Courtesy of articles.nydailynews.com

The Black Friday Rush

Black Friday is traditionally the day after Thanksgiving, when the Christmas season officially begins. It marks the first day of the ‘shopping’ season when online shops and shopping malls are able to sell more products because of Christmas time. You’ve probably employed some basic Christmas Facebook strategies before.

But how do you prepare for the busiest shopping day of the year?

Shop.org has reported that they believe online shopping sales will balloon this year by 12%, to about $92-96 billion dollars in the US alone. It’s definitely time for some strategy!

Facebook Strategies: Page Design

Black Friday is coming, and you need to have all of your businesses best deals out there for your Facebook public to see. This is how to do it.

• Change your cover page to promote Christmas sales
• Change your description URL to specific sales pages
• Make your brand profile image fit your new Christmas design

Include the words ‘Black Friday’ in your Facebook strategies – it motivates people to check out your deal and specials – because there are often a LOT of good ones this time of year. If you really want attention, use a ‘buy X and get Y free offer.’

Courtesy of modbodblog.wordpress.com

Facebook Photo Strategy

As Facebook strategies go, you can’t go wrong with a bit of image advertising. It takes a few minutes to mock up an ad in Photoshop, or you can commission an affordable designer to create several images for you that you can use as advertising.

You’ll need to include a great sales pitch, loud red sales prices, and one or two special products per image. Then create a very alluring update to publish with the picture. If you get some great feedback on these specials leading up to Black Friday – spend
a little more and make your best image ad a REAL promoted ad on Facebook.

Facebook strategies like this will work, especially if your goal is to get people to your sales pages. “Get a free 25% discount coupon instantly when you click this ad.” That works!

Facebook Strategies: Post Updates

Get into the habit of creating posts that tug on the heart strings. Christmas is about giving right? So create some great Facebook strategies that use the family unit, Christmas morning and smiling kids as an incentive to get your buying public to buy more.

Super Power Your Black Friday

If there was ever a time to leverage viral marketing, it’s now. You can improve your Black Friday sales a whole lot if you can get a video to go viral in the days leading up to Black Friday or Christmas.

Facebook strategies like viral video can be the difference between a few thousand dollars, and hundreds of thousands of dollars that you could potentially make on that day. Use your Facebook page to promote a brand –orientated viral video that is entertaining, funny and that is worth sharing. It can make a big difference to your bottom line!

Educate Yourself!

Speaking of Facebook strategies and bottom lines – if you want to learn more about how to increase leads, revenue and brand awareness, I have something for you today.

Sign up before Nov 20th!

Sign up to my free webinar now, where you’ll get to experience a live discussion on 9 Facebook Strategies that you’ll need for this time of year, or any time of year!

Facebook has changed so much in the past few months, you’ve probably missed some really important stuff. Enroll in this free webinar, and you’ll get to take part in our live Q&A sessions afterwards, with our awesome experts.

Just register here.

The webinar begins on Tuesday November 20th 3PM EST. It’s just in time for Black Friday!

Otherwise, what Facebook strategies do you use to leverage Black Friday?

Courtesy of blog.intrapromote.com

Navigating and Using Facebook Insights

It can be daunting for any small business to review their own analytics data. It’s nice to see that people are responding to your page – but what do you do with this information? More to the point – how do you use this information to get even more response from your fans?

Total Likes

The total amount of likes on your page is an important metric. The higher the number – the more chances you have of reaching people.

Tip! Part of your analytics strategy should be to increase your total likes!

Friends of Fans

The ‘friends of fans’ metric tells you how many people you could reach through your total likes. In other words, these are the friends of your fans who may see your posts.

Tip! You’ll want to improve your friends of fans metric to extend your reach!

People Talking About This

Your ‘people talking about this’ metric just lets you know when people are engaging with your brand. It could be anything, from liking, to commenting, sharing or checking-in. It’s a decent metric to know about, as it improves your Edgerank score between certain people.

