category: andrea vahl, call to action, cover photo, facebook, facebook page, facebook photo apps, Facebook Timeline, How To, milestone, profile picture, timeline, timeline cover /

9 Social Media Marketing Tips From the Pros

March 20, 2012 / Cindy King / No comments

Are you looking for some new ideas to simplify your social media marketing?

Do you wonder how others use social media to attract customers?

We asked the pros for their hottest social media tips. Here’s their advice to help you power up your social media marketing.

#1: Draw Attention to Your Custom Tabs in the New Facebook Timelines

Andrea Vahl @AndreaVahl

If you have a special offer on your website, why not use Facebook to showcase your freebie?

With the new Facebook Timelines fan pages, you can no longer have a custom tab as a default landing tab, so now you will have to draw attention to your freebie with the custom tab photo and the custom tab name.

HubSpot has done a great job of that with their custom tab photo advertising their free ebook and the Customer Case Studies title on one of their other apps.

Notice the images on the four icons under the header image.

A Facebook custom tab is not hard to create with a Facebook application. You can find out about some of the best applications to create custom tabs here.

Applications like Lujure and ShortStack have templates to help you easily create your Facebook custom tab with your email capture form embedded into it. You can add a video, a picture of your freebie and some text. You can also link your email opt-in code within the custom tab to get people connected to your email list, as well as connected to you on Facebook.

Then once your custom tab is created, edit the custom photo and tab name by clicking on the pencil icon in the upper-left corner of the Application box and select Edit Settings.

You can also advertise your special freebie using Facebook Ads, drive the ad traffic to your Facebook custom tab specifically and hopefully capture the Facebook Like as well as the email address!

Andrea Vahl, co-author of Facebook Marketing All-In-One for Dummies.

#2: Add the LinkedIn Company Follow Button to Your Site

Michael Stelzner @mike_stelzner

If you’re trying to connect with business folk, LinkedIn is clearly the social network of choice. They recently released a simple widget called the Company Follow button.

This nifty little button looks a lot like a Retweet button, but instead makes it very easy for people to follow your LinkedIn company page without leaving your site.

See the LinkedIn Company Follow button in our sidebar.

Michael Stelzner, CEO and founder of Social Media Examiner.

#3: Use Bufferapp to Manage Your Social Media Marketing

Dave Kerpen @DaveKerpen

One of my favorite social media tools right now is Bufferapp, a content management system. Bufferapp allows you to add content to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts prior to their being published.

Unlike HootSuite or TweetDeck, Bufferapp automatically spaces your content out for you. That way, if you post something spontaneously, your scheduled content moves around so you don’t end up spamming your followers’ feeds.

Another advantage Bufferapp offers is the optional toolbar add-on that allows you to post directly from another website, similar to the Pinterest Pin button.

Bufferapp is brilliant in its simplicity and is an excellent content management tool, especially for those of us who might not have time to sit down and tweet for a couple of hours each day.

Check out Buffer to manage your social media marketing.

Dave Kerpen, author of Likeable Social Media and CEO and co-founder of Likeable.

#4: Get YouTube Subscribers Just by Asking

Paul Colligan @colligan

Many marketers feel the most powerful feature of YouTube is that it will provide free video hosting. This is as strategic as reading Social Media Examiner for the cute cartoons.

YouTube’s value is that it is a very social network that wants you to interact with your audience (called subscribers).

If you use YouTube for nothing other than free video hosting, you’ll never have that audience or experience the community it can bring you.

How do you get subscribers? Ask anyone who views your videos to consider subscribing to your channel. They already like you, or they wouldn’t be watching your videos.

Do it right in the video if it makes sense and/or do it with a YouTube annotation. Don’t know how? Click on the “Edit Annotations” button to make an annotation on any YouTube video in your account. You can link any annotation to a Subscribe link. You must be logged into your YouTube account to do this.

Need more help? Below is a YouTube video that walks you through the process step by step.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxk5LEf0nuU

Paul Colligan, CEO of Colligan.com, education czar for Traffic Geyser Inc. and executive producer for eMarketingVids.com.

#5: Create a Facebook Plan You Can Stick With

Amy Porterfield @amyporterfield

My clients often ask me, “How many times a day should I post on Facebook?” Unfortunately, there’s not a magic number; however, research does suggest that 2-5 times per day is key.

Anyone can handle this posting schedule for a week or two, but the real winners on Facebook are the companies that keep it up—every single day (or at the very least, Monday through Friday). Consistency always wins on Facebook.

Because your fans visit Facebook at different times of the day, one post a day simply isn’t enough—most fans won’t even see it. Instead, post several different types of content throughout the day. These can include short videos, quick tips, links and questions, to name a few.

Stagger your posts at different times to reach more fans. And never forget to include a call to action—words like click, comment, share and like will increase engagement.

