Courtesy of jobsnhire.com

The Facebook Marketing Fail That is Turning Heads

Facebook has always had privacy problems, since the very first moment it went live. You’ll often see fake spam from your friends every now and then, warning you that Facebook has once again changed its privacy functions, and now the world can see you drunk at that party – if you don’t rush to change the settings.

But what has really happened to this giant social network, since it went public last year? The Facebook marketing team is clearly taking a lot of strain from large investors, as advertising and testing of ad processes has shot up since that time.

Right now, all it takes for a small number of test users on Facebook to inbox you, is a measly buck. They don’t have to be your friend, or know you at all. Facebook real estate is plummeting, and everyone is starting to notice.

The Facebook marketing team needs to be careful how many spaces they fill with ads. Email was one of those hallow areas that were spam free. Facebook first released new policy guidelines that made it impossible for you to block messages from people you aren’t friends with. Now they’re testing this MASSIVE Facebook marketing fail.

Courtesy of empowernetwork.com

Here’s why I don’t think people are going to love this idea, and why businesses won’t benefit from it at all.

• People are unnaturally paranoid about stranger interaction on Facebook – they hate it. Hence the many Facebook marketing spam and privacy problem warnings that go viral.
• People don’t like companies’ cold emailing their daily email addresses, why would Facebook make it so that people can do this to their social networking accounts?
• Small businesses won’t be able to afford too many emails anyway, so there is no value here for them. The Facebook marketing team is targeting big spenders that spam A LOT.
• It’s another ‘bad’ solution to a non-existent problem like the $7 it costs to send status updates directly to the top of friends feeds.
• It comes in the wake of Facebook’s recent privacy policy reform that caused negative backlash, not to mention their privacy issues on Instagram.

It seems to me like this is a ploy by The Facebook marketing team to open yet another revenue stream, even though experts say it won’t earn them a lot of money. While the intended uses for this ‘innovation’ may be to allow a stranger to inbox you, because they met you at a conference or something relevant, it’s a hollow reason.

Courtesy of lifehacker.com

The Real Reason Facebook Allows $1 Emails

The real reason that The Facebook marketing team is testing this $1 email system is of course – money. Investors are nipping at the heels of the marketing team to earn more money, to find new paths that can be money spinners to boost their share value.

If a large corporation wants to directly reach 100,000 people with an advert, they could choose to do it on Facebook as part of their own Facebook marketing campaign. It would only cost them $100,000, and its extra functionality for the business. Everyone wins – oh, except the user.

If this moves past the testing phase, expect to see a whole lot more rubbish in your inbox. More proof that Facebook is going the same way as the old Myspace. Soon there won’t be any place for friend interaction, because of all the ad space!

How do you feel about getting ads direct to your Facebook inbox from strangers?

Courtesy of blog.journalistic.com

Finding The Root of The Problem

You land on your Facebook page, and horror! Your fans are up in arms! What do you do? The first thing, is determine the root cause of the issue. Believe it or not ‘trolls’ still exist, though these days it’s called ‘raging’ instead. Step one is to find out what you’ve done wrong. Is this an isolated incident? Who is this coming from? Why are they saying the things they’re saying?

Establish if the slander is warranted, or if it’s just someone raging your page.

Turn The Problem Into a Solution

By now you should have established whether this was a one-on-one type deal, or if it involves many fans. Here’s how you turn the problem into an opportunity to make your business look good.

• 1) It’s your fault. You’ve done something wrong! Immediately apologize to the person, or people concerned. Then go a step further. Offer them something extra for free, as a heartfelt apology. People love it when you make an effort.
• 2) It’s partially your fault. But the fan is being unreasonable and embarrassing. Apologize anyway, about the fact that the issue caused the fan so much distress. Then give them a free gift. Or two.
• 3) It’s not your fault. Your fan is going nuts! Apologize on your Facebook page, and offer to clear up the matter via email. It’s much more private and will prevent any further ‘live’ feedback. Do NOT engage this fan publicly.
• 4) What’s going on? Pure rage/trolling! Publish a brief post apologizing to your real fans, and explaining that the message was spam. Delete the post. Block and report the troll.

Rules of Engagement

Whatever you do, always respond. When you don’t respond, and your page is left full of negative feedback, you’re shooting yourself in the foot. Even if it’s a highly unpleasant experience, regarding a fan or client you’ve had trouble with, make the effort. Not for them, for your own sake.

Always respect your fan or client, even if they are completely unreasonable. The last thing you want to do is rage at them, or start a public fight. Be the bigger person, and be polite. Don’t remove all negative posts. Use them as an opportunity to show your other fans that you care about their concerns.