Weekly Total Reach

Weekly total reach is really a good metric to know about. That’s because it tells you how many people have actually SEEN your content. Yes, they could have scrolled past it, or not looked at it directly – but it was there – which means they could have been exposed to your message.

Tip! It’s a great idea to try and extend your reach in any way that you can.

Total Subscribes

This metric simply tells you how many outside parties are subscribing to your page.

Courtesy of emersonecom.wordpress.com

People Saw This Post

A number will appear detailing how many people ‘saw’ your post – again it is simply telling you how many people could have seen it. It’s a start – if you increase this number only good things can happen in your business.

Overview Page

Okay, so how do you actually take all of this information and make it useful? Take a look inside your overview section. Scroll to the bottom and you’ll see a list of your posts and how popular each one was. Organize these into hierarchies.

If you don’t yet – have at least 5 ‘easy to identify’ post types that you can test. Find out which ones test the best, and try to repeat that formula. Give your Facebook fans what they want!

Likes Page

Use your likes page to check on your demographics. What is the age of your fans? Who of these are men, or women? Who is interacting more? How can you get them to respond more often? How can you get more response out of the age groups that aren’t responding?

Answer these questions and test some gender, age and location based posts.

Reach

Check on how many page views you get in the ‘reach’ section. See which days you got the increase in page views. Come up with a strategy to increase your page views. Test different things and track the progress using certain days as markers.

Use these tips to put together a mini analytics strategy to steadily improve your fan count, reach and popularity on Facebook!

Which Facebook metric do you think is the most important of all? I’d like to hear your opinion!

Courtesy of sayingitsocial.com

What is Facebook Offers?

Businesses and brands can post offers on their Facebook pages, which their fans can then redeem in person, as a discount or coupon. To claim a coupon, a fan just needs to click on it – then an email is sent with the details that the fan can print out, and use. This Facebook service is free to use, and you can create as many discounts as you like.

A New Dimension To Facebook Advertising

Brands are always looking for ways to increase exposure, because finding business can be tough. With this new dimension to Facebook advertising, businesses no longer have to mess around with print coupons, newspaper placements, or untrustworthy sites like Groupon. Instead, they can harness the power of their fan base and source direct sales from them.

Posting an Offer

Posting an offer on Facebook couldn’t be easier. For restaurants, gyms, salons and other ‘walk-in’ businesses, offers will become a primary means of advertising. Simply create an offer, fill in the fields and publish to your Facebook page. Facebook will show your offer to a number of people on the platform, though not everyone.

Fans will be able to see a brief pitch – ‘Exclusive to Facebook: Buy one bagel, get a coffee for free!’ – and a ‘Get offer’ button below it. They’ll also be able to see the number of people that have already claimed your deal, which only prompts more people to do the same. These offers have an expiry date, so you can set them for short periods, to rapidly increase business.

Business Promotions With Offers

Getting the word out about your business is essential if you’re going to turn a profit. Just remember that running an offer on its own won’t make you much money. Train yourself to see offers as a free advertising tool. You must prepare other ‘upsells’ in your shop to make the most of the additional foot traffic you’ll get from the deal.

So, for example, you’ll give away free coffee – but your real goal is to sell your deluxe bagels and panini sandwiches. When your customers are in your shop, hand them another coupon, for another incentive that will bring them back. Juggle your upsells, but try to retain the foot traffic that you get in, each time you launch an offer on Facebook.

Facebook offers can be a major blessing for your company, if you learn to use them correctly. Coupons will get you the customers you need, but you need to make sure they return again and again, with your savvy marketing tactics.

Try Facebook offers for yourself, and tell me how it went! I’d love to hear from the SMM community about your experiences with this new ad tool!

Courtesy of fbcovers.com

Facebook Time: The Good

What is the absolute BEST part about the new Facebook timeline? The page revival that Facebook has built in, thanks to their new reach generator advertising offering. The problem with engagement on Facebook, is that once people like your business, they never again return to your page. Why should they? They have a newsfeed!

This doesn’t always align with your business goals, especially if you’re trying to stick to the 80/20 rule of content publication. People should be seeing your promos and deals all the time, but they can only do so on your new ‘sales’ Facebook timeline page.