Plus, the more you post, the more feedback you’ll get on what kinds of posts work best, and use this information to post more of what your audience really wants.

One extra tip: For maximum engagement, keep your posts around 80 characters or fewer. A study by Buddy Media showed that posts with 80 characters or fewer received 27% higher engagement rates. That’s big!

Aim to post short updates regularly on your Facebook business page.

Amy Porterfield, co-author of Facebook Marketing All-In-One for Dummies.

#6: Be Consistent

Rich Brooks @therichbrooks

I know that sounds completely boring, but it’s true!

Too many people think that social media success comes when you set up a Facebook business page. Or they expect their YouTube video to go viral or believe that one blog post will generate hundreds of leads. It doesn’t work like that.

Because of the low barrier of cost to social media, everyone will have at least a Facebook page, one blog post and one video under their belts.

Success comes from being consistent—consistent with your messaging, consistent across your social media outposts, and most important, consistent in delivering quality content to your audience day in and day out.

Don’t flame out like a shooting star; be as reliable as the rising sun.

Rich Brooks, founder and president of Flyte New Media.

#7: Prepare Now for Tough ROI Questions

Nichole Kelly @Nichole_Kelly

Measuring social media has a two-fold return. First, it will allow you to do more of what is working and less of what isn’t. Second, it will allow you to address the question management teams are asking: “What is our ROI?”

Successfully measuring your efforts will require some upfront work to make sure you can collect the data and that you have a framework for presenting the data in a way that executives care about.

Take a look at your daily executive report to find the metrics that matter most and then figure out how you can collect similar data for social media.

Plan to calculate your ROI. Image from iStockphoto

Nichole Kelly, CEO of Full Frontal ROI Consulting.

#8: Focus on Dollars

Kipp Bopdnar @kippbodnar

Followers, Klout and Sentiment are not the end-all, be-all metrics of social media marketing success. A staggering 73% of CEOsthink that marketers lack credibility and don’t drive revenue or business demand.

The best step a marketer can take in social media is not to chase the newest shiny object like Pinterest. Instead, build a strategy and measurement plan to generate cold, hard cash from your marketing efforts.

For B2B marketers specifically, this means having lead generation calls to action on your blog and being more conversion-focused. Use a like-to-lead gate on your Facebook page in an effort to increase your social media reach and generate leads directly from Facebook (see screen shots for example).

Counting followers isn’t enough. Start attributing social media marketing efforts directly to sales.

Kipp Bodnar, co-author of The B2B Social Media Book and inbound marketing strategist at HubSpot.

#9: Fix the Appearance of Your Links on Facebook

Kelly Lester @EasyLunchBoxes

Facebook posts will get a much better click-through rate if they include a picture. But what if the post link you are sharing fails to show a thumbnail, even if the post you’re trying to share is full of them?

Use the Facebook Debugger Tool!

Somehow, this handy tool clears the clutter and refreshes the page so that Facebook can grab the latest goodies. Here’s a much better technical explanation.

All I know is this thing works! Look:

Here's what my post was going to look like before debugging.

Here's a lovely thumbnail image I got after debugging.

Kelly Lester, creator and CEO of Easy Lunch Boxes and the host of the musical web series, Let’s Do Lunch!

Join These 9 Pros at Social Media Examiner’s Social Media Success Summit 2012

“Social media has changed radically in the last 12 months,” acknowledges Michael Stelzner, (CEO and founder of Social Media Examiner). “Google+ entered the stage, Facebook introduced Timeline for pages, YouTube unveiled their new layout, Twitter got a complete revamp and then there’s Pinterest. It’s a completely different world and there’s a need to discover new strategies and new ways to market your business with these platforms.”

To equip you with the latest strategies for marketing with Google+, blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter and Pinterest, the people you trust from Social Media Examiner have recruited 27 of the world’s most respected social media experts to share their newest tips and advice at Social Media Success Summit 2012.

If you’re not familiar with these events, they’re large online conferences (so you don’t need to travel).

Typically, thousands gather at Social Media Examiner Success Summits to discover new social media tactics, network with peers and discover how other successful businesses are using social media.

What People Say About Social Media Success Summit

Last year, 3,000 people attended the online summit.

Some of the organizations represented were Coca Cola, Visa, Microsoft, 3M, Honda, Kraft Foods, SAP, Wells Fargo, Disney, AutoDesk, LexisNexis, Four Seasons Hotels, Fuddruckers, EMC and thousands of small businesses.