Do this right, and you’ll find that other fans often come to your defense. What started out as something very negative, can turn out to be the best post on your page! So keep your head, stay calm – and respond in a professional manner.

What’s the worst feedback you’ve ever received and how did you deal with it? Share your story with us!

Courtesy of facebookms.com

#1: Tricks With Reveal Tabs

If you don’t have a reveal tab – get one. You don’t have to hire a developer to do it for you, you can do it yourself. Just buy a template, and customize it. They very rarely cost more than $50.00, and they’re totally worth it!

#2: Time For Incentives

If you don’t have enough fans or interaction – try running a competition or promotion. Fans want a reason to be on your page, so give them one. You can add incentives to just about anything – apps, images, videos, get creative.

#3: Change Your Questions

Everyone asks questions, and people do respond. But if your questions aren’t getting any responses, then you need to look into changing your question strategy. Make them personal, specific and interesting. People love the opportunity to show off!

#4: Create Occasions

You have to start thinking like a media company. That means your page needs to host certain occasions to keep people coming back. Mondays can be your day for live Facebook chats, Fridays can be video sharing day. Again be creative.

#5: Target Your Ad Campaigns

If you’re on a limited budget, be smart about when you run your Facebook ads. If a holiday is coming up, build a campaign around that. People are way more likely to like, chat and buy from businesses that target their ads.

#6: Give Something Incredible Away

If you want more attention on Facebook, try giving something of real value away. You’ll get a ton of new likes, and lots of new comments. Best of all, your page will probably go viral. Make it big, and worth sharing.

#7: Harness The Power of Humor

We’ve said before that it’s a bad idea to use random humor on your Facebook page. Instead use targeted humor! People love to interact with funny images and videos, so find one every now and then that is related to your niche.

#8: Ask Fans Personal Questions

If you want to engage your audience, find out more about them. Stop talking about yourself and your business, and ask them personal questions. Where are they from, what do they do? Form personal relationships!

#9: Facebook Wall Advertising

You can use Facebook to advertise special events that you’re hosting on your other social media pages. In fact if something is happening – you should always put it on Facebook. If you want more attendees, make an event.

#10: Friend Your Competition

Interesting business opportunities can result from actively ‘liking’ a competitor’s page. Don’t only like it – get involved. Share your community, and promote their posts as well. Great things happen when people stop being competitive.

Which of these 10 tips is your favorite? We want to find out!

Courtesy of digitizor.com

Working With Invites

Once you’ve selected your image and done a write up of the event – you need to invite people – directly on Facebook. Send out as many invites as you can, and encourage all those that are attending to forward invites onto their friendship network. When you are setting up your event, remember to select the option that displays who is attending and who isn’t. This is very important to the growth of an event.

Pay special attention to the people that click ‘maybe’ on your events page. These potential attendees are just one click away from being at your event. To encourage these folks to change their RSVP to attending – run promotions straight from your events wall. These could include real-life specials, coupon giveaways or Facebook-specific promos. Your goal is always to make your list want to attend your event.

A quick and effective promo to run from your event wall is the old image tagging competition. Make the prize something location based, to encourage excitement for the event day. Put aside 5 images and ask your fans to tag themselves in them. As one image fills up, move onto the next. Then select a random winner. The key here is to give your attendees enough time to enter and tell other people about the promo.

Do something special the day before the event, to remind your community that the date is imminent. Create a memorable message and send it to your Facebook RSVP list. If you want even more of a turn out – send each person a discount or coupon. Using events is a great way to get people in the door, but from the minute you post your event – you need to start giving them reasons to commit to coming.

Paid Advertising Notions

Events are best when they come with a supportive Facebook ad campaign. Get more people interested in your event by promoting it all around Facebook. You can adjust the campaign to suit your budget level, but make sure to increase it on the last few days of your event post. Community members are more likely to attend something that is still fresh in their minds.

Mari Smith suggests that you should set up a registration page outside Facebook – and include all relevant social media buttons to make it effective. She also states that offering your communities something for free doesn’t hurt either. Be sure to create the event from your business fan page and not your personal profile.

Brainstorm various ways to get the word out about your event, and integrate it into your page campaign.

Have you ever run a Facebook event? What happened? We’d like to know!

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 blogen.ebuzzing.com

Your Facebook Wall

The wall of your fan page is a powerful feature – it’s the place where your fan base communicates with you. Your first step, is to draft a comprehensive write-up of the position involved, using niche related keywords. Include a direct link to your business website – where you should be advertising the position(s). Choose an interesting image to go with the job description.