Grab some of your most liked and chatted about promos and turn them into ads, with a link straight back to your Facebook page. Conversions can rise as much as 40%! Believe it!

Facebook Timeline: The Bad

Right now, the most pressing ‘bad’ thing about Facebook timeline is that no-one knows how to use it yet. Then there’s the fact that Facebook owns everything you publish on timeline. Publish a fantastic slogan on Facebook first, and it belongs to them. While you will probably never be sued for it (Facebook is not that interested in us), it’s still a concern for celebs.

Then, the elephant in the Facebook room. People really, really hated it when it first came out, and aside from marketers that are catching onto the brand potential – normal users STILL hate it. Whether this will affect engagement on brand pages in the future is anyone’s guess. I’m going to carry on hoping that people snap out of it, and realize timeline is great.

Facebook Timeline: The Ugly

What could possibly be worse than the general public hating timeline? Well, the reasons why people hate timeline, of course! Popular opinion states that it’s mainly because every last terrible, embarrassing or horrible post you’ve ever made on Facebook has suddenly reappeared on your page. And timeline was not optional, it was forced upon you!

For businesses, all you have to do is comb through the rubble and hide the posts you don’t want people to see. But it’s also a good idea to make your timeline page as fan friendly as possible. They already don’t like the new layout, so you have to give them a real reason to want to stay on your page. Apps, videos, images and great content will do that.

So, Facebook timeline is still the prince of the social media world. And sometimes, princes have to make tough decisions for the people, that people might not like. In the end – they’ll thank Facebook for it.

Do you have a good, bad and ugly comment on Facebook timeline? Tell me what you love, hate and are irritated by the most!

Courtesy of techland.time.com

Implement these powerful strategies and you’ll transform your timeline into a social sales page!

#1: Profile Picture Size Changes

The size of your profile picture thumbnail has increased from 125×125, to 160×180 pixels. Any larger ad space that Facebook wants to give us, is a good thing. Make sure your image is clear, sharp and NOT blurry, as many will be now that auto-increase has happened.

#2: Cover Your Promos With Your Cover

Use your new Facebook cover space to create inventive, creative promotional images. Take advantage of this area to push your latest discounts, deals, promos and coupons.

#3: Use Your App Space To Sell

Your apps need to have their own cover images, you can change them in your admin panel. Don’t forget to install a few new ones to get return visitors to your page.

#4: Your Business Story

Tell the story of your business by uploading images to certain milestones on your timeline. I’ve seen this done very creatively by small businesses that use the space to invent a history for themselves and each product.

#5: Pin The Posts That Sell

If you want to increase Youtube views, pin your latest video to the top of your timeline. But if it’s products or services that you want to sell, pin incentive posts to the top for a fast response.

#6: Create Social Adverts

Use Facebook’s new ‘post as ads’ to create engaging adverts from your popular page posts. The goal of your advert should be to attract people back to your fan page.

#7: Highlight Your Important Posts

Facebook now allows you to ‘star’ or highlight important posts, which means that they stretch across your entire timeline page. This is great for videos, images and promos.

#8: Check Your Insights, Daily

Every time you post on Facebook, check your daily insights. Use this information to repeat the things that have worked best. Do this often enough, and you’ll eventually be doing things that your fans love.

#9: Build Your Facebook Email List

People can now email you directly from their own email address, to your Facebook address. Why not try building up your Facebook email list for marketing purposes? It’s a great way to connect with your fans. Promote your Facebook email!

#10: Your Facebook Sales Page

The verdict is in. Timeline is now the most effective social sales page we’ve ever seen. If you post daily, and support your posts will an ad campaign – you can literally sell directly from this platform. Yes, you could before – but now people will sit up and take notice, because you’ll be using all the tips I’ve listed for you here!

How is your Facebook sales timeline coming along? List it here, and I’ll check it out!

The best Facebook pages in the world are constantly busy – each update crowded with likes, shares, comments and links. Today, we’re going to teach you how to increase interaction on your page, with these 10 powerful tips.