Here’s what some of them had to say:

“Thoroughly wowed by the format and content. I will most definitely attend future summits,” Kim Kiefer
“Guaranteed to improve the way you approach social media. I’ll be back next year!” Derrick Sweet
“Phenomenal topics and knowledgeable speakers. The ability to ‘catch up’ on sessions thanks to recordings was a selling point for me due to scheduling,” Erin Caples
“This is the most comprehensive training I have yet seen on social media. The lineup of presenters was most impressive and the whole summit exceeded my expectations,” Suzanne Kiraly

Meet Your Presenters

Among the 27 social media experts who will be presenting at this summit are:

Jeremiah Owyang, Altimeter Group
Chris Brogan, author of Google+ for Business
Mari Smith, co-author of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day
Brian Solis, author of Engage
Scott Monty, head of social media at Ford Motor Company
Frank Eliason, author of @YourService
Michael Stelzner, founder of Social Media Examiner and author of Launch
Jay Baer, co-author of The Now Revolution\
Jason Falls, co-author No Bullshit Social Media
Mark Schaefer, author of The Tao of Twitter
C.C. Chapman, co-author of Content Rules
Dave Kerpen, author of Likeable Social Media
Jesse Stay, author of Google+ for Dummies
Amy Porterfield, co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies
And experts from Dell, Ford, LinkedIn, Citigroup, Citrix and many others.

Why Attend Social Media Success Summit?

Here are a few reasons:

Learn the latest and best social media business-building tactics.
Learn about tracking and measuring social media return on investment.
Learn how to sell with Google+, blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter and Pinterest.
Learn how content marketing fits in with social media.
You’ll have the opportunity to network via LinkedIn with thousands of people who are expected to attend.
You’ll interact live with experts from big B2B and B2C brands such as Ford, Dell, LinkedIn, Citigroup and Citrix.
Keep learning even after the summit is over—With the session recordings and the transcripts, you can keep studying the material for up to one year from the date of your ticket purchase.

Want to save some money? If you reserve your spot now, you’ll save 50%. Click here for details.

What do you think? What has worked for your business? Please share your hottest social media tips and questions in the comments box below.

Image from iStockPhoto.

Category: amy porterfield, andrea vahl, bufferapp, calls to action, cindy king, click through rates, Custom Tabs, dave kerpen, facebook ads, facebook business page, facebook debugger tool, Facebook Timeline, generate leads, hubspot, kelly lester, kipp bodnar, linkedin company follow button, linkedin company page, lujure, mike stelzner, nichole kelly, paul colligan, rich brooks, ROI, sales, ShortStack, Social Media Marketing, social media reach, social media success summit, Tools, youtube /

Businesses to Fully Embrace Social Media In 2012

March 6, 2012 / Patricia Redsicker / No comments

The vast majority of Americans are actively using social media. Has your business acted on this fact?

Are you looking for a way to keep pace with the quickly evolving field of social media marketing?

If so, Social Media Examiner has some exciting news…

But first, consider this story.

Imagine your business competing for your state’s “Best Brand” title against huge names such as Target, Dairy Queen and Wheaties.

Now imagine simply leveraging the power of social media and taking the grand prize! Wouldn’t that just blow your mind?

Well that’s exactly what happened to Creative Memories!

This Minnesota-based scrapbook supplies company beat 64 other brands to take the “Best Brand in Minnesota” title! And they simply relied on social media to make it happen.

Creative Memories won Minnesota's Best Brand by leveraging their existing fans via social media.

Recognizing the Opportunity

Creative Memories’ community manager Kristen Jacobs discovered a single tweet as she was monitoring Twitter for mentions of her company.

It turned out the Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal was hosting a brand challenge. And one of America’s biggest retailers—Target—was in the running! Target had nearly 5 million Facebook fans at the time.

Jacobs’ immediate response was to post the article on their Twitter and Facebook pages, calling on their 60,000 fans to vote for them.

Creative Memories learned first on Twitter about the Minnesota Brand Challenge competition.

Creative Memories’ fans not only responded, but also voted for them repeatedly through six rounds of the competition against nationally acclaimed brands until Creative Memories emerged the winner of “Minnesota’s Best Brand.”

“We learned that we may not be as recognized, have as many customers or make as much money as the brands we were up against, but we do have something none of them have. And that’s the ability to use social media to mobilize a passionate fan base to action when needed,” said Jacobs.

Now you might be wondering, “How did the community manager know what to do, or how to respond?”

That’s a great question. But think about this: “What would have happened if she hadn’t responded or hadn’t known what to do?”

To be successful in social media, you need to know what to do when an opportunity knocks.

More than ever, it’s critical to keep up with social media changes, to stay competitive and to learn the tactics and strategies that produce the best results and the greatest return for your business.

Has your business tapped the massive opportunities presented by social media marketing?

Recent Statistics on Social Media Adoption

Here are a few reasons why you should invest heavily in social media:

Mass adoption of social media: Nearly 80% of all active U.S. Internet users regularly visit social media sites (Nielsen). And while consumers spend 25% of their Internet time on social sites, Facebook has become the most visited website in the world. Your customers are there.