Invite applicants to ask questions about the position in the comment section, and do your best to answer each of them. Q&A updates will get you closer to finding the perfect applicant, which is why a recruitment campaign on Facebook is useful.

An Application Job App

Sometimes directing people away from your Facebook page isn’t the answer. If your company often posts jobs, then it’s an excellent idea to have a job application app created for your Facebook page. Here a job prospect can click on one of your category tabs, flick through the jobs on offer and submit their CV right then and there. It’s a simple, effective way to collect potential employees.

Advertise To Attract Relevant Applicants

Posting jobs isn’t going to attract enough people to your Facebook page, so you’ll need some additional help with an ad campaign. All you have to do is select the job you want to fill, and create a targeted Facebook ad about it. Instead of simply advertising ‘lots of jobs on offer,’ make it specific, so that the targeting works. Choose the age group, location and more for the best applicants possible.

You’ll want to have these adverts appear on industry related Facebook pages, where your applicants might be. If you’re going to run a targeted ad campaign for the position available, then don’t forget to ask interested people to share it on their Facebook walls. This will encourage the viral effect.

Use Groups and Pages For Promotion

Finally, to really get your job seen – you need to put together a list of niche related Facebook pages that you can ‘like.’ The more you like, the more CV’s you’ll receive. Draft a standard template email detailing briefly why you would like to post this job on the Facebook page owner’s wall. This might seem like a futile step, but it prevents page owners from flagging you as a spammer.

Once they agree, post your description and link, to get more applicants. If you have a substantial community, then you can use the group function to let your fans know about the new position. Simply add them to the group and invite discussion. For a viral boost, why not ask other page owners if they will publish your job in their groups? This can be very useful.

Use your personal network to advertise your positions, and promote your Facebook page on your website and other social media sites. You’ll be well on your way to launching a great recruitment campaign in no time.

How do you advertise jobs on Facebook? Share your tips with us below!

Courtesy of zelrealm.com

#1: Empowering Design

Your Facebook page design matters. It’s the first thing your potential fans see, so it needs to make an impression. For a twist on your design, select images for your Facebook page that share a common color scheme. Use the page image, additional apps and top image bar to secure a vibrant page design.

#2: The Domino Effect

Give each Facebook update viral potential. That means you need to give people a real incentive to respond and share your posts. Think prizes, Q&A’s, contests, quizzes and competitions that result in free exposure for your winning fan. People want to be seen, heard and acknowledged. That’s the domino effect!

#3: Image Tagging

Upload product images and get fans to tag themselves in the image to qualify for a contest. Pick the exact spot on the image before hand, and publish it ‘circled’ to get an additional response from your fans. It’s a great way to engage a crowd.

#4: The Awesome App

Your goal is to keep your community active. When you do this more fans will come. Get an application created that will have them returning to your page daily. Be creative, and aggressive in marketing that app once it’s complete.

#5: Comment Love

Treat your responses to fans as MORE important than your original update. Spark real conversations and engage your fans with relevant questions. Remember a well posed question to 1 person, will spark a much larger community response.

#6: Facebook Groups

Segment your fan base into specific groups. Once they are all part of a group, create unique content there on that subject that really grabs their interest. Encourage user generated content to keep the group going.

#7: Facebook Video

You already know people love video. Videos go viral on Facebook often. But posting a video isn’t enough – you need to plan a conversation to go with that video, based on insight and juicy tips. Hook your fans and get video post discussions 1000 comments long.

#8: Places and Check-Ins

The world’s gone mobile. Take advantage of this by setting your small business up as a Facebook place. Encourage incentives to ‘check-in’ – it’s great exposure. Do this by reminding your fans outside the virtual realm. Posters anyone?

#9: Who Are You

A brand without a face, or a name is difficult to relate to. Don’t forget to pop in a ‘team’ app, and put the faces to the names. If you’re publishing nameless posts and have more than one admin, you’re missing out on real time interaction.

#10: Like Page Potential Networks

When someone likes your page, they potentially unlock their entire 130+ friend base. Get their attention by immediately engaging your new fan, so that your posts find their way to the eyes of a personal friend network. Always keep non-fans in mind. They’re out there. They just need a reason!

Any more Facebook marketing tips you’d like to add? Have your say below!

Courtesy of bitrebels.com

#1: The Content Generation

Back in the old days when communication was still limited – only people that loved to write actually wrote and shared their knowledge with the world. And even then, you had to be a particularly good writer to get published. It was a closed club. What Facebook has done, is it’s turned even the most humble small business owner, into a writer. Writing has become the most important skill in the world.