Courtesy of ignitesocialmedia.com

#1: Personalize Each Update

People like to communicate with real people – so sign off each post with a name. Speak directly to your fans, not in the third person, to get better responses. Use multiple names to add a new dynamic to your Facebook community.

#2: Update Headlines

The first sentence of your update should be like a headline. Its sole purpose is to capture the attention of your fans, and to prompt some sort of action. Good update headlines are controversial, funny, interesting, strange or they teach something rare.

#3: Photo Strategy is Best

Every update should contain a photo to increase interaction, and you should select these photos very carefully. Each of them needs to support your text, or add something special to your update. Don’t add in ‘pointless’ images that say nothing.

#4: Fine Tuned Consistency

Post your updates every single day, at the same time – if you can. Fans respond to regularity, and they’ll check in more often if your posts are reliably published. Be consistent in answering questions quickly, never ignore fan engagement.

#5: Make It About Your Fans

Forget posting too much about your business. Focus on what your fans like, and challenge them to give their opinions to you on important matters. Fans love to be valued, and asking their opinion is a great way to form steady relationships.

#6: Love Your Fans

Give your fans special access to free stuff, or new products. Show them that you appreciate their time and effort, and they’ll never stop returning. Free digital products are usually the easiest to distribute.

#7: Puzzles, Blanks and Mysteries

Engage your fan’s minds, by adding in ‘fill in the blank’ posts, or by creating a brand based puzzle for them to solve. Never let a chance to get brand exposure, pass you by. Regular brain teasers to puzzles just aren’t good enough!

#8: Think Like Wikipedia

Become a resource for your fans! Post the best information you can find or create on your page, become indispensable to them. Wikipedia gets it right by offering the most detail in the most consumable, easy to use form.

#9: Offer Free Advice

If you’ve established yourself as an industry leader, offer your advice for free. If you show personal interest in the lives of your fans, they’ll show interest in your business. Spend some time helping fans achieve their goals.

#10: Become a Super Fan

Join as many other pages as you can, and become their best fan. Interact often, and soon you’ll find that their fans are hopping over to your page for some engagement. To be social on Facebook means visiting new locations!

Use these 10 powerful tips to supercharge the interaction that you get on your Facebook fan page.

Which tip is your favorite and why? We’d love some feedback on which tip you found the most helpful!

Courtesy of crunchbase.com

Iwipa is pleading with Facebook for help. Some time a couple days ago, Facebook decided to disable the application – for reasons as yet unknown. Iwipa is wildly popular, so this move has mystified the Facebook community. If you’re looking for answers, then you’ll need to join the ranks of thousands of other business owners.

You’re all in the dark – not because Iwipa has put you there, but because Facebook made a decision, and decided not tell anyone about it. That decision affected so many people, it’s mind blowing. Do they care? We’re not so sure.

A tweet went out to Facebook 3 hours after the app was disabled. “@Facebook We have no idea why you disabled our application, it serves 80K users. This happened 3 hours ago, please help.” The most disturbing news is that user content is gone too. Is Facebook starting to remove free applications that allow fans to host content there?

Some say yes. If this happens, it’s going to cost business owners a lot of money. You’ll have to pay for SSL certificates and specific domains. One thing is for certain – Facebook is making a lot of changes. First there was the image SSL certificate debacle, which forced businesses to find certified hosts for their page images.

Now, it appears as though Facebook is moving against applications, the question is WHY? We’d love to know their master plan. Perhaps they’re consolidating, and figuring out new ways to earn money by shutting out the little guy. Who knows!

But be wary – Facebook pages are changing – and we’re all going to have to adjust.

Remember when Facebook removed page email functionality? You can’t directly email your fans anymore – you can only contact personal friends that way. That was another major disappointment, and brought many perfectly functioning Facebook strategies to a grinding halt. Is Facebook ruining the appeal of their business pages?

They better be careful now that Google+ is out there, nipping at their heels. In the meantime Iwipa issued an announcement to their users. You can download a temp app from a new page they’ve created, which will bring back all of your content.