Social media benefits businesses: Among marketers who include social media as part of their overall strategy, 97% agree that it provides benefits and value to their business (eMarketer).

Social media improves branding: In a survey of more than 700 marketers, 88% of respondents found that social media helps grow brand awareness. Social media also benefited marketers by allowing them to engage in dialogue (85%) and increase sales and partnerships (58%). An additional 41% of marketers said it helped reduce costs (Wildfire Interactive).

These stats are just a sample of the power of social media.

Are you “all in” with your social media activities? Want to fast-track your success?

Social Media Examiner Announces Social Media Success Summit 2012

“Social media has changed radically in the last 12 months,” acknowledges Michael Stelzner, (CEO and founder of Social Media Examiner). “Google+ entered the stage, Facebook introduced Timeline for pages, YouTube unveiled their new layout, Twitter got a complete revamp and then there’s Pinterest. It’s a completely different world and there’s a need to discover new strategies and new ways to market your business with these platforms.”

To equip you with the latest strategies for marketing with Google+, blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter and Pinterest, Michael Stelzner and the people you trust from Social Media Examiner have recruited 27 of the world’s most respected social media experts to share their newest tips and advice at Social Media Success Summit 2012.

If you’re not familiar with these events, they’re large online conferences (so you don’t need to travel).

What People Say About Social Media Success Summit

Last year, 3,000 people attended the online summit.

Here’s what some of them had to say:

“Thoroughly wowed by the format and content. I will most definitely attend future summits,” Kim Kiefer
“Guaranteed to improve the way you approach social media. I’ll be back next year!” Derrick Sweet
“Phenomenal topics and knowledgeable speakers. The ability to ‘catch up’ on sessions thanks to recordings was a selling point for me due to scheduling,” Erin Caples
“This is the most comprehensive training I have yet seen on social media. The lineup of presenters was most impressive and the whole summit exceeded my expectations,” Suzanne Kiraly

Meet Your Presenters

Among the 27 social media experts who will be presenting at this summit are:

Jeremiah Owyang, Altimeter Group
Chris Brogan, author of Google+ for Business
Mari Smith, co-author of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day
Brian Solis, author of Engage
Scott Monty, head of social media at Ford Motor Company
Frank Eliason, author of @YourService
Michael Stelzner, founder of Social Media Examiner and author of Launch
Jay Baer, co-author of The Now Revolution\
Jason Falls, co-author No Bullshit Social Media
Mark Schaefer, author of The Tao of Twitter
C.C. Chapman, co-author of Content Rules
Dave Kerpen, author of Likeable Social Media
Jesse Stay, author of Google+ for Dummies
Amy Porterfield, co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies
And experts from Dell, Ford, LinkedIn, Citigroup, Citrix and many others.

Why Attend Social Media Success Summit?

Here are a few reasons:

Learn the latest and best social media business-building tactics.
Learn about tracking and measuring social media return on investment.
Learn how to sell with Google+, blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter and Pinterest.
Learn how content marketing fits in with social media.
You’ll have the opportunity to network via LinkedIn with thousands of people who are expected to attend.
You’ll interact live with experts from big B2B and B2C brands such as Ford, Dell, LinkedIn, Citigroup and Citrix.
Keep learning even after the summit is over—With the session recordings and the transcripts, you can keep studying the material for up to one year from the date of your ticket purchase.

Want to save some money? If you reserve your spot now, you’ll save 50%. Click here for details.

What do you think? Would you be interested in learning what the world’s top social media experts are doing that makes them so successful? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

Category: adam brown, amy porterfield, ana white, andrea vahl, brian solis, C.C. Chapman, chris brogan, dave kerpen, frank eliason, james wedmore, jason falls, jay baer, jeremiah owyang, jesse stay, justin levy, kelly lester, kipp bodnar, mari smith, mario sundar, mark schaefer, nichole kelly, patricia redsicker, paul colligan, phyllis khare, Reviews, rich brooks, rick calvert, Scott Monty, Social Media, social media benefits, social media event, social media experts, social media for business, Social Media Marketing, social media return on investment, social media strategies, social media success summit, social media success summit 2012, social media tactics, Social Media Training, success summit /

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Join These 9 Pros at Social Media Examiner’s Social Media Success Summit 2012

What People Say About Social Media Success Summit

Meet Your Presenters

Why Attend Social Media Success Summit?

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Recognizing the Opportunity

Recent Statistics on Social Media Adoption

Social Media Examiner Announces Social Media Success Summit 2012

What People Say About Social Media Success Summit

Meet Your Presenters

Why Attend Social Media Success Summit?

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