According to Soshable, The average Facebook user generates 90 pieces of content every month. That’s incredible! Sharing knowledge with words on Facebook, whether it’s for social or business gain, is being embraced by people all over the globe.

Without Facebook this real-time social form of communication would never have happened. Facebook is the reason the world is becoming smaller, and more intelligent. More than 600 million people use Facebook to share information. That’s trillions of bits of information every month!

#2: The Next Economic Boom

Because platforms like Facebook have revolutionized the way we communicate with each other, it’s kick-started an economic boom. Now that small businesses have the opportunity to promote themselves on Facebook – they will grow larger, faster – and this means higher income and a better standard of living for self-starters.

More than 70% of local businesses use Facebook as a marketing tool. The hype is dead. Everyday we’re faced with more success stories, improved communication between businesses and clients – and calculable financial returns. To not have a Facebook fan page for your business, excludes you from this excitement.

From the chance to earn more and expand, despite the fact that you’re in a fixed location. You don’t have to rely on a tiny percentage of local business anymore, or deal with massive advertising costs that television, radio and print ads demand. Your Facebook business page is your proven ticket to more success.

#3: A Central Hub of Knowledge

What would you do if you couldn’t contact your friends or colleagues on Facebook? How would you promote your latest one-day special if your fan page wasn’t instant? Facebook collects and shares all media – content, video, images and audio, making it easier to interact and have a voice that is heard.

You’re not only speaking to the people you know, but to everyone that is interested in what you’re talking about. That’s why keywords were created. In one location you can manage your business and your social life instantly, efficiently and better than anything that’s ever come before. Facebook is not only the future, it’s your future – even if you hardly use it right now.

We all need Facebook – it’s our personal diary and life planner! If you’ve been wondering if it’s all worth it, the answer is a thousand times yes!

Facebook Poll

Please choose from one of these 4 answers and place your vote in the comment area.

What Do You Use Facebook For The Most?

a) To keep up with friends and family
b) To boost your business image
c) To sell products or services
d) To network, socially and for business

Leave your vote below!

Courtesy of businessinsider.com

The result has been some rather awesome changes that will help your business get more exposure, build better relationships and yes – make more money. But how do you use these new features?

1. Personalizing Your Business

Facebook has now made it easier to personalize your business, by allowing you to act as your business, instead of a random name or third party. The new “Use Facebook as” option, lets you capitalize on Facebook’s functionality by using your businesses voice.

This means that you can interact with other people, on other pages – as your business. The benefits of this of course, are endless. You can build a credible reputation on Facebook, by speaking to a variety of different people, even if they don’t ‘like’ your page.

How To Use This:

‘Like’ other pages that are similar to yours, where people with the same interests will find your contributions valuable. Don’t spam your competitor’s walls. Social media is about sharing.

Contribute knowledge to their pages, and allow the same on yours. Eventually, as time goes by and you become friends, you can straight out say, “Hay like me too!” In the meantime, your comments lead back to your page anyway.

Find useful and important things to say on your competitors pages. And monitor your own very carefully, for foolhardy businesses that will see this as an opportunity to spam your pages. When you’re done, simply switch back to your personal profile on your main page.

2. The New Photo Updates

You’ve already noticed that there are now 5 photos at the top of your fan page that continually update themselves. This is an excellent new feature on Facebook, because it encourages further investigation into your photo albums, from new visitors that land on your fan page.

It’s also great as a monitoring tool, because you’ll always be informed about the photos your business is being tagged in. If something unsavoury comes up – you can remove it before any damage is done.

3. Making Friends With Your Top 5 Competitors

Now, your business fan page can ‘like’ up to 5 pages of its own. From a business standpoint, this is a unique opportunity to become allies with 5 of your competitors. Instead of seeing them as enemies (as we are taught to in traditional marketing), view them as friends. Together you are helping to complete your reader’s knowledge on your industry.

How To Use This:

Research and begin a dialogue with a competitor business. Be realistic about it, and don’t approach huge businesses unless you are one. Once the dialogue is open, explain that you would like to add them to your top 5 ‘likes’ on your fan page.

If they are open to it, they might be willing to do the same. Essentially this will feed traffic between your pages. It’s a mutually beneficial situation that very few savvy businesses will decline. Choose wisely, and genuinely make friends with your top 5 competitors.

Use this new functionality to spread the word about your business on Facebook. If you continue to create engaging content and uphold a good reputation, there’s only one way your business can go – up!

How do you use the new Facebook question tool? Tell us below!