Get your Iwipa content back here.

Its times like these that we’re reminded of Facebook’s power. With one click they can ruin the hard work and effort of thousands of business people. Let’s just hope that whatever prompted Facebook to disable Iwipa, goes away.

If they strike a deal, we have some semblance of hope for the future. If they don’t…we might all have to move over to Google+.

In the meantime learn how to use other Facebook features here.

What do you think of the Iwipa debacle?

Courtesy of plus1ghz.com

Why Facebook Has Made These Changes

There has been a flood of hate mail floating around the net, with people up in arms about the new Facebook changes. And of course there would be, until you view Facebook as a business trying to compete in what is basically the most competitive market in history. First of all, yes the changes inconvenience users – but Facebook knows these users will adjust, and eventually come to love the updates as they have before.

Facebook has been forced to take the next leap in social networking – what with competitors like Twitter and Google+ snapping at their heels. Long term, this is an excellent decision by the Facebook team. The bottom line is that while these new changes are drastic, they are necessary. There is more control, a broader integration of real-time posts and a more intimate user experience overall.

The New Changes and Their Impact on You

The old profile ‘top stories’ and ‘most recent’ are gone, replaced by ‘recent stories’ and a real-time news ticker that displays all of your friends content on the right hand side of your profile. This of course sent waves of outrage trickling through the marketing community. What about Facebook edgerank? How is this going to affect my marketing efforts? The answer is – not as much as you think.

Facebook edgerank still applies, only now they are using an algorithm that checks how many friends comment on a post, who the post is from and what kind of post it is. This is so similar to edgerank anyway, that we’re confident the same rules apply. The new profile changes demand multimedia, engaging content and fairly strong relationships with your community. You see – not so different!

Facebook has actually made it easier for businesses to be seen with the news ticker. All your fan needs to do is like you, and you show up in their feed. The problem with this development, is that many businesses are going to start posting more often to get better results. We advise that you keep to a conservative posting regimen, and begin to observe when your fans are on Facebook most often, to catch them then.

The new Facebook profile uses user frequency to sort out what you’ll see on your page first. If you haven’t been on Facebook in awhile, you’ll see a selection of top posts from the last time you logged on. If you visit everyday, you’ll see posts that are more current. Getting your page posts on your fans top stories feed will be a priority for all marketers in the coming months.

The Changes Aren’t Done Yet

Another great feature is the recommended pages app that shows up on your fan page. Now instead of having to find pages to like, Facebook will recommend them to you based on your past interests and interactions. Lists are also a big step for Facebook, emulating the Google+ circles. Create business lists to properly segment your audiences for more accurate marketing!

The subscribe button is quite a revelation, and allows you select what you’d like to see from your community in your newsfeed. It even lets you subscribe on personal pages without having to ‘friend’ that person. More control means more power for the individual user, which in the long term means more effective marketing efforts for businesses – as fans select brands they really enjoy.

Predictions For The Future

Will these changes impact Facebook negatively or positively? We are going to hazard a guess, that short term – Facebook fans are not going to like it – but long term it’s a wise decision made by a team of expert individuals. There may be some initial fans that seed over to Google+, but in all honesty we believe Facebook will maintain their title as the world’s largest, best social network.

The only concerns left are all the new privacy issues arising from the changes. When people who aren’t your friends can see your posts, that’s just a skip away from everyone seeing them. Once again we urge you never to post anything on Facebook that you wouldn’t want made public. That’s the safest bet, especially amidst these new changes. We’ll write again on this subject soon!

Reports indicate that 70% of all Facebook users hate the changes. Do you really hate the changes and why? Leave your comment below!

Courtesy of dennis-yu.com

#1: Variety Sells

Our first tip is to never get stuck on one particular advert. Change them up, try new things and track the results while you’re doing it. Use this time to collect as much information about what your audience responds to the most. Then fashion two adverts of unparalleled efficiency.

#2: Split Test

Running one advert at a time is a waste of your time. The only way you’ll ever learn how to tweak your adverts, is if you run 2 of them at the same time. Track and measure the results, and fine tune as you go along. Change the heading for a few days, then the keywords, and perhaps a bit of text or the image. Test, test, test!

#3: Image Priority

Never underestimate the power of a single image. Finding the right image for your adverts can mean the difference between 100 new likes, and 500 new likes. People are very visual, so spend some time choosing and testing the right images. Make sure the image says something on its own, and compliments the text.

#4: Be Creative

An advert doesn’t have to be for any one purpose, or have a specific formula. Creativity reaches people – so experiment with competitions, promotions, free giveaways – they all count. How much more effective would your ad be if you gave your new ‘like’ something wonderful for free! Your ad may even go viral!

#5: Withhold Something Magical

Adverts are only successful if the fan clicks like when they get to your page. For this to happen, you need to devise a creative way to withhold information from them that they really want. A reveal tab perhaps? Many will like you just to see it, most of them will be a fan forever. Unless you get a bit spam happy, which is not a good idea.

#6: Data is King

When monitoring and tracking your adverts – check on your settings. Demographic and targeting is very relevant to the performance of your advert. If you’ve miscalculated, you could be sending the wrong fan base to your page, or worse, no one at all. Keep an eye on your ad stats, and really think about their impact on your campaign.

#7: Titles Get Clicks

Your advert title is the first, and often last thing a person reads. If the image catches their attention, their instinct is to read the title. Do not sacrifice cleverness for keywords, and always spend the most time tweaking your title. Sometimes something small like changing ‘I’ to ‘we’ can make a big difference.

Use these super marketing tips to run an excellent Facebook ad campaign!

What do you think is the most important part of running a Facebook advert? We’d like to hear your views below!

Courtesy of blogtipswriter.com

The Not So Shocking Truth

You already know that social presence is fast becoming the centre for all exposure and sales on the internet. People are pulling away from the traditional website, and instead replacing them with social profiles. One business will have a real presence on several large social sites. People interact with them and in turn they sell things to the people. Not so complicated, except for the inherent value we’re missing here.

Because of social trends, it is far more valuable to be prolific on Facebook (i.e. have a great Facebook page) than ever before. Some emarketers would even say it’s necessary. Sales on the internet is changing rapidly. A business once had to try and attract customers – but not any more. Instead, with a shiny social profile, all of their clients will find them. The better the profile, the more money they make.

So you see, it stands to reason that businesses are in a flurry to try and build their social profiles. What has this got to do with Facebook ads? Facebook is the mother of all social network sites. No Facebook business page can function without a decent community to chat with and market to. This community must grow all the time. And it’s a FACT that 75% of brand ‘likes’ on Facebook come from Facebook ads.

The moral of the story is that the success of your Facebook ads are directly proportionate to the success of your marketing strategies on your fan page. Google PPC campaigns might drive more traffic to your website – but are they really making those sales you need? For every person that clicks on your Facebook ad and decides to ‘like’ your page – well, that’s a real investment.

Creating Social Currency

Introducing a new fan to your Facebook page exposes them to your marketing methods, your attempts at social engagement, your community. You are introducing a new person into your social sphere, and increasing your social currency. Social currency is the information shared on your page that encourages further interaction. There are a few other definitions as well, but this one is most relevant to this context.

When you pay for a Facebook advert, what are you getting?

1) More exposure for your Facebook page.
2) More likes, and a larger community.
3) A new fan that will promote – identity, affiliation, conversation, utility, advocacy and information. In other words increase your social currency.
4) Direct sales from your Facebook ad.
5) An increase in repeat business from that individual fan.
6) A boost to your overall social profile.
7) As a result, greater sales in the short and long term.

Can Google Adwords give you all of these? Nope. So to answer the question – are Facebook ads worth paying for? It’s a resounding yes, now more than ever. Facebook adverts are for everyone looking to increase their Facebook community and enhance their overall social profile. Use them like the pros do!

Do you use Facebook adverts to promote your fan page? We’d like to hear about your experiences with the ad platform. Leave a comment for us below!